A Dilemma!

Everything’s waking up again; voles, birds, rabbits, hares and many creatures in between; blue tits and robins have muscles to die for from all the nuts, fatballs and seed they have devoured at my expense. However, we now have a more sinister beastie living alongside us; ‘Ratty’ has taken up residence at the corner of our rockery – just a metre away from the bird feeders. On the wall, happily sharing breakfast are robins, blackbirds, finches, woodpeckers, nuthatches, chaffinches, dunnocks, tits and now, Ratty; a healthy, Brown rat - Rattus norvegicus.  

At the base of the rockery wall are Pheasant, English and French partridge, two pigeons, a crow and a kestrel hovering over his own, private fly-through takeaway. The owls are asleep – they come out later and hoover up whoever’s still out there.

Ratty takes a piece of toast back to his larder, the blue-tits, nuts and bread to theirs and the kestrel, when he scores a direct, airborne hit, a blue-tit or two to the top of his telegraph pole or cow shed roof, depending on the morning’s preference.

Ratty bothered me. Rats, plague and paranoia are all, to us humans, much inter-related, so like the hunter I once was, I dragged from my gun safe a .458 side lock Winchester Magnum, slid two soft point 500 grain cartridges into the breach and opened the landing window (for that little lot, read: .22 air rifle – doesn’t sound nearly as impressive though). Within a couple of minutes the eye piece of my scope was filled with furry, puffed up cheeks, little ears and two sparkling eyes that bored right through my wussy, unable-to-pull-the-trigger soul. So, two weeks later, guess who’s still with us and on a daily basis, happily plunders the bird food. Think I’ll hire a professional hunter to do the dreaded deed, but there again, Ratty didn’t ask to be Ratty and as long he or she stays in the singular... Let’s see what the summer brings.

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An English Boy’s Wanderings; another re-written excerpt:

 ... Our little Morris Minor took us into and out of Bulawayo without mishap. The streets were amazing; all of them really wide and straight as arrows – streets and avenues at right angles to one another. All, from what we had been told were wide enough to turn a wagon and full span of oxen through one hundred and eighty degrees with space to spare. But that was in the old days. Now the middle bits are filled up with car-park spaces.

‘Turn left into Selborne Avenue,’ Mother instructed and father swung us in line with one hundred and sixty seven miles of road that would, all being well, take us into our new, adopted mining town – Mashaba.

Mother had bought half a dozen steak and kidney pies from Downing’s Bakery. Her Thermos was un-stoppered and to go with the pies, everyone got their part-filled cup of lukewarm tea. Within twenty minutes Bulawayo had disappeared.

Mother unfolded a Caltex road map across her knees, her finger now the non-stop seeker of unknown highways and new names.

‘Essexvale,’ she smiled to herself. ‘That’s the first town we come to. Then a place called Bala Bala?’ She looked sideways at my father. ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘Bit like Wagga Wagga in Australia,’ said my Dad and got glowered at. ‘Must be one of those native names?’

The road was wider now; full tar – no missing piece in the middle, but not for long.

‘Slow down there’s a sign.’ Mother craned her neck, bumped her head on the windscreen and bent her cigarette. ‘Detour?’ A line of forty-four gallon oil drums had been strung across the road. ‘Must be road works.’

We followed the arrows. The tar macadam disappeared. Now the road, like a giant skiffle-board threatened to shake our Noddy car to pieces – like driving over a corrugated iron roof but twice as bad. Then we hit a smooth patch and a single-decker, ‘Shu-Shine’ logoed juggernaut from Hades thundered past. I looked up from my little window and caught a glimpse of glassed in, black faces staring down at me; white eyes and coloured headscarves – then the bus was gone. What dust there had been on the road was now in the air and stones the size of butter beans thrashed our windscreen. Mother screamed, my father cursed and I learned a string of new, exciting words...

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Towards the Light!

Hi – my need to batter the little white ball has been re-awakened by youngest son, so decided to have a one-blog-break from my wanderings in Africa and take you along to my modest golf club for a short, but hopefully, humorous insight. Anyhow, having dusted off my clubs and harvested a dozen balls from around our garden, with spring in the air and jaunty bounce to my step, yours truly set off with Tiger-like intent for 18, unsuspecting fairways...

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The Over the Hill Gang:

... Four minutes late for tee-off time. Having parked my van, changed my shoes, lashed together trolley and bag, I merge with six other grumpy golfers. Now there are seven, ‘Victor Meldrew’ look-alikes huddled around the first tee.

‘You’re late again.’

I give Geoff my best ‘so-what’ look and manage to mouth obscenities at him without the others cottoning on.

‘A quid on the game?’

Everyone nods. Geoff looks surprised, even though it’s been ‘a quid’ as far back as anyone of us can remember.

Les has got his blue, thermal vest on; the sleeves are sticking out from those on his shirt. When he laughs his eyes water and his top teeth drop; tough old sod but he’s eighty one for chrissakes! Pipes and tubes, tablets, teeth and sprays, I can’t wait to get that old – so much fun to look forward to. I pinch my nostrils closed and mimic Peter Allis:

‘On the first tee from...’ wherever – doesn’t really matter and I get another dirty look from Geoff, I guess his waiting for whichever god he believes in is driving him nuts.

So this is it. The moment we have all dreaded and dreamed of since last Wednesday. Trolleys of varying colours, makes and price tags are parked and preened like Mayfair Rollers. Batteries are coupled, engines revved and wheels checked for fear of flying off halfway down the Glorious Fourth.

‘Show us the way, Tiger!’ I grin at Geoff and egg him onto the first tee.

He glowers at me for talking and with a driver modelled on Picard’s Starship Enterprise lurches at a little ball no bigger than a pullet’s egg. 

‘Great shot!’ I lie and get muttered at when Geoff’s ball makes a spiteful swerve for squirrel country. Now he’s sucking his teeth and glaring. Him the Great White, me the unfortunate seal; I can see by the look in his eyes that I’m to blame for his crappy shot and he would, if he could, devour me.

‘Do you ever stop talking?’ he asks me. My reply of ‘only-when-having-an-orgasm’ has obviously offended him because his grip on the driver is really tight now.

Eventually, we’re off. Most are in the trees but there’s a lone ball on the fairway. Ian, being dragged at break-neck speed by his runaway electric trolley is first to reach it. He checks the logo and dribbles venom.

’It’s yours.’

‘Titleist 3?’

‘Yes,’ he growls and the urge to stamp on my ball turns his ears red. 

‘Behind that tree,’ I point to his ball, ‘I think that’s yours.’ It is and another gargantuan slash with the Callaway equivalent of a Scottish broadsword squirts his ball towards the pond, skips it three times on the water and sticks it in the bank. I daren’t repeat what Ian said for fear of being locked up. However, an hour and three quarters later with spikes off, hands round balls in pockets we all traipse into the golf club dining room.

Les orders for all of us; always the same – soup, roll and a cup of tea. Seven mushroom soups – seven ageing men on the verge of a feeding frenzy. Roger flashes a smile at the waitress; not impressed by his Brad Pitt, plastic look-alikes she twirls her pencil and stares through him.

‘Whadjawant?’ She’s texting while she speaks. Clever girl – multitasker. Miniature, chromed dumbbells through her lips and both earlobes.

‘Some extra rolls would be nice?’

‘Gedjasum in a minute,’ she replies and carries on texting.

The soup arrives; hot enough to melt down Chevy engine blocks. John burns his mouth and shouts out something that rhymes with duck. The waitress laughs, Geoff threatens to eat her liver and drops his spoon in his soup. Ian and Owen spring to life, wipe their chins and both shout, ‘Drink!’ to what they think is the waitress.

‘That’s the Captain’s portrait,’ I tell them. Both go back to their soup. Drinks forgotten; hands shaking in unison they stipple the table cloth with mushroom soup.

Les smiles and nods his head. Soup finished and rolls dismembered he talks to his invisible friend at the doorway.

‘Time for another nine, then?’ 

Outside, the sun’s come out through a hole in the clouds, startlingly bright just above the tenth green; maybe God’s sent someone down for us. There’s no one else on the course; ‘millionaire golf’ everyone points out – same as they pointed out last week. However, it matters not, the air is fresh, the colours stunning. I shrug off the inevitability of me reaching my own, life’s ‘final hole’ and with the rest of the over-the-hill-gang trundling along behind, walk as a grumpy old git of a golfer down towards the light...

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Goodbye Wankie Colliery!

Hi – full of a cold so my blog story will be short and sweet this week, reckon I’ll crawl back into bed and stay there ‘til spring. This is when I really miss living somewhere hot and dry – taste the dust instead of the damp – the sun on my back instead of a minus ten wind gnawing at my neck.

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An English Boy’s Wanderings... continued.

(Partly rewritten so some of the below you may well have read before; the editing goes on and on and...)

... Two weeks later and we were gone; tearful goodbyes were said and with our Morris loaded to the gunnels with sandwiches, flasks and mother’s fags we headed straight for the rising sun. The mango trees, swimming pool and first love were now just memories. Our sun-bleached Morris Minor went bravely into the heat and onto a road we had never seen before. Mother sat with her fifty-box of Matinee cigarettes clutched to her bosom and an austere stare for everything beyond the windscreen. She had the quarter window fully open to suck out her smoke and fag ash. The back seat, piled up like some pawn shop counter, left just enough space for me.

‘What in God’s name have they done to the middle out of the road?’

‘It was built that way on purpose.’ My father did his best.

‘Without a middle?’ Mother retorted.

Dad nodded and I leaned between the two front seats for a better view. Two, single strips of tar macadam stretched away to the front like wobbly liquorice sticks in the heat haze.

‘Called a strip road. Built during the recession. Saved the government a fortune.’

‘And what happens when we meet a car coming the other way?’ She grabbed at her seat. ‘Like right now!’

The car bombed towards us, whipping up dust from the missing bit in the middle; a black Chevrolet, all chrome and leering headlamps – the car from Hell.

‘For God’s sake pull over before we all die!’

We closed to within a hundred yards of the Chevy before both cars gave up their respective ‘right hand strip’; with barely the length of an outstretched arm between us, we passed as stately ships in the night. The Chevy driver waved and grinned and mother retrieved her cigarette from its neat little burn in the carpet. For the next fifty miles no one spoke...

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Fishing For Bugs!

Hi – today’s been a cold one; snow, sleet, rain and everything else related to freezing your socks off. Makes me wonder how birds survive – stuck outside with nothing more than a flimsy feather jacket and bare legs. In theory, their feet should freeze solid and snap off at the ankles, but they don’t. However, costs me a small fortune to keep them fed and warm via their calorie intake. Nuts, seed, fat-balls and crumbled up toast – and if they’re really lucky some chopped up bacon, all to keep their engines running. Even the crows drop in for a crust; guess they know I’m a soft touch. Oh, and the owls are back to decimate the local vole population.

 Stuck in a picture for you – handsome as ever in his winter plumage – the barn owl, not Jones, who just this minute whispered to me that none of you know what he looks like, so to make his day in it goes – another picture, one of the man himself, the Jones of Indiana. Drew the line at hat-and-whip though; told him you wouldn’t believe me.

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My Wanderings; an extract:

... Scorpions come out at night; they like the dark when no-one can see them stabbing their suppers to death. Baboons eat them, they flip over stones and when they find one, pull off the stinger bit and crunch up the rest, but that’s in the daytime. At night, the baboons are asleep and the scorpions know this so they all come out of their holes and, like I said, it’s their turn to crunch things up. Some of them are really big and black with big nippers; they look a bit like crabs with long tails. Uncle Ron told me it was the ones with small nippers that stung you the hardest – little nippers, more poison – big nippers, not so much. ‘The littlest bastards sting the hell out of you...’ I heard him tell my dad, ‘...and brown ones are the worst.’

Most scorpions like to make holes in the ground where they can sleep ‘til the sun goes down. Catching a live one was, to us kids, on a par with a Masai warrior initiate hunting his first lion. At the edge of our picnic site the ground was suited for just such an occasion. So, armed with glass jars and grass stalks, in we went.

The holes were sort of flat, oval shaped mini caves, dug at a shallow angle, that’s how we knew they were scorpion houses. They had to be oval and wider than they were tall because scorpions are flat-wide bug things and their stingers stick out straight when they crawl inside. Anyway, we selected the biggest hole and the biggest of us bullied his way to the front of the queue and claimed his rights to first go at scorpion fishing. I held the jar and with my heart up round my tonsils watched the big kid slide his piece of grass inside the devil’s lair.

‘Can you feel it?’

‘Dunno yet – not sure.’

‘Did you chew the end?’

‘He didn’t chew the end,’ another kid challenged. ‘It won’t grab hold if you don’t chew the end.’

Out came the grass, the end was chewed and back in it went.

He let go of the grass and we all watched and waited – hearts thumping – five kids in a clump.

Minutes later... ‘I saw it move.’

‘Nah, it didn’t.’

‘It did! I saw it move you had a bite.’

The big kid reached for the grass and like a fisherman sensing his line, held the stalk gently between his thumb and forefinger. He looked up and grinned.

‘I can feel him.’

‘Pull him out!’ the rest of us piped, ‘but slowly or you’ll break his legs off!’

Inch by inch, whatever had grabbed the grass stalk was towed from its burrow. Scratchy noises; bony needles on glass, then, like a cork from a bottle out it came and the arachnid from hell landed on my arm. The words ‘panic’ and ‘mayhem’ joined forces and all my supposedly, steadfast comrades legged it.

Petrified, I was left alone with my now redundant jar, thumping heart et al.  The big kid laughed, the littlest whimpered, one kid peed his pants and the other ran off yelling adult swearwords until he bumped into his dad’s leg.

At the tail-end of one extremely peed off scorpion, like a saddler’s curved needle the stinging bit arched above the creatures bony back; at its very tip, a jewel of bright, extruded venom hung there, trembling in the sunlight.

The creature’s eyes, I swear, were firmly locked to mine...

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