A brief history of the ‘Made in Rhodesia’ bicycle as recalled during a Police Anti Terrorist Unit patrol, Gokwe Tribal Trustland, Rhodesia, 1977.
Here is Part Two of the incredible story of how I got done-over by my bicycles. Please scroll down a bit if you are a late entry for Part One of this excruciating tale.
Me and Alan G. - Sengwa Base Camp, Gokwe TTL, New Years Eve 1976/7
I had been a ‘real policeman’ for almost two weeks! Please note ultra-cool digital watch.
‘Hello, I am Middle Silly Junk Bike, and your father bought me as a surprise present for your eleventh birthday.’
Surprised? I stared in horror at the thing.
‘And - I am Made in Rhodesia!’ it added proudly.
Well that was understandable. I really couldn’t imagine countries like Germany and Italy manufacturing such a contraption. Perhaps it was a French design based on the hunch-back of Notre Dame de Paris. Something was seriously wrong with it. Granted, the handle bars were quite cool, almost perfectly straight, and it had cable brakes, but I just couldn’t get my head around it. It was like looking at a cheated cheetah; the one that lost out at the back of queue when the creator ran out of legs, and stuck on some spares left over from the elephants. The bike was a freak! The owner of Manica Cycles must have laughed his head off -
‘Quick, here comes that Troll who bought Lockwheelfor his son! He never misses a bent bargain. Bring out the Quasimodo, I have a hunch my till will start ringing again.’
A quick ride around the block established the problem. With an amazing ingenuity the manufacturers had, just for a laugh, attached 24-inch wheels to a 22-inch frame. This meant that within a year, my knees would start to hit the handle bars and the saddle would have to be raised so high, it would resemble the French bell ringer with a padded cripple’s crook sticking out of his back. I would soon be forced to ride with my knees sticking out like a butterfly’s spread wings.
The little silver bell on its horns had been moved on the first day, after its fixings managed to slice through my kneecap, whilst turning right. Besides the ridicule from my ‘friends’, at least it didn’t suffer from lock-wheel. But when Middle Silly Junk Bike decided to have a go, it waited until my thirteenth birthday, when for once, my pitiful bleating took fruit and Quasimodogot geared up - in the shape of a Sturmey Archer internal hub, three-speed gearbox.
***
I stood up, uncoiling my frame as lazily as a puff-adder reluctantly reacting to the warming sun. I needed a wazz. At this darkest of hours, the land was at its coolest. The dew made damp patches on my trousers as I cautiously moved towards a nearby tree. As I struggled to pee silently, I recalled looking at a blow-up schematic of that gear box’s innards and concluding the inventor should have stuck to Cuckoo clocks.There was a wire leading from a gearshift on the handlebars to the guts of the contraption, which made strange ticking sounds as you peddled. That was the flaw in the scrambled egghead’s machine. As the gear-wire stretched over time, it needed to be periodically checked for the right tension. Failure to do so could wipe out a dynasty.
***
Twelve year old Me and my Monkey. And my late brother Michael. Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1970.
It was on the way back from school when Quasimododecided to try and castrate me.
At a furious pace, I left the flat stretch ofSecond Street Extension, and hit the steep cycle path on Upper East Road (later to be renamed) that goes up to my suburb of Mount Pleasant. Standing up on the pedals, with the momentum well timed; I flicked gears, each time doing the little reverse pedal that engages them. Three - Two -One. Down came my legs with awesome thrust - into nothing. Nothing at all - the gear had not engaged, a phenomena known as freewheeling, or to be more accurate; ‘neutered on neutral’.
My feet slipped off the pedals and I came down crashing onto the cross bar, my full weight cushioned by my little pack of tenderly maturing genitals. The forward momentum continued. My head just missed having its teeth removed on the ‘L’ shaped bracket for a torch (we had advanced further than the candle holder), the front tyre did manage to shave my chin. Up went the legs in an automatic counter-balance.
Contrary to the rumours, my life didn’t flash before my eyes; instead I saw torturous images of euphemisms:
Crushed nuts
Pressed olives
Sad Sack
Unicorns (I couldn’t remember the word for eunuch at that time.)
The pain was so intense, I couldn’t even scream. My hands, now crushed against my chest, had Quasimodo’s horns in a grip of death. My elbows jerked spasmodically, and the crazed machine now wandered off the cycle track, and onto the main road. Gravity took over, and I collapsed under the bike. Cars desperately swerved around me. Kids peered out the windows as I vomited out my crushed family jewels. Preservation made me crawl to the small grassy strip between cycle path and the main road and curled up foetidly. I retched for what seemed an eternity.
Finally, still bent double, and with tears streaming down in sympathy, I lost the plot.
‘You piece of shit,’ I screamed, and in an adrenalin rush of pain and pure hatred, I threw the hunchback onto the cycle track, and jumped all over it, kicking it whilst it was down, smashing-in spokes, buckling its wheels and snapping the gear’s wires.
I really taught it a lesson. I cleverly told father that a bad boy (unknown) must have done the terrible damage to Quasimodo whilst it was parked in the school’s bicycle shed.
***
I punched the button again. Another forty minutes before I could officially awake the others and make a well deserved cup of chicory, with just a hint of InyangaMountain’s coffee. I just couldn’t wait to spend the first half hour of sunrise crunching floating islands of milk powder against the aluminium cup.
Bored to distraction, I decided to tie my shoelaces. I slept with my boots on. They weren’t really boots, just canvas tackies, designed as basketball shoes, with no treads. Great for fooling gooks, according to ‘Be Smarter, Wear Bata.’ Their ability at subterfuge was equalled only by an elephant with red painted toenails hiding in a strawberry patch. They were also about as clandestine as a corpse wandering around asking for directions to the cemetery. They were comfortable enough and dried out rather quickly. A mangy odour permeated the air as I strapped my soggy meat in. I wriggled the right foot. It still worked, but it had been a close shave. There was still visible scar tissue shining dully under the half moon, where just above the ankle, Die-Swiftly, the third and largest of the Silly Junk Bikes, had attempted a narcosis free amputation.
Greetings all. As promised, I will post a piece of my memoir. Sadly, you have to read the blah-blah below before it kicks off. Also, due to the length of it, I will post in three parts.
Is ‘Youth is wasted on the young’? (George Bernard Shaw.) From an adult’s perspective it most certainly is. I am sure that we all have nostalgic memories, some good, some are bad. I believe I tend to think that I had happy times when I wasn’t at home, because as long as my father was alive, I tend to have miserable memories.
Time passes differently for children. Each year (which just lasts for ever, except during school holidays), was a triumph when it ended, because for a brief moment there’re nearer to their peers - those older than us - who did clever things we wanted to emulate. Of course, it turned out they were also older and doing even more grown up type of things. In fact, children spent most of the time growing up wishing it would hurry up. Worse of all - they were not paid to attend school. The teachers were!
Still, we always had plans what we were going to do as soon as we grew up. So we couldn’t wait. Only Christopher Robin, Peter Pan and the late Michael Jackson, didn’t want to grow up. The last one died trying.
Kids do stupid things; it is part of growing up. Well it was, nowadays it is banned, controlled or given an ASBO. (Just like my dear Daddy was to me.) What is weird is how I now look at Three Silly Junk Bikes, now that I am fully engrossed with the OU course Children’s Literature.
Me, aged 11 with my best friend. The dysfunctional family has moved to 10 Sims Road, Mount PleasantSalisbury. The house was brand new and the garden is not finished. Oh, we were very poor. The new pool isn’t that large.
I was a white, middle class Rhodesian kid. I was entitled to a bicycle. I wasn’t entitled to very nice one. Each model that would grow with me emulated my personality. Would I have treated my bicycles better if they had cost a fortune, or if I had had to pay for them myself (which of course, was impossible), who knows? I certainly looked after my first car.
Is TheThree Silly Junk Bikes a finished chapter from Last of the Rhodesians? I actually thought so. I now sincerely do not know and I am no longer sure. The prose is simple, but in a way it is a children’s story. I have added some photographs applicable to the time. I don’t have any of the bicycles for the simple reason they weren’t worth the cost of a Kodak Instamatic shot. Why spend 15 cents from your pocket money getting a picture developed of something you loathed?
The Three Silly Junk Bikes is about growing up - albeit through the saddle of a bicycle.
It is told in time shift as I reminisce a decade of misery owning Rhodesian bicycles.
A second Raleigh Bicycle advert, Date unknown, depicting a classical ‘Kaffir Bike’. The term is highly derogative but used by us whitey kids more in this context as a social class difference, rather than a racial slur. It is imperative for the first part of the story to look in close detail at the bicycle.
Me aged 18 +. My first Police Anti Terrorist Patrol (PATU) early 1977, GokweTribalTrustLand. I had an accumulated counter insurgency knowledge of 25 days training. My arsenal at the time consisted of three, 20 round magazines, one WW2 grenade, (in my hand), and another 60 rounds packed in their cardboard boxes and easily accessible from my rucksack - should a ruckus commence.
I just presumed that there would be some kind of cease fire that allowed for me to reload my F.N. magazines.
I had refused to wear the issue webbing of hanging, canvas chaffing lumps, and opted for my super-dooper, shiny aluminium framed, bright red, perfect target, nylon imported rucksack. I did reluctantly cover it with my dull green nylon poncho after the rest of my ‘stick’ threatened to mutiny or mutilate me.
The Legend of the Three Silly Junk Bikes
Part One
A brief history of the ‘Made in Rhodesia’ bicycle as recalled during a Police Anti Terrorist Unit patrol, Gokwe Tribal Trustland, Rhodesia, 1977.
Once upon a time, deep in darkest Africa, there lived Three Silly Junk Bikes named Lockwheel, Quasimodo and Die-Swiftly. They had all been Made in Rhodesia and, before they were nearly kicked to death, they had lived in a cave called Manica Cycles on Second Street in Salisbury.
Every now and then, a Troll, called Simon the Terrible, who was stocky, balding and had a pencil moustache, would enter the cave and roar out -
‘Who goes squeak, squeak, squeak, over my wallet?’
And the Three Silly Junk Bikes would, one after another, be purchased by the Troll for his son, because they were on a special offer. Unfortunately they were each in their own ways demented, for they had been designed to try and exterminate any one who attempted to ride them.
***
‘No no, go away!’ I screamed out, ‘I don’t want any of you! You’re all just cheap bicycle junk, and you all want to kill me!’
A hand covered my mouth and another shook my shoulder. A hissing from unseen lips brought me awake.
‘Shut-up, will you! Your screams can be heard by every gook within five clicks.’
I came awake instantly.In the half-moon light I took the proffered timepiece and pushed the tiny button on its side. Red L.E.D.s glowed briefly 3.01. I gave Tony the thumbs up, and wriggled out of my sleeping bag. Squatting uncomfortably on the hard ground, I cradled the loaded F.N. assault rifle and stared out into the all encircling bush. Two hours till sunrise. This was the graveyard watch, and judging by the speed it was dragging, time seemed to have stopped.
I was damp. That horribly sticky, clinging, mildew damp, permeating my filthy combat uniform; a mixture of constant rains and sweat. A sweat that came from exertion of daily fifteen mile foot patrols, and fear. Perhaps it was the massive doses of quinine I was taking that brought on the nightmares of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’, all of them turned into bicycles that were allied to the Troll just to try and eliminate me.
I suppose these horrors would not go away until I had my own car, for that was the only reason I now stared past the shapeless, dark humps of the rest of the patrol unit around me. Adrenalin fine-tuned my ears. I could almost hear the mosquitoes as they valiantly drilled their way through the streaked thick layers of war paint on my face.
I had actually volunteered for this particular three-month stint of dressing up like a rancid tree and looking under rocks for Mugabe’s freedom fighters. It wasn’t out of nationalistic idolism; I was doing it for money. Each day on patrol added a tax free $3.75 towards my dream - my own set of wheels. You could only pull birds if you had a motor. Rocking up at the night club on a bicycle wasn’t just uncool; it was image suicide. When I was seventeen, I would walk or hitch to a party, rather than ride the bike; never mind eighteen months later.
Still, there was a remote possibility that raising the deposit could get me killed. I would die trying to replace the very machines that over a decade attempted to have me terminated.
***
‘Today we will go and look for a bicycle for you.’
These magical words would excite any eight year old boy. I was quivering like my dog being shown a leg of lamb, as I gabbled nonsense all the way to Manica Cycles in Salisbury’s city centre.
I rushed around, intoxicated on the smells of fresh rubber, paint and dollops of grease. There were so many shiny machines, all lined up in various sizes. I pointed out a couple of suitable models, but father wasn’t having any of it.
‘What are these strange wires for the brakes?’ he asked a helpful salesman.
‘This is the latest technology; most of the bikes use cable.’
‘Well, I need something for my small boy, and I want it to have the rod braking system. I don’t trust these wires. They could easily snap and my son could be…’
Me thinks, ‘Killed?’Great idea. Actually, I would not mind that. Better to die in style, than be seen riding a peasant’s two wheeler.
The salesman looked down at me. I could see the pity in his eyes and I immediately started to sulk.
‘I don’t wanna bicycle with old brakes. I would rather have no bicycle at all.’
The Troll’s response to my enthusiasm was a thick ear. As I picked myself up off the floor, my head still making odd buzzing sounds, I heard a small voice from a dark corner of the shop.
‘Here I am, Little Silly Junk Bike!’
The museum relic was finally exposed from its blankets of cardboard packing.
My father looked at it. ‘Perfect. How much?’
‘I am sure we can give you a good discount.’
I didn’t hear the rest. I just stood dumfounded looking at it. It was the end of my little world; my father had bought me a miniature Kaffir bike, except it was red. Maybe it had been re-sprayed, because only black people rode black bicycles. Everyone knew this. White people rode on red or blue bicycles, or occasionally a green or yellow one. If a black person rode any other colour of bike, it would be presumed they were overpaid or it was stolen. Perhaps the shop had hoped a colour-blind pygmy would buy it.
It had everything I did not want. Its entire frame was covered in shiny rods, criss-crossed and complicatedly connected to huge steel brake handles that were attached to ancient Dutch-style handlebars. And the ultimate embarrassment - a hideous metal chain cover. The revolting object was popped in the boot and my conversation consisted of a forced ‘thank-you’. Why should I be thank-full? For the next three years I would be constantly ridiculed by my school peers, all of whom had proper white peoples’ bicycles.
Unloved and unwanted, Silly Little Junk Bike pined for attention. It would get plenty. Inexplicably, and usually at the best turn of speed I could push through the pedals, the rear wheel suddenly locked against the frame. If it was raining, the bike would simply slip underneath me, leaving my small form spread-eagled all over the road for someone to run over. If the road was dry, it would screech to a shuddering halt of burnt rubber.
Whatever. I had to schlep the thing home, kicking and cursing it, dragging its sorry arse, leaving a long flattened patch on the tyre. Before it finally burst, the canvas exposed spot would make the wheel do a little skip on every revolution, causing my teeth to click.
‘What have you done now?’ Father would accuse me time and time again.
***
I pushed again and looked at the readout. Hi-Tech flashed mockingly - 3.27 and 14 and 15 and 16 seconds. I let the button go. I hated night watch. Sometimes it was real scary. You look at something too long, you start to think it is moving. But not as scary as my bicycles; they had more stealth. I knew now why that damn tyre got lockwheel. Its Rhodie steel tubes were too soft. The right, rear wheel nut on the axle could be turned till the forearm bulged on a grease monkey, but a few trips, especially ‘off-road’, and the vibrations worked it free. Three years I put up with this nonsense before I grew up enough to make even my father conclude I didn’t quite fit on it. Not unless I did get a job so often promoted in my school reports - circus clown. Maybe that’s why I joined the police force.
I took my hands off the F.N. assault rifle and wiped them on what I thought might be a clean part of my camouflage shirt, and rubbed my eyes. Not too hard. There are enough stars in the southern heavens, I didn’t need to create a few billion more between the scrub and bush grass hiding the foe. Almost out of habit I touched my forehead, as if that massive lump from eight years previously was still there.
***
‘Bridget, you know that big ditch near Groombridge shops? Well, I am going to jump it with my bike. Do want to come and watch?’
‘Only if you don’t try and make me do it first; just to make sure it’s safe.’ Sister, now at the age of nine, was becoming a seasoned and very protesting guinea pig.
I couldn’t believe the moaning. I reminded her, ‘When I made you jump off the highest platform into the diving pool, you didn’t die did you? You had to go first because you are lighter and smaller.’
‘Yeah, and when you made me jump of the garden wall with your home made parachute that didn’t open, and I fell into the rose bushes, I was hurt.’
I sighed. ‘I explained to you, it was not my fault. The strings were too long for your short body.’
The four foot wide, and same depth, drainage ditch sliced through the middle of a vacant corner plot. There was the usual ‘short cut’ beaten smooth through the waste high vlei grass. Pedestrians could leap it, except the black women balancing forty pounds of meilie meal on their heads. Cyclists cleverly dismounted and, with the bike hooked on the shoulder, jump across.
‘It looks very deep and very muddy,’ Bridget chirped up, as she peered in. With her small size in relation, she would see this as a chasm. There was no way I could get her to do a test run.
It did seem rather wide, but pride took precedence over stupidity. As father always told me, ‘You act first and think later.’
It took years before I understood he meant this as a serious critical observation - not advice. He would also tell everyone that I walked around, ‘With thumb up bum and mind in neutral,’ which was now rather difficult to do whilst sitting on a bicycle and attempting to enter the history books.
Sister stood back a respectable distance and I peddled off a stretch to get a good run at it. The path was a bit bumpy and a little slippery in places due to recent rains. As I approached, at a break - my - neck speed, frantically pumping legs, I started to furiously ring my little silver bell. The last thing I needed when I leapt to glory was to meet someone coming from the opposite direction. Just feet away from the rapidly approaching giant slash in the earth, a niggling doubt about reading somewhere about ramps entered my head.
I had reached the point of no return, when Lockwheel must have realised it was in for the chop, because at that moment it did a Bob Marley -
Everything happened very quickly. There was a weird sensation of weightlessness… as the plunge into the abyss began. I heard a huge explosion, deep inside my head, as my forehead contacted the rim on the far side of the ditch. Day turned briefly into night and I had a little sleep. When I woke up, I wasn’t curled up in bed cuddling a blanket; I was lying in six inches of cold, red mud, wrestling the devil, shaped like a bicycle, with a spectator cheering me on.
‘Are you alright? You’re bleeding from your head - quite a lot!’
***
Picking up a handful of scraped earth from a small pile I created for my hip a few hours earlier, I let it trickle through my fingers. I thought about the saying that Africa’s soil is red from the blood people have spilled on it – all murdered by their bicycles. That was the end of Little Silly Junk Bike. It was sold for $5 at the local African hardware store. Hopefully it was painted black and used in the bundu by a picanin goat-herder. It would serve the sodding thing right.
I shifted restlessly on the hard ground. There was still an hour to go and I put a hand in my underpants to rearrange some rather sticky and smelly tackle. I haven’t had a bath or changed my underpants for three days. All seemed okay, or at least I hoped so, because Lockwheel’s replacement had tried to neuter me.
What started of as a bit of fun for a quickie on my Blog, landed up being rather an exhausting scroll through the internet with some rather remarkable results. I think you will agree.
---
Recently I stumbled across, quite accidently I assure you, a very strange unknown statistic. It is unknown because it was me who discovered it. I know that ‘stats’ are well recognised as to be often totally misleading and often manipulated; usually to make bad news good. This is taught as part of a Master’s Degree in Spin by political universities all over the world.
Now, messing about a bit, creating my own time line and guessing accurately that what I have come up with is about as relevant as the stats of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, I uncovered an amazing fact. The trick is to see if with some rather dodgy input, I could make some cash. I mean, Tony Blair is now worth shit loads and all he did was peddle facts and figures of utter garbage.
With my newly conjured information, I wandered into the local ‘Bookies’ - better know as place of ill repute - legalised gambling. I then approached the woman behind the bullet proof, glass protected desk, who was idly painting her toenails whilst casting a lazy eye over the punters pumping their unemployment benefits into machines for the benefit of Ferrari owners and other luxuries.
Trying to sound sub-human to match the blank look on her face, associated with the British uneducated illiterates, I grunted out my proposal in TXT language.
‘What odds would you, or precisely, your employee, give me, that I know, that per squire inch per head of population in the last century, the country with residents of at least six months to be afforded more internationally literature prizes and multi-million best sellers; than any other at the same time in percentage of population to squire miles and GNP ratio? (Don’t worry if this makes no sense.)
She replies, whilst chewing gum and punching some drunk trying to grope her voluptuous breasts,
‘Sure, gimme a sec. I gotta see wat the com-poo-ta say.’
Hah, I knew she had more chance of negotiating an Arab - Israeli peace deal than getting the right answer – ask any Middle East envoy.
Presumably, her gambling odd software isn’t as bright as this spark because it would have to work out the following to get the right answer –
Firstly - to define the land Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in its Geo-Political position. Most people know that by the time Bismarck’s Berlin Conference of 1884 (The Scramble for Africa), had concluded, Africa had pretty well been hacked up into chunks with almost no account to the indigenous populations opinions. As, Joseph Conrad, so eloquently paraphrased the conference as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs" in his novel Heart of Darkness, Africa by 1914 looked on a political map like this –
As the decades wandered violently on, one bit was called Southern Rhodesia, then Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Republic of Rhodesia, Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and by the end of the last century, had been for two tenths of the time – Zimbabwe.
Then you have to take the average populace over the last century in the above named country as four maybe five million, and its relatively small GDP as against the then so called Old and New Worlds.
Also to be taken into account is that at the start of the 20th Century, education would have been very rudimentary in Rhodesia.
Finally, to create my criteria - how long must the writer have actually lived in Rhodesia? I settled on a minimum of six months. If that sounds too little for an environment to actually make an influence, I beg to differ. By the late ‘70s the then Government of Ian Smith, imposed a ‘settling in’ policy for newly arrived male (white classified) immigrants, of six months before they exchanged Safari Suits for itchy cotton canvas, painted to look like a tree, and run around the bush taking pot shots at illiterates hacked off they weren’t in whiteys nice schools. (Well, they are now, but sadly they trashed them, but that has nothing to do with this story.)
‘Awl right’ says the girl from behind her com-poo-ta, ‘wat country ya want?’
‘Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe,’ I reply with undisguised glee.
‘Ow ya spell “now”, I kent member it with a k or not.’
Once all this nonsense was settled, I received a slip of 5 to 4 on with a five pound bet.
‘I would like to see if I have won,’ I told drained-brain and handed the betting slip back. After feeding it into the com-poo-ta she handed me a pound.
I was stunned. ‘What, only a pound?’ exclaimed I angrily ‘but I won!’
‘Yeah, so wat? So wat your problem, stupid.’
I realised I had been tricked. Before I could start a ruckus, she went on, rather sympathetically to my dilemma, ‘We’re a betting shop, not a friggin charity. See that sign?’
I looked in the direction her bright red talons were waving at. ‘Wat it say?’
‘The right of admission reserved.’
‘Does it? Well, I never knew. The Manager said it said “Piss-Off now before ya get your head kicked in!” ’
Fair enough!
Here is the list. There might be more, but this is what I found. (In no particular order.)
I have just done my head in writing my latest essay for the Open University. Trying to think of something funny to put on my Blog after trashing my brain cells writing words such as, ‘dramatising phenomenology’, and clever-cleverparts of sentences like: ‘… manipulate the child’s emotions which are in the stage of being trained and nurtured, whilst they are in a constant state of perturbational flux.’, isn’t that easy.
Don’t worry if that sounds just like gibberish, you are not alone.
I am presently reading (for leisure, rather than by order of the Open University), Frank McCourt’s third and last (he has kicked the bucket), memoirs, called Teacher Man. Obviously, by the title, it is about his career as a…teacher! And, an English one at that - considering he is Irish. Since I am also seriously contemplating going on and getting my own teaching certificate, the memoir, whilst not in the class of Angela’s Ashes, is of course for me rather fascinating. In one attempt to teach grammar to a bunch of ‘Ye oldie style New York ‘Hoodies’’, he has an eureka moment. And, this bit: ‘They were beginning to understand what grammar was. If I kept at it I might understand it myself.’ - did I sigh with relief or what? Salvation!
Anyway, staggering around feeling enlightened with enlightenment is always very enlightening, but I was now searching seriously for my sense of humour, which sadly, is not required in academic papers. Not unless you are doing a PhD in Toilet Humour of the Roman Empire. Er, oddly enough, I studied that as well.
So, as poor old (rephrase that to rich), Dan Brown gets serious stick from ‘those who know’ regarding his literal style, such as Richard Eyre’spolite review of The Da Vinci Code:‘quite astonishingly badly written…It’s as bad as a bad novel by Jeffery Archer. It’s so bad that even Erich von Daniken would scorn its prose.’ - I thought, how bad can you write some tosh that is still worth reading to the end? (I am not referring to my entire Blog - just as a matter of interest,) Now that is a challenge. When I write my tosh, it attempts to incorporate techniques I am now supposedly well qualified in, but have unfortunately completely forgotten.
So, here is my attempt. It is rather a short novel for such a difficult subject, but c'est la vie! Actually, I scribbled the first draft in a matter of an hour, but when I read through it, I was shocked to see it wasn’t bad enough. So, with great skill, I have attempted to make this as insanely inapt as possible, but not to verge on the ridiculous, and, just like a Dan Brown novel, it has its roots in truth. It is up to the reader to look between the lines for that, - because in the words of Wolf Mildew: ‘The lie is out there.’
The Mystery of the Back-Stabbing Assegai Coded Symbol
Chapter, and only chapter, One.
Chigutu, Zimbabwe 2009, Wednesday, 17th of August, 14.43 and 7 seconds.
Professor Reverend Rabbi Doctor Theodore Blackman III (PhD, Harvard in Klingon Language for Advanced Studies in Extra-Terrestrials), eyes bulged out his square jawed, craggy face upon his six foot twelve frame of tensed muscle and bone, as he sniffed appreciatively at his fear sweated armpits. He gasped with horror, eyes squinting against the perpetual beating African sun, as he addressed 7 of 9 Assistant Commissioner of the Zimbabwean Republic Police responsible for efficient looting and disposal of stolen merchandise and ultra-violence,
‘Lordy me, the man lying on the ground (dressed like a farmer) appears to be wreathing in agony. Why is that?’
7 of 9 Assistant Commissioner of the Zimbabwean Republic Police Mathew Mark Luke John Mugabe (27th Cousin far removed), rearranged his gigantism frame inside his exploding Gucci suit of pure Scottish tweed.He gazed complacently the gently revolving end of the assegai making pretty circles in the Havana cigar smoke he was puffing at (a personal present from Fidel Castro), and spoke in a deep and scary type voice,
‘I believe this is a sign, but with my limited education due to the former colonial racists that once ruled and fed my people, I do not know what it says.’
Blackman’s face, that had gone white, returned to its normal colour of white as he gained control of his fear filled palpitating anus.
‘He appears to be pinned to the red soil ground through his lower spine’ he carefully analysed.
‘It is a spear called an Assegai, not a pin,’ replied Mugabe, picking his yellow teeth with a Yemen styled Rhinoceros horn handled knife.
‘Yes, yes’, replied Blackman, ‘and look - he is a whiteman! This is a sign, a symbol that if I can fathom it out, I will be rich.’
‘And I get 80%,’ chortled Mugabe, ‘tax free in Obahma dollars,’ he muttered into his bottle of imported SouthAfricanCastle beer.
Blackman stared around at his surroundings of rows of rows of six foot nine growing maize. He could see nothing of interest besides a few starving nine year old war veterans from the 1970’s liberation war, helping themselves to some mielie cobs.
Just then, Rhodesian born, 73 year old farmer John Brown’s eyes fluttered into life for a brief second before they died.
‘I know now,’ said Blackman as his professional gaze took in the shocking detail of the farmer’s naked and beaten to a pulp feet. ‘His shoes have been stolen!’
Mugabe glanced guiltily at his new ‘veldskoens’. The evil man flared his broad nostrils wider than a Rwandan gorilla and squirted a stream of vile smelling, nicotine stained phlegm at the still twitching form’s feet.
‘So much for being smarter by wearing Bata’
Blackman contemplated for a while, scanning his amazing academic memory for similar comparisons amongst the ancient rituals of the Aztecs.
7 of 9 Assistant Commissioner of the Zimbabwean Republic Police Mathew Mark Luke John Mugabe (27th Cousin far removed), burped, and scratched at his brown eye with a grubby finger, still covered in sadza from last nights meal.
‘Listen Blackman, this whiteman is dead, but before he died he donated his farm to me. You are trespassing.’
Blackman looked into the blackman’s bloodshot eyes that reflected his fear, and instantly released his bowls into his Sainsbury’s £4.50 ‘Made in China’ by child labour, bright pink silk trousers.
‘You do not frighten me Mugabe, there is still the law on my side,’ declared the brave but rather stupid professor, defiantly in a very defiant tone.
Mugabe raised his Russian made, folding butt Kalashnikov 47, from where it had been hidden in his rear pocket, and with much ado about nothing, emptied the entire magazine of thirty rounds into Blackman’s torso.
‘Law? In this country - that is just whiteman’s lore.’
Consider this guidance note for my present assignment in Children’s Literature. (By that I mean all arts – films, TV, books, magazines, etc.)
‘[G]o on to discuss the issue of ‘instruction through delight.’
So, what do I see the other night that made me want to throw the TV out the window – the Government's latest Global Warming, Save The Planet ‘advert’. I was just waiting for the complaints to appear before I put the proverbial boot in.
I refer to New Labour’sbedtime story about drowning kittens and puppies.
Energy and climate change minister, Joan Ruddock, denies that the six million pound advert is aimed at children. (Just like the Iraq war has nothing to do with oil.) It is a bedtime story read to a little girl by her father involving drowning kittens and puppies because we don’t turn our light bulbs off or, in more technical terms – reduce our carbon footprint.
What kind of nonsense is this? Forget for the moment the scientific controversy around increased CO emissions and our energy consumption, whether it is or not, isn’t the issue here. Anything that reduces the wasteful use of our dwindling resources is obviously a good thing and best of all; saves loads of dosh. ‘Seemples!’
Whatever team came up with this advert complete with cartoons being used to show a terrifying account of drowning puppies, rabbits dying of thirst and the end of the world as we know it; must have been taking a leaf out of the writings of Professor of Children's Literature, Kim Reynolds, of Newcastle University, who wrote:
If children’s literature fails to offer young people ways of thinking about themselves and their world that suggest that they can make a difference (Yes we can – Obama 2008), and help them construct discourse of their own to empower them as political subjects, it can not be excluded from the other social forces implicated in the gelding of youth and youth culture. (Keenan and Thompson, 2004, p147)
Now if that means frightening kids to death, so be it, the Labour government seems to think so but American fantasy and science fiction author,Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, in Language of the Night, wrote ‘But what, then, is the naturalistic writer for children to do? Can he present the child with evil as an insoluble problem … To give the child a picture of …gas chambers … or famine or the cruelties of a psychotic patient, and say, “Well baby, this is how it is, what are you going to make of it” – that is surly unethical. If you suggest that there is a ‘solution’ to these monstrous facts, you are lying to the child. If you insist that there isn’t; you are overwhelming him with a load he’s not strong enough yet to carry.’
What adults believe is suitable for children are an extremely complex social network that is very vulnerable to censorship. Remember the recent furore over Tintin in the Congo. (As a result, Amazon’s sales of the ‘offensive’ literature shot up 25000%.) There is still the problem exactly what the child reader understands.
Joan Aiken, English children’s novelist, recipient of the Guardian Award (1969) and the Edgar Allan Poe Award (1972) said ‘What terrifies one child may seem merely comic to another, or may be completely ignored; one can’tlegislate for fear. Exercising any degree of control over the kind of books written for or read by children is a highly doubtful policy.’ (Haviland, 1980)
So, returning to the advert- does it have a happy ending? Is there ‘education throughdelight’ after all. Does the little girl say to daddy ‘If I listen to an audio book in the dark, will Peter Rabbit be saved from floods?’ Hardly, he has more chance of being shot by a farmer or ripped to shreds by a fox. As for drought - in Australia they would be delighted to get rid of the myxomatosis riddled pests from lack of water.
So what beggars belief, as far as I can figure out by this advert, is that all involved with the project have absolutely ZERO knowledge of what is ‘instruction through delight’, nor are they very clued-up on children’s literature.
Were we as children delighted by Big Billy Goat Gruff killing the troll, or were we sad that he was rather stupid and should have just eaten the Little Billy Goat Gruff , hence prolonging his life and perhaps then procreate and make more trolls who would grow up to become Labour MPs? Are trolls, along with dragons, bad because Tolkien says they are? But Puff the Magic Dragon lyrics tell a story of the ageless dragon Puff and his playmate Jackie Paper, a little boy who grows up and loses interest in the imaginary adventures of childhood and leaves Puff alone and depressed. (Amazingly some critics believed it was all about smoking marihuana.)
So is the ‘delight’ actually just the delight a child has when actually learning something new and exotic and successfully understanding the plot - regardless of the theme. Surely children’s literature should create more questions than it answers. As Peter Hunt, Professor Emeritus in Children's Literature at Cardiff University, in his essay Instruction and Delight writes in conclusion ‘To understand what is happening to narrative and our children we need to understand the process of decoding texts, as well as their history and their contemporary forms; the study of children’s literature can provide us with this understanding.’
Babies who suck dummies and their thumbs for too long could damage ability to speak
So if the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs decided to make a little advert about that topic, I can help them out. I would simply use some 150 year old German children’s literature, animate it a bit, and then they can flash it out every ten minutes on CeeBees and Nickelodeon – job done, loads more of traumatised kids and at just one million pounds, a real bargain. It goes like this –
Die Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher
"The Story of Little Suck-A-Thumb".
Konrad, speaks Mrs. Mamma,
"I go out and you stay here.
Be nice and well behaved.
Until I come back home again
And especially, Konrad, listen!
Don't suck on your thumb anymore;
Otherwise the tailor with his scissors
Comes very quickly along,
And cuts off your thumbs
Just as easily as paper."
Just as soon as mother left-
Wupp, the thumb is in the mouth.
Snap! The door opens,
And at lightning speed
Jumps the tailor into the room
to the thumb-sucking boy.
Wow, now it goes snip, snip
With the scissors the thumbs come off,
With the big sharp scissors!
"Oh boy" Konrad hollers loud.
Just as mother comes home,
Konrad looks very sad.
Without thumbs he is standing there,
Both of them are gone forever.
Acknowledgment: Translation and pictures lifted from here
So, finally, what is the difference between the advert and the German fairy tale? Well, one tells you it is a bad idea to suck your thumbs and the other is brainwashing pre-election propaganda.
Little Red Riding Hood in a purple dress combing her hair.
Lordy me, woe is me at that. I have just read several versions of the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood. (No fairies, and the wolf isn’t gay.) I also had to read several analytical essays ranging from the reasonable to the semi-deranged. Think of some hood (could be her father), riding little girls till they bleed – that’s how crazy some of the ‘Freudian’ deep thinking into what is a relatively simple tale.
The original earliest known printed version was known as Le Petit Chaperon Rouge and had its origins in 17th century French folklore. It was included in the collection Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals. Tales of Mother Goose (Histoires et contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. Contes de ma mère l'Oye), in 1697, by Charles Perrault.
Now, I liked this version because the wolf doesn’t mess about, and first eats the grandmother (yuck) and then LRRH. Serves her bloody well right. Loads of other versions have some hunter/woodsman riding (hah-hah) to the rescue. Load of bollix.
So, in a Last of the Rhodesians exclusive, and till now, never in print, is a German version from the Nazi era. I heard it about two decades ago whilst blasted out my skull in some dead-end knieper (pub), called the Oktoberfest. Don’t think this will be grim my brothers, this is the real shit.
So, translating, it sort of goes like this-
It was a dark and stormy night and when daylight broke, Frau Hitler said to her daughter
“Raus aus die sack, you lazy cow, and bring zee Oma her Pampers so she not wee in zee bed. And brush your hair before you go out.”
Fraulein Hitler did as she was told because the alternative was to be shot. Snatching up the only garment she owned, she traipsed out looking like some hoodie in red drag. Schlepping four dozen, get one free, pampers from Lidl she wandered off in the direction of the Black Forest, very mindful of her mother’s warning.
“Don’t dilly-dally and talk to any Jews. They are all wolves in stolen clothing”
Being slightly hacked off that she had to visit Oma (who did smell of wee), instead of playing with her Nintendo Wii, the fair maiden took her frustration out on a couple of fairies she caught dogging behind a tree and kicked the dirty dogs to death.
The Black Forest is full of green trees and sure enough after a while she spotted a wolf amongst them. He was actively busy wandering around in a small circle. (We are not sure how we know it is a he wolf, but that is legend.) Anyway, the wolf was just getting his leg ends into place when Fraulein Hitler (er…we don’t really know what her first name is), said, in a voice full of fear (no idea what that looks like, but Dan Brown uses phrases like that, and he has made shit loads),
“Herr Wolf, wat are you doing?”
The wolf, shuffling around a bit, arched his back till it looked like the Sidney harbour bridge, and bulged his eyes till they almost popped out his skull. Not quite finished with the ritual, he then curled his cruel lips cruelly back, exposing glistening fangs of saliva dribbling fangs and… er, teeth!
Fraulein Hitler then expressed horror and some more of that fear mentioned previously.
“Gott in Himmel, what huge eyes and teeth you have! I am sure you vant to gobble me all up and down”
The wolf, (who incidentally wasn’t Jewish, but a Russian Orthodox Siberian wolf who was positively gay until the annoying Fraulein turned up), was forced to pause in his twice daily ritual (depending on his diet), and howled Hitler a woeful heil-
“Can not a wolf have a shit in peace and not knots of interrupted pieces of faeces?”
The End.
Well, erm…where is the moral in this story? I am open to all suggestions.
Please note: To write such unadulterated crap takes years of study at university. If you have any complaints; keep them to yourselves or the tabloids.
I stumbled across this today and think it is worth a mention.
Loads of people are rather adapt with their cameras and using Photoshop. This young man (24) is self taught, but what makes him stand out is his unique lateral thinking approach. He somehow takes the obvious and ‘paints’ a different picture. Some of his work is very simple, such as the Ikea pic.
Others are so intricate in their impossibilities. The detail is fantastical -
In this picture, although we do not see the shocked face, the release of the knife says it all. And – just look at the reflections – brilliant stuff.
Jimmy was having another boring Sunday afternoon at home. Pissed and stoned out of his skull whilst watching assassin Geena Davis in Long Kiss Goodnight slicing vegetables at the speed of light, he decided to have a go. Sadly it took his inebriated brain a while to register that his pet rabbit didn’t eat meat.
One of the biggest problems I have is lateral thinking. I am not sure if this is documented, but in my case; it’s a one way street. Confused? Well, think of cryptic crosswords. I can create the clues but cannot solve any. Weird, huh. Anyway, wandering off now, I wish to bring you up to speed on almost everything, but perhaps I will stick to Africa for the moment.
Why We Love Africa
The other day I was watching a documentary about Nigeria. What was different from the usual style of reporting was that the channel, Currant TV (an independent media company led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt), lets the viewers send in their own documentaries. Brilliant stuff. Anyway, this was about Nigeria.
Now, Nigeria is anarchy with a large A, especially when it comes to oil. In a brilliantly funny memoir Don’t Tell Mom I Work on the Rigs: She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse, by Paul Carter, has him on a Nigerian rig. That particular chapter is as funny as telling God jokes to the Devil. Graft isn’t just rampant, it is de facto how the economy works, along with a little kidnapping and murder; it is a great tale of derry-do. The author got out asap, with barley his skin on his back intact; never mind loosing a shirt or two.
Now, going back to the documentary. So, this petrified young woman is filming around the Nigerian Delta. It is one huge slum surrounded by pollution and over swarmed with armed gangs. Then she reports (and this bit made me choke on my beer), a commission set up by the Nigerian government themselves into the investigation of corruption, concluded that –
In the decade 1996-2006, revenues from oil totalling- hang on to your hair – 400 BILLION dollars disappeared into accounts unknown of ruling party officials.
This was equal to the entire amount of donated ‘aid’ by Western governments to the continent of Africa during the same time frame. Not one cent was invested in the area. Cool Beans! Give this some thought next time you fill up at a BP station.
Okay, jumping laterally, but staying with Africa and whitey pass out the dosh, I quite happily admit I am a Barack Obama fan (he is the guy that picked up some type of clever award today). Barack knows his stuff when it comes to Africa. I will never forget his famous speech at some begging bowl summit organised by Smelly Bob Geldorf and Bonehead Bono –
“And I have a message for all my fellow Africans. The bucks stop with this black – go get a friggin job - I did.”
At that same summit, was a woman whom (according to Time magazine), is the most powerful woman on earth. I refer to recently re-elected Angela Merkel of Germany. I will never forget what she said to the Irish pikies, when those twat-twins took it upon themselves to champion the rights of the starving (as long as they are black).
Unlike Tony Blair, who would suck cockles with them just to have a photo opportunity, Merkel can’t stand the media circus. Blocked into a corner at the summit, she presented the two terrible tossers with a 50 Euro note and a cheque for half a billion. As I understand German, I was able to pick up what she said quietly to her finance minister seconds after the beaming bum bandits waved the cheque triumphantly at the cameras.
“Fritz, blitz zee cheque to go bouncy-bouncy.”
…
Changing subjects, I was reading an article in the Times suggesting more disabled children should be represented in their fiction. Er…More! I say less actually. As the subject I am studying covers all children’s arts, not just books, I beg to differ. The film Slumdog Millionaire had scenes that crippled me, never mind the cripples. Even my hardcore children, brought up since the age of two on such gore as Starship Troopers, were shell shocked by Slumdog. If you haven’t seen it, please do. It is most definitely NOT a feel-good movie.
As for literature, I just finished the classic Treasure Island. I read it four decades ago and recall I didn’t like it. This time around I was gob smacked. One beggar is blind and gets trampled to death by horses. Presumably, because it seems he was one of the bad guys, we can laugh at that. Besides the motley lot of alcoholics (they are presumably disabled too), there is Long John Silver. He is the pirate with one leg…and a parrot that swears.
It turns out that LJS whilst amputated at the hip (a serious operation with a cutlass in those days), could hop about like cooking popcorn.
But it was what he could do with his crutch that amazed me. In one scene, he spins it out from under his arm and hurls in the back of some back stabber pirate scally-wag and, it snaps the bloke’s spine! Just like that. Stops him stone dead. Nice one! Me thinks - he would win Gold at the paraplegics Olympics in Javelin throwing.
Doing some research, it turns out that the great-great, twenty times removed, grandson of LJS thought along similar lines. Here is the YouTube.
Finally – The latest decree to come out of the lips of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, made me lift a Spok eyebrow. With his hatred of whites well into paranoia, he instructed the Zimbabwean Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast the zillion times repeated, ancient drama Peyton Place, to be shown only in the original negatives. So you have all the people being black, with black teeth, dressed in ghostly white suits and dresses. Weird, but - it gets better. Somehow, the technicians also managed to negative the sound track. Everyone speaks backwards. Amazing! The local paper was deluged with complaints that the program was in Chinese.
Well, I notice it has been some time since I expunged some verbal diarrhoea here on these trusty pages of perverted memories and present perversions. (Here I refer to bankers’ bonuses.)
I have been busy doing nothing. I haven’t had that privilege for some time. I got sick of writing. Over the last two years I have written xxx exercises, and every month an assignment or final exam. So, I took a break. It is over sadly because for me, it is back to school.
For those that are interested, I wrapped up the last academic year rather nicely. I picked up a Certificate in Humanities, but best of all, I just received a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing from the OU. Not bad for someone who failed O Level Eengleesch, at the first try. (Saying that, our exams were a tad harder than the ones they do now. I mean; we didn’t have multiple choice questions like - ‘How do you spell ‘The’?
A - ‘The’.
B - ‘Huh’.
C - ‘Doh!’
All those wonderful letters after my name are just part of my BA. With Honours, I got another 160 credits to go. Then I want to take a teacher’s course and go back to Africa and brainwash some kids in Botswana that white people are evil. Well, that’s the plan.
I stop here for a short commercial break where I unashamedly plug for LekkerWear.com, makers of all sorts of Rhodesian stuff. After the break, I will explain what the hell I have been doing these last few months – stay tuned…
LekkerWear, has recently changed ownership. We only can guess that it has to do with money and women, but they make some cool stuff. Still; till it is repossessed, hah-hah. They even have copper plated vibrators shaped like the tower at Zimbabwe Ruins. Another one is shaped like Mugabe’s fist and when you switch it on, instead of buzzing, it shouts out “And you just thought I just wanted your farm!”
Now in this pic, I am wearing a green T-Shirt. Wow! – says you. Please note the Flame Lily and the word ‘Rhodesia’. No big deal, but I got it for free. (Along with a Rhodie motive emblazoned pair of knickers - size small - for donating a couple of stories for their Rhodesian Memories book. It is a good book.) The best stories are by me.
In this picture, I am posing completely bare in a London railway station with a Wales rugby shirt. I paid for this one. It has nothing to do with LekkerWear.
Here ends the commercial break…
Welcome back. So what did I do? Not a lot actually.
1. I spent a lot of time looking out the window, standing on one leg, and with a finger up a nostril; occasionally saying “hum-baa” to some simple pop question on the radio. Not surprising, I had a problem as the station is in Welsh.
2. I spent a lot of time wandering along the beach looking for talent. Amazingly, I did spot that one of the kiddies’ riding donkeys could actually canter! This town is really showing the X-factor.
3. Entertained my visiting kids. This was hard work. We watched loads of films. We were all mortified with the ‘feel good’ movie Slumdog Millionaire. As my latest course is Children’s Literature, which covers all the genres of the arts, I will be posting more about this film. It is a piece of genius, wrapped in a bag of commercial vomit.
4. Flitting around and catching up on Rhodie mates. Did a lot of that. Great fun. The high-light must have been a week in 37 degrees Celsius, listening to three generations of Rhodesian women haggling, via text and eMail with strange relatives (linked genetically via ‘Lucy’) ; squabbling over the spoils of the, yet, not defunct Granny.
5. Was given the boot a few months ago by my girlfriend. Yours is not to question why.
So, as a reward for all my loyal fans, I have a forthcoming treat. Against the advice from all imaginary future investors in my memoirs; I will post, in three parts, my latest masterpiece from Last of the Rhodesians: Chronicles of a Colonial Anarchist. A severely abridged version was part of my last exam. So I am allowed to put it up here.
Born in Salford, UK, I was brought up in Rhodesia and fought in the Bush War. I spent two decades in Germany running my own construction company. Recession and total disillusionment with the building trade and its workforce of primitive imbeciles compelled me to seek a new way.
I am now studying full time and presently almost two thirds through my BA and will continue to a Masters so as to attain a teacher’s certificate.
I have travelled across large swathes of Europe and Africa (even seen the gorillas of Rwanda).
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