Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Laugh, The Beloved Country

Apologies for not posting much these last few days as I have been practising being a Zimbabwean – hanging around all day, doing fuck all. But that is not my fault and I happily point this out to anyone who listens, that it is all the blackmans fault for not letting me have him as my servant no more. I am also suffering from NHAN (Never Had A Nanny) which seems to be the reason why my mates like sadza more than me!

Whilst scrolling through Zimbabwesituation.com, I came across a couple of rather curious articles. The first one:

South Africa's Business Day newspaper reported that Zimbabwe's government has embarked on a project to resuscitate agriculture. The plan involves the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono setting up technical colleges to produce ox-drawn carts and ploughs to help communal farmers produce food. Gono is quoted saying the project was part of government's mechanisation programme.
Government says at least half a million ox-drawn carts would be produced at institutions set up in 62 districts around the country. Gono said this would also create jobs for youths as well as boost agriculture.

I was totally stunned! Gono must be reading my Blog and saw the First Day Cover depicting the World Ploughing Competition. (Scroll down a bit if you havn’t seen it.) So I am right and the second stamp depicted is now the plan. What a clever man.

In 1977 I arrested a cart maker because he was a nasty piece of work, who had defrauded several thousands of dollars (real Rhodie dollars, not Zimbo rubbish), from scores of his fellow black country men. What should have been a simple case turned out to have more twists than an Ox’s tail. (Oxs’ tails are twisted by the farmer to make them pull the plough.) You will have to wait for my memoirs to read the whole story.

But, in another twist of the tale…


Political commentator Dr John Makumbe dismissed this plan as another
stop-gap measure taken by a desperate regime. He said Gono forgot that when they took the commercial farms, they ate all the meat at a braai and there are no cattle to pull the carts. Eventually he said government will force the farmer and his family to pull the ploughs.

Which means, that they will revert to the first stamp! I am so bloody KLEVAH!

AND to prove it, here is a little short video for you to watch…

The second article really made me laugh. One thing I have learnt about writing is to do your research well. This rule, a certain Peter Thatia writing for the Eastern Standard of Kenya and printed on the front page May 25th, was obviously forgotten. Whilst I do congratulate him on giving Mugabe a hard time, there were a few glaringly bad errors:

Flashback to the gloriously sunny Salisbury afternoon of April 18, 1980,
when a surging crowd of unprecedented proportions on the continent of Africa roared in unison as the Union Jack and the flag of Rhodesia came down for the last time. Robert Gabriel Mugabe had finally arrived.

Well, last I heard they were all there to watch Bob alright, but the wrong Bob!

With over 200,000 hits, this footage and the comments posted with it, show who the real hero of that night was.

The Rhodesian flag wasn’t there either. It had been replaced several months before by the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia flag and at the time of the celebration the land was officially under the Crown once again.

In the same article, Mugabe:Shame of Africa

http://www.eastandard.net/archives/?mnu=details&id=1143969056&catid=4

there is more blah blah and then this sentence –

Do they care about the genius who created the best education system in
Africa (by 2000 Zimbabwe had the highest literacy rate in Africa at 85 per
cent), or the devious schemer who went ahead to have two children with a lover 41 years his junior (whom he later married) while his wife Sally was dying with cancer?

Actually, Mugabe’s troops were instructed to destroy all the schools for the blacks in the Tribal Trust Lands and kidnap the kids to be made into freedom fighters. Mugabe simply took over the existing public school infrastructure of the whites and like everything else there, has totally destroyed it.

The best bit from the article is this -

In his personal website, launched in 2002 and recording over 300,000 hits so far, President Robert Mugabe makes an interesting statement about himself:
"I know you love your leader as much as you love your country. I know you deserve to see what kind of a man I am. To those of you that already know me, this will simply be a joyous refresher of your cherished memories of me. To those with still unfulfilled desire to know me better, I welcome you into an intimate glimpse of Mugabe The Man."

I have had a link to this website ever since I started blogging and it is indeed a wonderful glimpse at Mugabe – The Man of Men. One problem though; it’s a huge piss take and thanks to Peter Thatia, it is becoming more popular everyday. You can go to it by clicking the picture of Tinpot Mugs on the cover of Time magazine.


Catch ya laters, alligators and stay tuned for more fun and games from the man, who according to local lore, is the Last of The Rhodesians.

Monday, May 21, 2007

When The Hunter Becomes The Hunted

Take time to watch this. This has to be one of the most amazing footages ever filmed of the underdog winning against all odds. This was filmed by tourists on Safari in the Kruger National Park of South Africa. I have witnessed loads of action in the African bush, but this is unquestionably one of the most amazing scenes of all time!

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Money for Nothing – Get your Chickens for FREE!


I was reading about how to increase your Blog’s traffic. Some of the guidelines were rather obvious. For example - pictures of you cutting your toenails or writing about a Chinaman, fixing a puncture on his blow up doll, will not keep people interested. Kids and pets are another no no. Lots of people do not know these rules and some even combine the two! I have two children but I don’t deluge you with facts and pictures about them. That is because they are weird!

The eldest son wanders around looking like Dracula, less the cape and fangs. According to modern teen terminology, he is a Goth.

The younger son acknowledges his lunacy as being inherited directly from the fruit of his father’s loin. When he is not watching Sponge Bob (in German) or playing on Nitendo/PS/Gamecube etc, he gets together with a pal and makes videos. They then put them up on You Tube.

Now, you can of course say that his artistic talent has been influenced by the games that he plays and the films that he watches (Sponge Bob Hangs Saddam or Sponge Bob’s Decapitated Head Iraqi Adventure, Sponge Bob and the High School Massacre etc), but I just think its in his genes. I will not bore you long – this film clip is about ten seconds. That’s more than enough time to start wondering where will it all end!

Another rule that you must try to follow, is to write in a language that is understood by its readers. In other words, if you decide to Blog in Congolese Pygmy, it is advisable that you have a vague mastering of the language. Presuming that your mother tongue is English, and having been through the education system of the United Kingdom and in one more year you have the power to vote and drink legally, your head might be filled with a bit more than this barely comprehensible waffle I discovered.

This I took directly off one of these dodgy Blogs-

I shall share a story wid u ppl okie? story:I(not me) met a guy by chance and they fell in love for 1yr.however,the guy's ex-girlfriend came back and wanted to patch wid him.the guy hesitated but he knew tat he still loved his ex-girlfriend alot.they always met up secretly without letting his current girlfriend(me) to know.but sad to say, I knew it long ago.I did not confront him,as I have a silly thinking tat they are just 'friends'.until one night,I saw them hugging at the playground near his house.I was shocked,and my legs couldnt move at all.tears began to roll down my cheeks.eventually,I left quietly.the guy did looked for me but I suggest a break-up to him.he agreed without asking me why.I was then disappointed when he just left after saying 'ok'.I began to wonder what I love actually.from tat day onwards, I dun believe in love anymore cuz it could torture a person to death and require a long time to recover from it.not only physically and aso emotionally.(Izit a sad story?)

This is so fucking sad, I hope she gets into politics and becomes the Minster of Broken Hearts and the English Language! Saying that - when I was 17, I failed O’Level English. I suppose it could be called experimental writing.
Its mental, I am experimenting reading it!


Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket


Meanwhile --- Back in good old ZIMBABWE, the people are jubilantly celebrating that they now chair the, UN-sustainable Development Commission. They achieved this when 27 African countries voted for, whilst 21 Western countries voted against the nomination. Below are the qualifications:

$444m foreign investment in Zimbabwe in 1998

$2.5bn Zimbabwe’s foreign debt last year

$109m foreign debt in 1999

2,200% official rate of inflation

3,000% Rate of inflation estimated by the IMF

Z$250 official exchange rate for US$1

Z$25,000 black market exchange rate

This means, should you have lost a serious part of your frontal lobe, and went to Zimbo land for a holiday and put your VISA card into an ATM, to get some bucks to pay for two chicken kebabs with rice and a couple of beers, it would set you back about £600. (Or was it £1200? Can’t get my head around it.) That makes Zimbabwe the most expensive holiday destination on the planet! Now that’s what I call sustainable development.

Does any one remember the silly, derogative, racist jokes we white pre-teen privileged supremacists of the early 70’s told each other? Here is one -

What’s the fastest thing on two legs? – A starving Biafran. (Not that we had much of a clue about Biafra.)

What’s the second fastest thing on two legs? A chicken, running away from a Biafran.

In present day Zimbabwe, the joke goes like this –

What’s the fastest thing on two legs? - A Zimbabwean supermarket shopper, loading their shopping trolley.

What’s the second fastest thing on two legs? – A Zimbabwean sales assistant, changing the price tags.

I think the greatest example of inflation was in Yugoslavia as it split up. It reached that magic hyper-inflation terminology, when it totally collapsed and was replaced by the German Deutsche Mark. Something similar looms in Zimbabwe, but Mugabe could never suffer the humiliation. It spells complete disaster, so they just keep printing more bearer cheques. Amazing!

More laughs – The Aboriginal land thieving, white convicts in Australia, have got their Chief gangster to announce that his racist cricket players can’t be arsed gong to Zimbabwe to play, because they are worried about the ashes. Since electricity is now limited to 4 hrs in the day there, the Aussies were frightened they would have to burn their bats and stumps to be able to cook an imported Kangaroo or two. The Chief black hater went on to call Mugabe, ‘a grubby dictator’, which was a bit rich, coming from someone whose great grandfather more than likely had his knee caps crushed with an iron bar and sent to Australia for stealing a loaf of bread.

The Great Liberator of Africa, Honourable President Robert. G. Mugabe, replied by calling the Prime Minister of Australia, ‘a cheeky white kaffir’, who had passed legislation to give Aborigines cheap white man’s fire water, so that they can be exported to the Northern Territories. Then they would be forced to live in squalor and be constantly raping their daughters for entertainment.

Catch ya laters – alligators

Lore -


glitter-town.com

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Bugger Me! This Beggars Belief!


I am not a fan of charity, believing that it begins at home. I am always in the High Street charity shops, here in the UK, because being poor; I love to go shopping in them. I have over time, picked up some lovely bargains. For example, the carrying case for my lap top. It is a lovely leather Targus (I think they are made in Chinese sweatshops), and not only can it accommodate my 17 inch widescreen laptop (brand new from Virgin Train charity shop), but easily takes the separate keyboard, mouse, webcam, headphones, books etc. It has loads of nifty pockets for lots and lots of widgets and things.

The case was almost brand new, hardly a scratch and after some serious haggling, I got the thing for just £5 pound. Unfortunately they didn’t have; Buy One, Get One Free, but still, I was well pleased when I looked it up on the internet and found that they cost about £60 in the shop.

The only draw back – it weighs a ton when fully kitted out to its bulging zip line. On the good side, a bag snatch thief would dislocate his shoulder pulling it off mine.

I have also managed to pick up some stunning African art work from another charity shop on Finchly road. (In support of Third World Save the Mercedes Benz Salesmen, or something like that.) Because I live in the past, I like my surrounds to be African theme. I have a large tiger skin on my couch and a plastic Bison head mounted on a wall and two flea bitten stuffed mating kangaroos, holding up empty bottles of XXXX beer, cleverly turned into aboriginal lamps, in my round cave’s corners. My few friends compliment me on my taste when they come to read the water and electric meters, but they never stay long enough to listen to my heroic tales of bravery against all odds as the Last of the Rhodesians.

Anyway - flushed with success over the Targus (not to be confused with Dr. Who’s telephone box), I attempted to knock down the price for three original pictures, made from grass or papyrus or something like that, of an elephant, zebra and giraffe.

Mounted in a gilt wood frame behind glass, the sticker on the back of each, stated that they originally were sold from the famous, Jack’s Art Gallery, 2855-Broadway, New York. I bet they were a pretty penny then.

Offered at five pounds a pop, I thought this was taking the piss and started to hint (‘I give ya a tenner for the lot’), delicately to the rather miserable looking cow pretending to work there for free, who took offence and said to me, rather huffily-

‘this is a charity shop to raise money for the poor and needy, not a car boot sale. The price is a minimum guideline, we actually hope that customers will pay more.’

Is that so! Well, fuck me with a feather! What a brilliant idea! Of course – it is so easy. I got all hot and excited, as my brilliant, lateral thinking brain went into overdrive. Giving the good dear exactly the minimum amount ‘requested’ and not a penny more, I managed to put the boot in a bit more, by paying with my VISA card, knowing that the poor starving will get shafted at least 3% less by them. Then I dashed off home to do some research.

Here it is. My idea to save Africa:

We only purchase electronic products with humanely and local indigenous populace beneficially mined casseritite ore tin!

Now, I can see you scratching your head with amazement, wondering why you hadn’t thought of this yourself! Pure genius! As every circuit board on the planet contains the stuff, if we all paid twenty times more the amount for our electronic gadgets now being offered, for ones proven to be ‘happy mined tin’, we could seriously reduce wars in Africa, like the 4 million dead so far in Demonised Republic of Congo, fighting over natural resources.

Will it work- will it fuck! Try getting a Brit to bring a Made in China cotton bag into a supermarket to put the groceries in instead of using one of several billion Made in China plastic disposable ones, is about as easy as asking the government to put a deposit on tinned beer empties. You would see how fast they disappear from the streets then!

Still, if the worst comes to the worst and you become a down and out bum like me, begging for a few pittances to ease your way just a little, as you pass from one life to the next (God help us if when we get there, Mugabe is organising cloud invasions), you can still get a job bumming coins from the gullible in London.

There are people who actually pay you to beg for the poor and needy! Hard to believe, but it is true. In yesterdays METRO (a freebie newspaper aimed at underground commuters), under classified adds I came across this little gem –

“I’d bounce naked on a Spacehopper”

Full-time Charity Fundraisers - £8.50-£13.50 paid weekly.


If you enjoy work you can feel good about and great rewards using your charm to great use by raising millions for leading charities like
MIND and Friends Of The Earth, call Sharif on our 24 hour hotline 020 7281 8908.

wwwgiftjobs.com

GIFT- Street fundraisers.

----

So now we know why there are such hard core beggars, licensed to make us ill on Oxford street, Saturday, rush hour shopping time. I was also thinking that Sharif must get very little sleep manning the phones all that time.

I pulled out my calculator - Presuming you are a Zimbabwean asylum seeking refugee doing a working Brit 45 hour week, never take a holiday because you can’t afford it, and pull the maximum wage, you could be earning £31,590 a year (might be tax free if its charity work) to get people to feed your family at home! I love it!

Still, if that isn’t quite your forte because you stayed on at school and have a few qualifications, there are other positions available. Here is another advert in the same paper. This one is extra large, 5 inches by 5 inches, for a position at home in the U.K. I have abbreviated it a bit because I couldn’t be arsed writing the full waffle.



BROOKE

(logo of a horse and a donkey giving coy looks)


Healthy working animals for the worlds poorest communities.

We operate in many developing countries reaching over half a million donkeys directly affecting the lives of the people who depend on them.

We are looking for more donkeys to join our rapidly braying brood:

Database Officer: Salary 19k-22k

Accounts assistant: Salary: 21k-23k

----

Both of these jobs are financed by fundraising. In other words, people are shown pictures of beaten, starving donkeys and pay money to send someone to a land of donkey owners and once there, tell the owners that, if they stopped beating the donkey and starving it, it might work harder.

This just has to be the first time a donkey employs a human to do the donkey work!

If you want a flash 4x4’ , a large house with massive garden and servants, you got to be an ‘administrator’ for a NGO charity in Africa. The real liberal souls who do the donkey work and live like peasants with the peasants tend to have paid their own flight to get there and happily finance themselves for the privilege of being donkeys.

----

Finally, I wish to thank all that have been visiting. The hit increase has been amazing. I am now floating around 13th place on top one hundred Expat sites which isn’t bad, considering the ones above me are serious pro web sites. I will try to post at least once a week, so keep coming back. For the newbies, please scroll the archives, they are full of insane gibbering.

I will add more links from people who have linked me, asap - many thanks.

Don’t forget to vote YES on my poll, there will be a 10% discount for everyone that votes and buys my book - if they can prove it.

Best Regards, till next time-

Lore: Simply the Pest.

P.S. : I could mouth the jaw of a donkey off here, but I just gotta get on with the book and the OU.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Anyone for Cricket?


I was puzzling over something I read the other day. The United Nations announced, that vehicle accident fatalities are second only to AIDS related deaths on our planet. (Starving to death and being shot-up by an AK 47 doesn’t count.)

So if the newspapers headlines are:

Aids Death Bus Driver Kills 75

Is this because 75 people caught Aids from him, or were they sitting on the bus when he drove over a cliff? Had the driver died because of an Aids related disease (like maybe his Aids weakened liver had exploded due to all the beer he was drinking at the time), and therefore lost control of the bus because he was dead? OR, was he just pissed and drove over the cliff and his blood splattered the survivors, who then all died from Aids?

Michael Schumacher, who is now a front man for the United Nations, Car Crash Aids Death Day campaign, was quoted in Germany’s most popular spread sheet Das Volk’s Scheisse as saying,

‘I had to give up F1racing because my fear of catching Aids after a fateful car crash scared the death out of me.’ He then went on to drive the message home, ‘Don’t Drive with Aids, You can kill someone badly.’

ZIMBABWE'S appalling road toll leaves more than 3 000 people a year dead,
often with dependents needing help, plus many thousand more injured and
disabled. Aids claims about the same amount but on a weekly basis…

A spokesman from the Ministry of Health, Dr, Juma said, ‘the government has worked increasingly hard to lower the death rate on the roads by not having any petrol. Most of these deaths are due to the British and American aid groups supplying fuel to the opposition to try and drive the legitimate government off-road.’

I just dunno, you would think the UN have enough problems to sort out without larking on about driving deaths. I haven’t noticed that the genocide in Dafur is due to thousands of unlicensed drunk drivers, in vehicles that are no longer road worthy, ploughing through entire villages.



The Cricket World Cup has finally ended. How long did it last? 47 weeks I think. For those who haven’t a clue what cricket is - it is a small insect that makes a lot of noise.

They play a game using a stick to hit a ball. A bit like baseball, but with a few changes. For example, the players from white ruled New Zealand are all blacks and the players from black ruled South Africa are nearly all white. Due to some obscure law introduced in that land, they now have to increase the amount of black in the team. That’s why they run around with all that make up on. If the face make-up is streaked with tears, it means they have just lost to Australia.

One team is called West Indies, but they don’t look like Indians, nor do they smoke West cigarettes.
The Irish team had only learnt to play cricket the weekend before the tournament started, but beat the Pakistani team. They all went home, less their coach, who couldn’t be with them because he had been murdered.
Oh, I forgot to say, America doesn’t play this game because the word, series, is missing in the cup.
Anyway- Zimbabwe played but they gave up after inflation ate into their innings so much, they couldn’t afford to bat.

England was also attending for a while. The team had great fun losing loads of matches and getting drunk every night. Should an Alien, as big as the Eiffel tower, land on Earth and decide he would just love to cook up a mixed race human stew, he would have boiled the English Team. They would have been the tenderest team because the only muscles they used in the tournament were their mouths, which constantly babbled out excuses for their uselessness.

The highlight of the English team effort, I was to hear on the radio. At the end of a news report on Radio 1, the presenter said

England has just started to play Australia and need to win if they expect to advance into the semi-final. They have got off to an excellent start by winning the toss!’

That was all they won and in revenge sacked their coach. Just like Mugabe, they blamed their pathetic effort on a white Zimbabwean.

But at least they didn’t murder him! (Yet.)

Talking about Mugabe – The Aussie team might not go on tour to Zimbabwe because it’s a bad place. Failure to comply would result in $US2 million in damages being paid to the governing body of cricket in Zimbabwe.
In this case, the fine would be paid directly in to the coffers of Mr
Mugabe, who chairs the Zimbabwe Cricket Union and acts as an informal
selector, refusing to allow his opponents to play on the team.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The War on Terror

Greetings and may everlasting health be upon you. Please clean your teeth diligently. I am having to learn the hard way and believe me, it hurts like hell!

I have had to stop working on LOTR the last few days because another Open University, teacher marked assignment is due on the 4th. I am studying the course Creative Writing at the moment. The last TMA was quite cool because I used the opportunity to re do some of my memoirs (Death of A Stupid Cow), but this time I had to write a piece of fiction.

I thought of something along the lines of a man who goes mad with pain, pulls all his teeth out and goes on a murderous campaign blowing up all websites that promote toothpaste that stops cavities.

In the end I decided to settle on a story I did before (The Great Welsh Cockle Wars), but expand it to reach the word count required. Writing for the Blog is one thing, because people don’t have to pay to read it, but if I really want to get people to cough up bucks for a book, it has to be tip top. Thus the courses I am doing. I had to rewrite this new version 14 times before I think I got it almost right.

So here it is, renamed and hopefully entertaining enough for you to want to read till the end. All comments appreciated and I will also tell you later what my mark was.
I decided to add a few pictures for a laugh.

The War on Terror

Commander James Tea Jerk, Royal Navy, (Semi-Retired), absent mindlessly scratched at his high-tech wooden prosthesis (an exact replica of Long John Silver’s), protruding out of his immaculately ironed white uniform shorts. He swore loudly as a large splinter buried itself deep under the finger nail of his index finger.

‘Chippie, up on the bridge, now!’ he screamed into the intercom, ‘and bring some sandpaper.’

From the bridge of his latest command, he gazed out at the busy summer scene. Hoards of small leisure boats, full of excitable, shouting kids and parents were criss-crossing around him. The HMS Dump, a woodworm rotted, rat abandoned pontoon, fixed permanently into the silt of Mawddach estuary, North Wales since 1963, felt as solid as Custer’s last stand under his foot. The warm breeze caressed his flash-burnt shiny head and brought the scent of salt and suntan oil to his flattened nose. The Royal Navy and Union Jack flags could be heard flapping lazily from their masts on the bridge’s hole riddled roof.

Pulling the splinter out with his teeth, Jerk thought back to the time, two years ago, of the fierce battle for the Nigerian delta. During the engagement, whilst commanding the H.M.S. Sinkfast, he had lost half of his body parts, plus his genuine Star Trek logo embossed plastic wallet. The vessel had spectacularly exploded after he had made the decision to scuttle the £1.2 billion state of the art battleship. Rather that, than let the enemy, disguised as giant Golliwogs aboard five dug out canoes, enter the delta and sabotage the British owned oil refinery. Due to having a rather large piece of his frontal lobe incinerated during the explosion, Jerk had no recollection of the incident at all. However, he knew he had done his country proud. The resulting devastation had destroyed the enemy, but tragically, 800 hands had also gone up with the ship. Jerk knew that more sacrificial lambs could be expected today - oblivion for the few to save a safe haven for the many.


The remaining two digits on his right hand wandered almost instinctively to the well fingered MBA medal (Missing Bits in Action), that he wore with pride over his collapsed left breast. Shifting uncomfortably on his chair, the absent right buttock making sitting up straight difficult, he spoke to his second in command.

‘You look an absolute mess, Number 1. Any sign of the filthy terrorists yet?’

In the rumpled uniform, First Officer Simon Simpleton lowered the binoculars with tremulous hands from his exhausted bloodshot eyes. Simpleton replied to his commanding officer.

‘All I see are waves full of civilians and they have doubled. Sir, I do not feel very well. I need to go below for a moment – my bowels are playing up.’ His urge to drink himself to the oblivion had almost succeeded last night. The First Officer’s undernourished body shook violently as he vomited a thin stream of cheap vodka and Red Bull, his fear of what was soon to happen was palpably visible on his pasty face.

Simpleton was riddled with self-guilt. Too cowardly to kill himself, he had become obsessed with the thought that heavenly redemption would only be given if he stuck by Jerk and got blown up again; with some luck, this time with success.

When the H.M.S. Sinkfast had spectacularly self exploded, Simpleton had been the only other survivor. He had provided the testimony at the official inquiry, all of it a pack of hysterical lies coming out of his bony arse. From that load of shit, Jerk had been handsomely compensated and given the H.M.S. Dump as a retirement command. Simpleton rarely spoke to Jerk about that moment of truth. On that fateful night he had desperately struggled with his conscience. He had two choices; either to shoot his commanding officer and let the terrorists destroy Britain’s desperately needed fuel for the latest models of four wheel drives, or to sacrifice the ship and crew. This would send a message around the world (clutched in the hundreds of hands that went up with the ship), ‘help us, the Captain is mad!’…

Jerk’s shiny glass eye stared at the First Officer sympathetically,

‘Go ahead, Number One, I’ll keep my real eye on things.’

Simpleton headed towards the stairs, passing the pontoon’s live-in yob whom had now appeared clutching a roll of sandpaper.




Chippie had turned up from the below where he had been engrossed in filing his teeth into sharp triangles. A gruff, but gentle kid, he was intent to prove that his bight could be worse than his bark. He was also completely and utterly stoned out of his head. (Chippie’s home grown skunk was famed in the region.)

‘Give us ya leg Captain, I’ll sand the bugger good this time, got to keep ya on your toes if we gonna catch them sneaky slitzzies.’

Jerk hated Chippie talking like this. He had been trying to educate the boy ever since he had found out that Chippie came with the ship as its live-in security guard.

‘They are pretending to be illegal Chinese cockle poachers, Chippie, and please refrain from such racial inferences, otherwise it is my right to have you keel hauled, if we ever get afloat.’

As Chippie got to work on the splitting parts of his prosthesis, Jerk addressed the dopey youth,

‘What is our official duty here, Chippie?’ he asked.

‘To act as an unenforceable deterrent to Jet-Ski tourists disregarding the council’s boundary limits.’ Chippie replied helpfully, if not a tad incoherently, a half finished joint waggling between his thin lips. As he vigorously sanded at Jerks wooden leg, he continued, ‘but we now know, thanks to you Capt’n, they are really terrorists disguised as cockle thieves.’

‘Correct, my dear Chippie, and why the hell are you smoking that shit, you idiot?’

Suddenly he sat up shouting loudly ‘I smell gas. It is not the time yet.’ He jerked his leg from Chippie’s grasp and leapt up with the uncontained primeval shiver of hunter’s lust.

‘Sorry Capt’n,’ Chippie grinned his shark smile, as he flapped his palms vigorously behind him, ‘that was a really mean lamb vindaloo for lunch, Capt’n, and with all them Carlsberg’s Special Brew I had on top…’ he shrugged apologetically.

He adored Jerk as a father figure. He could listen to the Commander for hours, as he regaled every evening the tales of heroism by his ancestors. In those intimate shared moment he would lie on the pile of stinking, flea infested lifejackets, wishing he had been there.

For a fraction of a second, Jerk smiled at Chippie with a rare sign of affection, but then immediately again became the professional officer that he was.

‘Put that joint out! It will make you insane, you imbecile. Go and open all the stop cocks on the gas bottles – and Chippie,’ the red watery eyes of the 17 year old looked at him in pure adoration, ‘no more naked flames!’



Jerk took his eye away from the sparkling estuary, now filled with thousands of happy holiday makers. He stared with growing pride at the only decoration on the bridge; a gilt framed oil painting of his great, great grandfather, Lord Pussyfoot Jerk of Kent. The born again alcoholic had been massacred, along with another 1499 troops at Isandlwana, Natal, South Africa during the Zulu War. Rumours still went around that the man was so drunk on his watch that he fell off his perch and therefore neglected to send out a warning cry of, ‘Oh, I say, old chaps, but there appears to be thousands of those assegai armed black savages, approaching with the intent to disembowel us.’

The Commander allowed a small grin to cross his lips, ‘They were men of men,’ he muttered admirably to himself.

The sounds of gleeful shrieks of happy holiday laughter penetrated Jerk’s eardrum. For the last time, Jerk went mentally, once more, over the information that had been passed to him in The Last Dossers pub. According to a reliable source (carefully nurtured the last six months with free beers), at 3 pm today, as the tide came in, the terrorists would sneak up the estuary unnoticed. They would be cleverly disguised as tourists in black wet suits, riding rented Jet-Skis.



According to the informant, Albert Blackman, the terrorists will sabotage the local fish and chips shops, then go on to plunder one of Britain’s last cockle beds and sell them duty free to Chinese restaurants in Beijing. Jerk had no reason to distrust the information, as the man was a true patriot. Albert always struggled to get his words out, as his tongue had been partially amputated. This terrible tragedy had happened whilst holidaying in 1967, when Albert had stopped over in The Three Ks motel in Whitesville, Alabama.


. Covered in dark mud from having had to dig his car out of a ditch, he had announced to the White hooded and clad receptionist, ‘I am A. Blackman and I have a reservation here.’ They were to have been his last intelligible words…


Based on the top intelligence gathered from Albert, Jerk had tried to persuade the navy to install on the pontoon sixteen 22-inch battery guns. The navy had declined, quoting the local council’s Health and Safety regulations and a shrinking budget. The hero of the Nigerian Delta refused to be dissuaded. That experience from two years ago could now be put to good effect - if he could only recall any of it. For the last couple months, 126 giant bottles of household cooking gas had been purchased and stored below. All connected together, by the willing Chippie who had been supervised by a terrified Simpleton, they were only stopped from expelling their deadly fumes by the handle mounted on the commander’s chair.

Jerk looked at his wrist watch. Mickey Mouse’s white gloved minute hand showed three to, whilst the other hand pointed at three, too.

‘They will not get through on my watch. Not whilst there is still breath in my right lung left,’ he babbled, whilst cackling to himself. His team had worked tirelessly on the plan to stop the raiders and now everything was ready. It was time to eliminate the terrorist scum and send them to Allah and the 70 virgins.

Jerk gazed once more upon the tranquil scene, which at any moment now, he would turn into a holocaust. He had no illusions that when the pontoon exploded, hundreds would be blasted to oblivion, or torn to shreds from flying metal and wood fragments. Innocent civilians are always caught in the crossfire in the deadly war against terrorism. It’s a hard knock life!

‘They’re coming,’ Jerk shouted into the intercom, his only ear tuned to the sounds of the approaching roars of the Jet-Skis. Dozens of them, heavily loaded with the terrorists who were now heading his way, some waving arrogantly in his direction – oblivious to the fact that their evil attack would soon be stopped.

‘Chippie, Simpleton, report to the bridge and stand-by for action; RED ALERT!’ At the same time, Jerk pulled the bright red lever to ‘Open’ and the gas started to flood into the pontoon. Timing was critical. As he waited for his two shipmates, Jerk limped briefly out onto the deck. Throwing up his arm, he saluted the holiday makers.

‘You will not be forgotten!’

A few faces glanced in his direction. A sun burnt bright pink fat girl, could be heard to shout,

‘Hey everyone; look at the fucking freak on the shit-heap, doing his nutty navy stunt. What a wanker!’

Back on the bridge, Simpleton and Chippie gathered around their Captain. The hiss of the expelling gas was now drowned out by the noise of the bouncing Jet-Skis. Commander James T. Jerk MBA, took 3 Cuban cigars out his top right breast pocket. Handing them out, he winked and tugged his shirt down, smoothing out the wrinkles. As the stench of gas reached his nostrils, he said,

‘we are Men of Men! As Officers of the Realm, it is our duty to protect our sacred shores. Have any of you got any last words for this historic occasion?’

Chippie chirped up first, enthusiastically quoting the great Neil Armstrong.

‘Wicked! Like a giant kind man leaping and a small man stepping.’

‘Am I going to die now?’ the first officer asked hopefully.

‘Have you completely lost your marbles, Simpleton? (Actually he had.) I will detonate the gas with the Ferry pistol, once we have reached a safe distance in the escape dingy,’ Jerk replied to the dejected Simpleton. He then continued,

‘well done ship mates. Not since the Battle of Britain, have so few, done in so many. Our shores will once more be safe from terrorists. Let this be a warning to them all. God Save the Queen; may she live long and prosper! Now remember, don’t light the cigars till the fat lady sings! Okay?’

Chippie sniffed appreciatively at the cigar in his hand. ‘Isn’t that from the movie Independence Day?’, he asked sleepily, as he flicked the wheel on his newly stolen Zippo lighter.