Captain Keith Stack and the legend of how Simply the Pest held the line.

 

And so, I rewrite the story. Even if you have read the deleted version, this is better. It needs a bit of editing but I pushed my creative writing almost to my limits. (And that is saying a lot.) It helps if you know your films.  I move back and forwards in time.

Weird, but very funny…

 
***

But the time we were 11 years old, our little balls were dropping, hair appeared under our arms, our voices got gruffer and the alpha male hormones injected the feeling of pure aggression. It had to be relieved.

At Blakistan Junior School we did participate in a rather rag tag game of rugby at every break period. With only 20 minutes of playing time there was no such thing as changing sides. The rivalry was fierce. This was brains against brutes, some with limited mental capacity beyond recognising the shape of a rugby ball and which direction it should be going. A bit like that scene in Forrest Gump.

As usual I was in the middle, a B streamer, but at this moment in time, (Standard 4, 1969), in my class we had a budding super star – Keith Stack. He was our Captain. It was never questioned. I hero worshipped him. Strangely he always had time for a screw ball such as me. I wasn’t surprised that he went on to become a doctor. It was in his nature.

Back to that fateful day. The line up was always the same. A stream against B plus C stream. Numbers were both irreverent and irrelevant. A referee was neither at hand and nor necessary. These extremely savage games were played on one of the football pitches with a ball provided by one of the kids.

For some strange reason I joined in. Suffering from malnutrition and weighing not more than a half a dozen eggs I desperately should be consuming, I tended to hang around in some form of defensive position. This was of course strategically very clever.

Our team usually kept the clever-clevers well in their half fighting for their honour, so most of the time I spent lolling around alone doing not a lot besides listening to my empty grumbling tummy.

Then one day - something went terribly wrong. Our marauding lions made a mistake and suddenly a terrifying site came down the right wing. The kid must have been almost twice my height and certainly triple my body weight. His pounding feet made the earth tremble as if a herd of elephants were charging at me. I think his name was Eliot or something like that. (I think he went on to MP.) He was Jewish and didn’t look very gentlemanly as he bore down on this gentle half gentile standing in his way.

Suddenly an amazing thing happened. I went back to the future. My memory brought up in graphic detail Quinton Tarintino’s film Inglourious Basterds and the character called the ‘Bear Jew’ (Eli Roth). He is the one who dashed out NAZI officers’ brains out with a baseball bat.

But I wasn’t a NAZI - just a nasty gnat in his way.

As this awful apparition approached, my brain struggling to return to the present through the mists of time; it picked up an order from my leader - Captain Keith Stack.

“Stop him! Karl – Hold the line.”

I now had other problems almost beyond my control. My adrenal gland had decided to work overtime and I had a desperate urge to wee and poo simultaneously. But this most terrible of hormones was now playing more tricks with my mind because everything slowed down. Just like that film The Matrix. I am sure everyone has experienced this phenomenon some time in their lives. What I dislike about it is that it is always connected to flight or fight and never when you have met someone nice and having a great time. (Does that mean there is an opposite hormone to adrenalin but it hasn’t been discovered yet? It would sure come in handy to speed up nasty times like learning Afrikaans.)

So with the whole scenario running at about one frame per second, I contemplated on my orders. The first bit even I could reluctantly understand, but the bit about ‘Hold the line.’? What was that all about? Somehow I didn’t think that we should all go off fishing.

Click, click, click… the picture kept running  through the projector to be screened in my confused cortex, as jerky step by jerky step, the monster approached. I didn’t have long and I was inextricably being dragged to the present. So I went mentally online to the freedictionary.com/hold+the+line. The options did not bode well. Obviously I soon sort of clocked between the various nouns, verbs, adjectives and all the other rubbish that makes up the technical side of the English language. But some awful definitions came apparent, and I quote from the bits my frightened brain now saw in terrifying black and white - complete with the scantily clad girl on the left advertising her underwear. As far as I could gather this was a collection of euphemisms to contemplate euthanasia.

These seemed to fill the criteria -

- To keep from falling or moving, such as being glued to the spot in mortal fear.

- To keep from departing or getting away from big bad monsters.

- To avoid letting out or expelling urine or faeces.

- To have as a responsible position or a privilege as by hanging around doing nothing at all besides picking one’s nose, scratching at an itchy anus and yawning in the proximity of a try line.

- To maintain occupation of by force or coercion whilst being brutally murdered.

- To stop the movement or progress of terrible monsters hell bent on brutally murdering you.

Actually, the list goes on and on and the more I rapidly scanned the explanations, the more I realised I either had to do a runner or die a terrible, violent death.

I was running out of time. But there, under idioms I found it –

- Hold the line - To maintain the existing position or state of affairs:

How stupid is that explanation? I just wanted to carry on picking at my nose and scratching my itchy brown eye whilst yawning with boredom, and then again, through the quantum physics of the universe, a voice called –

“Karl… Tenent linea – Tenent linea!  Prohibuimus eum!”

Now he sounded like the Roman General, Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the armies of the North, as when they were fighting Germanian troops. It was alright for him. His army were all in the north of the playing field leaving the south being guarded by little me! And, why the hell was he telling me this in Latin? Keith might be practising the language for a future career as a doctor but I didn’t have the slightest inclination of being his first patient. As much as I liked the bloke, I was not that enthusiastic to see his signature posthumously on my certificate.

Slowly my mind returned to the present but briefly paused and I instinctively reached for my trusty FN with Mk11 Zulu flying grenade. That will stop the bastard.  Alarmingly it wasn’t there and as the imminent confrontation bore down, the film frame started speeding up and I suddenly realised it would still be another nine years before I was kitted out to the teeth – if I survived this contact with the enemy – here and now.

I returned to the present and at the age of 11 I knew my coffin would be so small that even my father might pay for it rather than a used mielie sack for 50 cents. Or even worse, my teammates might dismember me and toss the bits to the circling vultures. I was, for yet once again in my short and miserable life – well and truly up shit creek without a paddle.

With the option well closed by returning from the future of shooting the rampaging creature, I thought out an option of appealing to our common Jewish blood –

“I will give you all my pocket money for a month if you desist.”

Obviously 10 cents was a poor bribe and was ignored. The huge Bear Jew, now being chased by our demented and desperate wild dogs, had moved up a gear and was pounding down through the wastelands of our half with serious and deadly determination. I was running out of time and alternatives.

I was now forced to crunch some serious megabytes of options through my cerebral cortex. I recalled a bit from one of the weird books I had delved into belonging to my historian step-mums collection – this one by a really clever bloke, Oliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774), Irish-born British novelist, playwright, and poet,

For he who fights and runs away

May live to fight another day;

But he who is in battle slain

Can never rise and fight again.

In my present predicament I rather fancied the former two lines. As for the fighting bit, I had a yellow belt in the ancient martial arts disciple of Legitquick.

And once more Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, aka, Captain Keith Stack called out in desperation –

 “Karl…Hold the line, Hold the line.”

My Captain had spoken. Okay - this was an animal crash just waiting to happen. I, the giggling emaciated cowardly heyena was just desperate to run away. I was facing a one ton Rhino with a rugby ball mounted on a seriously big horn, legging it in full kill charge mode. Its beady eyes were now greedily seeing the exact point where he could give B + C the ultimate humiliation of scoring a try.

I didn’t have a clue what I supposed to do. I had no instruction on how to tackle apparitions you only see in your worst nightmares. But the captain expected me to do my duty. So I just kicked started my tiny engine, let out a huge fart to increase acceleration, closed my eyes and ran full tilt into him.

This wasn’t bravery, this was pure stupidity. 

The kids watched with horror as I flew away into the sky like the last flightless dodo heading for immortal extinction. So powerful was the ricochet I was close to have been converted. (Not to any religion, but over the goal post’s crossbar.)

I awoke to bells ringing. I thought I had died, had been converted and gone to heaven. The worried face of Captain Keith Stack was above me. The bells were actually end of break time.

“Karl, are you okay?”

I wasn’t really sure where I was. I sat up a bit groggy.

“Did he score?”

Keith’s face broke into a big grin of relief.

“Karl, you bounced off him with such force, he placed a foot outside the boundary line. He was out. You held the line.”

My little heart burst with pride along with a rather aching head. It turns out I was unconscious for nearly two minutes and the kids were starting to panic.

Of course, these days I should have been sent to hospital and checked in the head for any long term damage or concussion. Since it was generally acknowledged that I spent most my time chirping nonsense all through lessons, the teacher would hardly notice that my speech was slurred and I kept banging into the desks for a few days.

Captain Keith Stack decided to ban me from playing for at least a week, till what little sense I had had returned. Then I took up my usual position of wandering around, picking my nose and scratching at my hole - but with one small difference. I now kept a wary eye out for nasty scary things wanting to kill me. I had made a decision that would keep me alive during the war years and ultimately lead to one of the funniest quotes from The Gokwe Kid –

‘Gooks! Run for your lives.’

 

Simply the Pest – the latest.

Okay, okay, I know. I have been ignoring my blog a bit. Very naughty. I have been spending too much time causing mayhem on Facebook (as you do). Only today some boring farts took offence to some of my brilliant wit – to wit this picture . I mean, where is the problem? 

The new Pope promotes my book.

I will tell you quickly about this picture. I gather it has gone viral (Not my version.) All sorts of nutty plonkers think they see a shadow of the Devil there on the right. That is the bit circled by some clown who sent it out. When this popped up on my Facebook, I grabbed the bull by the horns. Added the words ‘This is me’ and for good measure added the sTp logo. Of course that is a trademark of a bunch of con-artists (look them up on Wikipedia.) I will rearrange it into StP and use monochrome and most probably a square as a picture for my book. 

Now. The next book StP. The good news! It is almost a wrap. Most of it formatted and only a couple of chapters I await from my editor. So, in theory, two- three weeks and it should be ready, firstly for Kindle and other eReaders, and a bit later in print.

Here is the cover I have been working on. I like it. The back needs rewriting and still haven’t decided on a picture. Note how I have inverted the colours from the Gowe Kid. Ignore the thick black border. That gets trimmed by the publisher.

  

Now the bad news -  Erm, (cough, cough, look up at ceiling, scratch at brown eye, place a finger up a nostril and contemplate an honest answer) – well… Ah – It is Good, it is Bad and it is Ugly, but most of all, hilarious.

Here is pic of most of it printed out for me to bore myself to death checking it for formatting and any obvious P and G errors that have snicked through.

I promise to keep you all posted.

The Black Jews of Rhodesia / Zimbabwe

Whilst doing some research for a chapter called Losing my Religion for my next book Simply The Pest, I came across an amazing story.

Whilst I found out that there is little of the Jewish community left in Zimbabwe (perhaps 500 plus from a high of several thousands during the Rhodesia period), the demise has nothing to do at all with anti-Semitism but more due to the collapse of the economy.

But in my story I refer only to white Jews. However it now turns out that for at least 2500 years or more, Jews wandered down from the Middle East (most probably what is now today’s Yemen), and the now 70,000 strong Lemba people are settled in Zimbabwe and parts of northern South Africa.

But here similarities to the white Jews end (besides the fact that the Lemba people are all black). Whilst they practice traditions such as a ban on the consumption of pork, male circumcision and ‘kosher’ type slaughter of livestock, for them it is more of a tradition rather than a religion.

 

Whilst it appears that there are several groups throughout Africa claiming some sort of connection to a Jewish ancestry, in the late 1990’s scientists dropped a genetics bombshell. Whilst over half of anyone whose surname is Cohen had DNA that could be traced back to the time of Moses, they found the same link in 50% of the Lemba people.

Curiously, I have no recollection of hearing about these people when I lived in Rhodesia.

For further interesting details – Google –

Lemba people. The Wikipedia entry is a good place to start.

Learner drivers – Gokwe style.

Oops. I just remembered a hilarious anecdote I forgot to put in my book. It is about learner drivers. We, (the police) in Gokwe were allowed to take the hopefuls for their theory test. (After we had passed our full license.)

It worked a bit like this. So along comes some black geezer. He has read the Highway Code (not). In the Highway Code was the Q and A list. In theory, you took one dollar and a passport sized photo from the applicant, randomly asked about 50% of the questions and if they replied correctly, you gave them the provisional drivers license to go out and kill and maim as long as a ‘L’ sign was stuck on the back of the vehicle. They were supposed to have a fully licensed driver with them, but I recall (and many of you will also), it was all a farce.

So, it didn’t take long to clock that the candidates were actually parrots! It didn’t matter what question you read out, they chirped the answer word perfect. Punctuation, grammar was faultless even if they couldn’t speak more than five words of English. Something was afoot. I started to get uneasy because I had a gut feeling that they hadn’t a friggin clue at all what the hell they were parroting on about.

There were two tricks you could do. Because I am a natural born liberal without a cause, I felt a bit sorry for the savages and would not take the money and fill in the form and paperwork shite before the exam. I gave the exam first and managed to fail about 99% of the hopeful drivers. They kept the buck and picture (a hell of a cost and trip down to Que Que to sort that out), I had no paperwork and the dirt roads were kept relatively safe till Independence.

Actually, it was rather easy to catch the natives out. The Highway Code had an error on the back. It was about which car dips lights for which car. They had it wrong and the candidate wasn’t really sure what the hell dipping lights meant anyway since whitey had only given him a candle a couple of decades ago. (Who remembers that fabulous little dip/full beam button on the floor for your foot? I really miss that.)

So as much as my liberal heart loved our peasants, I wasn’t exactly going to allow them to run rampant. I would gently break the news (sometimes through a translating constable), that perhaps they should spend some time actually understanding the Highway Code rather than just memorise the Q and A bit. Then some of them would really be drama queens and weep and wail about starving to death and all sorts, but my heart was hard and I said no.

But for the really clever-clevers that kicked up a right ruckus, I had my own question that always destroyed their dreams. It goes like this –

You are driving to the township. You are drunk and weaving all over the place. Behind you is a BSAP squad car flashing its blue light and yowling its howling siren. You see a possible bolt hole in a tiny street between some shebeens. It is hard right hand turn and at 130kmh, you try it. Of all the vehicles tyres, which one bared the least load as you attempted this maneuver?

Answer in comments please…

Just remembered…our black BSAP blokes who were taught by us to drive, were book perfect- almost to despair! In all my time with the BSAP, I never, ever saw or witnessed any of these perfect gentlemen drive like us white drunken hooligans.

PS – If you laughed, please buy me a beer. I am running out…

Tanga – My best friend

I am furiously working with two fingers ticky-ticking away on the next book. One story I still keep till the end of my rewrites is because it makes me cry. I hate this story. So stupid really, I mean like, it is just about a dog.

Most Rhodies have something emotional about dogs. Why do we come so attached to them? Someone told me that it because they never would betray you. Perhaps actually as the war made life untenable, we betrayed them. Beaten to death, shot or we put them down or gave them away as the last of the Rhodesians fled. I shudder.

So I have beautiful story about a dog that was as useless, hopeless and suffered from ADHD as myself. He wasn’t just a dog; he was my brother.

I found some words from a song that I wanted to include in the story. Smart money said check out the copyright. Well, it is a mess. You can download, read on the internet, do what you like with lyrics, but put them in a book – serious trouble. You have to try and find the owner of the lyrics (not necessarily the artist) contact them and either they ignore the Email, reply asking for serious bucks or give you the okay shortly before you die. In other words, unless you have a powerhouse publishing company behind you – forget it.

I believe this will all change because of the internet. The copyright laws need to be totally revamped. I find that writers should be able to set moods by quoting from songs with no fear of being sued. It is ludicrous.

In this point of time I have no choice. But I will give you a hint of the passion of the story from a song. I put it up here because it is quite frankly everywhere and I quote from Wikipedia –

Mr. Bojangles is the title of a song originally written and recorded by American country music artist Jerry Jeff Walker for his 1968 album of the same title.

These are the lines –

‘He danced for those at minstrel shows and county fairs throughout the South.
He spoke with tears of fifteen years how his dog him, he traveled about.
His dog up and died, he up and died,
After twenty years he still grieves.’

I never owned another dog again.

Beer – till death do us part.

Sigh. The dreaded time has arrived yet again. The fridge is empty. It is raining a sort of Inyanga type ‘guti’. Tomorrow is Sunday and here all the shops are closed.

Option one – do nothing and await the shakes of withdrawal.

Option two – look up the bus times and drag sorry arse along with a little case down the road and wait for bus. Then either a) rush like a lunatic and purchase as much as possible in 10 minutes, fast track through the checkout and stagger coated in sweat to catch the bus on the way back…or b) miss that bus and wander around stupidly for an hour plus in the supermarket killing time so as to catch the next bus home.

This of course depends if they are running every hour because today is Saturday. A quick look at the timetable shows that sadly, it appears that I am well shafted by the local public transport as it appears they running around about every THREE hours. Even Kambasha’s bus in Gokwe had a better service.

Which leaves me with the worst option of all – the evil monster on two wheels. The mere thought of mounting it fills me with dread. But I will be brave, I will look at my General Service Medal, beat my chest and shout out the window ‘We are Men of Men’, and mentally prepare myself for the awful trip ahead.

So before I go out into the wilds yet again, please note that you can now help me out with a beer or two. Just click on the Paynow button on the right. Many thanks…

To be continued - if I return in one piece…

Grim Reaper v My Sister

My two years younger sister Bridget should have popped her clogs and given the bucket a thorough kicking well before her teens. I can only hazard a guess that her Yorkshire genes (world renowned for being tighter than Scot or Jew genes), thought that if they came into this world for free, on no account were they departing without a fight.

Bridget was physically not suited for Central Africa and all it entails. In Rhodesia we were brought up from the age of five to be tough and excel in sports and be fit and strong. Unfortunately Bridget could only be considered a bit of a Spazsticus rather than a Spartacus. She did learn to swim, although if it hadn’t been for the rope the teacher tied around her, she would still be lying at the bottom of the pool to this day.

No matter what sport it was - she was useless. The lack of eye and hand coordination extended right down to her feet. She did excel in fraud though and as a teenager mysteriously seemed to always being excused from the compulsory two afternoons sweating buckets at hockey, tennis, athletics etc because she was always ‘not well’, with the note signed by her mother. Not that my step-mom Katherine, ever knew about this.

But it was not only sport that was bad for my sister’s health. They didn’t call Africa the ‘Whiteman’s grave’ for fun but because all sorts of nasty diseases could be picked up and many thousands of brave, land thieving pioneers paid the ultimate price of shitting and vomiting to death (the easy way), or if you want to depart seriously hard core by going berserk and snapping your own spine in your death throes - rabies was up there in the top 10. I remember at junior school being showed a short film of this bearded bloke strapped to a bed and frothing out the mouth and generally going quite mental and it put us all off patting any friendly jackals that came our way.

Unfortunately for my family the nasty things always seemed to visit my sister either just before we were supposed to go on our Xmas holidays or bang in the middle of them. Mmm…let me recall.

Paradise Island. Just off the coast of Mozambique. Maybe she is five. Paradise without hot water and very little food but luckily a tiny clinic with loads of syringes full of anti-biotics pumped into her arse because all of a sudden tonsillitis took hold. You could hear her screams as far as Vilanculos.

Then the next year. The old man decides it would be a great idea to DRIVE from Salisbury to Lake Nyasa. Hah-hah - what a fucking nightmare that was. But Bridget does us proud and promptly gets malaria. Luckily there is a small clinic with loads of syringes full of whatever and her screams could be heard as far as Lilongwe. Well, the Grim Reaper wasn’t having that and the recovering fair skinned redhead was left to rest on the beach and within seconds suffered sunstroke but luckily the clinic still had more syringes and her screams could be heard as far away as Salisbury.

Undeterred, a year later, death tries another plan. Just before we were due to go to the Chimanimani mountains, she turns into a Chinese woman! Amazing. One minute she is a natural born, ghost type colour, and next thing you know she is yellower than the proverbial canary that chirps “I smell gas!’ and promptly falls off its perch. But riddled with yellow fever (jaundice) this canary refuses to die.

And then, was it the next year, I can’t remember, as she picked up more exotic germs, parasites and viruses that even Katherine’s favourite textbook ‘The Reader’s Digest Guide to what can kill you in Africa’, couldn’t keep up. I only got jealous once. I reckon she was 13 and me was due some serious end of the year exams. As usual I hadn’t done jack shit and would fail and subsequently be beaten once again to death.

Then, in a stroke of amazing luck, our little brother Michael contracted measles! I am not sure where he got that from but he was quarantined and Bridget and I were banned from his presence. I took every opportunity to sneak into his bedroom hoping to get the dreaded illness and sister, being a bit of a lazy arse, also had the same idea. Well, Michael only had a teeny weenie dose and a few little tiny spots. I caught nothing. Bridget caught the lot. So huge were her red spots I thought she had turned into a Native American! She stayed in bed, I failed and was subsequently beaten once again to death.

I am sure there were more strange exotic things she caught. She never got bilharzias because she didn’t like swimming in rivers and dams. I did…and didn’t…sigh. In fact the harder I tried to catch something the harder I failed. Even now (touch wood) with my lifestyle I should have dropped dead years ago.

Bad luck always plagued Bridget. Not just from the inside but also from the outside. I tried to kill her off with various extreme sports designed for the pre-teens such as parachuting from the garden wall, but she always survived. But the funniest thing I recall was when she must have been about seven.

It was a Sunday outing. The family went to some small park near the railway line that divided Salisbury between the white have and have nots. It wasn’t much of a kid’s playground but they had a roundabout thingy and a slide. The place was pretty deserted. There was one bloke with his little boy and a rather large Alsatian. So, messing around, whatever, the bloke puts his little boy on the roundabout. Bridget gets on too. The bloke starts to spin the thing. Shrieks of enjoyment from his son but the shrieks from my sister could be heard as far away as Johannesburg…because

You see, as the spinning got faster and faster, little sister, hanging on to the bars for dear life, was slowly being pushed by the centrifugal force to the extreme edges. Now at the same time, the fucking dog decides that the screaming boy is obviously in some kind of danger and is running around like a lunatic, getting totally dizzy, barking its head off and trying to stop the spinning thing by bighting at the ‘hold on’ bars. Realising that wasn’t working, the deranged animal locks onto a soft target – Bridget’s bum.

I will never forget this image, god help me, did I laugh? The dog has her bum in its teeth - it tries to brake the roundabout by digging in its haunches whilst growling like a rabid jackal, Bridget is howling worse than a wolf on LSD, the dog is having its arse burnt to a crisp as it is dragged around the tarmac surround and I only stop screaming with hysterical laughter when my beloved father drops me to the ground with a well aimed smack to my left ear.

Ah, once the canaries finally dissipated from my humming head, Bridget, (now rescued), is soothed and prompted to cheer her self up by going on the slide. Ah, but the Grim Reaper wants revenge. So she climbs up. Stands there and starts yowling with fear. She won’t go down the slide nor reverse down the steps. I am sulking because my head hurts otherwise I could have sorted the problem out by simply pushing the silly hysterical bint down it.

So the old man decides he goes up and holding Bridget between his thighs - fires down like a rocket. Sadly, the dumb ass had forgotten about using feet for breaks and at the end of the slide shoots off at an alarming rate. Forced not to crush Bridget, he uses his palms and knees on all fours to come to a halt. I took evil satisfaction of his pain. Still, bit harsh hey. What looked liked just a bit of removed skin turned out by the next day to be fractured knee caps. HE went on the sick for two weeks and I went back to school! It was impossible for me to get written off.

Well, my sister is still alive. Doing okay actually, even if the tight tart never bothered to buy my book. I sent her a copy but she gabbled some excuse that it never turned up. Oh well, £20 down the drain. But, amazingly, of all careers she could have taken, she decided to become an expert in…Tropical Diseases.

Reasons to be thankful this Xmas –

Totally well wired up, the Gokwe Kid, Hwange, circa 1984/5. Brilliant pic of the Land Rover’s short wave radio antenna sticking out off my head. (Pic taken by my ex.)

 

That short time with the magnificent BSAP of Rhodesia turned me from a childish child lunatic into a childish adult lunatic - strictly on paper mind you. As soon as you turn 18 most of the excuses are legally gone and suddenly, instead of six cuts with the cane for shooting your father dead, you could be legally and literally (depending on date of birth), be converted into a short drop with a rope around the neck.

Luckily my old man went to the beyond (Warren Hills cemetery to be exact), before I did a teenage rampage. I use to buy fishing worms from the happiest ‘blecks’ in Africa on the road towards Lake Mac. I got suspicious after the old man died because the worms seemed to know me and sadly, unlike the poetic justice of Shake Ya Spear (a famous medi-evil African tyrant, whose famous quotes also include – ‘Even a Jew can passover the bowl of a gentile,’ or something like that), because the fish I was fishing for thought the offerings looked a bit fishy.

So I contemplate my situation this Christmas and decide it sucks because the shops are closed and the lazy bastard bus drivers take the day off. Still, nothing like some cool vibes to cheer you up – Ralph McTell –

So how can you tell me you're lonely,

And say for you that the sun don't shine?

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London

I'll show you something to make you change your mind

That’s for sure…hah-hah, that is why am in Germany. All I need now is some wheels, but as us Rhodies say…make a plan, and I am making one. Oh yeah, book two is nearing completion. It will sell but I might have to go into hiding because I could get a few more than my sales.

And then, since the world didn’t end on Friday (bit of a pisser as I hit the credit card and spent three Euros on some socks because the last thing you want in hell is to walk on brimstone with holes in the heels), I am forced to make some form of New Year resolution. Here is one -

What I want to do for the BSAP in 2013 –

I would like to be personally invited to many BSAP conventions etc, as a guest speaker and totally shit faced staggering drunk, slurring my words, stand tall (well as best as possible), and with rapidly failing eyesight, recite in incomprehensible dribbling gibberish, one of my favorite chapters from my best selling book The Gokwe Tit. (Sorry, I will just ticky-ticky that again) The Gokwe Kid.

I now throw up, er… throw open to my BSAP peers, which chapter should I read out? I mean I love them all. Please use this democratic moment and if you want me banned it proves you’re just a load of bigoted racists because I am a half sort of Jew. (Please do not hesitate to send a few cents to my PayPal account as a way to acknowledge my wit.)

But…look at this pic. Taken by me between the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro crater, Tanzania. Why does Africa keep calling me home?

Bicycles, Beer, Eggs, Chips and Salami.

I had to go shopping on a bicycle today. It was a frigging nightmare. Luckily the snow had stopped and some rain had sort of made the pathway only semi-suicidal. Oh the irony!

I have totally rewritten the chapter about the history of Rhodesian bikes taking me for a ride and here I am, an old tired man and I am forced to mount another invention designed to kill me.

I haven’t thought up a name yet for this contraption that has been leant to me. It was designed for the Jolly Green Giant, not Miserable Shortarse Greenberg. Still, no pain, no gain and with supplies running low, I strapped on the little suitcase to the back and with trusty rucksack on my back went off into the Bavarian countryside towards the few shops eking out a living. I mean this city (CITY!, oh give over, they don’t even have a post office), makes Gokwe look like a tourist resort.

So I peddle away, skinny bum hurting from the even skinny saddle, thighs aching and after what seemed an eternity, get to this place where they have a Penny discount supermarket, a 1 Euro junk shop and KiK clothes and cheap shite store. Ironically, opposite is a huge Porsche car dealer. Not that you actually see many customers crossing the road in either direction. The lot looking at the Porsches wouldn’t be seen dead at Penny and those spending a penny (or 1 Euro) were lucky to, well, have heels on their shoes.

In KiK, I am very pleased to get three pairs of warm socks for three Euros. I need them as quite few of my socks have some serious holes in them. I also reluctantly, had to buy another winter jacket because the last one I bought from the same shop has been used for work. (Yes, I do occasionally work.) I was hoping to get the same jacket. Sadly they had sold out. But I grabbed a compromise and off I went to the next place.

Heading back home, and a small detour past the cemetery where a passing car nearly put me in it because I forgotten that they drive backwards here, I screamingly forked out over eight Euros for some fag filters and papers. Mounting the monstrosity, it was back down to the ‘local’ supermarket Netto. Luckily for me they had restocked the Weissbeer from my last visit and before any other alcoholics laid claim to them, I had 4 by 6 plastic bottles of the stuff in my trolley.

Then it is push the wheeled basket to my all time favorite hole – the deposit machine. Cracking fun. You fire all your empties into it and the fancy lasers and spinning wheels and stuff do a right merry jig examining what you just placed in it. Then satisfied, it takes it away and you feed in the next one. Not too fast hey, because in Netto, they do all sorts (not like Penny which only crushes the plastic bottles), Netto even takes glass bottles and tins! Amazing. Thing is, behind the hole is a rather complicated set up and if you feed your empties too quick some bird starts chirping nastily in German because the whole lot has piled up and is now crashing onto the floor. Great laugh.  Me thinks the crooked Brits could have a ball here. Load up trucks full of all the flotsam of plastic bottles and tins littering most of the country; drive down and with a scanned real code fraudulent sticker on the shit, they could make a bloody fortune fucking the Krauts over again whilst cleaning up there own backyard. I kid you not. There is serious dosh to be made. Here, the Bavarians don’t believe in the British hogwash about cheap beer causing binge drinking, so half a litre of top class beer is still only 33 cents…but, the deposit on the bottle is 15! How about that then? That’s why you don’t see any binge drinkers here – they can’t hang around because they too busy bringing the empties back. It is called exercise and keeps them fit.

So, back to me stocking up for Xmas on my own (thank God); I had to be very rational. They are rather Holy Joes here and shops are not open on Sundays or public holidays. I needed four days supplies. Food isn’t a problem, beer is. So calculating my future input down to the last sip till reload, along with a frozen chicken and a special offer tin of ravioli and a giant 500 gramme tube of salami (plus a few small bits and bobs), it is with huge fear and difficulty I strap the bulging case onto the rack and stick the exploding rucksack on my back.

I set off and nearly get creamed at the first bend as the dangerously flexing machine seems to have taken a mind of it its own and not even shouting in fluent Bavarian at it “Verdamt Sheisse ich wird dich Schmelzen Sie unten in Sarggriffe,” (roughly translated – “You damn shit, I will have melted down into coffin handles.”), seemed to help.

Then, to add more problems to this death ride, this thing has more gears than the average shift changes of African dictators. In my panic I start to get confused between up and down and nearly spilt a gut on the up and scream hysterically on the downs because I can’t peddle fast enough to change the gears back to up or fucking down or I haven’t a clue, and my left hand is desperately trying to keep a huge mound of beer on the back from tipping off and making the foraging crows pissed out their boxes from the exploded contents on the pathway whilst negotiating snow slush, shouting at old biddies insisting on taking their mangy dogs for a walk just at the moment I am risking life and limb to quench a fucking serious thirst I have now worked up because I am sweating like a kosher pig.

Which now brings us to eggs, chips and salami. You see, as I unpacked, shaking all over from the exertion and the fact that somehow I had survived (oh, I have one of those weighing things and for a laugh, it turns out rack pack was 18 kg and rucksack 9 kg), I pulled out this huge sausage of salami and suddenly remembered a little anecdote I forgot to put into a chapter called - ‘Food, food everywhere, but not a thing to eat.’

I quickly noted this down - as you do when you’re a writer. But as I put things away (beer) into the fridge and some down my gasping gullet, a sneaky plan dawned. So sneaky – you’re reading it, because in a way those two chapters about food and bicycles suddenly combine and leap forward three decades. Well, you will have to read them but, as far as the salami is concerned –

Sometimes even my step-mum Katherine, surpassed herself in burnt offerings that even my Jewish father would consider God may have thought it was taken a bit too far. He would gabble some lies about it being wonderful, but sadly his palette wasn’t quite up to it. But not to worry hey, he sort himself out and dash into the kitchen and one, two, three, potatos peeled and chop, chop, chop, ten slices of (kosher) salami fired into the chip pan and just as the aroma hit my quivering nostrils (as I was forced to attempt to consume the muck on my plate), in went two fried eggs. The greasy pile would be devoured before my starving eyes without a hint of guilt.

Guess what I am having for dinner tonight? Well not quite, it seems the eggs are knocking on a bit, so it is fried salami and ravioli.

Now, if any moaners think I can snick this chapter into the next book, well think about it. You are getting it now on credit…HEY!

Bad Boys Banned from Bernie Inn

Yeah, I just remembered this little incident. 1979/80 it must have been. So I am living in Norwich at the time being seriously bad ass working for a bunch of crooks (see the forthcoming book for details). So, this bloke Bill I was working with, agree to have a nice cozy with our respective partners eating some juicy steaks at Bernie Inn steak house.

Well fuelled in the pub after a few toots to get us in the swings, we rock up for our telephoned reservations. Told to wait and three pints later, Billy boy is kicking up a bit.

The waitress calls the manager and he tells us you can’t make reservations, which was a bit odd as we had!

Anyway, we get the table and skof the grub and the bill arrives. Bill tells the waitress we aren’t paying. By now I am off my head and wondered where this bit of agro was going.

So we tell our better halves to check out the downstairs’ bar whilst we men sort this out.

The waitress gives up and calls the cheeky manager along with his assistant. Much to my surprise Bill tells them –

            “Listen you pair of shit heads, you fucked us over with the reservations and, I tell you what, let’s go outside and sort it out. You two beat us up, we pay up. If you don’t we will call it quits.”

Now, personally I am not that way inclined and Bill had always seemed a reasonable bloke but the beer was obviously making him see the dark side of the force. I didn’t care. One way or the other I was likely to get a good kicking.

Anyway, of course we had become quite boisterous and getting evil looks from nearby clientele. Bill didn’t quite make things better by telling them,

            “Mind your own fucking business before I tip your fucking meal over your head.”

The manager now starts getting a bit shirty and says if we don’t pay, he will call the police. We (Or Bill in this case) happily agrees and asks for two more pints. This was strangely refused.

Well, knock be down with a beer bottle, just our luck, it turns out that there was a patrol car just around the corner showing a local magistrate around how well they kept the filth off the streets. Next thing you know we have a Chief Inspector, a Sergeant and a Magistrate making some serious noises at our table with some hard core hints that if we don’t cough up dosh for the steaks - a night in the cells was to be expected.

Well, Billy boy and I just shrug, and we were quite happy with the status quo when suddenly the waitress runs over and says the bill had been paid. It seems the other half (now weeping and doing right girly moaning), had used a credit card. We were furious!!!

Bloody women messing in real mens’ affairs and in the car park we told them so. Oddly, we got banned from the place for ever…

The cat did it

In Rhodesia during the early ’70s us school kids went through a phase (actually, we went through loads of them), and in this case it was white mice. These cute little things were sold for 25 cents at Leslie’s Pet Shop in down town Salisbury. I didn’t clock that they were actually for feeding pet snakes, but some of us thought the mice would make real cool playmates.

After some kid brought one to school, hiding in his pocket, I wanted one too. So after painfully saving up my pocket money (or thieving more of my old school uniforms to flog), I got myself a mouse. I kept it in draw in my bedroom. I always kept my bedroom door closed because our Persian long haired cat Jeanie (named after the TV show, and who in their right minds would purchase such an animal in the middle of Africa), spent hours sitting in front of the entrance to my room.

Well, unfortunately, I hadn’t clocked that the back of the drawer was a little short. The mouse got out, Julia the maid went into my room to give it a quick hoover and the rest of the mouse story is history. Goodbye 25 cents.

Amazon reviews – they love The Gokwe Kid

So they all scream to me to keep writing. Are they sure? Because the next book is seriously bad news.- It is very serious hard core bad. In fact, some people I shot a few chapters across their bows to check out the P and G said that, quite frankly, they do not like me anymore.

I thought that was rather harsh. I mean, I tell the truth and they are upset with it?. Fucking wimps. Oh yeah, wait…not long now. I ticky-ticky away on the keyboard and the chapters grow. And the best bit…you will hate me at the end. But, before you decide to kill me, I will make you laugh, cry and wonder over a beloved country lost and another I found and loved…strange stories indeed.

You want a bit? Hey! Just a bit hey???

Okay, I tease ya – from a chapter…

Night Raid

 (Somewhere in Rhodesia, early 1970’s)

We knew that the enemy we most dreaded had returned to plague us once again. Year after year, the ever-grinding war of attrition; the same old battle of nerves. We had never really been able to corner them, and end it in a final fire-fight. At most, we could take out a few of their leaders and leave them disorientated for a while, but there was always another to take their place, and the guerrilla war would start afresh.

For most of the year we held the upper hand. Our latest base was comparatively new and our designated area for patrols seemed relatively free of the menace. Daily our small unit pounded the now familiar routes with an ever weary eye open. It was our land and rightfully so and we sculptured it as we liked, because we had made it our home. But they dared to question this with audacity. They remained for the most part unseen and would spook us from a safe distance.

            The rainy season always changed the scenario.  It was almost as if both sides needed respite from the game of hide and seek; a status quo, an unspoken agreement between the antagonists. We hated to slog through soaked grass and the ever increasing quagmire of rich, venial-red mud. Legend has it that Africa’s soil is that colour because of all the blood that has been spilled fighting for it. There would be more blood spilled, but we hoped our superior intelligence and armaments would ensure it would only be their blood that would soak into the ground to blend with their forefathers’ life juices.

The enemy had slinked back into our territory with some primeval instinct, just as the first summer rains finally came to break that smell of parched earth and moisture- starved yellow grass. The incredible majestic force of tropical storms normally kept us in base. Few dared to go outside when Mother Nature decided to throw her weight around, randomly spitting deadly bolts of lightning; killing hundreds each year. I respected and feared that power, for only last year, a colleague of mine had lost his younger brother from one of those jagged strikes. The kid had gathered with some fellow Cub-Scouts from a storm under the overhang of a giant boulder at Balancing Rocks. No one can explain why he was chosen from the group, to be so freakily picked out and struck down, leaving the others standing on either side of him terrified, but unhurt!

            Our adversary knew of our fear, but they seemed impervious to the danger. They even seemed to welcome it! Not far from where we slept in our fortified abode was a small isolated oasis with dense foliage - a perfect hide. They were happy to take time out and reorganise their forces during this time.

            We had used an observation point on the small hill overlooking their recently re-occupied stomping ground, hoping to spot them, but with no success.  Team leader reckoned that we would get some tonight. The Old Man, as he was better known by, was frustrated with the previous failures. The whole thing was getting on his nerves, and he was starting to take it personally. That morning he had approached me.

            “I have a job to do, but I will be back about 6.00 p.m. The weather report is for a big storm about that time. I will try and nail their leader then. Get everything ready, I am taking you with me on this one.”

            I felt honoured, as I was still in my teens. Any thoughts of ice cold, premeditated murder never entered my head. We had a job to do.

STP – Simply The Pest

 

STP – Simply The Pest

When we were in Rhodesia, as kids we went through a phase of collecting stickers. They would be traded at a furious rate. Lives could be taken and fights broke out. Because of sanctions stickers were seriously hard to come by. I recall one coveted sticker – STP

It was some bullshit fuel additive. A bit like Redbull of today. Still, I thought how weird…STP;  because that is the title I have decided on for my next book  - Simply The Pest

You don’t really have to wait long for it. I am well into it. It is bad, mad and wicked. Some are rewrites of old stuff posted on this blog, but much better because…

Yeah, I got my degree. It is official. A BA (open) from the Open University. I am carrying on for honours, which will be a doddle. I did all the hard shit and only need a few credits at Level 1 to wrap up big time. I picked something easy – German for beginners. Hah-hah, I lived in the place for twenty years and now I am back again spreching the Deutsche almost every day. Four tiny exams spread over a year - I don’t exactly have to extend myself.

So, I wrapped up the last heavy exam for my 60 credits with a passable Grade 3 pass. I was more than happy because I was in the middle of moving and had also lost total interest in the module. My last TMA (Teacher Marked Assignment) submission went down badly. I redesigned a Wi Fi remote controlled via Skype vibrator. Teacher was not amused and refused to mark it. It was passed up the hierarchy and two months later I received a close fail. I still haven’t bothered to open the sent comments. I didn’t give a monkey – I was still well okay for the pass I needed.

Ah, it is so nice to have all those fancy letters after my name. Quite a list now –

Karl Greenberg

BA (Open)

Dip LCW (Open)

Cert Hum (Open)

My ex asked me if they will bring in any money. Not really, but I know that I wouldn’t be writing without the input from the Open University, so quite frankly, she can go fuck herself.

 

Back to STP – yeah, you will love it. Totally different to The Gokwe Kid, it is made up of different anecdotes that slowly weave together to create the legend and just when you think it is over, I hit ya with a sequel of what happens after I flew away from Rhodesia.

Stay tuned and don’t forget, I post loads of nonsense and silly quizzes on my Facebook page Gokwe Kid, so join and have some fun.

Oh…almost forgot. I have some serious competition. His name is Steve, and the tosser happens to be also a fake Jewboy from Salisbury and also has a cutting edge writing wit (the bastard). He has made me realise I have been complacent and the swine wants my coveted titles – Rhodesian X Factor (1977), Strictly come Soldiering (1978, runner up), I am a Coward – Get me out of Here (1978), and Rhodesia has No Talent (1977).

I will keep an eye out for this great pretender…

http://wheniwasawhenwe.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la/

And – last but not least –

Sales of The Gokwe Kid are doing very well. All my reviews are top besides some twat who thought he had been done over by having to buy Part 1 and 2 on Kindle…hah-hah…it’s a hard knock life.

Making a plan

I just realised I haven’t posted in a while. This is not good for maintaining a fan base. Sorry about that but I have been very busy. Some people may find that hard to believe but it is true.

Firstly I moved house. Well, flat actually. After six years of crawling up that sodding hill in North Wales everyday with some shopping; it was time to go. I would miss the view but that was about it.

So I sold just about all my possessions, even most of my beloved Rhodesia memorabilia, but I needed the dosh and I couldn’t be arsed dragging the stuff around anymore. I thought I would miss them but not really. I think completing The Gokwe Kid made me decide that I can keep it all in my head. I kept some important bits, my three wall plaques and my police diaries and a few other small bits and bobs.

I have them here in my new flat in….Germany! Yup, I have come full circle and I am back to where it all began three decades ago. It is a cute, brand new pad and unlike that damp, rotting hole in Wales, this one is toasting warm with buckets of steaming hot water as much as I like and not once a week when I would reluctantly turn on the boiler and watch with horror as it chewed a £1 a second in juice. Nah - none of that crap anymore.

You see, when problems arise us Rhodies are world famous for what is called ‘make a plan’. Maybe sanctions did that to us. We couldn’t simply wander into a shop or pick up the phone and someone on the other end could solve your problem. Nope, no chance. That was because I was always skint (still am) and we had a lock on our phone at home.

My parents were very tight. I wasn’t as crafty as my late brother Michael. I found out the cheeky bugger worked out that you flicked the bit out of the middle of  the dial and there was the screw that held it in place. Somehow he had ‘managed’ to procure an extra dial and simply swopped them over. I gather that the phone was then locked away in the parent’s bedroom because mysteriously the phone bill was still rather extravagant.

Michael wasn’t to be bypassed with that one so he simply bypassed the problem and the phone bills still climbed every month. It was his best friend who was responsible for his undoing. Garth, rocks up one Saturday and asks John (Michael’s step-dad), if Michael was around. Now, John says ‘Yeah, hold on I get him,’ because he had seen Michael cruise in only a few minutes before. So he wanders into Michael’s room, goes in and he isn’t there. Fair enough, maybe he is having a wazz, but a quick look-see around the small house and still no Michael.

Confused he tells Garth and the two wander about calling his name. Then, going back into Michael’s bedroom, they hear ghostly talking. It is coming from the built in clothes cupboard. John opens it and there is Michael – on the phone! The crafty sod had got himself an extra phone and some cable, gone up into the loft and spliced into the line and ran a new one into the clothes cupboard. I don’t know what the punishment was – but now that is what I call making a plan.

So, I also made a plan and here I am. A tiny town called Töging am Inn, west of Munich. It actually has ‘city’ status but I would question that because they don’t even have a post office. This place makes Gokwe look like a thriving, bustling metropolis. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and when the piper plays - ‘I come a’running bwana.’ I don’t have to do that too often which is great because that gives me plenty of time to get on with the next book. More about all this in the next posting – I don’t want to overload attention span, plus I need to get a beer.