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All right then mates, brothers, I don't mind saying it was a bad situation. Fucking bad, actually. I couldn't believe they'd just left me like that, the tour guides. Well I'm a big bloke, you know, I'm hardly inconspicuous, and yet there I was anyway, standing around like a prize fucking lemon in the arse-end of nowhere, roasting in the sun, with nothing but bloody desert in any direction, as far as I could see. There was no pool, there was no caff, there were no proper facilities, in fact there didn't seem to be any sort of infrastructure at all.
So I was feeling quite low, to be perfectly honest. If going abroad's really all about home, and how much you'd miss it if you couldn't go back there, if that's at least one of the points of a foreign holiday then it was a point, by then, that had been well fucking taken.
I mean I'd only wandered off for a couple of minutes, ten or fifteen, really twenty at most, to see about getting a drink of something, or maybe an ice lolly, anything to cool off a bit after God knows how many hours on that sodding oven of a coach. No such luck, I hasten to add, and when I got back it was to the somewhat alarming sight of no guides, no fellow passengers and no fucking bus, as if the ground had just swallowed them, as if they'd all buggered off back to London without me. Turn your back for five seconds in that gaff and you got done up the arse, it seemed. As a holiday experience, it was hardly ideal.
So I must have stumbled along for ages after that, totally clueless, like the proverbial Englishman, in the midday sun. Until I got to the edge of what looked like a shanty town, from which point I could see, well, not all that much. There was a bus stop, a shed and a couple of soldiers, or possibly Old Bill. Whatever they were, they didn't seem friendly, nursing their beers in the afternoon heat, guns on their knees or slung over their shoulders, eyes looking heavy, like dirty fried eggs. And then a bit further on was just a handful of shacks and the trace of a dust road, plus some parched, scrappy grass and a few of the natives, the view untroubled by telly satellite dishes, or even any shops. God help me if I have to spend the night here, I thought, out here in the middle of fucking Noddyland. And it was starting to get dark.
And I'd gone there in good faith, really I had.
'See the world' they'd said 'You should broaden your horizons. You're in a rut, mate.' And perhaps I was. Maybe life, after all, had been a bit too predictable back at home. It was the same old faces most of the time, at least apart from the tourists, and you'd get a shag, it's true, about once in a blue moon. But if life wasn't exactly the great adventure some of the old blokes would talk about sometimes down at the watering hole, then at least it was comfortable. And if I had, in truth, been up to my ears in the worst rut ever then I was missing it by then, mates, I'm telling you that much. Waiting around on the edge of the settlement, not too sure if it was safe to approach, it seemed pretty clear that you should never leave your manor, and especially not if you're relying on a bunch of clueless fucking arseholes to get you back home again. Colin, in particular, the leader of the twats ... well he'd seemed like trouble from the get-go, on about the birthplace of civilisation and all that, about the WWF, and the bloody environment, all the way there.
'Mate,' I'd wanted to tell him 'I'm from London, I'm not arsed about the rain forests, and a flight back home in time for the wrestling would suit me nicely at the moment, even if my carbon footprint's a bloody size twenty five.' Not that you can say anything of course. You look a certain way, you're from a certain background and they treat you like a monkey, that lot.
And as for the climate ... God only knew how the locals managed, in that heat. Well they were out to lunch half of them, as far as I could see, sitting round oil can bonfires, rabbiting on in some sort of dialect, probably off it on ganja or something. Not that I could blame them. It seemed a fairly hand-to-mouth existence to say the least, just a few goats and bantams to keep them all going, in houses, from the outside, that basically looked like the contents of a skip ... And I was really suffering by now, the smell from the cooking pots like ambrosia really, even though as grub went, it looked like a short path to a dose of the runs. Under the circumstances, I don't mind admitting that my eyes were a bit damp.
Still, however fucking useless the tour guides were, however much they'd been driving around like headless bloody chickens for the whole afternoon, they were bound to catch up with me sooner or later. It stood to reason they would. So in a couple of weeks I'd be back home, surely, having a good old laugh about my African holiday. And it was really cold by now, and I was knackered, mates, and starving, and I could hear the wild dogs, or lions, or whatever they were, howling on up at the man in the moon from somewhere not that far away. So I decided to see about approaching the settlement, in the vague hope that maybe they could sort me out.
Gingerly then, I moved away from the trees I'd been watching the village from, not exactly hidden or anything - as I said earlier, I'm a fairly big bloke, but I'd been well-enough covered to avoid being noticed. I knew I must be a sight, lumbering out of the darkness, a bit unsteady on my pins, so I was trying to make it clear that I wasn't a nut case, that I meant no harm, that I was really just after some grub and some water, and a place to crash out. Which, as you can no doubt see from my current condition, was a fucking big mistake. Because as I got closer, the village went off on one, into some kind of frenzy, to the point where one of the soldiers took a pot-shot at me, shrieking his head off like a mad chimpanzee. There was a flash from the muzzle, then a pain in my shoulder, bloody agony actually, and then a load more bullets flying over my ears as I turned tail and bolted, eyes hot and streaming, claret going everywhere. It's probably something you lot are used to, but I'd never known people to act like that. They might, where I'm from, try and slip you a beer or a moody hot dog on occasion, and their kids, the little bastards, might sometimes stretch to an apple or something with a razor blade in it, but nothing worse than that. Nothing like this. I don't know if you lot have gone all paramilitary on the cunts, and good luck if you have, but back in London, we've always been inclined to turn the other cheek. Though if I ever get back there, which now seems unlikely, I might have a few things to say about that.
And after that, anyway, things became strange. They were bad days actually, when I lost track of time, when for various stretches I was off my rocker, wandering around with no idea what to eat, or where to get a drink, or anything. I suppose I had visions. I'd see, I don't know, palm trees, an oasis, stuff like that. I remembered the old blokes talking about it, back at home, about somewhere they'd refer to as the ancestral graveyard, which some of us see when we're on our last legs, even if it's bollocks, a final trick of the mind. I never quite knew what they were getting at actually, but out in the wilderness during that time I think I had glimpses of it, of green plains, rock pools and our lot everywhere, as if the desert round there had come back to life
And I spoke to the voices, or the spirits or something, with some of the blokes that live there now. Who set me straight I suppose, on a couple of things. Such as, after all, that I'd never been out there on holiday in the first place, and that the tour guides had left me on purpose, the cunts. That even though I'm a Londoner born and bred, and I know bollocks all about how to survive here, the plan was to release me back into the wild, like some sort of bell-end on a reality TV show. As I'm sure you can imagine, I was a bit gutted when I heard that. Well, they think we're just wankers, and everyone knows it, because we don't have thumbs, because we can't talk back to them, as if the language is something we can't pick up on, even though our brains are about three times the size. But even so, to be confronted with the truth of the situation was a
bit like catching one of your keepers stark bollock naked in the reptile house, as it goes. You know they're all
probably as mad as arseholes, but it still isn't good to have to ponder the evidence, all the same.
So I eventually came across a pool with clean water, and some grub nearby I could just about eat, a few dry leaves on the end of a branch, and where I could wash up the wound in my shoulder. But I don't know, really, I think it might have gone septic. I'm not feeling too clever now, it has to be said. And so that's where I was when the film crew arrived, lying in the mud when the trucks pulled up like another mirage, the BBC logo bright in the sun. At last, I thought, although fairly delirious - they looked like angels in their damp, dusty t-shirts and holiday beards - I'll get some sense out of this lot, they'll maybe give me a shot, try and bandage my shoulder, even phone for some help. Surely, I thought, that's the least they can do.
Needless to add though, that's not what they did. Instead they just filmed me stumbling about the place, as if I was pissed and the whole thing was comedy, backing away if I tried to approach, even though I was obviously in all sorts of trouble And then they packed up their cameras and buggered off out of there into the sunset, just like that. Believe it or not, I actually overheard a couple of them discussing the pathos of the situation. So, so much, really, for saving the species, seeing as those pitiless, bleeding-heart BBC wankers were all that seemed to stand between me and extinction, personally. Which is not the sort of thing that would have happened in London - when one of us blokes is in a bad way back there, what they usually do is start a telly appeal.
So I had a bad feeling, as the trucks disappeared.
And then you lot arrived, my African brothers, although I dare say you can't understand a word of what I'm on about. And lying here babbling like some sort of loon, I suppose, increasingly dazzled by what may or may not just be more strange visions, of bright, winged pachyderms coming out of the sky; pink blokes, and white ones, like the Disney cartoon, although I'm looking at vultures instead of crows at this point, it does seem clear that the game's about up.
I'd complain to head office, really I would, but there seem to be any number of problems with the management these days, ones that go well beyond admin, and right to the top. And everyone knows that he's out of touch, so what, I ask you, would be the earthly point? I don't want to queer my pitch just before I have to speak to the bloke, do I? If that's what's to happen. There being no tour guides available for where I'm heading to next. The silly fucking cunts.
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