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African abstracts - a brown trouser moment

23/11/2017

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West Tanzania, close to the Burundi border - about as far as you can get from civilisation...

The workhorse of a truck ahead was kicking up a screen of dust as our Land Cruiser pulled out to overtake it on the dirt track they called a road.  Soon it was lost behind us, our own dirt screen obliterating it from view. Then I felt  a jolt, a tyre had punctured. The driver mumbled something under his breath but kept the 4X4 hobbling along, across a bridge over a sluggish stream, and a further two hundred metres up the track towards a small settlement where we stopped.

The truck passed us to the sound of a horn and a cloud of dust while our Tanzanian africans leapt out of the doors and set to work on the wheel while I wandered into the bush on the side of the track to water the tall grass.

For once, there was no dilatory work; the wheel was off and the spare was on before the first of the village boys came out to look at me shaking a leg. It resembled an F1 pit stop; I was impressed.

We set off again and our africans wiped their sweaty brows and smiled. It was explained to me. We punctured before the bridge; a known place for Burundi bandits to skulk. We would be sitting targets there: literally, we would be robbed, the vehicle hi-jacked and maybe, just maybe, we would be held hostage or killed.  The white man - hard cash for the bandits.

It was wise to hobble to the relative safety of a settlement and change the wheel before word got out and was passed downstream. And I had got out of the car in all innocence - had I known, it would have been more than shaking a leg...
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Monday Night Blues

17/11/2017

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Yesterday, Dave and I were having a late lunch at Le Spice, a curry house, and before long after exhausting the stories of his latest golf trip to Bangkok, which included fraternising with the local ladies at the nineteenth hole we switched to music appreciation. 
'The Blues Bar is over there,' said Dave, pointing at an elevated metal roof. Yes, I recollected a past conversation where he frequented the venue with a couple of his mates, usually on a Saturday night.
'Good idea,' I said, 'I'll stay in town overnight,' - both my partner and I preferring that option to drinking and driving in a country soon to be declared with the world's highest road deaths.
'Monday is jam-night,' he said. 'Musicians take turns in fronting the regular band.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Some of it is good.'
It didn't put me off, and I resolved to join the crowd later that evening. As it happened, my local restaurant bar, was celebrating the owner's son's birthday, and as an extensive free buffet was available, time passed enjoyably. 
At around ten p.m, I paid my check-bin and hiked it down to the Night Bazaar where I was greeted by a cacophony of noise, some of it musical.   
The Bazaar - a tourist souvenir trap where road stalls are erected every day around 3 p.m. and dismantled at midnight is a honey-pot for visitors - and quite famous for the variety of goods on show. You name it - they got it or will find it. I often wonder why the dead insect stall is an attraction, but for one who isn't into tarantulas or any bug come to that, I guess there are strange people in this world who are.

Back to the Blues Bar, and I climbed the stairs to the roof area. It was packed with mainly old farangs sporting long white hair and beards - aficionados - viewing a small stage where a combo of four to five musicians were belting out songs. some had their young Thai wives in tow. One farang looked the splitting image of Bernie Ecclestone - and dressed the part also. Guest musicians were also male and pushing on in years, but still full of life and movement. 

Hmm.

As Dave said, some of it was good. You know how it goes - I woke up this morning, my baby had gone - repeated for effect ad - infinitum.

Between songs, I chatted to a young French couple from Marseilles, who were travelling around Thailand - the woman (good English) said she was going to sing a song next week on her return to Chiang Mai, as she was not shy.

Hmm.


I stayed to close on midnight, had a final Moose cider, and meandered back to my guest house. Still plenty of open bars on route, still raucous music played at high volume, bar-girls screaming and getting drunk, and ladies of the night prowling.

Somehow, the Blues Bar suits me better...
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Thailand Tales from the past - the wild west

10/11/2017

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...so my thai wife comes back home and said there's been a shoot up. Her voice is raised and her arm waving is extreme. Now 'shoot up' I have to consider, because it could mean different stories depending if you are a farang or thai or something in between. Like a ladyboy.

Seems serious, so I wait patiently while she unwinds and starts talking English speak.  Police come from Bangkok, some ten hours away, to break up a gang of drug pushers. Yaa Baa is an amphetamine, keeps the long distance truckers awake.

It's dinner time, still light, peaceful country setting.  So there are the police chasing these guys past her sister's house, her cousin's house, and her aunt's house - you get the picture. The gangsters are hanging out of their pick-up firing pistols at the police - the police are firing back - gunshots.

At one house, her cousin and the cousin's daughter are eating on the front patio. It's a meal to savour, every Thai loves dinner. Thai food is not to be sneezed at, unless you are allergic to chilli peppers - hot ones - and I mean hot ones that would have you climbing the walls if you accidently swallowed one. Pork, chicken and seafood with rice.

So this cowboy scene from "Gunslinger" rushes past and the cousin grabs her daughter and hides inside the house.

As you would. Wouldn't you?

Some five miuntes later, when the coast is clear and there's no sign of a return battle, her cousin and daughter go back out to their meal.

What meal? Their dog had scoffed the lot. An iron stomach.

PS: the police burst the tyres, caught the five gangsters. Her cousin - well I won't tell you what happened to their dog...
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A Brown, Dec’d - flash fiction

2/11/2017

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Warning- bad language.
 
I’m talking to you dammit. Pay attention, Tony. It’s been a fucking lifetime. As you get old, and I am mature as in fine Chablis, give or take an odd Sauvignon, invitations to funerals are a daily occurrence.
You know how it goes. Chinese whispers across a crowded bar, with ex-mates and ex-lovers. By the time it got to me, with a shed load of Black Rat inside, Tony Green had passed on to the next life. He’s having a Jazz party in his remembrance.
Free booze.
Which did it for me. So there I am, accompanied by you on a freebie promise, and what do I see? Not fucking you, Tony Green, who fucked away eight million baht on a Thai girl who promised him she’d stay with him to eternity and beyond, but Anthony Brown, who I couldn’t give a fuck about.
However, that intrigued me.
So I went through the motions, we even sat up-front (cause I got Charisma) next to a woman dressed in black who – between kneeling and standing) showed me a picture of her in a go-go outfit, and a dirty look that promised more than music.
You still here?
Oh, the vicar, priest or whoever was singing the praises ad-infinitum, and I felt a hand across my thigh.
So there I am. In a fucking funeral ceremony itching to get to the nitty-gritty with said groper – and needing a few imbibers to get me going – when I learn from her that this Anthony Knob-head was her ex-husband. And she wanted a replacement ATM.
Fuck that.
Twenty years ago, Tony did me a favour. It was an accident that took my dearly beloved from being a fucking leech to a place that Anthony Brown now resides in.
So mate, because it’s you, I nodding to. And you’re the one that’s feeding me morphine.
Fucking cancer.
Take her out, Tony, before I join the jazz club.
 
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    Author

    Bio: British age 73 (young) retired and living in Thailand.  Profession, Charity Auditor working in some 40 countries over the last ten years before retiring.  Familiar with writing reports to professional standard.  Sense of humour, reserved, realist and down to earth.  Enjoy writing with a passion for the unusual. 
    Genre: Fiction crime  

    Email: stephenterry747@hotmail.com
    Phone: 0066823250835 Thailand

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