Cheeky monkey!

The week straddling the turn of the year saw me hosting a visit from my parents, who coped remarkably well with the more adventurous nature of holidaying in a developing country. Predictably, the bulk of my mother’s comments were “what beautiful flowers!” while my father’s revolved around the fact that nothing here quite works properly. Both were delighted by the range of goods and services rendered on the back of bicycles, and Ugandans didn’t disappoint with their efforts in this respect – we saw virtually every home furnishing, including the larger items like three-piece suites, skilfully poised atop the reinforced luggage rack behind the tottering rider.



We paid a visit to the modest Kibale Rainforest. It isn’t quite the Amazon but one thing it does have over that more famous tract of tropical trees is that it hosts an endangered but much-loved species of primate, the chimpanzee. They say chimps share 98% of their DNA with humans, but the remaining 2% must be the important bit because I didn’t really see the similarity, and that’s coming from a man who is unusually hairy. A couple of chimps high in the trees treated us to an amateur sex show but it lasted only four seconds, which I don’t think us lads would get away with in the human world. Still, our lady chimp didn’t seem at all disappointed, and who am I to judge?



Close Encounters of the Parental Kind (My desperation to make sure nothing went wrong during my parent’s visit has left me mercifully bereft of close encounters of the African kind, hence the slight change in emphasis).

I am lucky enough to have truly wonderful parents, but they can also be wonderfully insufferable. I feel licensed to say this by the knowledge that they would say the same about theirs.

As we packed up one morning, I kindly offered to put their suitcase in the van for them. However I was doing it, though, proved utterly unsatisfactory to my Dad – the wrong angle or orientation or off-centre or something – and as the bickering exchange reached a heady crescendo I considered it wiser to step out the way and let him do. But it had dented my patience severely and thus could be considered the precursor to what happened next.

All I did was ask if anyone had a plastic bag for my good shoes so the dust didn’t ruin them, and I set off a chain reaction of events that left me utterly exasperated. My mum suggested I put them in a nearby cardboard box instead, but I told her I thought I’d forget them there. Then my dad (still manipulating the suitcase) managed to produce a plastic bag for me, so I slipped the shoes in and then, out of respect for maternal advice, put them in the box anyway. This is when my mother communicated that she considered that an unnecessary risk now that I had a plastic bag. I sighed – not aggressively, but more of an involuntary exhalation of long-sufferance. I decided instead to tie the handles of the bag to seal it, and just as I began that action, she piped up with “why don’t you just tie the handles?” Patience ebbing, I was tempted to unleash a barrage of vicious sarcasm (“WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M DOING?!?”) but instead opted for a more politely diplomatic “please stop.” I tied the handles once and was about to tie them again to make sure when my mother came in with “once is enough.” My patience ran out. I launched into a lengthy diatribe on the theme of my ability, at an age of a quarter-century, to exercise basic common sense without close parental supervision.

My mother later blamed my request for a plastic bag as the reason for the unprecedented mollycoddling, but I consider this a poor excuse. The fact is parents never stop being parents.

Friendometer

The new year saw me receive an email from a former student of mine:

Alright dude, Mark here, your favourite student, just wondering how things are going down in Africa? Mosquito bites reached a thousand yet? i also hear you are chasing gorillas.. sounds fun. Holla back homie Peace

It may sound like it’s been lifted straight off the streets of Brixton, but that’s pure Salford, that is – prettily laced with irony.

Competition time

OK, OK, when I said misogynist what I meant was misanthropist. Totally deliberate, of course. Thanks Mum. You’re catching up!

Ben 2
Nigel’s Dad 2
Nigel’s Mum 2
Uncle Simon and the Family Hipps 2
Julia 1
Nigel’s Gran 1
Brother David 1
Volunteer Jo 1
Phil 1
Mr Ibbs 1

Some of you may have read Suzanna’s plea for pity points in the comments section. She thinks that as insignificant a gesture of friendship as visiting me is more worthy of points than the correcting the rare errors I’m prone to. Ha! What misguided nonsense.