Do you think you’re funny?

For my girlfriend’s birthday, we went to see a TV programme being filmed. It was like a sort-of Pop Idol for Ugandan wannabe stand-up comedians, eight of whom had 2 minutes each to try and make us laugh, most of them failing embarrassingly. The worst one must have endured the longest two minutes of his life – after bounding onto the stage like a demented goat, his attempts to tickle the thousands of ribs before him became increasingly frantic, and the anticipation in the auditorium thickened into a bitter soup of agony. How unfortunate that he was called Mercilus.

The judges followed the now formulaic good-cop bad-cop routine, with one following the Simon Cowell school of judging, pitilessly crushing valiant candidates with deft put-downs (e.g. “John? [pause for effect]. You’re not funny.” Ooh, harsh!)

Close Encounters of the African Kind

My girlfriend’s ex is a peculiar lad who I’ve spoken to on the phone once or twice and even had the honour of meeting – he dropped in unexpectedly to the office a couple of weeks back. I was hoping he’d at least try and threaten me or something, but it seems he was just curious to see if I was as beautiful as him. Sure, his sculpted musculature gave him a natural flair for intimidation, but nothing can win in the face of my devastating wit.

It was rather absurd, then, that we took our seats in the comedy show only to discover he was sat a short distance away on the same row. In such a situation, a sardonic smile and wave is a dangerously compelling course of action for a bold usurper to contemplate. Tempted though I was, I decided that I was above such an undignified display of smugness. But to pretend I hadn’t noticed him at all would have been a sure sign of weakness in this world of alpha-male competition. I considered standing up to stretch ostentatiously, as if limbering up, to show that my streamlined physique could give me a speed advantage if not a strength one. A casual glance in his direction at the end of the movement, to make sure he’d noticed my quivering calf muscles bulging beneath my straining trouser seams, would do the job nicely.

In the end I opted to meet his gaze and give a subtle and manly raise-of-the-eyebrows. I was rewarded with an even less perceptible nod in return. Job done, I settled down to watch the show, albeit taking care not to appear to be having *too* much fun with this lunatic’s ex-girlfriend lest I feed his thirsty wrath and get embroiled in some primeval showdown on the steps of the theatre at the end of the show.

Friendometer

Someone pointed out to me the other day that in order to make friends you have to leave the house, an observation that I had to admit seemed to have been eluding me. Waking up on a Saturday morning to glorious sunshine tempered with a cool breeze, eating homegrown paw paw on the verandah, and watching tweeting birds and fluttering butterflies frolic across verdant lawns edged with relentlessly blossoming bougainvillea, never gave me much incentive to step out on the weekend, especially when someone else is doing the cooking. And being white in Uganda, it’s not so crazy to expect someone to knock on the door and beg for you to accept them into your elite group of friends. Is it? Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that this lifestyle, though good for getting through lots of books, is not likely to bring much social gratification. Get a life, Nigel!



Working Hours I’ve made my first bold step on the ladder to becoming a famous, respected author – a national treasure, even – by being quoted. Volunteer Jo – gone but not forgotten – has decided to feature my grumbles about the Uganda NGO board in her Cambridge University (nothing but the best) dissertation. Apparently she has to first seek permission, which of course I granted as long as she paid the £500 fee.

Competition Time

Volunteer Jo also noticed the obviously deliberate error in the last entry – that Uganda used to be a British colony so of course it knew ounces. Whether or not mercury powder was sold by such archaic measures is, I suppose, a moot point. Either way, she’s earned herself two points in one go, catapulting herself with acrobatic ease to the top of the leaderboard.

Volunteer Jo 3
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
Phil 1
Mr Ibbs 1
Suzanna 1
Charlotte 1

Tip of the week

As follow-up to the ‘ten steps to tyranny’ programme outlined in the previous edition of this publication, your ever-willing author hopes to bring periodical updates that will assist those aspiring dictators hoping to speed their ascent to despotism.

I’m starting the series with a suggestion that has a sure-fire guarantee of efficacy. It goes as follows: if any constituencies have had the impudence to elect, by fair and democratic means (heaven forbid!), an opposition MP, then you should be sure to tell them, on your next visit there, that they’ll get a smaller portion of the national cake as punishment. The principle is, “if people won’t vote for me because they like me, then they’ll vote for me because otherwise I’ll make sure they starve”. Don’t worry about seeming like a five year old (“you didn’t choose me so I’m not sharing my Wine Gums with you”), because the desired effect will come about hastily.

And by the way, as you tick off these ethically bereft actions, don’t worry about what your donor government friends over in Europe and America might think. Their love is unconditional, provided you’re not a communist or Muslim. In fact, if you’re lucky, they might even let you host the Queen of England and all the Commonwealth Heads of Government, even when they know that you’ve just bribed MPs a paltry 300 quid each to get the constitution changed so you can get re-elected for a third term after 21 years in power. How’s that for an endorsement of corruption?!

Friendometer

My neighbour’s watchman collared me on my way out of the house the other morning with an arresting proposition: would I like to buy any mercury powder, he asked. “Mercury what?” I countered. Powder, he said. He had about 15 grams.

Now even though metrification was easy in a country that never knew ounces, small quantities of powdery substances sold on street corners by strange men tend to draw one’s mind in a certain direction. I have no idea whether mercury powder is the sort of thing you snort through 50,000 shilling notes, or whether it has more reputable uses, but I promised to ask around for potential clients. He thanked me, and said if he did well with the powder he would move on to mercury liquid. Well, good luck to you, mate.

Competition Time – It’s back!

I’m relieved someone is still ‘on the Ball’ (pun fully intended, even though I hate people who attempt to craft cripplingly unfunny puns from the family name). And I’m even more relieved that it’s Suzanna, who’s been pestering me for a point since goodness knows when. But I am incorruptible, and my points can only be earned by legitimate means, as my faithful cousin Eleanor is also seems to be discovering, given her complaint in the comments section.

Well done Suzanna – my arithmetical messiness was due to a desire for prosaic tidiness, but was indeed a deliberate mistake, so the point is heartily awarded.

Charlotte wants a point for spotting a typo, but I made it clear long ago that we’re not about nitpicking here. However, she has found some feature of this website whereby I can have ‘followers’, like some sort of cult leader, so gets a point for such a show of loyalty. But don’t expect me to dole out more for those who follow suit – I’m rewarding the pioneering spirit.

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
Suzanna 1
Charlotte 1

How to be an African leader in ten easy steps

Today I'm proud to bring you step-by-step instructions on how to make yourself an effective national leader in this continent, particularly for those with an eye on despotism. Obviously I don't have personal experience in the field, but a few months of casual observation is all that is needed to make anyone an expert in the topic.

1. Firstly and most importantly, steal the equivalent of your country’s GDP from government funds and keep the lot in a personal bank account in Switzerland. There’s millions and millions of dollars stashed there – more money than one individual could ever spend in a lifetime of squandering – enough, even, to catapult the infrastructure of your country forward 20 years in one fell swoop – but that doesn’t matter. It’s important to have it there to make you feel like you’ve earned a personal fortune, even though you filched every penny.

2. Own as much of the press as you possibly can, and any other media channels you can get an influence in. Make sure that any media that you don’t own is intimidated and threatened unrelentingly so that no-one can say anything really bad about you, or worse, the truth.

3. Regularly reshuffle your cabinet. If any members have fallen out of public favour due to corruption allegations, make a big show of sacking them but then make them ‘senior presidential advisors’ to keep them on the gravy train so they don’t stab you in the back. It doesn’t matter if you have a hundred senior presidential advisors, as a president can’t have too much advice. Reward useless sycophants with big cabinet jobs to keep them useless and sycophantic, so you can retain your autocracy.

4. Use any means necessary to mobilise political support, including creating endless new districts so you can make lots of new jobs for your friends in the new administrations. It really doesn’t matter if some of the new districts are based around towns that are little more than a group of shacks, or even just a road junction – the more people you can get on the gravy train, the better, as long as they don’t actually have any real power.

5. Give political rivals enough leash to create the impression of a multiparty democracy, but no so much that they could actually have some power. Let the big guys do and say what they want, but make sure their followers disappear mysteriously.

6. Distract any potential pockets of internal resistance to your regime by allowing them to fight amongst themselves for interminable years. Never mind the misery that will ensue amongst ordinary people – it stops these dissenters giving you any real challenge. This is where tribal differences come in handy. You should exploit these as much as possible to create the most enduring internal conflict you can. Make sure there is a ready supply of weapons to the dissenters or the conflict will dry up too soon.

7. When campaigning for upcoming elections, import cheap sugar from Central America and give half a kilogram each to illiterate mothers in rural areas. Exploit the fact that they value half a kilogram of free sugar once every five years over ongoing and lasting improvements in the education of their children, the health of their family, or the road leading to their village. In fact, try not to improve education too much in case they suddenly realise that a government is supposed to do more than twice-a-decade sugar distribution.

8. When it comes to elections, rig them to make sure you win by threatening or bribing people in the electoral commission. If you can get your own people in the electoral commission, all the better. Make sure anywhere that has international observers, things run like clockwork, but everywhere else make sure the real votes are burnt. As soon as you are declared the winner, your rival will instantly proclaim the elections as rigged, and even though they were, it is important for you to denounce him as a traitor to democracy and an enemy of the country.

9. Remember that the world is full of leaders for life. Generally their countries are in a total mess, but don’t be put off by this. History will show that the leaders of Zimbabwe, Libya, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and all the others, are the kings of their day. As the years go on, gradually remove all obstacles to your continuing in office until the day you die, and then surround yourself with the world’s best unscrupulous doctors to make sure that that day is delayed for as long as possible.

10. Relax! You may have had to do some terrible things to get to where you are today, and you may be causing untold harm to your people, but you’re president for life, and what can provide a better indemnity than that? There’s still the thorny issue of what’ll happen at the pearly gates, but that’s all the more reason to get them to keep you alive until the last possible moment.

Friendometer

I seem to be receiving more than my fair share of complaints about this blog, which I would gladly react to if it weren’t for the inconsistency of them. For example, I have Mr Ibbs grumbling about “monosyllabic Nigelisms”. I don’t know what these are, but they seem to imply a criticism which is the exact opposite of Suzanna’s, who is always carping about my perceived verbosity, as if I write with a thesaurus open by my side. What nonsense! Rubbish! Baloney! Poppycock! Twaddle! Claptrap! Drivel!

And then you get Ben complaining about my blog being “full of frustratingly ambiguous teasers” while my own mother wastes no time in voicing her opinion that my last offering contained “too much detail”. What is an amateur (and mildly self-aggrandising) travel journalist to do? You people just can’t be pleased!

However, I must admit I'm thoroughly enjoying slipping references to a girlfriend at plausible junctures in my blog, as for all you lot know she could be a figment of my imagination, or even a ruse to provoke responses from heretofore silent acquaintances. It certainly gets them crawling out of the woodwork, as many an unsolicited email has testified. It still doesn’t seem to have stimulated any activity in the comments section, though.

Office Hours

Just stop for a moment and imagine living with your boss for a month. If you are flirting with your boss in an effort to gain promotion by illegitimate means then you may be thinking the set-up would suit your purposes rather well. I, however, am not attempting to follow such a cynical and depraved course of action to reach the top, mainly because my boss is neither attractive nor female, but also because the top is occupied by him already and there’s no room for me. Living with him therefore means that I get my head pecked not only from 9 to 5, but also from 5 to 10, lengthening my office hours by a factor of 50% (and giving me a very sore head).

A Gentle Brush Against Fame's Elbow

On Thursday, I had the honour and privilege of meeting the great Tracey Emin: esteemed artist, general London socialite, and patron of one particular school library in Uganda. I was rather excited about the prospect as I’d cited her work many a time during my A-level art studies. I wondered what it would be like to meet such an icon of art history – Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, Van Gogh’s Waterlilies, Emin’s Unmade Bed. She’d always been top of my list of historical figures to have dinner with.

Sadly, this being a web publication open for the whole world to see, I feel that it’s prudent to exercise a degree of self-preservational censorship. This sadly prevents me going on with the story, and I’m sure you can work out why.

The sorry truth is that all my juciest stories from Uganda are the ones that you never get to read about because the associated risk is simply too great. Once time has dampened the sensitivity I promise to publish ‘Nigel in Uganda Uncut – The Bits They Didn’t Want You To Read’.

Office Hours

There is a particular brand of coffee available in Uganda – Tanzanian, as it happens – that is so tasty I’m convinced it’s not really instant, even though no filters, cafetieres, funny Italian pots or Expensive Electronic Equipment are needed to make it. It’s quite hard to track down, so when I found a tin of it in a supermarket the other day I became unduly excited. Having achieved an almost total abstention from caffeinated beverages for the past two years, this stuff has regressed me to a stage where I frequently indulge in two mugs of the stuff at breakfast every morning. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of this extravagance the other morning when I was due to make a long, long journey on public transport to our most remote and rural school.

Nature came knocking only minutes into the journey. I held on tenaciously but as the caffeine got down to its diuretic work, the discomfort only intensified. It was when the minibus turned off the highway onto the unsurfaced country road that things became unbearable. Every bump was a test of my resolve. In the end, much to the vexation of my fellow passengers, I had to ask the driver to stop. I’d have done so sooner if it wasn’t for the fact that I was seated right at the back of the bus, so getting out involved moving several mothers, children, chickens, suitcases, sacks of flour, etc. out of the way. (I’d already considered climbing out the window but it proved unfeasible).

I ran to a nearby bush but when it came to the moment of release, the stress induced by the barely concealed disapproval of my co-passengers reduced what should have been a whitewater deluge to a lame dribble. I managed to squeeze enough out to reduce the intolerable agony to a dull ache, but within ten minutes the intolerable agony was back. Just where was all this liquid coming from?!

It felt like I’d never reach my destination but when I eventually did, I enjoyed the catharsis of a lifetime.

Close Encounters of he African Kind

Anyone who has stayed at my humble abode here in Uganda knows only too well the vexing state of the ‘shower’. This is a great misnomer: the word suggests a capacity for merciless saturation, whereas this particular ablutional device provides more of an apologetic dampening. It would be better described as a ‘trickle’. Upon my parents’ visit only a month ago, me and ‘DIY Dad’ discussed how to remedy this sorry situation, which tended to double the length of my morning hose down and rob me of time in bed.

For some reason, late last Sunday afternoon I decided to get to work on the pipes. What led me to such a radical course of action? Perhaps it had been my Dad’s mistaken assumption that I knew about plumbing. Perhaps it was my good friend Miss Billy Crombie, at whose Manchester home I spent many an hour busily wielding hammers and saws while she delivered endless cuppas, and who massaged the handyman segment of my ego to such proportions that I felt like a DIY superhero. Or was it the company of my girlfriend, to whom I was attempting to demonstrate some sort of manly ability to get my hands dirty and fix stuff? Or maybe it was the imminent presence of my boss from the UK, who would also be staying in the house, and who I wanted to dazzle with how much things had improved since his last visit.

Whatever it was that sent me into such a frenzy of activity, things slowly went very, very wrong. My first mistake came quickly – I sealed off the tank outlet with an upside-down mug and then disconnected the pipe, but the mug proved an utterly inadequate seal and for the duration of the ensuing saga I was constantly aware of the disconcerting fact that at any moment, about 500 litres of water could come hurtling inexorably down onto my head. I realised I needed to work quickly, so proceeded by enacting my Dad’s great idea to connect the taps to the mains instead of the tank. Despite snapping all the exisiting pipes in the process, I was successful, but the result was that the toilet cisterns flooded and an unstemmable tide came from the overflow pipe that went up through the roof. So I had to turn off the mains tap altogether. By that time it was dark and late and I was left significantly worse off: no water whatsoever coming from the shower and a considerably grumpier girlfriend.

I wasn’t at this stage about to pay a professional to put the mess right – I’d spent too much time and money buggering it up to do that – and besides, my status as ‘Mr DIY’ was at stake. So the next day, I browsed through the various pipes and connectors in a local hardware shop, chose a few that looked feasible, and reconnected the pipes, sealing them off with bits of plastic bag. I turned the mains tap back on and needless to say they all leaked. So I turned the mains tap back off. By this time there was no water left in the tank, either, as it had all leaked past the mug. I had managed to impose a full-blown drought upon the household.

As if to add insult to injury, when I finally succeeded at getting the whole thing back to how it was when I started, the mains had been shut off altogether by the water company, so we *still* had no water. By this time my boss had arrived. I hope he doesn’t read this as then he’ll realise that his enforced inability to wash on arrival, and for two days hence, was entirely my fault.

Me, Ad and Lindsay (hereinafter Muriel) went East together this week to climb a volcano and look at a pretty waterfall, and I got the opportunity to take lots of photos of the sort that make other people jealous, a much abridged gallery of which you may peruse herein.

Working Hours

You could be forgiven for thinking that I seem to be doing more holidaying than working at the moment. However, this holiday’s crowning feature was a magnificently glittering climb to 4321metres, which was so strenuous that it qualifies for inclusion in the present section.

Also adventuring on the great Mount Elgon were some gap-year teenagers. As with so many of their ilk, they were paying some cynical organisation for a year’s worth of warm fuzzy glow helping poor black children (while stealing jobs from poor black adults who could really do with the money). Feeling older and wiser, we were determined not to be upstaged in our ascent by these “what-did-you-get-in-your-A-levels-I-got-four-As-but-a-B-in-General-Studies” young whippersnappers. Me and Ad had our masculine pride at stake, and even Lindsay was to be heard at one point expressing concern at being beaten up a mountain by someone born in the 1990s. In reality, though, there was no major risk to our collective ego as we did in one day what had taken them two, and on our way to the summit the next day we caught them up even though they’d left an hour earlier (OK – it was on the way back down – but we’d still caught them up).

Despite this, as we were in the process of overtaking them, we passed the path to the second highest peak, and me and Ad, as if to cement our victory, started egging each other on to climb that one too. We did this under the pretence of the Adam-and-Nigel tradition of death-by-exercise, as neither of us would have dared admit that we just wanted to reassure ourselves that we really were superior to the nappy parade. However, they must have seen the game we were playing, as when we started up the path to the second summit, they were hot on our heels. Even so, once we’d all done that one, me, Ad and Lindsay still had to descend to the lower camp that same day while they got to nurse their aching quadriceps at the high camp. So there was no real doubt that we were the winners, although the fact we’re becoming paranoid about being beaten by youngsters when we ourselves are merely in our mid twenties is a great testament to the painful awareness we all have of life’s transience in this modern era.

Friendometer

Next stop was Sipi falls, an altogether more relaxing destination whose big draw was a stream which toppled down the mountain in a sequence of three boundless cascades. They got better as you went up, and my guide for the top one was a soldier on leave whose family happened to own the bit of land over which the cataract tumbled (not that the land was much use, being vertical). After he’d shown me their backyard’s ornamental water feature, which would have made any suburban housewife delirious with envy, he offered to take me to taste some of the ‘local brew’ (and he wasn’t talking about brewing tea, nor any other herbal infusion).

When we stepped into the pub (mud hut) I was taken aback – three old ladies with toothless grins were huddled around a rusty old teapot full of steaming brown gunk, from which they were taking it in turns to take deep draughts through the spout. In fact it was just like I’d walked into the village production of Macbeth. The three witches wanted me to take a photo of them, and asked me to give them five hundred shillings for it, which seemed like an economic transaction in reverse to me. And besides, shouldn’t they have been telling me I’d be king one day and then disappearing into the mist? I think their script was missing a page.

The maize-and-sorghum based cocktail tasted uncannily similar to the smell of the beer you find in half-finished cans after teenage house parties. It felt strangely illicit to be sucking it through the spout of an enamel teapot. I drunk enough to convince myself that Uganda’s bottled offerings were superior, and left my soldier counterpart to get tipsy on the rest. At this point, he offered to take me back to his home and show me photos of his circumcision ceremony – a local rite-of-passage conveyed upon Sabine teenage men (at twenty, he’d obviously been putting it off – can’t think why). If I claimed herein to have jumped at the opportunity, I would be bound to cause raised eyebrows amongst my loyal readership, but I can’t deny a certain morbid curiosity. My guide even proposed I take one of the snaps away as a souvenir, but I couldn’t really picture it on my mantelpiece, so I made an excuse about not wanting to deprive him of his memories. How else would he remember the small part of his being that has since probably been tossed perfunctorily into a pit latrine? After all, I doubt he keeps that in the photo album.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

Our mountain guide’s imaginative attire provided a fantastic showcase of mix-and-match accessorising that would go down a storm on the catwalks of Milan:

Chillin' Lakeside

I am now hosting a visit from my old cycling buddy Adam and his girlfriend Lindsay. Adam was the inspiration for my crazy trip across the Andes (which by the way was far less crazy than the things he used to get up to, before he met Lindsay). Lindsay suggested Adam use his artistic skills to paint a Muriel at one of our schools – I think she meant mural, but has now earned herself an endearing (and enduring) sobriquet.

Close Encounters of the African Kind

I caused much embarrassment to Adam and Muriel on their first night in Kampala when I vociferously challenged a minibus driver who attempted to short change my girlfriend by 200 shillings, when he’d already overcharged us by double. It wasn’t much money, but he soon discovered that he wasn’t getting away with stealing it.

There’s a lot of that about in Kampala – underhand theft. Basically, if you’re caught stealing then members of the general public will beat you up and run away with all your clothes. So if you’re the sticky fingered type, or, as is the case with some Kampalans, utterly kleptomanic, the trick is not to get caught. Which is why people do stuff like falsify receipts or bodge jobs or overcharge or, if they’re in government, demand bribes. Instead of stealing, it then becomes ‘cheating’ so is OK. It’s just the way things are done. I cheat you, you cheat him, he cheats me, and the world goes round. Many people don’t really see how honesty would bring about an improvement. Just don’t say the word ‘theft’ or someone’ll lose their pants.

Friendometer

Sunday saw a chilled-out trip to the beach. We left our cossies at home after a tip-off that were we to take a dip, we’d be swimming through a sea of floating turds, and the water would be warm not from the sun but from untreated effluent. Too much time in the company of Kampala’s stinking drains made this description seem utterly plausible. However, when we got there, Lake Vic proved utterly irresistible, just like the eponymous fat little queen must have been to hubbie Al. Adam and I decided we’d just have to plunge in in our boxers and hope nothing fell out.

Once we got in the therapeutically balmy waters, a kid called Maurice challenged us to a game of the thrilling see-how-much-sand-you-can-get-in-your-hands-from-the-bottom-of-the-lake. He went first, and I was disconcerted by the murky green hue of the sample of lakebed that he held in his fists. Maybe swimming hadn’t been such a great idea. Still, I was in now, and seemed churlish not to play the game, especially considering how absurdly easy it would for me to win and make him cry. So down I dived.

I resurfaced seconds later with a pitiful quantity of sand that wasn’t even half of Maurice’s entry, still lying there sloppily in his palms. I had also come back up minus my glasses.

As ideas go, diving whilst wearing spectacles is up there amongst my less inspired moments. After several endless minutes clumsily shuffling around the lake bed with our hands and feet, we started to wonder whether we wouldn’t do better to fly to Cairo and wait for the Nile to bring them to us. But no points for guessing who saved the day: Maurice, you’re a hero!

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.