The Cunnilingus King
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 1: The Cunnilingus King
‘I could really eat a big bag of cheese curds,’ Warren grins,
wiping sweat from his burnt forehead. ‘You know what I mean?
A big bag of fucking cheese curds.’
Si scratches the back of his head. ‘Yeah, sounds delicious.’
‘I love them!’ he laughs, rubbing his bloated stomach. ‘I
can’t stop eating them.’
Warren reaches over and snatches my cigarettes out of
my hand.
‘Can I crash one?’ he asks, placing a Marlboro between
his lips. ‘I’ve lost mine. I’ll buy some more and give you…’
he stops in mid sentence, ‘…actually, come to think of it,
I probably won’t.’
I turn to Si and shake my head in disgust. I’ve met a few
freaks in my time, but this dude takes the biscuit. One
minute we’re watching The White Cliffs of Dover shimmering
in the distance from the windy deck of this P&O
ferry, and the next thing we know some total stranger, who
introduces himself as Warren, plonks himself down beside
us and spoils our beautiful view. I saw him earlier as we
drove to the docks to catch the ferry to Calais. He was
walking, or should I say waddling up the main road
towards a busy roundabout. There was panic in his eyes
and a look of concern in his fat red face. I remember smiling
at his discomfort and thinking that any guy who has a
tight 80’s perm and wears a pair of paisley shorts ten sizes
11
too small, should deserve to look worried.
‘So where are you fuckers heading?’ Warren sniffs, pulling
hard on the cigarette.
‘Vladivostok,’ I reply.
‘Vladifok-what?’
‘Vladivostok.’
‘Where the fuck’s that?’
‘It’s in Eastern Siberia. It’s about ten thousand miles …
that way,’ I smile, pointing in the direction of Calais.
‘Fucking cool, man. Where you flying from?’
‘We’re not.’
‘You’re not?’
Si shakes his head. ‘Nope. We’re going to drive there in
our Ford Sierra.’
Simon, my twin brother and travelling buddy extraordinaire,
dreamt up the idea of driving across Russia whilst
stacking boxes of frozen oven chips in a -30°C freezer.
We’d bought the car for £300 from some dude with a
twitch, and even though it had over 100,000 miles on the
clock, attempting to drive the 1.8litre mean-machine
halfway around the world seemed all too irresistible. Our
family and friends thought we had finally lost the plot
when we told them about our idea of driving to Vladivostok.
They thought we were taking this new lifestyle of ours a
little too far. OK, so maybe we were going a bit over the top.
I mean, just because we had driven across the US six
months before, it didn’t really give us the right to worry
everyone or give us the confidence to play fools and take
on the world with this massive overland adventure. We
hadn’t even met anybody who had been to Russia before,
let alone driven across it. Were we kidding ourselves? You
could say it would be suicidal to even attempt such a journey,
especially as we hadn’t spent weeks researching the
roads, or invested money on the correct equipment that
would be required for such a huge expedition. Of course,
12
we made sure we had oil, a few spare tyres, a GB sticker
and an SAS Survival Guide, which Si bought from Oxfam
for 50p, but apart from this, we took the attitude that we’d
just see what happened along the way.
A few weeks before our departure, I jumped on the internet
to find out what we were letting ourselves in for. I
searched on Google to see if I could find any web sites by
people who had driven to the Far East. It was quite worrying
as I only found two. They were driving huge 4×4’s
and both had been heavily sponsored. On their web sites
it showed pictures of them driving over dusty potholed
roads and crossing deep rivers. It looked impossible, and
neither of them had managed to complete the journey to
Vladivostok without putting their vehicle on the train.
What really put doubt in my mind, was the fact that there
appeared to be a section of highway in Eastern Siberia that
was still under construction. What chance did we have if
the highway was still being bulldozed? How would we be
able to make it across Siberia without a 4×4? I mentioned
this to Si in passing, but he just shrugged his shoulders
and told me not to worry. Deep down, I knew that if we
were going to do it we might as well take the bull by the
horns and go in blind.
‘You’re going to drive across Siberia?’ Warren frowns.
‘You’re kidding me, right?’
‘No,’ Si replies.
‘Why dude? Get the fucking plane. It’s quicker!’
‘Yeah, that would make a lot of sense, but it’s not quite
the plan we had in mind.’
‘Well, fuck me hard with a dildo. Whatever floats your
boat, guys. It sounds far too adventurous to me.’ Warren
leans forward. ‘…So, anyway, have either of you two had
any pussy yet?’
I frown. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Pussy. You know, as in sweet pussy,’ Warren sings,
13
adjusting his tight shorts from around his crotch. ‘Are you
getting any? Last night I made out with this chick from
Dover. Fuck me she was hot. She had a face like Whoopi
Goldberg and a body like Tina Turner. Damn, what a
woman!’
Si looks completely horrified.
‘Where did you meet this girl?’ I ask.
‘Some nightclub in town.’
‘Which one?’
‘OK, you got me, guys. It wasn’t a nightclub at all. She
worked in a massage parlor. You know how it is, I’m a
fucking thirty-three year old Love God who needed some
release. Normally, I’ve got girls coming at me from every
direction. Back home they call me the Cunnilingus King!’
This guy has to be talking out of his fat ass. In the name
of the Lord, what sane girl would let this grotesque specimen
of a human being put his disease-ridden tongue anywhere
near her clitoris? He must be over twenty stone,
and if you squint your eyes for long enough he looks a bit
like Jabba The Hut from Star Wars. This guy is ugly. He’s
so ugly I find it amazing he has so much confidence. If I
looked like Warren, I’d be hiding in a dark hole somewhere
suffering from a serious communication disability.
‘I’m the cunnilingus King!’ he yells, pounding his
chest. ‘All the girls in Dover last night were obviously on
their fucking periods. You know, I hate it when you spend
an hour of your time chatting up a chick, telling her about
yourself, complementing on how the kitty-cat looks, making
her laugh, buying her drinks and all you get in return
is jack shit. They walk away without even giving you a
suck. That sucks. I like Dover, but it’s full of frigid chicks
and asylum seekers. The way I see it, it’s all a numbers
game. The more puppy dogs you chat up the more chance
you have of getting some action. Last night was bullshit,
so I paid for it. The bitch gets money to buy drugs and Iget-
to-taste-the-pussy,’ he sings, leaping back in his seat.
14
‘Mother fuckers!’
A small group of French school kids sitting close by stop
talking and look over.
‘Hey, guys, listen to this,’ Warren whispers, waving us
closer. ‘Have you two ever heard of klismaphilia?’
We both shake our heads and prepare ourselves for the
answer.
‘You don’t know what klismaphilia is?’ he repeats, looking
concerned.
‘No, but you’re going to tell us, right?’ Si replies.
‘You bet ya!’
We move closer and wait with bated breath.
‘OK, klismaphilia is the word for the sexual pleasure of
flushing your asshole with water.’
There’s a deadly silence. Warren sits on the edge of his seat
in suspense, waiting for our reaction. But there isn’t one.
‘Flushing your asshole with water!’ he cries, breaking
the silence. ‘Come on, it’s pretty cool, man. I bet you didn’t
know that?’
‘Uh … no, we didn’t,’ Si grins.
‘Fucking hell, guys, everybody knows what klismaphilia
is. Look, here’s some advice. The next hotel you stay in
and there’s brown scuff on the shower head…move
rooms.’
Warren has to be the most disgusting person I have ever
met, well, apart from a kid in my class at school who
used to eat shit and shag his cat, but apart from him this
monster is pure filth. What is he trying to prove? Maybe
nothing, maybe this is what he’s normally like. He doesn’t
know us from Larry and he’s talking to us like we’ve been
best buddies for twenty years. OK, so the showerhead
thing was good advice, but come on! This guy needs to
return home and seek some professional help.
‘To klismaphilia,’ Warren cries.
The French kids sitting nearby look over again, and
without a word they all get up out of their seats and move
15
speedily back inside the ferry.
‘So where in the US are you from?’ Si asks in an attempt
to change the subject.
‘The US?’ Warren spits.
‘Yeah, which state?’
‘You’re a rude dude, man.’
‘Why, what’s the problem?’ Si replies.
I turn to Si and try to indicate to him that it’s time to
leave.
‘I’m fucking Canadian, man, Canadian! I live in
Canada. Vancouver as a matter of fact.’
He reaches down between his hairy legs and picks up
his rucksack. ‘Look, I didn’t stitch this Canadian flag onto
my rucksack for the hell of it. I’m Canadian not American.
My God, why can’t people just shut the fuck up! Have you
ever been to Canada?’
Si shakes his head. ‘No, but I’d really like to go there
someday.’
‘I nearly killed an American guy in Hastings about a
week ago,’ Warren brags, his eyes darting suspiciously
around the deck. ‘He was pissing on my patch. I hate it
when a guy pisses on my patch. Have you two ever pissed
on someone else’s patch?’
He looks at us coldly, waiting for an answer.
‘No, I can’t say that I have to be honest with you,
Warren,’ I reply.
‘Good, because if I ever caught you making out with my
girl, I’d…’ he stops talking and uses the bottom of his Tshirt
to wipe sweat off his face.‘…Let’s just say he was in
a bad way by the time the medics arrived, red wine was
pissing out of the back of his head. He was hurt real bad.’
I quickly interrupt. ‘Warren, I hate to jump in like this,
it sounds like an amazing story, but we’ve got to go and
change some money before we get to Calais.’
Warren leans back in his seat and folds his arms. I avoid
eye contact with him for a second. His face is so ugly. He
16
looks concerned. It’s as though he’s trying to work out in
his head the slowest and most painful way he can kill me.
He wipes more sweat from his top lip before tilting his
face in the sun. We both stand up and say goodbye before
sprinting to the other side of the ferry. Calais is only a few
miles away now. The sooner I’m in the Sierra and driving
off this rust bucket the happier I will be.
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Daventry
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 2: Daventry
Before I can say “naturellement, quand la slitude me pese
un peu, je me parle a moi-meme, ou a mes betes, en particulier
a mon chien”, Chris strikes up the Sierra’s sixteen
year-old engine and drives the car off the ferry onto French
soil. It seems strange that not more than three hours ago
we were stuck in a traffic jam on the M25, and now we’re
in a different country surrounded by weird road signs,
weird number plates and weird people who speak a foreign
language and eat frogs legs for their tea.
‘Well, here goes,’ Chris grins, pulling away from customs
control.
‘Yeah, n’ailez-pas! Ma-un-ami-a-une-chambre-avecdouche.’
‘You what?’
‘It means, “don’t go! My friend has a room with a shower”.’
‘I thought you did German at school?’
‘I did, but when in Rome, Chris, when in Rome. You
never know when a little bit of French might come in
handy, if you know what I mean?’
‘Uh … yeah, I know exactly what you mean,’ Chris nods.
‘So where are we heading first?’ I ask, opening the road
map out on my knee. ‘I can’t remember what we said. I
think we decided to go north into Belgium, didn’t we?’
‘Yeah, from Calais to Belgium, Germany to Eastern
Europe, through the Baltic States into Russia, and then
18
head east over the Ural Mountains, across the entire length
of Siberia until we hit Vladivostok and the Sea of Japan,’
Chris replies, turning to me with a smug grin.
‘Bliemy, is that it? You make it sound like we’re about to
go on a Sunday drive with Grandma.’
I peer down at the map and slide my finger across the
globe from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. The distance is
immense. For a start, Siberia alone is BIG. It’s so big you
can scoop up the whole of the US and drop it into Siberia
without even touching the sides. Add to this Alaska and
all of the European countries, except Eastern Russia, and
still there would be an incredible 300,000 square miles of
territory left.
‘If either of us want to chicken out, we should say so
immediately,’ Chris mutters, indicating onto the A16 to
‘I’m not chickening out. Are you chickening out?’
‘Piss off! I didn’t pay sixty pounds for a Russian business
visa for the fun of it, you know.’
‘What about the Russian Mafia and the KGB? Knowing
our luck we’ll be kidnapped by Chechen terrorists and
held hostage in a dirty shed for fifty years.’
‘Nah, we’ll be all right, Si.’
‘How the fuck do you know?’
‘Well … I don’t, but it’ll be OK. Trust me.’
‘I suppose things do seem to have improved since Putin
came on the scene.’
Chris frowns. ‘Putin?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But that was years ago, wasn’t it?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. He only came into power in 2000,
since he left the KGB and worked his way into politics. I
saw him recently standing outside Number Ten with Tony.’
‘Oh … you mean Vladimir Putin!’ Chris smiles. ‘The
19
Russian President.’
‘Yes. Who did you think I was talking about?’
‘I thought you meant the dude with the big beard from
the eighteenth century.’
‘What dude with the big beard from the eighteenth century?’
‘You know … the old Putin.’
‘Chris, I don’t know who you’re talking about.’
‘He saw a vision of the Virgin while working in the
fields and started a cult.’
I narrow my eyes with irritation. ‘You’re talking shit!’
‘No I’m not, you know who I mean. He charmed
Catherine the Great with his beliefs that sinning through
sex, then repenting could bring people closer to God. His
orgies were legendary. Come on, Si, don’t be a dipshit, you
must have heard of him.’
‘Wait a minute!’
‘What?’
‘His name wasn’t Putin.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘No. It was Rasputin, you fool!’
Chris clicks his fingers. ‘That’s the one, Grigory Rasputin
… the priest of sex. What a genius that man was.’
Six months ago, Chris and I travelled across the US in a
brown van called Hank. Returning home after such an
amazing journey had been an anti-climax. For the first few
days we were treated like respected explorers – our presence
to our family and friends had been a novelty, but
sadly this quickly disappeared and before we knew it reality
kicked in.
I hadn’t lived at home for nearly eight years, not since I
first flew the nest to go to college in London, and the idea
of moving back to our mother’s house in the small market
town of Daventry was daunting to say the least. I was a 27
year-old man and dumping my rucksack on the floor of
20
my old bedroom, which hadn’t changed much since the
day I’d left, could only feel like regression. What struck
me the most about being back home was how people
appeared to have little concept of what we had seen, or
the effect our journey might have had on our lives. As far
as they were concerned we’d been on a little holiday, got
the travelling out of our system and we would now settle
down again – slip back into working life and a career.
Continue on as we had before.
Within a matter of weeks, we decided the only way to
combat the travellers blues was to quickly find some
short-term work – pay off our debts, store up some cash
and buy ourselves some options. We didn’t know where
our next journey would take us, and smoking the last of
our duty free cigarettes out of the kitchen door we’d spend
most evenings trying to devise a cunning plan.
Daventry held a lot of memories from my childhood. I
had gone to the local school until the age of sixteen – it
was where I had kissed a girl for the first time, experienced
my first fight. There were old class mates still living
in Daventry that I hadn’t spoken to since those days,
and the idea of bumping into them in town made me feel
unreasonably uncomfortable. I feared their questions. What
have you been up to over the past ten years? What are you
doing now? All I could think about was the negatives. How
could I answer their questions without looking like a freak?
‘Are you married?
‘Uh … no, I’m single right now.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘I’m living with my mum at the moment.’
‘With your mum? I heard you’d moved to London.’
‘Yeah, I did for a while, but I decided to leave.’
‘Why would you come back to Daventry? Someone told
me you had a really good job.’
Mentioning my fears to Chris, he had tried to put my mind
at rest.
21
‘Don’t worry about it, Si, school was years ago. Nobody
gives a shit about what you’re doing now. So you’re living
with your mummy, who cares!’
‘But what if I bump into Kerry Middleton?’
‘Kerry Middleton? She was your girlfriend when you
were fourteen, wasn’t she?’
‘Yeah.’
Chris sighs. ‘That was fucking years ago. She’s probably
married with three kids by now. She doesn’t give a fuck
about you.’
‘Three kids! Do you reckon?’
‘Si, this is Daventry. People settle down a lot younger
around here.’
‘OK, what about a job, then? We’re going to have to work
in a warehouse with scumbags. What if we end up working
with the Depford brothers? I don’t think I could do it.’
‘Si, you’re living in the past, mate. All those lads are either
in prison or they’ve moved away. Besides, you’re forgetting
something.’
‘What?’
‘They were young kids back then. They only seemed
scary because you were a kid yourself. You’re a twentyseven
year old man now. It’s different.’
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Of course it is! All those lads got girls pregnant when
they were eighteen. They don’t want to fight anymore,
they’ve got responsibilities.’
‘But what will the people be like in the factories? What
if they take the piss out of my hair?’
‘Si, believe me, it’ll be OK.’
Determined not to return to the mundane world of the
office, I agreed to stay true to our plan and we quickly
found temporary work in a gigantic freezer on an industrial
estate close to our mother’s house. From the Nevada desert
and the Caribbean beaches of Mexico, to an ice cold dis-
22
tribution warehouse in the East Midlands. It certainly
took a while for us both to get used to the change in temperature,
but nothing was going to stop us from saving up
some cash and doing another drive.
Our first night in the freezer had been an education.
Emerging from the changing rooms wearing steel toe-capped
boots, insulated dungarees and a large thick ski jacket that
made you look twice your normal size, we were ordered
to sit in the canteen and await instructions. To say I was
nervous would be an understatement. I had never worked
in a manual job before. Hunched over tables at 7 o’clock in
the evening, the room fell silent as a large man in a high
visibility vest entered the canteen and made his presence
known.
‘Right now, guys!’ he bellowed. ‘Great shift last night,
we picked seventy four thousand in total with no accidents
to report. The forecast for tonight is ninety thousand.
We’ve got a few new lads starting on the agency, so
we shouldn’t have a problem. OK, let’s get working. Big
push, lads, big push!’
On that note, everyone stood up and headed for the
freezer. A man with thick stubble nudged past me.
‘Good luck,’ he growled in my ear.
We had been warned by our employment agency that the
work in the freezer was tough, but nothing was to prepare
us for that first night. The place was like an enormous
prison. The supervisors were our prison guards, walking
around the factory spying on the workers and looking
down from metal walkways. You couldn’t stop for two
seconds without one of them shouting at you. To the
sound of loud thrash metal blasting from speakers around
the warehouse, we lifted heavy boxes through the night.
The only way to stay warm was to work, and the only way
to stay sane was to think that with every hour that passed
we were one step closer to being free again.
23
I wouldn’t say working in the freezer had been any better,
or worse, than my experience working in an office. In
fact, after a few weeks I actually started to enjoy my new
life as a factory worker. There was a real sense of achievement
stacking boxes and loading lorries. We were distributing
frozen food to the nation. We had a purpose, and finding
many of my fellow workers to be very decent, intelligent
men, there reached a point where I would actually look
forward to a good nights graft. My fears of working in a
factory had suddenly disappeared. For the years I worked
in mundane office jobs, I had heard people consoling
themselves with lines like, “At least we’re not digging the
roads”. This statement no longer made any sense to me,
and I quickly began to realise that the only negative aspect
of work in any environment is that if you solely rely on a
wage to support your existence…you’re a slave to it.
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Thirty Below
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 3: Thirty Below
Without realizing it we cross the invisible border into
Belgium. It begins to get dark as Si directs me through
Brussels, and determined to make some distance we thunder
across the countryside with petrol pumping around
the engine as fast as the adrenaline is pumping through
our veins. Passing through Düsseldorf, I drive on the
German autobahns late into the night. I feel wide-awake,
which isn’t surprising really as I’m still in nightshift mode.
When you work the nightshift you live like a vampire. It
was new to us and in a weird, fucked up kind of way I
soon began to enjoy my life living in the dark. Waking up
as the sun was going down and returning home at the
crack of dawn was totally crazy. There was a whole world
at night that became our community, and I’d often find
myself filling up a supermarket trolley at 3 o’clock in the
morning.
Nobody worked in the freezer by choice, we had all
ended up there through circumstance; a divorce, just got
out of prison, left the army, business collapsed. Our reasons
seemed less sane, we got bored of our cushy lives in
London, we wanted to be flexible for a while and travel.
In a strange way we had chosen to work in the freezer, but
maybe it didn’t seem all that bad to us as we knew it
would only be for a short time. The fact that we were also
25
with a temporary employment agency made our circumstances
seem even more bizarre, particularly as we were
literally the only English guys temping in the freezer.
Well, that is except for Lefty, a young lad who seemed different
to most people and who had become a great friend.
Our fellow agency staff were from every country imaginable,
predominantly Kurdish guys from northern Iraq, but
also from other places around the world like Mozambique,
Nigeria, Ghana, The Congo, Serbia, Romania, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Germany, Turkey, Portugal, France, Albania, and
Syria – to name but a few. This made working in the freezer
even more fascinating, and we’d spend much of the
night jumping between chutes and chatting to people from
all over the world. It felt like travelling, and it turned out
to be as much an education as it was hard graft. One guy I
got to know was called Abdul, a forty-year old man who
was born in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime. He
told me about the public floggings he’d received for not
having a beard that was two fists in length. As a university
student in Kabul, he had grown tired and fearful of the
repression, and in a bid to start a new life he had fled across
the border to Pakistan. He learnt Urdu and lived in Pakistan
for a number of years, smuggling immigrants by camel
across the border into Iran. He eventually moved to Iran
himself and lived there during the entire bloody revolution
and the Iraq-Iran war. After spending some time in
Kazakhstan, where he learnt to speak Russian, he travelled
across Europe and eventually made it to Great Britain as an
asylum seeker. He had spent the past three years trying to
scrape together a living as a tailor. The majority of the
money Abdul earned in the freezer he sent back to his
family in Tehran. He hadn’t seen his family for over four
years and had yet to meet his youngest son. We heard
many stories like these during our time in the freezer. Like
the guy from Mozambique whose best friend had been
eaten by a Nile crocodile and the dude from the north-
26
western frontier of Pakistan, who shot a dog with an AK47
and kept a rocket launcher in his bedroom. If this wasn’t
enough, the Iraq war kicked off in the last month we were
working there. It was fascinating to be surrounded by the
people whose country was being invaded, and to see their
mixed reactions when the US army captured Saddam
Hussein. From the impression we got, life was quite easy
in Iraq when Saddam was in power, which seems strange
when this monster murdered thousands of their people.
Because of the oil in Iraq, food and cigarettes were free
and it was only necessary for one member of a family of
ten to go out to work and bring in cash to buy luxury
goods such as satelite TV, or imported food or clothes.
Most of the Kurds were from Mosel or Kirkuk and some
were from Turkey. A few of them told me how they hid
under lorries, and one guy claimed he had been involved
with the Mafia and used to hijack cars in Baghdad. I could
quite easily believe this, as he used to relieve his tension
by head butting the metal cages at frequent intervals during
the night.
In the beginning, working a twelve-hour nightshift was
tough. You’d clock-in at the start of the shift feeling fit and
healthy, but by the time you clocked-out you’d practically
be in a wheel chair and sucking through a straw. I remember
watching Si battling to stay warm from across the
freezer. I could see a desperate man wrestling with his
mind and fighting hard to keep up with the masses of
boxes sliding down the chute. I felt angry with myself for
pushing him into this hellhole. I wanted to tell him to
leave and go back to London – to run as fast as he could
out of this icebox and jump onto the next train bound for
Euston. This wasn’t the right job for him. It wasn’t the
right job for me, but I didn’t have a choice – Si did! I felt
responsible in some way for putting him through this torture.
Before we left London to go on our first trip to the
US, Si had a good career in the internet. He still had the
27
option to go back to London for a while and earn money
in a much easier way, but I knew he didn’t want that. He
was sticking to his guns. For the first time in his life he
could see a light at the end of the tunnel, and over the following
weeks as we became settled into the job, I began to
notice that he actually seemed to be quite enjoying his
labour.
It was around 2:30am whilst stacking boxes of frozen oven
chips, when Si ran up to me with a big smile across his
face and a plan that was to change everything.
‘Put down that box and listen to this!’ he yelled over the
noise of a nearby hydraulic machine.
‘Why, what’s up?’ I yelled back.
‘I’ve got it!’
‘Got what?’
‘An idea!’
‘Si, I’m working here. I’ve got to clear this chute before
Bateman comes back.’
‘Fuck, Bateman – Vladivostok!’
‘You what?’
‘How about we drive the Sierra to Vladivostok?’ he
beamed with excitement.
Throwing a box of oven chips into a cage, I patted my
gloves together and tried to comprehend what Si was saying.
‘You’re joking, right?’
Si dropped his smile. ‘No. I’m being deadly serious, you
little shit … think about it, what a journey! All the way
from Daventry to Siberia … overland.’
‘It’s not possible, is it?’
‘I don’t know, but I was thinking about an article I read
in National Geographic. It was about the Trans-Siberian
Railway that runs the entire length of Russia. Fuck getting
the train … let’s drive!’
Suddenly, a voice cried out from across the freezer.
‘Raven’s!’
28
We turned to see Bateman, the evil nightshift manager,
storming towards us.
‘Raven’s, what you doing?’
Sticking out his chest, Bateman slid up beside us. He
was a large man with dark heavy bags under his eyes, and
had the manner of an army sergeant in some fucked up
boot camp.
‘What part of work don’t you understand?’ he growled.
‘What part?’
I leaned against the chute, and smiled. ‘We’re just warming
ourselves up.’
‘Warming up your fucking mouths more like. Try doing
some work, that’ll warm you up.’
‘We have been all night,’ I replied. ‘It just so happens
that every time you walk past we’re not working.’
‘Look, guys, if you want to chat do it in your break –
we’ve still got fifty thousand cases left to pick tonight. If I
catch you both gossiping again like two housewives over
the garden fence, you’re out of here – understand. The
Kurdish guys are bad enough, don’t make me get rid of
you two.’
‘Leave them alone, Bateman, you bully!’ a kid yelled as
he ran past.
‘Shut up, Lefty!’
Bateman pointed two fingers at his eyes and then at us.
‘I’ll be watching you.’
He stormed off and disappeared behind a chute rammed
with boxes.
I turned to Si with a nod. ‘Vladivostok. It’s a crazy idea,
but I love it!’
‘Excellent, so in six weeks we go!’
‘Yeah. In six weeks we commit suicide.’
After escaping the grasp of Köln, I force myself to pull
over at a service station somewhere outside Nürnberg.
Drawing to a sudden halt beside an orange VW Beetle, Si
29
jerks forward and peers up over his fleece.
‘Where are we?’ he croaks.
‘Uh … near Nürnberg,’ I reply, tucking into a packet of
salt and vinegar flavoured crisps.
‘You what?’
‘Nürnberg.’
‘Nürnberg!’ Si shouts, springing up in his seat. ‘Nürnberg in Germany?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘We can’t be!’
‘Why can’t we be?’
‘How can we be near Nürnberg? It’s not possible!’
‘We are – it’s a fact.’
Si peers down at the map. ‘Jesus Christ, you’ve driven
fucking miles! What time is it?’
‘I don’t know the clock doesn’t work. I think it’s nearly
morning.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’
I shrug. ‘Dunno. The past few hours have been a bit of a
blur, to be honest with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s these German autobahns. I couldn’t stop driving. I
just wanted to drive and drive. It was like I was hypnotized
… stuck on autopilot.’
‘Fucking hell, Chris! The last time I looked out of the
window we were just leaving Liège.’
‘Liège? Nah, that was ages ago, wasn’t it?’
‘You should know, you’ve been driving.’
‘All right, calm down.’
‘NO, I won’t calm down! It’s a bloody good job you
stopped when you did, otherwise we would have been in
Vladivostok in about five days.’
I smirk. ‘Yeah. I caught myself starting to drift off, so I
thought I’d better pull over.’
‘Drift off? You could have killed us both, you idiot!
That’s the last time I let you drive when I’m asleep. I’ve
30
nearly missed the whole of Germany because of you.’
‘You didn’t miss much. There really wasn’t anything to
see … well, apart from miles and miles of tarmac. Oh, I
did have a race in a tunnel with some prick through the
centre of Köln, though. That was quite interesting.’
* * *
After a quick freshen-up and a very strong coffee, I take
over the driving and zoom down the autobahn towards
Regensberg. Chris climbs into the back of the car and disappears
beneath his sleeping bag. BMW’s, Mercedes and
monster size Audi’s eat up the tarmac in the fast lane, and
chasing their taillights we drive swiftly into the Bavarian
countryside. Castles rise from the lush green forests that
stretch out into the distance, and relieved to be away from
the noise of industrial Germany we venture further
towards the depths of Eastern Europe.
Glancing over my shoulder, I can see that Chris is sound
asleep – most probably dreaming about being a gangster
pimp in New York, or being stuck on a desert island with
a hundred naked girls and fifty crates of beer. I’m not surprised
that he’s still dead to the world, especially after his
mammoth eight-hour ‘non-stop’ autobahn experience,
which I must admit I can totally understand now.
Avoiding the city of Regensberg, I happily turn off the
autobahn and follow signs to a town called Passau on the
Austrian border. It’s early afternoon and spying a petrol
station outside town, I decide to fill up the Sierra before
we head north for the border with the Czech Republic. Not
wishing to disturb Chris from his surreal dreams, I quietly
remove the key from the ignition and unhook the hose.
The petrol pump jumps into life and shoving the nozzle
31
into the fuel tank, I press the lever and shoot the liquid
into the car. Watching the numbers on the screen clock up
at speed, the sound of the gushing fuel signals to my bladder
that it needs to be emptied. Struggling to lock the
petrol cap in place, I remove the key and hurry over to the
garage to pay. A large Bavarian gentleman with a bushynicotine
stained mustache stands at the till and talks loudly
in a thick German accent to the guy behind the counter.
They seem to be having a serious discussion, so I wait
patiently to be served and try to distract myself from the
fact that my bladder is ready to burst by thinking of other
things … nice things … things that don’t involve fast flowing
water. Both guys can clearly see that I’m ready to pay,
but they ignore me and continue with their debate.
Feeling annoyed, I begin to tap my foot on the floor and
hum a tune. The gentleman in front stops talking and
turns to me. I beam a smile and peer over at the cashier.
The large guy finally steps to one side and I slap my
money on the counter. Running my purchase through the
till, I take my change and leave without so much as a
danke. I glance around in desperation for the toilet, and
spot a small brick building around the back of the petrol
station. I head swiftly in its direction. I enter the dark closet,
flick on the light switch and slam the door shut behind
me. The place is grim, with crusty shit plastered around
the rim of the bowl and shit stained pieces of tissue paper
spilling out of the bin. Trying to block these images from
my mind, I feel relieved to see the toilet bowl and quickly
tear open my flies just in the nick of time. Relaxing, I let
out a deep sigh of relief as the pressure on my bladder is
released. Shaking my fella dry, I pop him back in my pants
and turn to the cracked mirror on the wall. I rinse my
hands under the cold tap and dry them on the bottom of
my T-shirt. Winking at my reflection I turn and reach for
the door handle, but to my absolute horror there isn’t one!
Running my fingers frantically over the hole where the
32
handle should be, I desperately begin to scan every inch
of the doorframe.
‘Oh, shit,’ I whisper under my breath.
Panic hits me. Feeling my heart beating violently inside
my chest, I look around the tiny room for an exit.
Everywhere I look I see dirty black tiles, and I find myself
holding onto the walls as the room begins to spin. Turning
to the sink, I grab hold of the basin and lower my head.
‘Fuck, stay calm!’
The room stops spinning and I try to gather my composure,
but my pulse is sent racing out of control again as it
suddenly occurs to me no one knows where I am. What if
no one ever uses this toilet or Chris, the lazy fuck, sleeps
for the next five hours. I’ll be trapped in this cesspit, left
to rot and die alone. Being trapped in a small space is one
of my worst fears. You’re helpless, confined between four
walls, which at this moment in time seem to be closing in
on me. The last time this happened was when Chris and I
were seven years old. He thought it would be funny to
lock me in the downstairs cupboard, and I’ve been terrified
of being trapped in small spaces ever since. Looking
up at my reflection in the mirror I can see the terror in my
eyes. Turning away, I lean against the sink and look slowly
around the room. There’s a sky light in the roof and a
small extraction fan on the wall to the outside, which sits
motionless. It stares at me with its star shaped form and I
try to find something else to focus on, but my eyes bounce
around this shit hole and I’m forced to stare at the floor in
an attempt to stop myself spinning again. Composing
myself, I turn to the door.
‘You’re gonna have to do something, Simon,’ I whisper
to myself. ‘What would Jack Bauer from the TV series 24
do in this situation? I know! He’d break down the door.’
Taking a step back, I brace myself against the wall.
‘You can do it, buddy boy. One hard kick and the door
will fly open.’
33
Releasing a high-pitched squeal, I leap into the air
‘Matrix’ style and karate kick the door. My right foot hits
the lock, but instead of the door swinging open and handing
me back my freedom, I find myself falling like a brick
onto the concrete floor. Scrambling to my feet I contemplate
karate kicking the door again, but I change my mind
and resort to banging on it as hard as possible and screaming
my tits off. Pausing to listen for a response, I lean back
against the wall and look up at the ceiling. Returning my
attention to the skylight in the roof, I stand on my tiptoes
and reach up above my head. I can’t quite reach the catch.
Deciding to climb up onto the sink, I hoist a foot up onto
the side and pull myself up. Balancing on the edge, I reach
for the skylight and grab hold of the catch. Tugging at the
metal handle, it appears to be wedged shut. Taking a
moment to adjust my balance, I take a firm grip on the
catch and prepare to wrench it open. Putting my full force
into it I pull down with all of my strength, but hearing a
crack below, I lose my grip and leap off the edge of the
sink as it breaks off the wall and crashes to the floor.
Stumbling forward, I slam into the far wall and skidding
in the piss around the toilet bowl, I slip to my knees and
plunge my right hand into the brown, foul smelling toilet
water.
‘Help!’ I scream.
Hearing the door swing open on its hinges, I look around
and see Chris standing in the doorway with his hands in
his pockets and a cigarette hanging from the corner of his
mouth.
‘Si, what you doing?’
‘It’s not my fault!’ I yell, vigorously scrubbing my
hand with a brown stained towel. ‘I’ve just put my hand
down the frigging toilet!’
Chris peers over at the toilet bowl, and shivers. ‘Why?’
‘I didn’t mean to do it, you twat. I was trying to get out!’
He nods reassuringly. ‘I totally understand. Come on, let’s
34
get the fuck out of here.’
Chris drags me out of the toilet and over to the Sierra.
‘What took you so long?’ I mutter, falling into the passenger
seat.
‘I didn’t know where you were. I woke up and you
weren’t around.’
‘I was stuck in the toilet, you numb-nuts. The lock was
broken!’
‘How was I supposed to know that? I’m not psychic!’
‘We’re twins, you should be.’
‘Si, you know I don’t believe in all of that GPS crap.’
‘It’s ESP, you idiot.’
‘Whatever…’
‘Jesus Christ, that was fucking horrible! Look at me I’m
still shaking, I thought I was going to die in there.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic.’
‘Piss off! I really lost it. I felt like a caged animal.’
‘I can’t believe you broke the sink?’
‘I had to get out, I’ve never been so scared. My whole life
flashed in front of my eyes, it was horrible. I’m telling you,
Chris, just horrible!’
Driving north, Chris follows signs for the Czech border.
Rain clouds fill the sky as we head deeper into the countryside,
and approaching a barricade situated in the middle
of nowhere, we draw to a halt in a torrential downpour.
A stern looking border official wearing a long green
raincoat, steps out of his guard box and peers through the
passenger window. Water drips rapidly from the brim of
his cap as he reaches out his hand and takes our passports.
He then turns around and disappears back inside his
guard box. Re-immerging a few minutes later, he hands
back our wet documents and slowly nods as if to suggest
everything is OK. With a friendly wave, we pass through
the barrier and continue on into the Czech Republic and
the forests of Sumava.
35
‘Well, that was easy enough,’ Chris grins, swerving
around the large pools of water dotted along the roadside.
‘So this is the Czech Republic, then?’
A bright bolt of lightening forks dramatically across the
sky directly above us, followed closely by a loud crash of
thunder.
‘Fucking hell,’ I mutter, watching the window wipers
dance vigorously from side-to-side. ‘I feel like I’m in the
Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ video.’
Shinning the torch down on the map, I follow the road
with my finger. ‘We need to find a turn off on the right for
Cesky Krumlov.’
Chris dabs the brakes as we race past a woman sheltering
beneath a small umbrella.
‘Did you see that?’ he cries glancing in the rearview mirror.
‘Yeah, what the hell’s she doing? Do you think we
should offer her a lift?’
‘Don’t be stupid, Si. She’s a hooker!’
‘Really! What, out here in the middle of nowhere?’
Chris nods. ‘Yep.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It was obvious, wasn’t it?’
‘Was it?’
‘Of course! Couldn’t you tell by the short skirt, or by the
way she was stood with one hand on her hip and her arse
slightly raised. Her tits were practically exposed to the
Czech countryside. She’s probably catching the rich
Germans crossing the border.’
‘She can’t be!’
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t seen one single car since we left the border.
Surely she must realise that tonight of all nights is a really
bad night to be working. I mean, there’s a full-on rainstorm
going on here – a torrential downpour! She’ll get
struck by lightening holding that umbrella … Hey! There’s
36
a sign for Cesky Krumlov, turn down that road.’
Another bright flash of lightening illuminates our faces,
and is followed even more closely by a bone-shattering
boom of thunder.
‘Shit, that was too close for comfort!’ Chris yells.
The rain begins to fall harder, and although the window
wipers are on full speed they fail to clear the buckets of
water pounding the screen.
‘Si, this is dangerous, I can’t see fuck all!’
‘Pull over, then!’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere!’
‘I can’t! A car might -’
The window screen suddenly turns white as hailstones
engulf the car. Chris slams his foot on the brake pedal and
the car skids to the left. I instinctively reach over and grab
the steering wheel, and we both hang on for dear life as
the Sierra spins 360 degrees in a perfect circle. While the
sound of hailstones drown our screams, another bolt of
lightening illuminates our frightened faces as the car
mounts a small embankment and slides sideways into a
hedge.
Continuing to scream at the top of our voices, Chris
quickly flicks on the hazard lights.
‘What the fuck happenned?’
‘No idea, but i think i’ve just shat my pants!’ Chris shrieks,
As quickly as it started, the hailstorm comes to an
abrupt halt and peering through the now visible window
screen, we gasp as we realise we’re less than a few feet
away from plunging into a deep dyke.
Still gripping the steering wheel Chris turns to me, and
laughs. ‘Welcome to the Czech Republic!’
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Long Face
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 4: Long Face
Following the road around the Krumlov chateau in the
early evening, we find ourselves in the old part of the historic
town of Cesky Krumlov. Si directs me through a
labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets lined with beautiful
old stone buildings, all restored to perfection. After our
little nightmare drive through the torrential rainstorm, we
decide to spend our first night in luxury … well, I guess
that’s if you call a backpacker hostel, luxury. Crossing a
small bridge we find an empty side street and park up
beside the Vltava River.
‘Right, then,’ I mutter, grabbing the Russian phrasebook
out of my rucksack. ‘What words should I learn first?’
Si frowns. ‘What you doing?’
‘I’m going to learn Russian.’
‘We’ve just arrived in this incredible town and you want
to learn Russian?’
‘Si, it’s pissing down with rain. Why get soaked?’
‘Yeah, but it hasn’t stopped raining since we crossed the
border.’
Ignoring him, I flick to the beginning of the book and
glance down at the first page.
‘Basic expressions,’ I grin. ‘That sounds good. I’ll start
with basic expressions, “Greetings and Apologies”.’
‘Yeah, I’d learn apologies first if I were you,’ Si laughs.
‘I mean, it’ll come in handy for when you have to apologize
to the pretty girls for having a pin dick.’
‘Do you mind, I’m trying to submerge myself in a new
38
language here?’
‘Ha, “submerge”. You’re only learning Russian because
you think it’ll help you get laid. You think that by slipping
a few Russian phrases into the conversation, you’ll have
girls doing back flips onto your cock. Well, don’t be surprised
when they back flip out of the door.’
‘Fuck off! I’m learning Russian so I can be a good ambassador
for our country. You know, show the people of
Russia that we respect their culture by at least giving their
language a go.’
‘Fair enough, Chris. I guess when we were in Mexico
you did try and learn a bit of Spanish. Well, at least the
words for “hey, beautiful, nice arse and two beers”, but I
was impressed.’
‘You have to start somewhere when you’re learning a
new language. I mean, look what it says on the cover of
this book. “Travel with ease and communicate with confidence”.
Now, that’s exactly what I intend to do.’
Si frowns. ‘Shouldn’t you be learning Czech?’
I look up from the page. ‘I’m sorry, what was that?’
‘Shouldn’t you be learning Czech?’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean “why”? Call me a frigging idiot, but
aren’t we in the Czech Republic?’
‘Yeah, but I just think the more Russian I learn now, the
easier … hey! I don’t need to explain myself to you. Get off
my back, will ya.’
Si raises his hand. ‘All right, all right! No need to get
over excited. It just seems a bit stupid that’s all. If you
were in Spain you wouldn’t be learning French.’
‘OK, I get your point.’
After twenty minutes of learning a few Czech words and
a few near impossible Russian phrases, it stops raining.
We lock up the car and slip on our coats. Without a map
of the town or a guidebook at hand, we head into the centre
on foot and wander through the deserted cobbled
39
streets in search of somewhere to stay. It isn’t long before
we reach the main square. Walking down a quiet alley, we
stumble across a backpacker hostel called The Traveller’s
Rest.
‘Here we go!’ Si grins. ‘A bed for the night.’
‘What a shit hole! There must be somewhere better than
this.’
‘It’ll be cheap.’
‘It should be free!’
I poke my head around the door and peer inside a small,
smoky room crammed full of young smiley faces. A large
group of backpackers sit around a table in the corner,
drinking beer and laughing in unison. ‘The Red Hot Chili
Peppers’ blast from speakers as we make our way over
towards a kid standing behind a small bar. The posh looking
nerd, who’s wearing a Red Bull T-shirt, appears to be
eves dropping on the group drinking at the large table.
He finally turns to us, and smiles. ‘All right, fellas.’
‘Hey, you’re English!’ Si grins.
‘Yes, born and bred,’ he replies.
‘Where you from?’
‘Bristol. What about you guys?’
‘We’re from a small town called Daventry in the
Midlands. You probably won’t have heard of it.’
‘Yes, I know Daventry.’
Si frowns. ‘Really?’
‘Well, I don’t know it as such. I’m sure I’ve seen a signpost
for it on the M1. Is it nice?’
‘Yeah, it’s all right.’
‘Cool. I’ll tell you what, give me your mobile number or
email address and I’ll come and visit you guys. You can
give me a tour of the town and introduce me to all of your
friends. Yeah, I’d really like that … I’ve got a pen around
here somewhere.’
‘So what you doing working here?’ I quickly ask.
The kid seems to immediately forget about the pen and
40
opens a bottle of beer.
‘Well, I decided to work here because I thought it would
be a good crack. I’m Inter-railing around Europe, you see.
I’m on my gap year.’
‘Nice one!’ Si beams. ‘Look, we want to stay here
tonight. Can you tell us where the reception is?’
‘This is the reception. It’s the bar-cum-reception if you
like. We’re pretty full at the mo, though. Actually! Saying
that, I think there might be two beds free in the dorm.’
I frown. ‘Dorm?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dorm as in dormitory?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he nods. ‘Don’t look so upset they’re mixed
dorms, which is great! My advice is to sleep with one eye
open, you never know what interesting things you might
see, if you know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, we’ll remember that,’ Si grins. ‘You don’t have
any private rooms left?’
‘Nope. Just the twelve-bed dorm, I’m afraid.’
‘Twelve beds?’
‘Yep.’
Suddenly, the big group of backpackers sitting at the
table next to the bar roars with laughter, and begins to
chant the name Snowdon. A blonde guy sitting at the head
of the table, who’s wearing a white England Rugby shirt
and has an uncanny resemblance to Prince William, stands
up and raises his drink.
‘Thank you my good friends,’ he bows. ‘Thank you so
very much.’
‘Tell us another joke, Snowdon,’ a small spotty kid sitting
around the table cries.
‘All in good time, Freddy,’ he winks, ‘all in good time. I
think I’ll let you all recover from the last joke first before
I split your sides with another.’
‘Who’s the show off?’ I ask.
‘That’s Snowdon,’ the kid behind the bar replies. ‘He’s
41
probably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. He’s a
master at telling jokes. They’re so funny and he’s so cool.
He’s a natural. All the girls fancy him. He’s on his gap-year
and Inter-railing around Europe, too … just like me! Hey,
Snowdon, that joke was hilarious!’
Snowdon stops laughing and looks over at the kid.
‘Thomas, you lazy fuck. Eight more beers over here and
make it snappy!’
‘Right away,’ Thomas salutes. ‘Absolutely no problem!’
Si turns to me with a smile. ‘What an arse-licker.’
‘Hey, Thomas!’ Snowdon yells. ‘Do you know any
jokes?’
Thomas drops his smile. ‘Uh … no, I don’t think I do. I
mean, I did do once, but I’ve forgotten it.’
‘Oh, I know the joke,’ Snowdon smiles. ‘Is it the one
about some loser called Thomas who goes Inter-railing
with a hair dryer?’
Everyone sitting around the table bursts out laughing.
Thomas’s face turns bright red with embarrassment.
Snowdon sits back down in his seat and flashes him a
smug grin.
Si turns to Thomas. ‘That was a bit harsh, don’t you
think?’
‘Nah, he doesn’t mean it. He likes me. We’re best buddies.
It’s just harmless fun. He’s a very funny guy, and he
respects me.’
‘Are you sure?’
He nods vigorously. ‘Yep! I’d bet my mother’s life on it.’
‘Come on, Thomas, tell us a joke!’ Snowdon cries. ‘OK,
it seems quite obvious you don’t have a funny bone in
your body … is there anyone else here in the house
tonight who knows a joke?’
‘I know a joke,’ I grin, raising my hand.
The backpackers stop laughing and look over at me.
Snowdon stands up and folds his arms. ‘You do?’
‘Yeah.’
42
Si turns to me, and frowns. ‘You do?’
‘Yeah, I know loads of jokes.’
Snowdon looks me up and down. ‘Well, why don’t you
join our table and share this “joke” of yours with us?
Come on … don’t be shy, we don’t bite.’
We both walk over and sit down at the far end of the
table. Snowdon sits back down and takes a large gulp of
beer.
‘OK, let’s hear it, then,’ he mutters, wiping his chin. ‘I
can hardly contain my excitement. Actually, hold on a
minute, I’ve got an idea that’ll make this more interesting.
Why don’t we each tell a joke and the one that gets the
biggest laugh wins, the loser has to buy the whole table a
drink. What do you say?’
The little shit I think to myself. I can’t stand fucking gapyear
kids. They’re young, naïve and most probably still
sleep in their pajamas. This table is full of rich toffs on
their once in a lifetime adventure before they skip off to
University and become doctors and lawyers. They’re so
fresh faced and clueless.
A kid sitting next to Si raises his thumbs in the air and
smiles. ‘Yeah, I think it’s a cosmic idea, Snowdon.’
‘Yeah, me too!’ A fat girl with a posh Edinburgh accent
yells.
‘Thanks Edward, thanks Lilly. So we’re all agreed, then?
This coin I have in my hand will determine who goes first.
What will it be, heads or tails?’
‘Uh … heads,’ I reply.
‘What the fuck you doing?’ Si whispers in my ear. ‘You
don’t know any jokes – let’s get out of here!’
Snowdon holds the coin between his finger and thumb
and spins it on the table. We all watch the coin intently as
it whips around on its axis. Eventually, it begins to lose
momentum and falling onto its side it rattles to a halt.
Snowdon covers it with his hand and cautiously steals a
glance.
43
‘It’s tails!’ he cries.
Everyone lets out a cheer.
‘Right, so that means I go first,’ he grins. ‘But, as I’m a
bloody nice bloke, I’m going to let you go first.’
Resting my elbows on the table, I throw Snowdon a nod.
‘Chris, this is stupid. Let’s fucking leave!’
I ignore Si and clear my throat. ‘OK … uh … why do the
Irish keep empty milk bottles in the fridge?’
Everyone shrugs.
‘…Just in case somebody wants a black coffee!’
Silence. Nobody laughs. There isn’t one single smile -
not one! The fat girl sitting next to me picks up her drink
and drops her gaze, while Edward scratches the back of
his head and looks over at Snowdon. Even Thomas, the
guy who wants to be liked by everyone doesn’t even back
me up with a snigger.
‘Well, well, well,’ Snowdon grins. ‘That wasn’t very
funny, was it? I don’t want to jump the gun or anything,
but I’d say that from the reaction around the table you
might want to start ordering our beers. Oh, and by the
way, I’m half Irish, so … yes, I am a little offended by the
joke.’
‘Tell your joke, Snowdon!’ Thomas yells.
‘Right, OK,’ he replies, straightening his posture. ‘A horse
walks into a bar and orders a drink. The barman turns to the
horse and says, “hey, what’s with the long face?’
The table erupts with laughter. Thomas whistles,
Edward stamps his feet, tears run down Lilly’s face and
everyone else just goes absolutely crazy. We sit dumbfounded
and watch the gap-year kid’s fall about in uncontrollable
fits of laughter.
‘What’s with the long face?’ Snowdon screams. ‘Beat
that, I bet you can’t!’
‘Si, for Christ sake, that has to be the oldest joke in the
history of jokes. I’ve had enough of this shit, let’s leave -
school time over!’
44
‘About frigging time, you idiot,’ Si replies, rising out of
his chair.
‘Hey!’ Snowdon yells. ‘Where do you think you’re
going? You haven’t bought our beers yet.’
I turn to Snowdon. ‘Shut it!’
‘I beg your pardon!’ he snaps. ‘You can’t speak to me like
that I’m going to Oxford University, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ Thomas shouts from across the bar. ‘He’s going to
Oxford University.’
‘Well, good luck,’ I reply, slamming a couple of notes on
the table, ‘because you’re gonna need it!’
* * *
‘What a bunch of cock-heads!’ Chris yells, stumbling out
into the street.
‘I did try to warn you, but you couldn’t resist telling that
joke, could you?’
‘It’s a very funny joke … I love telling that joke … it’s a
great joke … why didn’t they laugh?’
‘It was crap, that’s why.’
‘Oh, and that posh twat’s joke was funnier, was it?’
‘Who cares?’ I laugh. ‘Hey, fuck this! Let’s sleep in the
car tonight. I really can’t be arsed to spend all night looking
for a place to stay.’
Heading back to the car via a pizza joint, we perch ourselves
on the bonnet of the Sierra and look out over the
river that sparkles in the moonlight.
‘Well, it looks like we’re going to be sleeping upright
again,’ Chris mumbles, taking a large bite out of his pepperoni
pizza slice.
‘It beats staying in that hostel any day. My days of sleeping
in a dorm are most definitely over. I’d rather sleep in
the car!’
45
‘I suppose we’d better get used to it. I can’t imagine
there’ll be many backpacker hostels in deepest Siberia.
Actually, come to think of it, we must be insane!’
‘I know, fucking exciting, isn’t it? I mean, can you imagine
that lad Steve from the freezer just dropping everything
and chipping off to Russia for a few months.’
‘Hey, leave Steve-o out of this,’ Chris grins. ‘He was a
good lad. It was just a bit unfortunate he got his girlfriend
pregnant when he was sixteen, and very unfortunate that
it was the first time he’d had sex.’
‘You what? Was it his first time?’
‘Yep. It’s sad, but true. Until the night he clapped eyes
on Kaz outside the post office, he was indeed a virgin.’
‘Imagine having to work all those hours in a freezer just
to feed your girlfriend’s fat ass?’
Chris shakes his head. ‘Pure tragedy.’
‘He must love her, though, mustn’t he? He must be
happy.’
‘I bloody hope so, the poor lad’s only twenty-one.’
‘Who would your dream girl be, then?’
Chris frowns. ‘Now there’s a difficult question. I’d hope
she’d be pretty – curvy, nice tits. Maybe someone like that
glamour-model Jo Guest.’
‘Jo Guest? But what about personality?’
‘Personality? Hmm … mellow, but passionate about life.
She’d have to want to travel like me, and yet still be
secure enough for us not to have to be together all of the
time. I need my space. Maybe an artist, what about you?’
I shrug. ‘I haven’t really got a specific type. Blonde,
brunette, short, tall, none of that really matters to me.’
‘As long as she’s pretty, right?’ Chris grins.
‘You’d hope so! I wouldn’t want her to be vain, though.
There’s nothing less attractive than a girl that’s vain, I prefer
girls that are naturally beautiful.’
‘Who like?’
‘Someone like Michelle Pfeiffer or Audrey Hepburn.’
46
‘What about that Charlie Dimmock off the gardening
program, Ground Force? She’s pretty natural.’
‘Earthy more like. What I mean is, I like a girl who’s
beautiful, but doesn’t appear to know it.’
‘Hang on, what’s all this talk about dream girls, anyway?
Are you getting lonely, Si? Scared of the future are you …
scared of the future?’
‘Piss off! It’s just something you think about sometimes,
isn’t it?’
‘Maybe you should’ve gone back to London and married
Emily?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
A couple of months after returning home from my travels
in the US with Chris, I had arranged to meet my ex-girlfriend,
Emily, in London one weekend. I had stayed in
contact with her by email during the remainder of the trip
and, feeling confident that I could handle seeing her again
after our painful break up, I nervously got on the train and
headed for the big smoke. Before I knew it, I was on
Hampstead High Street for the first time since the day our
relationship ended. Memories of our time together flooded
into my mind, and I suddenly felt anxious as to how I
might feel about seeing her again. Having arrived early, I
decided to duck into a nearby pub to calm my nerves a little
before meeting her, and sitting at the bar I sipped a pint
and enjoyed the sensation of being alone with my thoughts.
Sitting there I remember thinking how familiar it all felt,
and it suddenly occurred to me that I’d spent many afternoons
before perched on bar stools waiting for Emily. It
had become a regular activity that I’d started to enjoy right
from the early days when we’d first met, and for the years
that followed I would often find myself arriving early to
meet her and use it as an excuse to enjoy some time to
myself. There was something deeply relaxing about waiting
for her to arrive, and I realised that as much as I looked
47
forward to seeing her, I enjoyed the comfort of being able
to enjoy being alone just as much.
Mellowed by the alcohol, I made my way to the restaurant
where we had agreed to meet and finding a space at
the side of the street, I waited patiently for her outside.
Watching the traffic pass by, I tried to guess which direction
she might appear from and turning in the direction of
her apartment, my heart skipped a beat when I saw her
walking towards me with her big smile. Stamping my
cigarette out on the floor, I looked up in time to receive
her embrace.
‘Simon,’ she giggled breathlessly, kissing me on the
cheek.
Leaning back, she looked at me anxiously and with wide
eyes.
‘Hey,’ she laughed. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Just a pint,’ I grinned. ‘I got to Hampstead a bit early.’
‘You piss head.’
‘Come on, let’s go inside.’
Taking her arm, we entered the restaurant and grabbed a
free table by the window. I watched as she removed her
coat and the long red scarf that I had bought for her 21st
birthday. She looked as beautiful as ever, with her long
shiny brown hair and clear skin and forcing myself to avoid
admiring her familiar curves, I signaled to the waiter for
the menu.
‘Are you hungry?’ I asked.
‘Starving,’ she beamed.
‘Me too.’
Making herself comfortable, she rested her elbows on
the table. ‘So when did you get back? What was it like? I
want to know everything!’
‘It’s been a few weeks now.’
‘Was it amazing?’
‘It was fucking insane!’
‘I’m so jealous. You look fantastic.’
48
‘Do I?’
‘Yeah, you’re tanned. You look more relaxed.’
‘You’re not looking too bad yourself.’
Reaching over the table we took each other’s hand. I
knew this was a bad idea. Chris had warned me not to get
too close, but after four years together it just felt natural.
We hadn’t seen each other for nearly six months, we
missed each other’s company and finding ourselves in bed
together later that afternoon, I put the consequences to the
back of my mind and enjoyed the moment.
Lying next to her in bed after the best sex I think we’d
ever had, I starred up at the ceiling. I felt incredibly happy,
but simultaneously a strange sadness lay twisting in my
guts. Finally, I knew it was over. I had needed to know
that what I’d felt for her was something special, and feeling
it more strongly than ever before I could also see that
it could never work. We had grown apart. We wanted very
different things, and in the pursuit of lasting happiness for
ourselves I think we both realised that it was over. In the
back of my mind, I’d hoped maybe we could find something
that might hold us together, but kissing her before I
left her apartment that day, I knew I would never see her
again and I think she knew the same.
Walking through the streets of North London towards
Camden, I’d felt strangely free as I made my way to a bar
to meet my old friend Dermot. My life had changed direction
for good and, although I felt nervous about what the
future held, I felt as equally excited about the endless possibilities
that lay in front of me. What I did with my life
now was in my hands and my hands alone. I had nobody
to blame for my frustrations. I could no longer use Emily
or my career as an excuse not to pursue my dreams. For
the first time in my life I was responsible for my destiny.
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Bohemian Rhapsody
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 5: Bohemian Rhapsody
Embracing a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza, I open
my eyes and glance sleepily up at the stone bridge that
arches above the car. Blinking, I leap forward in my seat
and glare open mouthed at the sight of a large group of
Japanese tourists, with surprisingly small cameras, all
pointing and nudging each other as they battle to take
photographs of us both asleep in the car.
‘Hey, Si, wake up!’
Removing his face from the passenger window, Si
glances up at the tourists and shields his eyes from the
bright flashes of light.
‘Jesus Christ … Hey!’ he shouts, rolling down his window.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? There’s a
thing called privacy, you know!’
The Japanese tourists ignore him, and continue to fight
amongst themselves for that one special picture of two
European street urchins sleeping rough at the roadside. I
tear open my sleeping bag and quickly reverse the car out
of view.
‘Where’s the respect? We’re not a couple of animals in
some frigging … Bollocks!’ Si cries, screwing up his
face. ‘I’ve slept in my bloody contact lenses again. Why do
I always do that? Why?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘No! Right, that’s it, I’m going back to wearing glasses.’
50
‘Glasses?’
‘What’s wrong with wearing glasses? I look cool in glasses.’
I laugh. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes!’
‘But if you do that, I’ll take the piss out of you and start
calling you four-eyes.’
Si scratches his chin. ‘Hmm … that’s true. Bollocks!
Why am I so frigging blind?’
‘You should have laser treatment.’
‘It’s too expensive.’
‘Just get one eye done.’
‘Chris, don’t be ridiculous. Come on, let’s get out of here
I need to find somewhere to wash my hands.’
Waving goodbye to Cesky Krumlov, we return to the lush
green countryside and pass through numerous villages
that appear to be frozen in time. As we leave one particular
town lined with Noddy cars and classic Skoda’s, we
drive beside an old mansion house covered in green vine
and spot a huge stalk feeding its baby in a nest perched on
a tall chimney top.
‘Si, quick, pass me my camera! I can see a P.O. with my
name on it. Quick! Quick!’
Si reaches down between his legs and fishes my Nikon
FM2 out of his bag.
‘What’s a P.O?’ he asks.
‘A Photo Opportunity.’
‘Oh, right…’
‘This is incredible,’ I beam, raising the camera to my
face. ‘Absolutely incredible! Have you ever seen anything
so beautiful? It’s a stork, for Christ sake. It’s huge!’
‘Chris, please don’t think I’m criticizing your equipment,
but have you ever thought about going digital?’
I lower the camera. ‘You what?’
‘Digital. You know, the future of photography.’
51
‘Yes, I do know what digital is, thank you very much.
Why?’
Si shrugs. ‘Oh … uh … no reason. It’s just I’ve heard you
can take a good quality picture with them now, and
they’re coming down in price.’
‘I do know about digital cameras. I’m a photographer, I
read Amateur Photography.’
‘Ooh … OK, sorry David Bailey. What’s your favorite
digital camera, then?’
‘Fuck knows. Look, Si, what’s with all the questions?
Are you purposefully trying to piss me off?’
‘All right, calm down! I must’ve hit a raw nerve.’
‘Are you saying my camera is shit and outdated?’ I cry,
waving the Nikon in his face. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No.’
We sit in silence for a few seconds.
I place the chunky camera on my lap. ‘I guess it is starting
to look a bit old fashioned. But I like using film, I
wouldn’t use anything else.’
‘Fair enough, Chris. As long as you take a good snap,
who cares what you use.’
Purchasing a motorway pass from a post office in the city
of Plzen, we find ourselves hurtling towards the capital
city of Prague. Excited by the prospect of seeing the
Bohemian architecture and experiencing a city that I’ve
heard so much about in recent years, I blast up the volume
on the radio and set to work at playing some serious air
guitar.
Reaching the outskirts of the city, we spot a tourist information
sign above a small grey portacabin. Pulling off the
motorway, we follow the slip road and park up next to a
shiny black BMW. An attractive blonde girl smokes a
cigarette behind the wheel and flicks through a glossy
magazine. Smiling in her direction, we climb out of the
Sierra and make our way over to the entrance. The girl
52
reluctantly tosses the magazine to one side and jumps out
of the car. She babbles something at us in Czech, and smiling
innocently she swings open the door to the portacabin
and gestures for us to follow her inside. The office is
tiny, with a flimsy counter and one chair. There are tourist
posters pinned to the walls and a red folder on the
counter. Grabbing the folder, she opens it at the first page
and slides it in front of us. Flicking through the file, we
study pictures of the large selection of kitsch hotel rooms
on offer.
‘Hey, Si, what do you think?’
‘Yeah, she’s pretty hot,’ he whispers.
‘No. The hotel rooms, you idiot.’
‘Oh, I dunno. Bit basic, aren’t they?’
‘How much is forty euros?’
Si shrugs. ‘About thirty quid, I think.’
‘Hmm … that’s a bit out of our price range, maybe we
should just head for the train station and see what we can
find around there.’
‘The train station? You’re kidding, right?’
‘No.’
‘Chris, hotels around the train station in any city are
notorious for being flea-bitten hellholes.’
‘Well, they can’t be any worse than the dives in these
pictures, and at least they’ll be cheap.’
Si turns to the girl standing behind the counter. ‘Uh …
es gut, but nein danke,’ he mutters, hoping she’ll understand
a little German.
Looking disappointed, the girl punches the number 30
into a calculator and then points to a page in the folder.
‘She’s knocked down the price,’ Si grins.
I shake my head. ‘Nah. We don’t know where the hotel
will be. It could be miles outside town.’
She slides the folder in front of us. We both peer down
at the pictures and notice that it’s student accommodation.
She then points at a map of the city and indicates
53
that it’s in the centre.
Si turns to me, and nods. ‘Sounds perfect! Let’s book in
for the night.’
Giving the girl the thumbs up, she grabs her mobile off
the counter and begins to make a call.
‘Hey, this is going to be fun!’ Si cries. ‘Maybe we should
ask her if she’d like to join us for a few drinks tonight.’
I frown. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Yeah, why not?’
‘She’s probably got a boyfriend. A sexy girl like that
always has a boyfriend.’
‘Not necessarily. Ask her!’
‘Why me?’
‘I’m always doing it. Go on,’ Si winks.
‘I can’t.’
‘You’re a wimp.’
‘Piss off! Anyway, she doesn’t speak English. It’s pointless.’
‘Chris, it’s called the language of love, dear boy, the language
of love. You don’t need words.’
The girl finishes talking on the phone and blushes. She
slides the address across the counter.
‘Thank you, I mean dekuji,’ I beam.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replies. ‘I hope you guys have a
pleasant stay in Prague.’
Feeling deeply embarrassed that she speaks English, we
grin falsely and return quickly to the car.
* * *
Reaching the centre of Prague, we drive across one of the
impressive stone bridges that arches low over the Vltava
River. Miraculously, Prague was completely untouched by
World War II, and we’re immediately wowed by the city’s
54
incredible bohemian architecture. Chris guides me through
the busy tram infested streets, and pausing at a pedestrian
crossing we watch the people of Prague rush by.
We arrive at the rather run-down student accommodation
building and head straight for a nearby car park situated
beneath a concrete fly-over. Waiting in a queue, Chris
excitedly points out a GB sticker stuck to the boot of the
car in front of us. Inching our way through the gate, we
take a ticket from a friendly old man in the office and pull
up in an empty space next to the blue Vauxhall Astra with
the GB sticker. A smartly dressed guy in a suit climbs out.
‘Hey, you’re from Great Britain!’ Chris smiles, pointing
at the sticker.
‘Yes, I am,’ the guy replies, grabbing a laptop case from
the boot.
‘Have you driven all the way, too?’
‘Sure have,’ he smiles, rushing around to the passenger
window. He cups his hands and peers through the glass
before tapping his trouser pocket. He then urgently jabs
his fingers inside his jacket pocket and pulls out a computer
disc.
‘Are you here on business?’ I chip in.
‘Yeah, I’m a journalist. I’m supposed to be interviewing
someone in about…’ he glances down at his watch, ‘hmm
… half-an-hour ago. Whoops, I’m a bit late, but not bad
considering I’ve just driven all the way from Surrey, I suppose.’
‘Bliemey, you must be knackered,’ Chris laughs.
‘Well, I had a pit stop in Brussels and Dresden, so I don’t
feel too tired. Where are you guys staying?’
‘At a hostel near here,’ I reply. ‘It’s part of the University,
I think.’
‘The place around the corner?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s where I’m staying,’ he beams.
‘Really?’
55
‘Yes. Maybe later we could meet for a drink in the bar?’
‘Good idea,’ Chris nods enthusiastically.
‘Does nine o’clock sound OK?’
Chris looks over in my direction, and nods. ‘Yeah, nine
should be fine.’
‘Great. OK, I’d better be off. See you guys later.’
Storming off to his meeting with his laptop case tucked
under his arm, we casually gather our bags together and
head towards the hostel.
Checking into the student halls, we drag our bags down a
dark corridor and enter our musty jail cell. Collapsing onto
a lumpy bed, I stare up at the nicotine stained ceiling. The
room is dark and cold with steel bars at the window.
Tutting, I reach over for my cigarettes on the bedside table
and turn on the lamp. The bulb flickers a few times before
producing a dim orange glow. Sitting up, I lean against the
cold wall.
‘I bet Terry Waite had a better cell than this,’ I mutter,
glancing over at the antique radiator hanging from the
wall.
‘Stop complaining, it’s not that bad. It’s just somewhere
to crash for the night.’
‘It’s a shit hole!’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ Chris mutters, as he rummages
inside his rucksack. He looks up. ‘Hey, have you got a
towel?’
‘Use your own.’
‘I haven’t brought one.’
‘Why the fuck not?’
‘I forgot it.’
‘Well, bad luck It’s not my fault,’ I cough, swinging my
feet off the bed. ‘There’s no way I’m using a damp towel
that’s just been used to dry your shitty arse.’
Collapsing onto his bed, Chris buries his face in the rock
hard pillow.
56
‘Oh yeah, and while we’re on the subject you can stop
using my frigging soap, too!’
Chris frowns. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s unhygienic, that’s why. I really don’t fancy
waking up one morning with mushrooms growing off the
end of my knob. All right?’
I’m awoken sometime later by a gurgling sound coming
from the radiator. I rub my eyes and look around the room.
Chris is sitting on the end of his bed and cleans his camera
lens with a sock. He’s showered and dressed to impress.
‘What time is it?’ I groan.
‘About seven thirty, I think.’
Grabbing my towel and wash kit, I leave the prison cell
and stumble down the dark corridor towards the communal
bathroom. As I push open the door, I’m surprised to hear
someone singing ‘Lady in Red’ in one of the shower cubicles.
Steam fills the room and throwing my towel over the
door to the adjacent cubicle, I step inside and begin to
undress.
‘Lady-in-red!’ the guy shrieks, ‘is dancing with meeee…
cheek to cheek.’
Smiling at this guy’s awful singing ability I turn on the
shower and quickly begin to apply shampoo to my greasy
hair. The shower is surprisingly hot and powerful, it lifts
my mood and I have to resist the desire to join in with the
rest of the chorus. After applying soap to my body, I stand
with my hands by my sides and relax for a moment
beneath the warm blanket of water. I turn off the shower,
wrap my towel around my waist and step out of the cubicle.
Just as I’m about to turn and head for the sink, the guy
in the cubicle opposite immerges at the same time as me.
I’m surprised to see it’s the journalist from the car park.
He’s bollock naked apart from wearing a pair of misted up
glasses.
‘Hey!’ I cry, feeling extremely uncomfortable. ‘How are ya?’
57
‘I’m good. I feel as fresh as the morning dew,’ he replies,
throwing his towel over his shoulder. ‘I was just taking a
shower.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ I grin falsely.
‘Great!’
We both stand in silence.
‘So, how was your interview?’ I quickly ask.
‘Good.’
‘Great!’
There’s more uncomfortable silence.
‘Well … uh, I’m going to brush my teeth,’ I grin.
‘Me too,’ he replies, whipping off his glasses.
Walking over to a row of sinks, we both squeeze toothpaste
onto our toothbrushes and begin brushing. The guy
begins to hum ‘Lady in Red’, while I look down into the
sink, trying desperately to avoid the grotesque sight of his
flaccid penis in the reflection of the mirror. Catching his
eye, we both nod before spitting the toothpaste simultaneously
into the sinks.
‘What room number are you in?’ he asks.
‘Thirty.’
‘I’m in thirty-one, we’re neighbours! I’ll knock on your
door instead of meeting you in the bar, shall I?’
I slip my T-shirt over my head and gather my things
together. ‘Sounds great … bye.’
‘Wait a minute!’
I stop and peer over my shoulder.
‘What’s your name?’ he grins, standing exposed with his
hands on his hips. ‘My name’s Cliff.’
‘Simon,’ I quickly reply, and disappearing around the
corner I hurry back to the room.
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Cliff’s Arse
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 6: Cliff’s Arse
There’s a firm knock at the door. I take a peek through the
spy hole and see Cliff’s big head and bulging alien eyes
glaring back at me.
‘Anyone home?’ he smiles.
I swing open the heavy door and invite him inside.
Looking fresh and wearing a pair of perfectly pressed chinos
and a white shirt, Cliff steps inside our cell clutching
a bottle of wine.
‘Goodness me,’ he laughs, ‘…and there I was thinking
my room was shabby. Never mind, I thought I’d tempt you
guys with some of the finest white wine in the world.’
‘Great,’ Si beams, leaping off the bed ‘I love wine!’
‘Good, because this little beauty just happens to be from
the steep slopes of the Mosel valley.’
I walk over and inspect the label. ‘It sounds delicious.’
‘Indeed it is,’ he nods. ‘Germany produces some of the
lightest, most delicate white wines on the planet. You
won’t be disappointed.’
Whipping a corkscrew out of his pocket, Cliff extracts
the cork and pours some into a plastic cup.
‘Ah, piquant and racy,’ he smiles, handing Si the cup.
Si sniffs the inside before taking a sip.
Cliff looks at him with keen interest. ‘What do you
think?’
‘Yeah, not bad.’
He frowns. ‘Can you taste the Riesling?’
‘The Riesling?’
‘The grape!’
59
‘I think so,’ Si replies, looking confused.
Shaking his head disapprovingly, Cliff snatches the cup
out of Si’s hand and takes a sip. He washes it around his
mouth a few times before swallowing.
‘Delicious!’ he cries. ‘It has that mouth-freshening
enchantment that leaves your palate perky and your mind
unfuddled.’
We both turn to each other and frown.
‘Come on, guys, let’s get the wine flowing here!’
He quickly fills two more cups.
‘Yeah, bottoms up,’ I grin. ‘To fine German wine and to,
uh…’
‘The EU,’ Cliff smirks.
‘Yeah, to the EU! I’m Chris by the way and this is my
brother, Simon.’
‘We’ve already met. You’re brothers, you say?’
‘Twins.’
‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Well I never. You don’t look anything alike.’
‘Yeah, thank God.’
‘Do you always travel together?’
‘We have been recently. We couldn’t do it all the time,
though.’
‘Why not?’ Cliff asks.
‘Because if we did, Si would be six feet under by now.’
Si narrows his eyes. ‘Uh … I think you’ll find you’d be
the worm food, pal. Not me.’
‘I sense a little tension between you two,’ Cliff smiles.
‘Nah, there’s no tension. It’s just sometimes I get the urge
to tie Si’s arms and legs together and chuck him in the
canal.’
Cliff laughs out loud. ‘Oh, brotherly love! So where are
you guys heading after Prague?’
‘Up through Poland,’ I reply. ‘I want to visit Auschwitz,
the Nazi Germany concentration camp. It’s supposed to be
60
very – ’
‘Depressing,’ Si butts in.
Cliff sighs. ‘It sounds like you’re really seeing Eastern
Europe. I’d like to see more someday.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘Well, the thing is, I’ve got an eighteen-month old baby
daughter, so I can’t be away from home for too long.
Otherwise I’d be heading that way myself. This is a working
trip. I’m a freelance journalist, you see. I write articles
for computer magazines.’
‘That must be interesting.’
‘Yes, it can be. I particularly enjoy it when I get the
chance to go on a trip like this. When I was given the
opportunity to interview the chairman of this big computer
company here in Prague, I jumped at the chance,
although, my wife wasn’t too happy. “Can’t you interview
him over the phone?” she said, but I kept telling her it’s
not how it’s done. I mean, OK, I could have interviewed
him over the phone, but I find it’s always best to see these
fat cats face-to-face. Oh, and it’s also a good excuse to go
on a little road trip by myself, too. I could’ve flown.’
We both give an understanding nod. Cliff sits down on
the bed and takes a sip of wine.
‘It’s crazy how fast your life can change,’ he continues.
‘Change without you even realising it. Anyway, listen to
me drone on – I still can’t believe you are twins! I bet you
get into all sorts of trouble.’
‘Yeah, not half,’ Si winks.
I pick up the bottle of wine and refill the cups. ‘How
long are you going to stay in Prague?’
‘A few days,’ Cliff replies. ‘There are one or two things
I’d like to check out while I’m here.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Oh, you know, this and that. What about you guys?’
‘We’ll probably leave tomorrow after a little sightseeing,’
Si smiles. ‘If you’re interested we’re thinking of going to
61
this really good club later.’
Cliff shakes his head vigorously. ‘Sorry, guys, but I’m
going to have to take a rain check on that one. I’m way too
tired. It’s been a hell of a day. I think I’ll just crawl into
bed and read my book.’
* * *
We grab a taxi to the Charles Bridge in the Stare Mesto
area of the city. The setting sun hangs over the beautiful
church of St Nicholas, providing Chris with not only great
light, but also great photo opportunities (P.O’s). I stand
and watch him dance around the tourists with his camera,
poised and ready for action. For a brief moment I lose
sight of him, but spot him crouched down behind a statue
as he battles to find the best composition. Eventually, he
staggers over to me with a big smile across his face and
two film cartridges in his hand. I pat him on the back and
suggest we find a bar and get drunk immediately. Crossing
the Charles Bridge, we enter the Mala Strana area and
within seconds we stumble across a drinking hole away
from the tourists. Sinking four glasses of excellent Czech
Budvar beer with a rather mature crowd of hard drinking
locals, we leap to our feet and make our way excitedly to
the Roxy Nightclub.
Joining the queue outside, we pay at the small window
and descend a flight of stairs into an enormous venue
that’s jam-packed with the young and fashionable. Dance
music blasts out across the club as we squeeze through the
crowds and head for a circular bar. Grabbing a couple of
drinks, we head up to the next level where we find comfy
seats overlooking the dance floor. We peer down over an
ocean of gyrating bodies.
Chris lights a cigarette and smiles. ‘Dancing is weird,
62
isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, imagine if you turned on all the lights and
stopped the music – everyone would look like freaks.
Hundreds of nutcases jerking from side-to-side, waddling
around in circles and punching the air.’
‘I hadn’t really thought of it like that before, but now you
mention it.’
‘Why do we do it?’
‘What, dance?’
Chris nods. ‘Yeah. I mean, what makes us want to move
our bodies whenever we hear a funky beat?’
I consider this for a moment. ‘It probably stems all the
way back to primeval courtship, I suppose. You know,
similar to the way swans have evolved to perform a kind
of courtship dance to attract a potential mate.’
‘I guess so,’ Chris replies, sipping his whiskey.
‘If you think about it, Chris, one of the main reasons a
bloke stumbles onto the dance floor in the first place is to
go in search of the ladies. It’s all about showing the girls
some moves and seeing whether they respond positively
before moving in.’
‘Is that what you’re supposed to do? I just thought people
liked to get-on-down and shake-their-thing.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they do, but apparently the action of dancing
also releases some natural chemicals in the brain that
make you feel horny.’
Chris’s eyes light up. ‘Really? I wonder why that is,
then?’
‘Well, for some reason, natural selection has favored
humans who get a buzz from prancing around to a funky
beat. It must have benefited us at some time in our evolution.
Maybe the strongest and most agile males were more
likely to be successful breeders.’
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Uh-huh. It’s all in a book I’ve been reading called ‘The
63
Selfish Gene’ by some dude called Richard Dawkins. I’ll
lend it to you if you like. Have you finished reading ‘Peter
and Jane go to the Seaside’?’
‘Piss off, I’m reading ‘The Rats’ by James Herbert at the
moment.’
‘Hmm, I’m not really into horror.’
‘You’re a pussy that’s why … a natural born … hey!
Check out that goof in the middle of the dance floor.’
‘The guy dancing next to the group of girls in white tops?’
‘Yeah, the lanky lad with his short-sleeved shirt tucked
into his jeans. What’s he doing?’
‘I think he’s dancing,’ I snigger. ‘Either that or he’s having
an epileptic fit.’
Chris slaps his thigh and stubs his cigarette out in the
ashtray. ‘Jesus Christ, now that is a classic example of
what not to do. That guy is going to spend his entire
evening dancing to impress but will sadly go home alone.
If he wants to get some action, he’ll have to improve on
his moves. Girls like a guy who can dance, it’s a fact!’
‘At least he’s giving it a go. Actually, come to think of it,
I haven’t exactly seen you cut a rug on the dance floor in
a while. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw
you dance.’
Chris frowns. ‘Can’t you?’
‘No. Why is that?’
‘I do dance.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Naked in front of the mirror, perhaps.’
‘Piss off, Si! I had a little jig at Gary’s wedding last year.
Besides, I haven’t exactly seen you dance for ages, either.’
‘True. Although, when I was in London I would often
shake a leg, especially at the weekend.’
‘I got tired of it, to be honest with you.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you never really were into the clubbing
scene.’
64
Chris shrugs. ‘I much prefer sitting at the bar and having
a chat.’
‘Like an old man?’
‘Yeah, like an old man.’
Consuming a few more cocktails from the bar, Chris falls
into conversation with a couple of lads from Amsterdam
while I purchase an ecstasy tablet from a dodgy looking
Czech guy in a baseball cap. Within minutes, I’m rushing
my tits off and gurning like a trooper. Unable to resist the
lure of the music I spring board myself into the crowd,
and with a grin the size of Siberia I begin to cut shapes
into the air and dance like I’ve never danced before.
Finding some space by a group of girls near to the DJ
booth, I quickly light a cigarette and lose myself in the
music. I glance up in the flickering strobe light and catch
the eye of a girl dancing a few metres away. She tosses her
head back and flashes me a sensual smile. Inspired by her
energy and rhythm, we find a connection and I immediately
know that for the rest of the night she will be mine.
When I first arrived in London, the club scene exploded
in a cloud of ecstasy and more than happy to go along for
the ride, I would hit the town most weekends with my
new student buddies. Until then, I’d lived a pretty quiet
existence in Daventry, smoking a few joints and getting
pissed with my friends in the local pubs. The club scene
was something new to me and discovering the pleasure of
Love Doves, my world was to rapidly change. Around that
time, I had never considered myself to be a good mover on
the dance floor. Dancing was not in our culture, girls
danced. Most guys just stood around the edges, drinking
heavily and eyeing up the talent. Ecstasy changed all this
for me, and using the drug to break down those self-conscious
barriers, I was surprised to learn that rhythm was
something quite instinctive to a human. There was some-
65
thing tribal about dancing in an ocean of perspiring bodies.
The DJ was our leader and taking us on a roller coaster
ride of hedonistic pleasure for those hours on the dance
floor, we felt united and free.
All of a sudden a hand slaps down on my shoulder. I spin
around and see Chris fighting to squeeze his stiff body
through the hoards of spaced out clubbers.
‘Have some water,’ he yells, patting me on the back.
Putting my arm around his shoulder, I give him a loving
squeeze. ‘I love you, man!’
‘Yeah, whatever, mate,’ Chris sniggers.
He hands me a cigarette and receiving a light from a
sweaty guy gurning next to me, I admire the beauty of a
flame.
Grabbing my arm, Chris tries to regain my attention.
‘Those dudes from Amsterdam are going to another place.’
‘What place?’
‘I don’t know, they didn’t say. Another club near here, I
think. They’re nice guys. Are you coming?’
‘Nah, I’m staying here.’
‘Are you going to be all right on your own?’
I spin around and shake my ass. ‘No problemo!’
* * *
Ivan and Petre are twenty-six year old pleasure seekers.
Living in Amsterdam for most of their lives, they have a
very liberal attitude to life – a Dutch attitude, which in
many ways I can relate to. Petre isn’t shy in telling me that
he has slept with prostitutes in the Red Light District, and
Ivan … well … let’s just say he isn’t shy. They seem like
nice guys, harmless and only interested in making sure
that my night in Prague is one to remember.
66
‘Have you been to Amsterdam, Chris?’ Ivan asks, handing
his ticket over to the girl in the cloakroom.
‘No, but I’ve heard shit loads about it.’
‘Amsterdam is the best! You should make a trip.’
He takes his coat and winks at the girl. She blushes and
turns away. Petre is waiting for us outside. We hail a cab
and head to the club.
‘Hey, Chris, you like to schmoke?’ Ivan grins.
‘Yeah, sometimes.’
‘In Amsterdam you can schmoke the best. One puff and
you are in fucking cuckoo land.’
They both laugh.
The cab quickly pulls up outside a large building about
five minutes away from the Roxy Nightclub. There’s no
name above the entrance, just a stocky guy standing in
front of a closed door.
‘How do you know about this place?’ I ask Ivan.
‘Surfing the internet,’ he replies with a grin. ‘Like I said,
it’s the best place in Prague.’
We all jump out of the cab and walk over to the guy
dressed in black. Petre hands him a pile of cash, and with
a smirk the guy swings open the door. On the internet, I
think to myself as we step inside. We walk into a luxurious
room that’s flooded in red light. The air smells sweet
and there’s a small fountain in the corner surrounded by
many large tropical plants. Two men sit on a white leather
sofa accompanied by a girl wearing a blue glittery dress.
Petre sits down on another sofa while Ivan drags me over
to the bar.
‘What do you think?’ he asks, raising his blonde eyebrows.
‘There are four other rooms, one large room with
a dance floor and three … more private rooms.’
I order a vodka and lemonade, and nearly choke when I
find out how much it costs.
‘Come on!’ Ivan yells. ‘Let’s go to the dance room!’
We walk behind a red velvet curtain and then behind
67
another curtain leading into a fairly large room. Candles
flicker on tables and a disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
Colourful lights spin across the room to the sound of
cheesy Britpop, and two girls flirt with three drunken
businessmen standing in the middle of the dance floor.
Four more girls sit pretty at the bar.
‘Where’s Petre?’
Ivan shrugs. ‘Don’t worry about him, which girls do you
like?’
Avoiding eye contact with a brunette at the bar, I turn to
Ivan.
‘You what?’
‘Which girls?’
Suddenly, Petre bursts into the room in fits of laugher
with two pretty girls wrapped around him. I acknowledge
him with a nod, and watch as he takes turns kissing them
both on the lips.
‘In London you’d pay twice as much for this quality,
wouldn’t you?’ Ivan grins. ‘Especially for a threesome.’
‘A threesome?’
‘Ya.’
‘I don’t know, I’ve never had one.’
Ivan looks shocked. ‘You have never had a threesome?
Me and Petre like to do this very much, but in Amsterdam
it is a little expensive.’
Ivan pushes me over to the bar.
‘I am having those two on the left, OK?’ he smiles. ‘You
have the other two.’
What am I doing? I shouldn’t be doing this. More to the
point, I can’t afford to do this.
‘Buy them each a drink,’ Ivan whispers in my ear.
‘Both of them?’
‘Ya. The more drinks you buy them, the better time you
will have.’
Ivan nudges my arm, and winks.
Feeling well out of my depth, I begin to think of Si in the
68
Roxy Nightclub shaking his booty on the dance floor and
having a good time.
‘I’m leaving!’ I yell to Ivan over the music. ‘This really
isn’t my scene.’
Ivan looks surprised, but shrugging his shoulders he
reaches out and shakes my hand.
‘Are you sure?’ he smiles.
‘Yeah, I’m a bit short of cash.’
‘No problem, Chris, It was nice meeting you.’
‘Yeah, you too, have a good time!’
‘This will not be difficult here,’ he grins, turning to the
girls.
I walk past Petre, who is too busy getting his balls
squeezed to notice my goodbye wave, and head straight
out of the room, but I get confused and step behind the
wrong curtain into one of the private rooms. I’m suddenly
shocked to see a naked man lying face down on a heart
shaped bed. A topless woman with enormous breasts
kneels beside him, and proceeds to spank his bare bottom
with her white stiletto. They both turn and look at me, and
I gasp as I realise the guy peering over his shoulder is
none other than Cliff! Cliff the journalist from our hostel -
the journalist with a wife and an eighteen-month old baby
… the journalist, who was supposed to be crawling into
bed and reading his book! Leaping back in horror, I fall
through the curtain and crash to the floor. I quickly clamber
to my feet and sprint for the exit.
Hailing a cab, I burn back to the Roxy Nightclub. It doesn’t
take me long to find Si’s big mop-head bobbing up and
down on the dance floor. Fighting my way through the
sweaty bodies, I grab his attention and wave him over to
the side.
‘Cliff was getting his bottom spanked with a stiletto?’ Si
smiles, and spins around. ‘Awesome!’
‘Uh-huh, I saw it with my very own eyes.’
‘Fucking hell, are you sure it was Cliff?’
69
‘Of course I am! It was definitely him, I didn’t imagine it.’
‘The dirty little toe-rag, you wait till I tell his wife.’
‘It’s not funny.’
‘Yes it is,’ Si laughs. ‘It’s pissing hilarious, “Uh … sorry,
guys, I’m tired. I think I’ll just crawl into bed and read my
book” – yeah right! You caught him red handed in some
hooker joint.’
‘Shit, I hope we don’t bump into him at the hostel. He
saw me. He knows that I know what he was doing.’
‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll avoid him. Look, forget
about that for a second, what happened to you?’
‘Well, before I had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing
Cliff’s butt cheeks being spanked, I was minutes away from
having a threesome with two blondes.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way! But I decided not to.’
‘Why, you crazy fool?’
‘It would have cost shit loads. And, anyway, I don’t need
to pay for it.’
‘Bollocks! You chickened out, didn’t you?’
‘Fuck off! I’ve got to be careful with my money. Let’s
change the subject, shall we?’
‘Pussy!’ Si shouts.
I knock back my drink. ‘Step aside, hippie boy, it’s my
turn to dance!’
‘You?’
‘Yeah, you didn’t think I was just going to stand at the
side and look moody all night, did you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Well, you were wrong. My night isn’t going to be ruined
by seeing Cliff’s arse.’
With a yeeeeeehaaaaaa! I leap onto the dance floor and
begin reinventing my best moves; flying a kite, shadow
boxer and making a sandwich. We dance until the end. Si
gets a kiss from some girl and I, for once in my surreal life,
discover that dancing is actually quite fun.
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Arbeit Macht Frei
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 7: Arbeit Macht Frei
Swinging my heavy rucksack over my shoulder, I turn
towards the door and accidentally hit Chris in the face.
‘Careful, you idiot!’ he snaps, rubbing his forehead.
‘It was an accident.’
Muttering to himself, Chris battles to close his bag that
bulges at the seams.
‘Quick, it’s ten minutes past ten. We’re supposed to be
out of the room.’
He looks over at me and sighs. ‘Hold on!’
I spin around and bump into Chris a second time.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ he yells, giving me a hard shove.
I stagger backwards and lose my balance as the weight of
my rucksack pulls me to the ground. I lie helplessly on my
back with my feet in the air like an overturned turtle.
‘You bastard!’ I cry, wrestling to get my arms out of
the straps.
Jumping to my feet, Chris looks worried by the psychotic
expression on my face.
‘Don’t do anything silly,’ he mutters, edging back
towards the window. ‘We’re both very tired after last
night.’
‘Don’t you fucking push me over!’ I spit.
Chris presses a finger to his lips. ‘Shush, listen.’
I refrain from punching him in the arm. ‘What is it?’
‘I think Cliff’s in his room.’
71
‘So?’
Chris grabs a plastic cup off the bedside table and places
it against the wall. ‘I can hear movement.’
‘My God, you’re a twat.’
‘Shush, he’ll hear us.’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck. Who cares about Cliff, anyway?
It was you who saw him … not me!’
‘Come on, Si, let’s get the hell out of here.’
Poking our heads around the door, we peer into the dark
deserted corridor.
‘If I see him, I’ll fucking die,’ Chris whispers.
‘I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s either hiding in his room
or exploring other dark corners of the city.’
‘OK. Well, let’s just go for it.’
Chris follows close behind as I tiptoe out into the corridor.
I pause outside Cliff’s room.
‘What you stopping for?’ he snaps.
‘I can hear movement. Yes, you’re right. Cliff is definitely
in his room.’
‘Si, keep moving, you prick!’
‘Shush…’
All of a sudden, we hear a key rattling in the lock. Chris
shoves me out of the way and sprints over to the stairs at
the far end of the corridor. I lose my balance and crash
against the wall. Cliff swings open the door to his room
and peers out.
‘Hello, Simon,’ he smiles.
‘Cliff, hey! How are ya?’
‘I’m great. Are you leaving so soon?’
I glance down at the straps on my shoulders. ‘Yep, it certainly
looks like it. It’s … uh … time to hit the road jack.
Time to motor on to pastures new.’
Cliff leans against the doorframe and folds his arms. He’s
naked apart from a small yellow towel wrapped around
his waist. Feeling extremely uncomfortable, I dart a quick
glance up and down the corridor.
72
‘Is everything all right?’ he asks.
‘Uh-huh, everything is hunky-dory,’ I quickly reply.
Sorry, but I’m in a bit of a rush. Chris, the idiot, left his
credit card in the club last night, so we have to go back
and get it. That’s why he’s not with me at the moment.
He’s … uh … gone.’
‘Oh, I hope he finds it.’
‘Yeah. I hope so, too,’ I grin falsely.
Cliff frowns. ‘Simon, are you sure you’re all right? You
seem a little flustered.’
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I nod enthusiastically. ‘OK, I really better
be going, have a great time in Prague.’
I turn and make my way down the corridor.
‘Simon, wait!’ Cliff shouts. ‘We haven’t swapped email
addresses!’
I close my eyes and release a deep sigh.
‘We have to exchange emails,’ he beams. ‘I want to know
how your trip is going.’
Cliff disappears inside his room and returns with a
business card.
I peer down at the card, “Cliff Barnes, Journalist – likes
his bottom being spanked.” I slide it into my back pocket.
He hands me a piece of paper and a pen. I scribble down
my email.
‘Excellent! Thank you, Simon.’
We shake hands. Suddenly, a young couple carrying
rucksacks appear at the top of the stairs. They both stare
at Cliff standing in the corridor in his towel. Embarrassed,
I acknowledge them with a smile.
‘OK, Cliff, I’m off. Mustn’t keep those gas chambers
waiting.’
‘Of course not, good luck. Oh, and say hi to Chris for
me.’
‘Sure.’
I turn on my heels and quickly head down the stairs.
73
Dumping our rucksacks in the boot of the car, we decide
to grab something to eat in an attempt at sobering ourselves
up a bit. Walking towards the train station, we find
a coffee stand in the park outside. Buying a cinnamonlaced
coffee and a couple of chocolate-coated doughnuts
from a scruffy teenager, we plonk ourselves down on an
empty bench facing a water fountain. Stressed out, whitecollared
businessmen with black briefcases rush to work,
while chilled out students slowly stroll to university with
their colourful folders. Devouring the coffee and the
doughnuts, I begin to feel human again and reaching for
my cigarettes, I pause as an old homeless woman staggers
towards me. Reaching out her hand she grins a toothless
smile, and feeling in a good mood and humbled by her
cheerfulness, I offer her one. Beaming, she snatches the
entire packet out of my hand and starts to cackle as she
places a cigarette between her cracked lips. Amused by
her reaction to my generosity and despite losing all of my
cigarettes, I watch with satisfaction as she shuffles away.
With new energy, we race back to the car and crawl
through the rush hour-traffic. Heading north out of the city,
I grab the map and begin to study it with keen interest.
‘Hey, Chris! There’s a place near the Polish border where
you can see strange rock formations.’
‘Rock formations?’
‘Yeah, the Ayers-Teplice Rocks. We should check it out.’
Chris frowns. ‘But what about Auschwitz?’
‘What about it?’
‘I thought we were heading there next?’
‘We are, but what’s the rush? We have to pass by the
place anyway, so we may as well make an afternoon of it.
You’ll regret it if we don’t.’
‘Uh … no I won’t. I don’t give a shit about a bunch of
frigging rocks. Once you’ve seen one rock you’ve seen
them all.’
74
* * *
In a bid to quench Si’s bizarre new thirst for geology, we
arrive at the Teplice Rocks in the early afternoon. The
main road leading to the entrance point is lined with tour
buses and turning left into the main car park, I stupidly
pull up beside a coach full of screaming school kids. A
swarm of excited brats leap off the bus and hover around
the Sierra. Their teacher, who looks flustered and
extremely disorganised, dashes off the coach after them.
She tries in vain to round them up, but fails miserably. A
little kid with curly black hair stares at us through the
window and sticks out his tongue.
‘Charming,’ Si smiles.
The kid runs off and joins his friends beside the coach,
whilst their teacher tries desperately to order them into
single file.
‘Si, are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘Of course it is, it’s supposed to be incredible! According
to this leaflet there’s a big waterfall inside a cave.’
‘Yeah, but there’s nothing worse than trying to take artistic
photographs when you’re surrounded by irritating little
squirts, how am I supposed to concentrate?’
‘Chris, don’t worry, ‘oh, great master of photography’,
we’ll jump ahead of them.’
‘OK, but I warn you now, if they get in the way of my
shot I won’t be responsible for my actions.’
Waiting in the queue at the ticket office, two kids standing
in front begin to pull faces at us. Si smiles back, but I
ignore them and peer anxiously over at their teacher.
‘Come on,’ I mutter. ‘How long does it take to buy a frigging
ticket?’
‘Chris, chill out would ya! What’s your problem?’
‘It’s these bloody kids. They’re a pain in the ass!’
75
The two kids in front continue to pull faces and giggle.
One of the little rug-rats stamps on my foot, while the
other pokes me in the stomach and sticks out his tongue.
This is the last straw. I peer down at them with an evil
stare and release a low monster-like growl. They stop giggling,
and with frightened faces they quickly push their
way to the front of the queue. We finally reach the counter
and enter the park.
Studying a map of the area stuck to an information
board, we decide to follow a 5km trail looping around the
national park. Striding ahead of the school kids, we weave
through a forest and quickly reach an impressive group of
bizarre rock formations. They reach for the sky from the
forest floor, some over a hundred metres tall. I feel inspired
to take a few photographs, but just as I’m about to start
snapping away, a million excited school kids run into the
frame. They swarm around me like flies around shit. The
teacher stumbles around the corner, shouting at the kids
in Czech. They ignore her and continue to race around in
all directions. I take a disappointing picture before urging
Si to press on.
Once again, we escape the chaos and quickly make some
distance. We eventually arrive at an incredible natural
stone archway, which leads into a passageway between
the rocks. Beaming with joy, I look through the viewfinder
and just as I’m about to take a beautiful picture, a large
group of pensioners begin to file out of the archway. They
gather in a huge semi-circle at the entrance, all thirty-six
of them. A geeky tour guide babbles facts at high volume
through a crackling megaphone. Seeing there’s no way to
squeeze past, we wait impatiently for the tour guide to
end his spiel. I look over my shoulder and notice the
school kids are catching up fast.
‘We’re surrounded,’ Si grins.
‘This is ridiculous!’ I scream.
Marching over to the tour group, I take a step forward
76
and squeeze through the crowd. I make it past the first
O.A.P and even manage to weave around the second, but
as I fight to push past the third, the gap suddenly closes
behind me and I find myself surrounded. Si pokes his
head in between the pensioners, who seem to have collapsed
into a state of rigor mortis.
‘Entschuldigung Sie bitte,’ he mumbles, turning sideways
and using his slim build to slip past.
Standing on tiptoe, I look over the white perms and
shiny baldheads and see the school kids racing towards
the tour group.
‘Right, that’s it! Out of my way!’ I command, moving a
sour faced old codger to one side.
Charging through the crowd to the sound of cursing and
grunting as I step on fragile toes, I eventually make it to
the other side. Standing in the entrance of the archway, I
lean against the moss covered rock face and catch my
breath. Si suddenly slides up next to me.
‘Hey, how did you get through so quickly?’ I laugh.
‘Years of practice in the mosh pit,’ he smugly replies.
‘These old dudes should hold the brats up for a while …
come on, let’s keep moving!’
We high-five and disappear through the archway.
After a few hours of walking around the trail, taking pictures
of waterfalls, dramatic views and the tops of people’s
heads, we both agree that we have severe ‘rock formation’
overload. Deciding to head back to the car, we
fight our way through the ever-increasing crowds and
eventually find ourselves hurtling down country lanes
towards southern Poland.
It isn’t long before we approach a long queue of stationary
trucks at the Polish border. A hard-faced Polish truck
driver peers down at our car as we crawl towards passport
control. I look up and grin. He doesn’t smile back; he just
continues to stare at us with a look of hostility in his eyes.
77
Joining a shorter queue of cars, we crawl towards the
blockade that stretches across the width of the road and
grabbing my camera, I quickly snap a picture of the sign
for the Polish Republic and a flag that flaps proudly in the
breeze.
‘Careful,’ Si whispers, ‘we don’t want to draw any
unnecessary attention to ourselves.’
‘We’re tourists … tourists take photographs!’
‘Yeah, but they probably don’t get many young travellers
passing through this way.’
‘Si, you’re talking shit. Stop being paranoid, just act normal.’
A stern faced officer approaches the car and peers
through my open window. We smile nervously and hand
over our passports. He flicks through them and without
saying a word moves onto the red transit van behind. We
eventually reach the front of the queue and wait at a small
traffic light. It turns green, so we pull up beside two more
uniformed officers. One of the guys opens my door and
gestures for me to get out of the car. He takes my documents
and walks slowly around the Sierra. Pointing at the
boot, I assume he wants to take a look inside. I remove the
small piece of metal that we’ve been using as a rather ineffective
ariel for the radio and, much to the official’s
amusement, I use it as a tool to open the lock. As with all
used cars, our Sierra had a slight imperfection when we
purchased it. The lock on the boot had been drilled out,
possibly by some well equipped thief, and unprepared to
spend money on a new one, we had resigned ourselves to
levering it open with our handy double purpose ariel, or,
piece of metal that Si found in the garden shed. Standing
back, I wait patiently for the official to rummage through
the trash in our boot. Content in his mind that we’re not
criminals (even capable of being criminals) he waves us
through to the next stage. Without any fuss they check and
stamp our passports before raising the barrier. We pull
78
over by a row of shops and cafes on the other side of the
border.
‘So this is Poland!’ Si cries.
‘It sure is, hippie boy!’
‘Hey, we need to change some Traveller’s cheques into
zlotys.’
I frown. ‘Zlotys?’
‘Yeah, it’s the Polish currency.’
‘It’s not the sexiest sounding currency in the world, is
it?’
‘As long as it buys me a few beers, Chris, they can call it
whatever they like.’
We make our way over to an exchange shop where we
change two hundred euros into zlotys, and then pop to the
shop next door where we insure the Sierra third party for
two weeks. Skipping back to the car, we feel ready to
explore the depths of southern Poland.
Si seems happy for me to drive and passing through a
number of small grey towns, we observe dozens of shaven
headed youths hanging around bus stops and drinking
cans of super strength lager at the side of the road. It
reminds me of England in the 70’s and 80’s, with the skinhead
culture that had become a fashion amongst the
unemployed and disgruntled youths of the time. Concrete
tower blocks fill the suburbs like monuments to the communist
era, and feeling unable to just pull over and grab
something to eat without our car being vandalized or
stolen, we push on into the night.
Spying a 24-hour petrol station that serves fast food, we
decide to take a break. Asking a young lad inside the shop
for directions to the town of Oswiëcim, he rather overenthusiastically
opens a huge road map out on the counter
in an honorable attempt to practice his English. Patiently
playing along with him, he gives me a long series of completely
incomprehensible directions, which I immediately
forget. I thank him anyway, in the hope of encouraging
79
him to learn more, and return to the car with a couple of
giant sized hot dogs and two cups of piping hot tea.
Picking up road signs for Oswiëcim, we’re eventually
directed off a motorway and find ourselves weaving
through the countryside. Wisps of fog glide over the bonnet
of the car like spirits in the night – ghosts of the
Auschwitz victims haunting our path. We eventually
reach the suburban town of Oswiëcim, a place with little
character and we follow an old train line, which leads us
all the way to the gates of Auschwitz. Parking up at the
side of the road, we decide to sleep in the car outside the
concentration camp. Wrestling to get comfortable, I glance
out of the window at the large wall that surrounds the
camp. I find it impossible to remove the thought from my
mind of the horrors that must have been committed
inside. During Hitler’s reign of terror over 6 million Jews
were exterminated. Both Auschwitz and Birkenau are living
museums to one of the worst atrocities of humanity in
modern history. As a child, I had studied pictures in history
books of the naked twisted bodies of Auschwitz victims
piled high in mass graves. It made me realise humans
are simply flesh and bone, hair and teeth and that all of
the dignity and fear we feel in life will eventually be
stripped away.
* * *
The sound of a truck’s horn wakes me with a start.
Striking the engine, I switch on the window screen wipers
and wait for the blades to remove the film of water covering
the glass.
‘Chris, we need to move the car!’
‘What?’
‘The car! We need to move it!’
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Trucks roar past on the busy main road, the swooshing
of their tyres against the wet tarmac frightening us into
action.
‘Bad place to park, or what?’ Chris mutters.
‘It seemed quiet last night.’
Waiting for a gap in the traffic, Chris swings the car out
onto the main road and turns into the gateway of the
Auschwitz car park. An attendant dressed in jeans and
wearing a high-visibility vest waves us through the barrier,
and crossing the empty car park I pull up beneath a
giant oak tree. Taking a moment to get my head together, I
open the car door and feel drops of rain on my face. I sit
motionless, allowing the water to refresh my tired eyes.
Ruffling my hair I climb out of the car and touch my toes,
my back aches and my neck feels stiff from resting my
head at a strange angle against the window. Collecting the
empty crisp packets and sweet wrappers stuffed into
every available orifice of the car’s interior, I empty the ashtray
and begin to fill an empty Tesco’s carrier bag with
rubbish. Chris begins to fold up all of the loose items of
clothing – coats, damp socks and jumpers strewn across
the back seat. Tying up the plastic bag, I walk over to a bin
beneath the large oak tree and toss it inside. The lid closes
with a satisfying clang. Feeling the heavy droplets of
water falling into my hair from the branches of the tree, I
take a deep breath and watch in amusement as Chris
struggles to change his T-shirt in the small confines of the
car. Deciding to freshen up a bit before heading off to the
museum, I rub some toothpaste on my teeth and change
my socks and T-shirt. In an attempt at looking a bit
smarter and possibly more studious, I dig out my blue
roll-neck jumper from the bottom of my rucksack.
‘I think we must be the first ones here,’ Chris mutters,
peeling a banana.
‘Yeah, I suppose it is only eight-thirty.’
Switching on the radio, we listen to some soothing clas-
81
sical music on a polish station and munch happily on
some stale crackers. Seeing the first tourist coach arrive in
the car park, we decide to go and check things out. I step
out of the car and look up at the sky. It’s stopped raining,
but thick black storm clouds hang menacingly overhead.
We walk across the car park adjacent to the high perimeter
wall, and quickly reach the main entrance to the red
brick building. Poking our heads inside, the main foyer is
empty apart from a girl wiping trays behind the counter of
a small cafeteria. Standing in the empty foyer, we study
black and white photographs hung in a line along the
walls. Suddenly, a well-groomed middle-aged woman in a
long black raincoat enters the foyer. She shakes her
umbrella and smiles over at us.
‘Hallo,’ she beams. ‘I’m sorry, but you are a little early.
Please take some time to read the information.’
‘Thank you,’ I reply.
The information on the boards has an English translation,
and we mill around the room devouring facts. A
coach party files into the building and they greet us as if
they were entering our home.
After sometime, the lady with the raincoat informs us
that we can now purchase a ticket for the museum and
also watch a short film in the cinema. Following her
instructions, we quickly find ourselves being herded into
a small cinema at the end of the hall. The place quickly
fills up with people all chaotically trying to find a seat in
the dark, and hearing the projector whir into life we watch
an emotional fifteen-minute documentary about Auschwitz
and Birkenau.
Exiting the cinema we’re led into a quad. Looking
around, I recognize it from the documentary and I feel the
hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. Nothing has
changed. It all looks exactly the same as it did in the film,
and seeing where the prisoners were executed by firing
squad on the grass adjacent to the sinister looking barbed
82
wire walkway, the harsh reality of what happened here is
made immediately clear. Breaking away from the other
tourists, we pass a tall watchtower and I find myself giving
it a wide berth. The spotlight on the top follows us
around like a large eye, and I try to imagine how terrible
it must have been to be imprisoned like this – to live in
fear of being shot by a bored SS guard with a rifle who’s
watching your every move.
Chris nudges me. ‘I think that building over there is one
of the gas chambers.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I recognize the tall chimney from the film.’
Walking cautiously over to the small grey building, we
peer inside. I feel a little shaken by the thought of what
happened here. It was mostly women, children and the
infirm that were murdered … the ones who couldn’t work.
‘This is sick,’ Chris whispers, as we enter the cold, dark
building.
I walk over to the window and peer out through the
metal bars. We’re stood in the room where they had been
ordered to remove their clothing, believing they were going
to take a shower and be disinfected. I feel physically sick as
I follow Chris into the main chamber. Dim orange lights
hang from the ceiling, and a vase of flowers has been placed
in the middle of the concrete floor. I touch the damp walls
and can hear the screams of the thousands of men, women
and children who perished in this very room. I can see the
terror in their eyes as the Zyklon B pellets, a crystallized
form of hydrogen cyanide, fell around their feet from
vents in the ceiling – killing them not instantly, but after
fifteen to twenty painful minutes. I feel suddenly nauseous
and follow Chris through an open doorway into the
next room. The sight of the two furnaces is too much to
take in, and I find myself backing away. All I can think
about is how anybody could think it was right to do this.
How could they physically put it on themselves to extract
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gold teeth, collect rings, jewelry and even shave the
corpse’s heads before burning the bodies in the furnaces?
On average 8,000 people were gassed everyday at
Auschwitz and Birkenau. By the end of the Holocaust, a
horrific six million people had been murdered … six million
innocent lives taken away.
Making our way outside, the clouds burst open and the
rain thunders down on Auschwitz. We run across the
courtyard and shelter beneath a doorway opposite the firing
range.
‘This place is truly horrendous,’ I shout to Chris over the
noise of the rain.
A man stood next to us smiles. ‘Expect to see what Hitler
called ‘ethnic cleansing’,’ he bellows in a broad Yorkshire
accent.
‘We’ve just been to the gas chamber,’ I reply, shaking my
head. ‘It’s a deeply disturbing experience.’
‘Yes, that it is. I’ve been here before, you know. I’m a history
teacher at an inner city comprehensive school in
Leeds. Coming to a place like this helps me to appreciate
what I teach my students. I’m here with my wife and children,
Amy and Ben.’
The two young kids look wet and miserable. They peer
up from beneath the hoods of their orange raincoats.
‘Say hello, kids.’
They look shyly away.
The guy’s wife forces a smile, but the man either forgets
or doesn’t think to introduce her.
‘They’re all a little tired,’ he continues. ‘It’s been a busy
few days. We flew into Warsaw on Wednesday and I hired
a car. Poland is a very interesting country, but Auschwitz
was on the top of my…’ he turns to his wife, ‘sorry … our
holiday itinerary. The kids wanted to go to Spain like last
year and play on the beach for the whole holiday, but I
thought I’d introduce them to history and what better than
to start with the Auschwitz concentration camp.’
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Chris nods. ‘Oh, I see.’
‘They might not appreciate it now, but they’ll benefit
from this someday.’
He turns to his wife again. She opens her mouth to say
something, but misses her chance.
‘When they go to comprehensive school and do projects
on the Holocaust, they’ll be the best in their class. Gold
stars all round. Well, looks like the rains slowing down,’
the guy observes, peering up at the sky. ‘Come on, folks.
We’d better be going!’
We watch as he marches off across the quad with his
family trailing reluctantly behind. Turning on his heels he
calls over in our direction.
‘Make sure you stop by the medical rooms. It’s where
they used to carry out the sterilization experiments.’
‘OK … thanks, we will,’ Chris waves.
Giving it a few more minutes, we eventually walk over
to the main gates where all of the prisoners were kept.
Above the gate is the sinister motto: “Arbeit Macht Frei”
(work makes one free). We walk along the main street past
brick buildings or ‘Blocks’ where the prisoners slept. The
buildings look fairly modern and are in surprisingly good
condition, making the recentness of this atrocity seem
even more horrifying. All of the photographs I had seen in
history books had been in black and white – images from
a time before, when the world was different, but seeing
the place in 3D and in colour makes it all seem suddenly
very real. We pass the ‘Death Block’ where prisoners who
caused trouble or tried to escape died from starvation, firing
squad or lethal injection. Next we examine the actual
wooden beam where twelve Polish prisoners were hung,
in the biggest public execution in the KL Auschwitz.
Januz Pogonowski, Leon Rajzer and Tadeuz Rapacz are
just three of the twelve men who died right here on this
very spot.
Behind glass in another block, mountains of hair, false
85
teeth, shoes and suitcases are on display. Their belongings
were stored in giant hangers, nothing was wasted – even
lamps were made out of skin cut from the dead. In the
next block, framed photographs of people imprisoned at
Auschwitz hang on the wall in a long line on opposite
sides off the corridor. I’m shocked by how similar they
look to people I know at home, how similar they look to
the young guys with shaved heads we saw on the way up
here. The pictures are so clear and sharp they could’ve
been taken yesterday. I stare into their eyes, they stare
back blankly at the camera in their stripy prison uniforms.
Under each photograph there is a date of how long they
lasted at the labour camp. Some died after two years, some
after only two weeks.
We leave Auschwitz and drive the 3km to the vast
Birkenau camp, a sub-camp of Auschwitz, where the
largest numbers of Jews were exterminated. With 300
prison barracks and 4 gas chambers, which were able to
hold 2,000 people, the camp could facilitate in total up to
200,000 inmates. When the trains arrived, the Jews were
separated into two lines and endured what was known as
the ‘selection process’. The chosen ones went to work,
while the others were sent immediately to the gas chambers
at the end of the line. We look around the appallingly
cramped conditions of the barracks where the prisoners
lived. It’s a large area, and we find ourselves weaving
between bunk beds and standing at cracked washbasins.
Returning along the train track to the gates, I look over
my shoulder at the camp one last time. I had never had
much faith in humanity – Auschwitz and Birkenau only
confirm this to me. As a species, it seems clear we have a
long way to travel along the evolutionary chain before
reaching anything close to what we might call perfection.
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Fresh Fish
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 8: Fresh Fish
I feel fresh. My clothes smell clean, my hair has been
washed with the finest Polish shampoo and my armpits are
dancing the Salsa. With a skip in my step, I make a tasty
salt and vinegar flavoured crisp sandwich while Si merrily
sucks the vitamin C out of a big juicy orange. With breakfast
out of the way, we hesitate no longer than necessary
and waving farewell to the trucker’s café outside Oswiëcim,
we head north for the Great Masurian Lakes.
By-passing Warsaw, we race across the flat open countryside
and begin to see where the wealth of Poland hides.
Large houses with acres of land and expensive 4×4’s litter
the roadside. Even the girls working in the petrol stations
look cuter and less repressed somehow, which is great!
‘Right, that’s it!’ Si smiles. ‘I’m gonna do it!’
‘Do what?’
‘I’m gonna catch my dinner.’
I turn to him and laugh. ‘Catch your dinner? You’re joking,
aren’t ya?’
‘Nope.’
‘You mean by using traditional hunting methods such as
trapping a wild pig or spearing a deer?’
‘Uh … no, I’m talking about grabbing a rod and going
fishing!’
‘Si, the last time you tried to catch a fish you fell in the
canal.’
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‘I slipped.’
‘You tripped more like, you dumb ass. My God, if you
think about it, we wouldn’t last five-minutes in the wilderness
without food, would we?’
Si shakes his head. ‘Probably not. In fact, I’d give us two
days max before we’d be heading off in search of the nearest
McDonald’s. It’s mad really, you’d think it would be a
necessary part of a child’s education to learn how to survive
in the wild.’
‘Yeah, but then I suppose in our society it’s not really
seen as relevant anymore. I mean, why waste valuable
time learning to fish or hunt, when you can just pop down
the local fish ‘n’ chip shop and buy yourself a nice piece
of battered cod.’
‘Chris, fishing today isn’t just about obtaining food for
survival, it’s a sport and a hobby as well, you know. It’s
about keeping the skills alive. Remember that kid at school,
who used to jump lessons so he could fish pike down the
reservoir. His fishing knowledge was passed down to him
by his old man, just as his father had taught him.’
‘So, fishing isn’t just an excuse to get away from your
nagging wife, then?’
Si nods vigorously. ‘Oh yeah, of course it is, but some
people just love to fish all the same.’
Grabbing the pocket SAS Survival Guide from his bag,
Si flicks to the first page. ‘Listen to what John Wiseman
says here, “survival is the art of staying alive. Combine the
instinct for survival with knowledge, training and kit and
you will be ready for anything.”’
I peer down at the book. ‘Who’s John Wiseman?’
‘The author of this book,’ Si replies. ‘He served in the
SAS for twenty-six years.’
‘Hardcore. I bet he’s seen a bit of action in his time.’
‘Damn right, you don’t make it into the SAS unless your
balls are made of steel.’
‘Heavy.’
88
‘Chris, do you think you could make it into the SAS?’
‘No problem! Might have to quit the fags first, though.’
‘Oh yeah, you’d have too. I’m telling ya, those boys can
trek for weeks with a pack the weight of a baby elephant.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘It’s true! It’s all about training. If you put your mind to
it you can accomplish anything.’
‘What, even if you’re a natural born pussy like yourself?’
‘If it’s a matter of life and death, then, yes,’ Si grins.
‘Shit, maybe we should study this book a bit more before
we get to Russia. I’ve got an awful feeling we’re going to
need it.’
‘Study all you like, but don’t worry too much.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, some things are just out of your control.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, take death for example.’
‘Jesus Christ, Si! Enough about death, I’m still traumatized
by our little visit to Auschwitz.’
‘Death affects us all, my friend. There’s no point ignoring
it.’
‘“Ooh, hello everyone, my name’s Simon and I’m here to
liven up the party!” You prick.’
‘Hey, cut the piss-take. This is serious shit.’
‘You could’ve fooled me, hippie boy.’
‘Don’t get me wrong; I’m not purposefully trying to
sound morbid here. Its just death is a reality we have to face
everyday. There’s so many ways it can happen there’s no
way you can ever totally prevent it. Sure, you can limit
your chances of it happening by living a safe, healthy life
and by teaching yourself a few basic survival skills. But at
the end of the day, when that large piece of masonry from
the roof of a church comes crashing down on your head
and squashes you into the pavement, there ain’t a hell of
a lot you can do about it.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
89
‘Chris, don’t let that put you off, though, it’s still good
stuff to know. All I’m saying is there’s no point living in
fear of what might happen, because ultimately it’s not in
your control.’
As I drive cautiously over an old disused railway track, I
can see the sparkling blue water of Lake Wigry flashing
past through the trees. Pulling off the road, we crawl down
a bumpy path leading to the water’s edge and ditch the car
close to a wooden jetty that reaches out across the flat surface
of the lake. Walking cautiously over the wooden slats,
I squat down at the end of the platform and glance out
across the tranquil view. I hear Si clomping clumsily behind
me, and brace myself as he pretends to push me off the
edge. Disturbed by the commotion, a large Canada goose
hiding in the dry reeds beats its wings and lifts itself a few
feet into the air, before crashing clumsily back into the
water. It disappears with a honk.
‘This place is perfect,’ Si smiles.
‘It’s beautiful!’ I sing, dipping my fingers in the water.
Ripples suddenly appear all around the platform. ‘Hoooha,
ride the ripples!’
‘Shush!’ Si hisses. ‘You’ll scare the fish away?’
Pausing in thought, I furrow my brow. ‘Do fish have ears?’
Si shrugs. ‘Fuck knows, but I’m sure you’re supposed to
be quiet. Maybe they feel the vibrations.’
Climbing slowly to my feet, I tiptoe back along the platform
and sprint across the grass to the car. Popping the
boot with the ariel, I rummage through the junk and grab
hold of the fishing rod that we’d thrown in at the last
minute – along with a load of other crap we thought might
come in useful. I untie the faded plastic bag wrapped
around the reel and extend the telescopic rod, a revolution
in fishing equipment introduced sometime in the
1980’s, and untangle the line. Inside the faded carrier bag,
which has probably been tied around the rod since we last
90
went fishing about ten years ago, I find some spare hooks
and more line. Placing them on the ground next to the rod,
I scratch my head in the heat and try to think what else a
man needs in order to catch a fish.
‘Bait!’ I grin.
Reaching deep inside the boot, I manage to grab hold of
a small shovel wedged underneath our bags. Pulling it
free, I stumble backwards and accidentally step on the rod
lying on the ground. I hear it snap.
‘Fuck!’ I cry, glancing down at the broken pieces.
Removing the broken end from the line, I real in the
hook and hold what’s left of my rod in the air. It looks
ridiculous, a mere stump compared to the length it should
be, but tossing the broken end back into the boot I’m keen
to get my hook in the water while the fish are still visible.
Slamming the boot shut, I walk back down the path and
notice Si waving vigorously from the bank.
‘There’s shit loads of fish!’ he cries. ‘You can see the
bubbles! Here’s three worms, I’ll dig up some more. Go on,
get fishing!’
With the tangled ball of worms in my hand, I smile at
Si’s enthusiasm as he eagerly digs a hole by the water’s
edge. I find a suitable spot at the end of the platform and
crouching down on my hands and knees, I thread a nice
juicy worm on the end of the hook and make a float from
a discarded lollypop stick. Weighing the bait down by
tying a stone to the line a few inches above it, I remove the
spare reel from the plastic bag and attach a hook to the
end. Following the same process, I make another float, but
this time from a piece of bark that I manage to peel from
one of the wooden planks used to make the jetty.
‘Good lad,’ Si smiles, admiring my handy work.
Opening his hand he reveals another seething mass of
worms.
Keen to try his luck, I offer him the rod and he makes his
way excitedly to the far side of the jetty.
91
* * *
Squatting down, I extend the fishing line and carefully
lower my worm into the water. Happy with the length, I
toss the stumpy rod over my head and catapult the bait a
good four metres away. Watching the stick bob up and
down on the surface of the water, I feel instantly relaxed.
Glancing over at Chris, I watch as he swings his hook
backwards and forwards like a pendulum, and gathering
enough momentum he lets go of the line and casts it rather
unsuccessfully into the lake. I lean back against a wooden
post and smile. Like Huckleberry Fin and Tom Sawyer,
minus the straw hats and dungarees, we bask in the sunshine
at opposite ends of the jetty. Persuading myself that
it’s unlikely we’ll catch anything, particularly as neither
of us had managed to in our lives before, I close my eyes
and enjoy the peace and quiet.
Around the same time I had said my final farewells to
Emily in Hampstead, I returned to London a few times
during my time in Daventry. On one such occasion, I drove
to Queen’s Park for the weekend to visit my good friend
Dermot. Dermot lived in north London with his girlfriend
in a flat overlooking the Salisbury Road. We would drink
in his local pub, The Salisbury Arms, and then stumble
back to his place after closing for a good old fashion
smoke and a singsong with his guitar called Gareth.
Waking up on his sofa one morning with a killer hangover,
I decided to head out and grab something to eat from the
Organic Café around the corner. Walking into a blustery
winter’s day, I wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck
and half-ran, half-jogged down the quiet main road.
Making myself comfortable inside the busy restaurant, I
92
ordered the eggs benedicts from the menu and a large cappuccino.
I grabbed a newspaper and waited patiently for
my food. Just as I was about to read an interesting article
about Colombia, I suddenly noticed a guy enter the café
with a very familiar face. I peered over my newspaper and
watched as he stormed across the restaurant – it was none
other than my ex-boss, Lawrence Cox! This was a man
who had made the early years of my career a misery, and
was an individual who can only be described as a complete
and utter tosser. Ducking behind the newspaper, I
closed my eyes and prayed for him to pass by. He didn’t.
I lowered the newspaper and we made eye contact.
‘Simon!’ he grinned, looking surprised.
‘Lawrence!’ I beamed, trying to look even more surprised.
‘How are you?’
‘Great!’
I stood up and we shook hands.
Lawrence grabbed a chair and swung it over to my table.
‘Mind if I join you?’
I rolled my eyes, and sighed. ‘Of course not.’
A waitress walked over and took his order.
‘So you’re back from your travels I see?’
‘Yeah, I got back a couple of months ago.’
‘That’s fantastic. How was it?’
‘Incredible. A real adventure.’
‘You went to the States, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right, and to Mexico.’
‘What was Mexico like? I’ve always wanted to see the
cliff diving in Acapulco.’
‘I didn’t go that way, but the Yucatan is beautiful.’
‘Sounds fabulous,’ Lawrence smiled.
‘Yes, it was. How’s Global?’
‘Wonderful! We’ve just finished a complete redesign. It
looks fantastic! A lot has changed since you left. I’ve been
promoted, actually. I’m now the Production Manager,
93
overseeing the development of all new content. Big step,
but I’m enjoying the challenge.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. So, now you’re back what are your plans?’
‘Well, I was thinking –’
‘We’d love to have you back at Global, Simon, but I’m
afraid there isn’t the head count right now,’ Lawrence
interrupted.
Stunned by his assumption, I tried to remain calm.
‘Oh, really?’ I replied pretending to sound disappointed.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Well, it’s a fucking good job I wasn’t planning on coming
back, then, isn’t it?’
Lawrence’s face dropped. ‘Oh, I just assumed you wanted
… so, where are you working now?’
I hesitated before answering. ‘I’m working in the
Midlands at the moment.’
He frowned. ‘What are you doing in the Midlands?’
‘I’m working in distribution.’
‘Distributing internet software?’
‘No, frozen food.’
Lawrence smiled. He wasn’t sure if I was being serious
or not. ‘Frozen food?’
‘Yep, I help distribute frozen oven chips and pizza to the
nation. I’m working temporarily in a freezer-packing
warehouse for Tesco’s.’
‘Golly. Quite a change from Global.’
‘You could say that.’
‘Why on earth would you choose to do that? Didn’t you
want to move back to London?’
‘I’m happy in the Midlands at the moment, thanks.’
‘Where are you based?’
‘Daventry.’
‘Don’t know it. Got a flat?’
‘No, I’m living with my mum at the moment.’
This is almost too much for Lawrence. He busts out
94
laughing and slaps his hand on the table.
‘With your mum?’ he coughed.
The waitress arrived with his order and placed the plate
of food in front of him. I began to feel a little stupid. Why
did I tell him I lived with my mum?
‘Oh, dear,’ he beamed, wiping a tear from the corner of
his eye. ‘I haven’t laughed like that for ages. Sorry, I don’t
mean to be rude – it must be hard sliding down the career
ladder like that. You’re certainly putting on a brave face.
I’m just sorry I can’t do anything to help you out.’
I suddenly felt my blood reach boiling point. He had
pushed me too far this time, and without warning I
exploded in a torrent of rage.
‘Listen here, you cock sucker,’ I hissed, grabbing his
shirt and pulling him close to my face. ‘I wouldn’t waste
another minute of my life working with you, even if you
paid me a million pounds a year and lent me your ugly
whore wife to fuck over my desk all day. You may think
behaving like a cunt is an acceptable existence, but
believe me, buddy boy, there’s a whole world out there
that’s passing you by.’
Jumping to my feet, I snatched a sausage off his plate and
took a large bite. He looked up at me in stunned silence.
‘So long, Cox.’
Storming out of the café, I could feel the adrenaline
pumping through my veins. The next chapter of my life had
definitely started and there would be no turning back now.
Disturbed by a splashing sound, I open one eye and see
bubbles on the surface of the water. Following the line
from the end of my rod, I notice that it has gone taught and
jumping into action my instincts take over. Chris leaps to
his feet.
‘You’ve bloody got one!’ he cries.
‘Have I?’
‘Yes! Quick, reel the damn thing in!’
95
Leaning over the side, I grab hold of the line and give it
a firm tug. I can feel the weight of the fish as I begin to
slowly reel it in. Standing up, I’m able to lift the hook out
of the water and seeing the white belly of the fish thrashing
against the surface, we release yelps of excitement.
‘Don’t lose it, Si!’
Tugging at the line, I heave the fish out of the water and
swing it through the air into Chris’s hands.
‘Fuck! It’s a fish, Si! It’s a fish!’
Crouching down, Chris brings it close to his chest and
wrestling to get a grip on its slippery body, he removes the
hook from its mouth and drops it into the faded plastic
carrier bag. Deep green in colour, the fish lies motionless
on its side and gasps for air. Prodding it with my finger, I
jump back in surprise as it appears to find a final burst of
energy and flipping into the air it leaps out of the bag and
lands on the wooden jetty. We both pounce on the fish,
head butting each other on the way down. Rubbing our
temples, we suddenly notice the fish is making its escape
over the edge.
‘NO!’ Chris screams.
I dive on top of the fish, but it slips through my fingers
and flips off the side. It disappears into the lake with a satisfying
plop.
Chris peers over the edge and drops his head. ‘Bollocks!
We finally catch a fish after all these years … and then you
let it get away!’
‘Me? It was slippery, you little shit, there was nothing I
could do!’
Chris turns away and walks sulkily over to his line.
Frustrated, I squash a fresh worm onto the end of my
hook. I lower it into the water and just as I’m about to reel
in the line a little, I watch in amazement as another fish
leaps out of the water and takes hold of the bait.
‘I’ve got another one!’ I yell, swinging the silver
fish through the air.
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‘No way!’ Chris hollers, and looking over at his line he
realises he has one too.
For the next hour, we hook fish out of the lake with as
much ease as Fat Larry serving up cod in Buster’s Chip
Shop on the High Street. The excitement of catching a fish
is overwhelming, and despite struggling at first with the
guilt of killing a living creature, we quickly get used to the
idea – particularly the hungrier we become.
Returning to the car with our catch, we feel like proud
hunters returning to the village with a feast. The bag slung
over Chris’s shoulder contains twelve little fish, and excited
by the idea of tasting fresh fish caught with our very
own hands, we immediately find the small camping stove
and heat up the frying pan on the boot of the car.
Chris pours a drop of oil into the pan. ‘What does it say
in the SAS Survival Guide about cooking them?’
Thumbing through the pages I find the ‘Fish and
Fishing’ section. ‘Now, let me see. It says here that all
freshwater fish are edible. Those fewer than five centimeters
long need no preparation and larger fish must be gutted.
Perfect! All of ours are tiddlers so we don’t need to
gut them.’
‘Yours might be tiddlers, pal. This last one I caught is
massive.’
He turns the fish over and opens its mouth. ‘Look at its
teeth. It was a fierce battle catching this giant.’
‘Chris, it’s tiny! My dick’s bigger than that.’
‘Yeah, right! In that case you must be hung like Dirk
Diggler.’
‘Hey, nobodies that big.’
Following the guidelines in the book, we scrape off the
scales and place a couple of the fish in the hot pan. We
watch excitedly as they sizzle and curl up in the heat. I
pick out some flesh and pop it into my mouth. It tastes of
blood … truly disgusting. We try adding some salt and a
shit load of ketchup, but the taste doesn’t improve.
Tossing the fish into a bush, we climb into the car and
munch on the last remaining crackers, which have gone
stale. Turning off the torch, Chris falls immediately into a
deep sleep and smiling to myself, I feel satisfied that
although our cooking skills might need some improvement,
tonight at least we had proved to ourselves that we
could survive in the wild.
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The 80’s Coming Back
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 9: The 80′s Coming Back
My fingers smell of fish. The inside of the Sierra smells of
fish, my T-shirt smells of fish and as I swing my legs out
of the car I nearly step on a charred frying pan full of …
uh … fish. Fish is everywhere! It’s up my nose, it’s in my
hair and as I sit up I hear a low growl in my stomach and
fear it’s the fish taking their revenge. Si is nowhere to be
seen; only his sleeping bag lies unzipped on the passenger
seat. Grabbing a tissue from the glove box, I blow my nose
really hard and scan the area for any traces of his whereabouts.
He doesn’t seem to be anywhere insight. He’s most
probably gone for a long walk to get rid of the smell of
fish, or he was dragged out of the car last night by mummy
fish and eaten alive, hmm … maybe not.
‘Chris!’
I look over my shoulder and see Si walking from behind
a bush close to the edge of the lake, with his shorts on and
top off. I wave back and watch as he makes his way over
to the car clutching a toilet roll in his hand.
‘Are you all right?’ he grins.
‘Yeah, apart from the disgusting smell of fish,’ I grumble,
forcing a tissue up my left nostril.
Si slaps a hand on my back. ‘Got off with this girl once
who smelt of fish.’
I throw him a look of disgust.
‘What’s the matter with you, you grumpy fuck? Can’t
99
hack the smell of fish?’
‘For fuck’s sake, Si … please! My stomach feels like it’s
about to explode. Are you sure we cooked them properly?
The last thing I need on the road is to feel like I’m going
to throw up after every mile.’
Si leans against the car and folds his arms. ‘John
Wiseman said you don’t need to gut fish under five centimeters
long, remember? Well, the fish we caught were
about two centimeters long so don’t panic.’
Waving goodbye to Lake Wigry, we head further north past
the town of Suwalki and up to the Polish-Lithuanian border.
It’s such a relief to smell fresh air again. I stick my
head out of the sunroof and make a promise to myself that
I will never smell of fish again.
Reaching the Polish border at Budzisko, we cross with
ease into the Lithuanian town of Kalvarija and continue
north along a brand new stretch of highway that carries us
towards the city of Kaunus.
‘Hey, Si, did you know the Lithuanian forests played an
important role in regional folk tales?’
Without taking his eyes off the road, Si grabs a mint off
the dashboard.
‘Did they?’ he nods.
‘Uh-huh. According to this guidebook, during times of
war the forests were a safe haven for those in danger. The
oak tree was worshipped during pre-Christian times and
today represents longevity and strength. Lithuanians often
plant oak trees to mark important occasions. Pretty interesting
stuff, don’t you think?’
Si ignores me and continues to stare at the road.
‘Also, in Lithuania until May 2002, the Soviet-era rules
required women to undergo gynecological examinations
to qualify for a driving license.’
He stops sucking on his mint and turns to me. ‘You
what?’
100
Suddenly, a horse and cart veers across the road in front
of us, forcing Si to brake sharply and swerve to the left.
‘Shit!’ he cries, narrowly avoiding the back wheels of
the cart.
The old couple driving this ancient mode of transport
bounce up and down in their seats as they hang on for
dear life. The guy wearing a flat cap thrashes the horse
with a whip while the old gal, who has a face like a
slapped arse, looks sternly at us.
‘Fucking idiots!’ Si shouts, blasting the horn.
‘They’re gonna get themselves killed!’
Dropping down a gear, he composes himself and picks
up speed. The horse and cart veers off the highway and
flies down a steep embankment before disappearing
through the gateway to a field.
‘Idiots!’ Si spits. ‘What the hell are they doing trying to
cross a motorway on that?’
‘I suppose it used to be just farmland around here, until
they plonked this bloody great big motorway right in the
middle of it.’
‘Well, somebody’s going to get killed. They need to build
a frigging bridge!’
Heading for the Baltic Sea, we turn west onto the A1 and
cross the Nemunas River. Reaching the industrial city of
Kaunas, we avoid the centre and continue on, hurtling
past a large industrial power station that bellows thick
black smoke into the atmosphere from towering red and
white-stripped chimneys. There’s little to capture the
imagination, and after a few hours we reach the outskirts
of Klaipeda on the Baltic coast.
Si pulls into a petrol station adjacent to a large industrial
estate.
‘What a shit hole,’ he mutters. ‘We’re not staying the
night here, are we?’
‘No way! How about we go to that sandy spit.’
101
Si frowns. ‘Sandy spit?’
‘Uh-huh. It’s near some lagoon. There’s a load of giant
sand dunes, apparently.’
‘Umm … I’m sure it’s beautiful, but the last thing I want
to do right now is spend the night on a sandy spit.’
‘Actually, neither do I. In fact, I’m hungry.’
‘Me too! Hey, Chris, why don’t you grab something from
the shop.’
I glance out of the window at the uninviting petrol station
forecourt outside. ‘Can’t you go?’
Si pauses for a moment, then sighs. ‘Oh … OK, you lazy
fuck.’
As Si scurries off across the tarmac it begins to rain.
Adjusting my seat, I make myself comfortable and pass
the time by observing the local Lithuanians outside.
Suddenly, just as I’m about to drum a tune on the dashboard,
a huge truck, minus its load, roars into the car park
and screeches to a halt opposite the Sierra. I watch with
intrigue as a man wearing a blue pinstriped suit, white
shirt and grey tie jumps out of the driver’s cab clutching a
briefcase. He races across the car park and disappears
inside a brand new BMW X5 with blacked out windows.
Surprised to see someone so well dressed behind the
wheel of a lorry, I eye him suspiciously.
Si quickly leaps back into the car and passes me a can of
Coke and a dumpling, which is an unhealthy yellowish
colour.
‘Sorry, that’s all they had.’
‘What is it?’
‘A Lithuanian dumpling,’ he smiles. ‘It’s got meat inside.
Might as well try the local dish.’
‘Yeah, but not from a smeggy petrol station.’
‘Food’s food, fat boy.’
I keep my eye on the BMW.
‘Fucking weather,’ Si grumbles, as he picks at his
dumpling.
102
‘Hey, you see that lorry over there?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Some bloke in a pinstriped suit just jumped out of it
holding a briefcase.’
Si shrugs. ‘So?’
‘Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?’
‘Why, because a lorry driver is wearing a pinstriped
suit?’
‘Uh … yeah!’
‘Maybe he’s on his way to a wedding.’
‘In a great big dirty lorry?’
‘He could be,’ Si nods. ‘They might do that around these
parts.’
‘Open your frigging eyes, will ya! There’s definitely something
going on. He looked suspicious. I wonder what’s
inside the briefcase?’
‘Who knows, Inspector Columbo. Probably his sandwiches,
a calculator and a photograph of his wife.’
‘Si, don’t be a dick, I’ll bet it’s full of money. He’s probably
involved in smuggling cigarettes, or some other
dodgy shit.’
‘Cigarettes?’
‘Yeah, cigarette smuggling is big business around these
parts. Those cheap boxes of two hundred we were getting
from the Kurdish guys in the freezer were probably from
here.’
‘Nah, they were coming from Romania.’
‘Well, he’s definitely up to something. These guys make
millions selling contraband on the black market. Look,
he’s getting out.’
The black 4×4’s passenger door swings open. The guy in
the suit immerges without the briefcase this time. He races
back to the lorry with a concerned look on his face and
climbs quickly into the driver’s cab. Striking the engine,
he accelerates at great speed out of the car park. Through
a gap in the window of the 4×4, I notice a man of Middle
103
Eastern appearance starring suspiciously in our direction.
Looking down at our crotches and in any other direction
but his, Si nervously stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray.
‘This place is fucking dodgy,’ he mutters.
This time the driver’s door swings open, and we watch
as his shiny black leather shoes step down onto the tarmac.
We see this as our signal to leave.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I grin, spinning the car out onto
the main road.
‘Good plan,’ Si replies. ‘The sooner we get to Estonia the
better. We’ll be nice and close to Russia, and we can relax
a little before…’
‘Before what?’
‘Before the real journey begins!’
Peering out of the window, I scan the horizon in the hope
of catching a glimpse of the Baltic Sea. On the map we
appear so close, but looking out of the window it’s nowhere
to be seen.
‘Where the hell is it?’ I cry.
‘Where’s what?’ Si frowns.
‘The ocean, you fool. It should be within pissing distance.’
‘Maybe it’s behind those trees on the horizon.’
‘Si, it’s not a glass of water we’re talking about here …
it’s the Baltic Sea! Seventy-two percent of the Earth’s surface
is covered by water. Where the fuck is it?’
Feeling irritable, I turn up the music on the radio and
listen to an orchestra belt out what I think might be
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, although, I could be wrong.
‘This classical music malarkey is pretty good, isn’t it?’ I
smile.
‘I guess it is pretty relaxing,’ Si replies. ‘The music goes
with the countryside. It makes it look more beautiful. In
fact, I’m glad the tape player doesn’t work.’
‘Why?’
104
‘Because I’d have to listen to your Guns N’ Roses tape all
of the time.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with ‘Guns N’ Roses’, pal. Those
boys know how to rock!’
‘Yeah, but it’s so bizarre you’ve only just discovered them.’
‘Come on, Si, you know I’ve never been very up on my
music.’
‘You came to see a few bands at the Roadmender when
we were at school, didn’t ya?’
‘Nah, I drove you and that weird friend of yours to see a
few bands, then me and my girlfriend, Lucy, would go to
the cinema or have a pizza.’
‘Oh yeah, you were like a married couple at the age of
seventeen, weren’t you! Bloody hell, Chris in love! It’s
hard to imagine now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you were so different back then.’
‘Was I?’
Si nods. ‘Uh-huh, you were so … sensible. What happened?’
‘Dunno? I was young and in love. I’m probably a bit
more cynical about the whole cabuddles these days. I’ve
learnt a lot since then.’
‘From watching daytime television?’ Si smiles.
‘No, from life.’
‘Cynical you say? Why?’
‘I’ve had some pretty messy relationships. Oh … I don’t
know. Maybe it’s because I haven’t met the right girl, or
I’m having too much fun to settle down and become
involved in something serious right now.’
‘Or maybe you’re just afraid of getting hurt again?’
‘Fuck off, Si! Are we talking about you or me here?
You’re the one who’s afraid of getting hurt again after
Emily. Anyway, the whole relationship process just seems
a bit false to me at this moment in time. Unless you’re
ready to fully commit, what’s the point? You’re living a lie.’
105
‘Yeah, I guess at the end of the day if your hearts not in
it, it can only end in disaster.’
It’s surprisingly quiet as we approach the Latvian border.
Si pulls up at customs control and a round, jolly gentleman
with rosy cheeks appears from a booth. He looks a bit
like the laughing policeman, only he’s dressed in a tight
green uniform. He beams a smile and gestures for us to
drive on.
It begins to get dark as we push on into the evening. We
head directly for the capital city of Riga, which is close to
the border with Estonia and is where this year’s 2003
European Song Contest is to be held tomorrow night.
‘You can’t beat a good old fashioned European Song
Contest,’ Si smiles.
‘Yeah, maybe one day we’ll find someone with a bit of
talent, who might actually win a point.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath.’
‘Maybe we should try and get a couple of tickets?’
Si shakes his head. ‘Nah, I’d rather watch it on the telly.’
‘OK, let’s wait until we get to Estonia. We’ll book into a
hotel and make a night of it.’
The city lights of Riga twinkle in the distance, as we
cross an impressive suspension bridge that carries us over
the river Daugava. Surrounded by grand architecture with
examples of all styles from Middle Ages to modern times,
Si sticks his camera out of the window and attempts to
grab a few shots of the city, which I predict will be blurry
images of … uh … the passing traffic. Even though the
idea of necking a couple of the local Latvian Aldaris Zelta
beer sounds tempting, we try to stay focused and leave
Riga in a bid to move closer to Estonia.
After what feels like an eternity, we eventually find our
way out of the city and onto the motorway via a very confusing
diversion. Seeing a service station up ahead, I
realise that I’m starting to lose concentration, so turning
106
off the motorway I find an empty space behind the petrol
station and we immediately collapse into a deep sleep.
* * *
I’m rudely awoken by the fantastic smell of freshly cooked
bacon. Leaping out of the car, I find Chris hunched over
the frying pan and flipping greasy rashers with his penknife.
‘Morning!’ he cheerfully sings. ‘Yesterday Latvia, today
Estonia!’
‘Good lad, where did you get the pig?’
‘From the petrol station, these Latvians love their meat.’
‘Smells delicious, I’m starving! I could eat a horse and
chase the jockey.’
‘Patience, dear boy, you can’t rush a man when he’s
cooking bacon.’
‘Very true! Hey, Chris, I can’t wait to check out the girls
in Estonia. According to the legend, they’re supposed to
be the hottest honeys on the planet.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ he replies flicking a rasher of
bacon onto a plate.
‘On the wind.’
Chris frowns. ‘On the wind?’
‘Yeah, you know, on the grapevine.’
‘Oh, I thought Venezuela had the hottest girls in the
world. I’m sure they’ve won Miss World four times.’
‘Who cares! Maybe it’s a folklore that has been passed
down through generations from father to son, or a sailors
tale that has been whispered in taverns and spread across
oceans.’
‘Bollocks,’ Chris laughs. ‘You saw a program about the
country on the Travel Channel, didn’t you?’
‘Well, yes, that might be true, but this time we’re going
to see it for ourselves. The program I saw focused on a
107
university in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and boy-ohboy
from the girls I saw in the program are we in for a
treat!’
Before we know it, we’re back on the road and heading
along the A2 towards the city of Valmiera. Passing through
the Gauja National Park, I whistle a tune as Chris merrily
steers the car towards the small town of Valka. The warm
morning sunshine streams through my window and I
smile as we pass through another border control, which
takes us into the northern Baltic State of Estonia.
Chris whacks the Sierra into fifth gear. ‘Right, where
shall we head first?’
‘To the ocean!’ I smile. ‘There’s a small seaside town in
the south west called Parnu.’
‘Parnu? It doesn’t sound very exotic, does it?’
‘Nope, but it’s where the party’s going down.’
‘All righty, then, Parnu it is!’
Heading west across the country, we weave quickly
through the pretty little towns and villages of southern
Estonia. We stop for lunch along the way, and devour a
mean burger from a bar-cum-restaurant with a ship theme.
The gaunt skinny girl behind the counter is dressed in a
navy blue sailor suit and white naval cap. Trying not to
laugh as she slides the menu over the counter, which is
shaped like a ship’s wheel, we begin to feel like we’ve
finally arrived on our holidays.
We reach the outskirts of Parnu in the early afternoon and
pass billboards advertising campsites, restaurants, bars and
an endless list of holiday activities.
‘This place is great!’ Chris smiles. ‘It’s so…’
‘Tacky.’
‘Yeah, tacky.’
Finding a cheap hotel in the centre of town, we park the
Sierra in the car park around the back and head up the
stairs to the reception desk. Pushing through the heavy
108
glass doors, I smile at the attractive woman sitting behind
the counter. She is of Scandinavian appearance with blonde
shoulder length hair and beautiful blue eyes. In my finest
Estonian I ask her for the price of a room. The woman
doesn’t appear to understand, so I resort to pointing to a
sentence in the phrasebook. She nods and calmly makes
her way around the reception desk. As she fiddles with a
large bunch of keys, I’m surprised by how tall she is. I
nudge Chris and he grins in recognition. Following her
down the corridor, she unlocks one of the doors and
swings it open.
‘We pay now?’ Chris asks, showing her his wallet.
She shrugs her shoulders and smiles sweetly. With her
hair practically brushing against the ceiling, she turns and
heads back to reception. Throwing our bags into the room
we immediately celebrate our arrival, and crack open the
bottle of red wine that has been rolling around in the car
since we left England.
I spark up a cigarette.
‘Si, you can’t smoke in here!’
‘Why not?’
‘There’s a no smoking sign on the door.’
‘OK, I’ll have it out of the window.’
‘You’ll set the smoke alarm off.’
‘Chill out, will ya!’
Kneeling on the bed, Chris joins me and we both lean as
far out of the window as possible.
‘We made it!’ Chris smiles, peering down at the cars on
the busy main road. ‘Estonia! Think how far north we are
now. We’re right near Finland, aren’t we?’
‘Yep, not far, Helsinki is just across the water from
Tallinn.’
‘Not bad for a three hundred pound Ford Sierra. It’ll get
us to Vladivostok no problem!’
I snatch the bottle of wine out of Chris’s hand. ‘I wouldn’t
count your chickens. We’re not even sure if the highway in
109
Siberia is passable yet.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Did it say on the internet when the road would be finished?’
‘Yeah, sometime in 2005, but I don’t reckon it’ll be one
hundred percent complete until the year 2008.’
I frown. ‘2008?’
‘Yep.’
‘But that’s in five years time.’
‘Don’t panic,’ Chris smiles. ‘I read on this official road
website that they only have a three hundred and fifty kilometre
stretch of highway left to complete, between the
Siberian cities of Chita and Khabarovsk.’
‘Have they started building it? I mean, is there actually
a road?’
Chris shrugs. ‘Dunno. I guess that’s what we’re gonna
find out.’
Taking a well-earned shower in the communal bathroom,
I return to the room looking as soft and pink as a newborn
baby. Fishing out my finest glad rags, I quickly get dressed
while Chris scurries off to disinfect himself. Peering out of
the window, I look past the road and over the small park
behind the hotel. A group of lads in baseball caps congregate
around a skate ramp beneath the bright blue sky. It
feels like the middle of the afternoon, but guessing that it
must be closer to nine o’clock in the evening, I’m suddenly
made aware of how far north we are.
Bursting through the door with a towel wrapped around
his waist, Chris races across the room and switches on the
TV.
‘The Eurovision Song Contest is on!’ he cries.
Glancing over my shoulder, I take a swig from the bottle
of wine and watch Marie Naumova and Renars Kaupers
present the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest live from Riga.
‘Three cheers to Terry Wogan!’ Chris sings, as he wres-
110
tles to pull his boxer shorts on beneath his towel.
‘Wogan won’t be commentating on this channel, you
dumb ass. He only does it for British TV.’
‘Bollocks! It’s Terry’s armchair wisecracks that make it
funny.’
Watching the titles, I can see that it promises to be a night
of the usual cheese with dance numbers, power ballads and
weird entries that involve attractive dancers removing their
clothes. A group of lads dressed in black suits and colourful
chunky knotted ties march across the stage.
Chris falls onto the bed. ‘Which country is this?’
‘I dunno?’
The four-piece band burst into song, which surprisingly
breaks all Eurovision traditions by providing virtually all
instrumentation, as they perform a Britpop-style number
called ‘The 80’s coming back’. I find myself tapping my
fingertips on the windowsill.
‘They’ve got to win!’ Chris smiles.
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Definitely… “I’ve got a feeling the eighties are coming
back”,’ he sings, grabbing his jeans off the bed. ‘…Hey, Si,
do you think he’s singing about your hair?’
‘Fuck off!’
Giving my bouffant a quick flick, I draw my hair back in
a ponytail.
‘It’ll never win,’ I mutter aloud.
Chris frowns. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s not cheesy enough.’
‘Hey, it’s Estonia’s entry,’ he suddenly cries, applauding excitedly. ‘Come on Estonia!’
‘My God, they’ll be a party in town tonight if they win.’
‘Chrissy boy, they’ll be a party in town tonight if they
don’t.’
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Fun Lovin’ Criminals
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 10: Fun Lovin’ Criminals
Heading out into the street feeling good and buzzing from
the wine, we storm through the centre of Parnu in search
of a bar. Turning left, we spy a pub full of holidaymakers
sitting at tables outside.
‘Hey, can you hear that?’ Si smiles, as we approach the
pub.
‘Hear what?’
‘I think it’s Roy Chubby Brown … it is! It’s Roy Chubby
Brown!’
Grinning, I look eagerly around. ‘No way! Where?’
‘He’s not actually here, you idiot,’ Si snaps. ‘Listen to
the music coming from those speakers.’
‘Oh yeah, it bloody is as well! Who’d have thought it?
Britain’s crudest seaside performer has made it big on the
Baltic. Have you ever heard him do the routine about the
cup of tea and the used tampon?’
Si shakes his head vigorously. ‘No, and I really don’t
need to hear it now.’
‘Why the hell are they playing, “Alice? Who the fuck is
Alice?” in a family pub, anyway?’
‘They probably don’t understand the words.’
As we pass a young couple and their two children eating
a meal at a table outside, fat Roy belts out the chorus,
“Alice, who the fuck is Alice?” from the speakers
positioned directly above their heads. I glance over at the
parents and wait for their horrified reaction, but there
isn’t one – they seem totally oblivious to the bad language
and continue to tuck innocently into their dinner.
‘Excellent!’ I chuckle. ‘Roy Chubby Brown in Estonia.’
112
Si skips inside the pub. ‘Makes a change from Britney, I
suppose.’
Toasting the night, we sink a couple of delicious
Estonian beers to the, uh … delightfully repeated vocals of
Roy Chubby Brown. Tables of merry holidaymakers provide
a vibrant atmosphere, and feeling well oiled we go in
search of the nightlife of Parnu.
The queue outside the Mirage nightclub contains a bizarre
mixture of characters.
‘Hey, Si! Check out the dude with the orange mullet and
green crocodile skin loafers … nice!’
‘You think that’s bad,’ he smiles. ‘What about Betty Boop
over there in the white fur coat?’
‘Bloody hell, and I thought there were some freaks in
Vegas.’
Handing over our jackets in exchange for a plastic token,
we race up the stairs and enter the club. Turning left into
the main room, the dance floor is already crowded with an
interesting mixture of smiley, eccentric looking individuals.
We find a spot at the end of the bar and order a couple
of whiskeys. To the right of the bar a group of girls
dance in a circle around their handbags … Essex style.
‘Hot potatoes!’ Si yells. ‘Check out all the women!’
We slam back a few more drinks before finding the confidence
to explore.
‘Head for those tables at the back!’ Si yells over the noise
of the electronic dance music.
As I push my way through the middle of the dance floor,
I suddenly hear Estonia’s Eurovision Song Contest entry,
‘The 80’s coming back’ burst from the speakers. Everybody
dancing instantly goes crazy, and a saucy looking blonde
girl in a short yellow skirt grabs Si by the hand and begins
dancing around him in circles. Swept away by the crowd
I’m pushed towards the edge of the dance floor, and grabbing
hold of the wall I feel relieved to have escaped the
113
humiliation of being forced to dance. Amusing myself, I
watch Si from a distance as he tries to impress the girl
with some of the new moves he had been working on in
Prague. Chuckling, I turn to the guy in a black leather jacket
standing next to me.
‘All right, mate,’ I smile.
Ignoring me, the guy licks his lips and continues to drill
holes into the butt cheeks of a girl dancing nearby. He suddenly
turns to me.
‘You Arab,’ he grunts with a strong Russian accent.
‘Arab? No, I’m English.’
‘You look like Arab.’
He throws me a cold stare.
‘I from Chechnya,’ he snaps, pointing proudly at his
chest.
Removing a small bottle of vodka from his jacket pocket,
he unscrews the lid and pours some into my glass.
‘Nastrovia!’ he nods, slamming back his drink.
‘I’m Chris,’ I grin, stretching out my hand. ‘What’s your
name?’
‘Sergei. I from Grozny.’
‘Are you on holiday?’
‘Holiday? Nyet, I live here five years.’
‘Oh, I see. Do you work here? You have job?’
‘Nyet. I Chechen criminal,’ he replies sternly.
I flash a smile. ‘You’re a Chechen criminal?’
He nods. ‘Everyone think Chechens are criminals, so I
criminal.’
Offering Sergei a cigarette, I listen with intrigue.
‘Very very bad in Chechnya, too much guns, so I leave. I
come to Parnu … why you here?’ he asks, lighting my
cigarette.
‘I drove here from England with my brother. We’re heading
to Vladivostok.’
Sergei laughs out loud. ‘Vladivostok?’
‘Yeah.’
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‘You drive to Vladivostok?’
‘Yep. In our Ford Sierra.’
‘Ah, you make joke.’
‘No, it’s true! We’re on our way to Vladivostok.’
He laughs again before refilling our glasses.
‘Impossible!’ he cries. ‘Not even Chechen soldier do
this.’
‘Why not?’
Sergei draws a finger across his throat. ‘Too dangerous,
many bandits … you will die!’
Suddenly, a guy in a grey roll neck jumper appears next
to Sergei, and I quickly discover that Azamat is also from
the city of Grozny in Chechnya. Sergei talks to him quickly
in Russian, and they both turn to me and laugh.
‘You will die,’ Azamat repeats, tossing his head back
and roaring with laughter.
Desperate to change the subject, I interrupt the laughter
and ask Azamat what he is doing in Parnu.
‘I Chechen criminal,’ he replies proudly.
‘You as well?’ I smile.
He frowns and turns to Sergei. Sergei turns to me, and
nods.
I clear my throat. ‘Oh, uh … cool!’
Across the crowded dance floor I suddenly spot Si pushing
his way towards the bar, so I quickly offer my new
criminal friends a drink.
‘You want vodka?’ I ask, knowing that this is a stupid
question.
Grinning at me insanely, Sergei pats me hard on the
back. ‘Da. Spaceeba, Chris from England, spaceeba.’
* * *
As I wait patiently at the bar, Chris suddenly leaps onto
the stool beside me.
‘Hey, hot shot! How’s it hanging?’
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‘Chris, you numb-nuts! Where did you disappear to?’
‘I got swept away by the crowd.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘I did!’
‘Of course you did. I forgot you’re a pussy when it comes
to dancing.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Stop being so self-conscious and just ride the music.’
Chris laughs. ‘“Ride the music”, you cheesy git. I’m
quite happy chilling out on the sidelines, thank you very
much.’
‘OK, fair enough. Right, Chris, its drinks time! I need to
order a cocktail for the cutie on the dance floor.’
‘The girl in the yellow skirt?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good lad, she’s fit as fuck!’
‘I know. I think I’m in love.’
‘Not again!’
I frown. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Si, you fall in love with all the girls.’
‘No I don’t … hey, why don’t you come over? I’ll introduce
you to her mates.’
‘No way, they’re all fat.’
‘I thought you liked a girl with a bit of meat around the
hips.’
‘Yeah, but not half a fucking cow! Besides, I’ve been
chatting to these two Chechen criminals.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, Sergei and Azamat, they’re both criminals from
Grozny in Chechnya. I’m gonna buy them a drink!’
‘Wait a minute … back up, buddy boy. Chechen criminals,
as in criminals from Chechnya?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘What kind of criminals?’
Chris shrugs. ‘No idea, I didn’t ask … I’ll ask them!’
‘Noooo … don’t be a twat, they could be dangerous. Use
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your noodle. I’d stay well away from them if I were you,
it can only lead to trouble.’
‘Nah … they seem OK. Well, as OK as two Chechen
criminals can be.’
Ordering a round of shots from the bar, Chris balances
them on a small tray and shuffles over to his new friends.
Leaving me with the bill, I hand over the cash and dance
with my cocktails over to Eva and her weighty chums.
Approaching her from across the dance floor, I’m immediately
reminded how beautiful she is. Taking the drink
out of my hand, she leans over and kisses me softly on the
cheek.
‘You very good boy, Simon.’
‘Thanks,’ I smile. ‘You very good girl.’
She reaches over and puts a finger to my lips. ‘Nyet good
girl, Simon, I am naughty girl.’
‘Really, why?’
‘I will not tell you,’ she grins cheekily.
I raise an eyebrow. ‘Now I’m really intrigued. Come on,
why are you a naughty girl?’
Looking unsure whether to tell me her secret, she tries to
distract me by pushing her firm breasts against my chest
in an effort to get me to dance. It works, but only for a brief
moment.
‘OK, don’t tell me, then.’
‘If I tell you, you not like me anymore.’
‘Yes I will.’
‘I have baby,’ she whispers, dropping her gaze.
‘A baby?’
‘See, now you don’t like me.’
Drawing Eva close, we begin kissing passionately in the
middle of the dance floor. Grabbing my arm, she leads me
across the club to an empty booth at the back of the club.
Pushing me inside, she follows close behind and jumping
across my lap she begins kissing me wildly. Surprised at
first by her enthusiasm – I quickly relax, and tenderly
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caressing her soft thighs beneath the hem of her skirt, I
feel bizarrely like I’m fourteen years old again.
* * *
I stumble out of the club and onto the wet pavement. A
police car with its blue flashing lights is parked on the
curb outside. Two cops leaning against the bonnet laugh at
the pissed up clubbers, and eye up the girls as they dance
around in their high heels. Spinning around, I see Si wave
a hand in the air as he disappears around the corner with
the blonde girl he’d met on the dance floor. I consider
chasing after them, but decide to leave them to it. I lost
Sergei and Azamat somewhere between going to the toilet
and chatting up Betty Boop, who turned out to be a freak
from the dark corners of Berlin. I try to stay focused
despite feeling severely mashed. Everybody standing outside
the club begins to either climb into a taxi, or disappear
on foot down the main shopping street. Not wishing
to be left alone with two bored policemen, I follow their
lead and head off in search of the hotel. Staggering
through the dimly lit streets, I turn left and then right in
the direction of a big road, which I think is near to where
we’re staying. Within minutes I’m lost. The wind starts to
pick up and a large spot of rain splashes across my forehead.
I scan the area for any recognizable landmarks, but
there aren’t any – not one. A brightly painted church on
the corner looks vaguely familiar, although, I can’t be sure.
Breaking a smile, I begin to laugh.
‘Ha-ha! Where-am-I?’ I sing out loud.
I stop laughing.
Taking a few deep breaths, I try to think clearly and
decide to turn around and walk back to the main shopping
street. The last thing I need is to end up in some fucked
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up crack estate on the outskirts of town. Rubbing my eyes,
I focus on the pavement in front of me and begin zigzagging
back through the streets. All of the buildings on
either side of the road are in darkness and, apart from the
occasional swoosh of a car going by on the road or a dog
barking far away in the distance, it’s eerily quiet.
I reach a crossroads and stop at the corner as I try to
retrace my steps. How difficult can this be? This is ridiculous.
I just walked down here a few moments ago.
Suddenly, I notice a guy in a brown bomber jacket walking
towards me up the street. I straighten my shoulders
and try to look as though I know where I’m going. He
reaches the crossroads and shouts over, but I don’t understand
what he’s saying. He crosses the road and walks up
to me. I stand my ground, annoyed with myself for not
paying more attention to Jackie Chang’s karate moves in
the movie ‘Rumble in the Bronx’, which I saw recently on
DVD. The unshaven guy looks at me suspiciously. He then
says something. I shake my head and shrug my shoulders.
‘Woman,’ he laughs.
I frown. ‘Woman?’
He nods. ‘You want woman?’
‘No, thank you,’ I reply in a slow, clear tone.
He laughs. ‘Jiggy-jiggy, da?’
I smile nervously. ‘Nyet.’
His face falls and his eyes are drawn to my jacket pocket.
I start to feel a little uncomfortable and take a step
back, but he steps forward – his eyes still firmly fixed on
my jacket pocket. Distracted by a passing car, I look away
from the guy for a second and before you can say ‘Jackie
Chang’, he reaches inside my pocket and grabs a couple of
notes I’d stuffed in there for safe keeping. I’m completely
shocked, and freeze as I watch him run off down the
street. How did he know I had money in that pocket?
That’s not important, my immediate concern should be to
get my money back, so I do … well, I try. Chasing after
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him, I shout really scary things like “I can use a gun, you
know!” and “The police are coming!” but he finds my
threatening words rather amusing and just laughs over his
shoulder instead of stopping and handing back my cash.
After a hundred metres, or so, the shock of what’s just
happened slowly begins to subside, and it suddenly
occurs to me that pursuing this thief might actually be
quite a bad idea. There can’t have been more than ten quid
in my pocket. I’m certainly not going to be knifed to death,
or shot in the head over such a small amount of money. I
skid to a halt and watch as the thief disappears out of sight.
Feeling a little foolish and annoyed with myself for getting
into this dangerous situation in the first place, I pick
up pace and eventually find my way back to the main
shopping street. It’s deserted. After walking thirty yards, I
suddenly see a guy who looks remarkably like Sergei, the
Chechen criminal from the club. He’s standing under a
shop awning with his head hanging down and his hands
in the pockets of his black leather jacket. At first I think
he’s starring down at his boots, but as I walk over to him I
see the poor guy is fast asleep. I don’t want to wake him
up so I creep by, but I accidentally kick an empty Coke can
across the ground. Sergei’s eyes spring open, and his head
slowly lifts up like a zombie rising from the dead. He
doesn’t move for a few seconds; he just stares at me intently
before cracking a smile.
‘Chris!’ he grins, his eyes struggling to focus on my face.
‘What you doing, Sergei? It’s raining. Were you asleep?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not asleep.’
‘You were asleep.’
‘Nyet. I wait for friend,’ he replies.
‘Azamat?’
‘Nyet, other friend.’
I offer him a cigarette. He pulls his collars up and takes
a lighter out of his pocket.
‘Where you go now?’ he asks, cupping his hands around
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the lighter.
‘To my hotel.’
‘You want vodka? We drink more vodka.’
‘No, I go to my hotel. I’m very tired.’
He points up the street. ‘We go drink.’
‘I go home,’ I reply. ‘I sleep.’
‘OK. You crazy, Chris!’
On that note, Sergei drops his head again, closes his
eyes and goes back to sleep.
* * *
Walking through the dark streets of Parnu in the early
hours, with an Estonian blonde in one hand and a vodka
and tonic in the other … I feel like a God. All I had managed
as a way of goodbye to Chris was a weak wave over
the crowd, but he knows the score. I’ve learnt over the
years that slipping away after the club closes is always a
wise thing to do, especially when there’s a girl involved.
Passing a newspaper stand, I buy Eva a coffee and with a
look of mischief in her eyes, she drags me down towards
the river. We find a bench close to the bridge and sit with
our arms around each other, watching the boats chug
slowly by in the dark. Deeply feminine, Eva looks at me
with her small soft features and long delicate eyelashes.
She doesn’t speak very good English, and as she tries to
explain something to me about herself, I interrupt her by
gently taking away her coffee and launching it into the
river. She looks surprised by my spontaneity, and grinning
wildly I take her in my arms and begin kissing her passionately.
Pausing for a moment she looks at me with wide
eyes, and greatly turned on we pull at each other’s clothes
and make love right there on the bench.
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It begins to grow light. We rearrange our clothes and sit on
the bench in comfortable silence, which is a relief considering
we’ve just had sex in a public place. Eva rests her
head on my shoulder and caresses my chest. I feel so
relaxed, a little cold, but relaxed.
I escort Eva along the river to the entrance of a high-rise
tower block. She doesn’t invite me inside, but I guess it’s
understandable particularly if she has a young child. She
scribbles down her mobile number on my hand in eyeliner.
What an amazing night …what an amazing girl. I look
down at her number on my hand and smile. We kiss
before breaking away, and smiling at each other one last
time, I float across the grass as she disappears out of sight.
Catching a taxi back to the hotel, I skip up the stairs and
sing a good morning to the tired looking woman sat
behind reception. Gliding down the corridor, I pause outside
our room and feel vaguely surprised to see the door
slightly ajar. It’s not like Chris to leave the door open. I
enter the dark room. I don’t want to turn the light on and
disturb him as he snores loudly beneath his sheets, so I
fumble my way over to my bed on the far side of the room.
Whipping off my T-shirt, I collapse onto the bed and lie in
the darkness. All of a sudden, the door swings open and I
sit up in surprise. A beam of light from the corridor blinds
my vision and, through half-closed eyes, I can just make
out a silhouetted figure in the doorway.
‘Chris?’
The room light flicks on and I’m surprised to see an
elderly woman in a nightgown stood in the doorway. Her
eyes widen, and she releases a bloodcurdling scream
when she sees me lying on her bed with my top off.
Scrambling off the bed, I pull my T-shirt over my head and
immediately try to calm her down, but she continues to
shriek insanely. She begins shouting at the lump in the
bed, and I turn and see the frightened face of a man with
a baldhead peering cautiously over the duvet. The woman
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continues to scream while the bald guy continues to cower
beneath the covers.
‘I thought he was my brother!’ I yell. ‘I thought this was
my room!’
The woman on reception suddenly appears at the door
and barks at me in Estonian. I quickly try to explain that
I’ve made a mistake. She doesn’t seem to understand. The
old lady in the nightgown clutches onto the receptionist’s
arm and begins to pant breathlessly. She seems to be on
the verge of hyperventilating, so the receptionist helps her
onto a chair in the corner of the room. I try to explain to
the receptionist what has happened, but she just scowls at
me as she tries to calm the old woman down.
‘Wrong room!’ I shout. ‘I got the wrong room!’
Chris suddenly pokes his head around the door. ‘What
the fuck are you doing?’
‘I got the wrong room! This isn’t our room!’
‘I know it’s not. Our room is next door, you idiot!’
‘Fuck! Chris, it wasn’t my fault! I thought this was our
room. All the doors look the same in this place. I thought
it was you in the bed.’
‘I’ve only just got back to the hotel myself, you prick.’
‘Help me!’
The old lady begins to scream again, but we eventually
manage to calm everyone down and explain exactly what
has happened. From the way the receptionist scowls at us,
you can tell she thinks we’re little more than two stupid
drunken tourists with no consideration for other people,
whilst the old couple glare at us with disgust. With bright
red faces, we edge our way out of the room. Nosy guests
in their jim-jams poke their heads out into the corridor as
we return shamefully to our room.
‘What the fuck!’ Chris laughs, falling onto his bed.
‘Oh my God,’ I cringe, biting my fingernails. ‘Did that
really just happen?’
‘I’m afraid so, hippie boy.’
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I pace up and down the room, sweating profusely.
‘Christ, I feel so bad.’
‘I can’t believe you got the wrong room! Your face was
hilarious.’
‘We need to get the hell out of here … yeah, that’s what
we should do … shit, I’m still pissed.’
‘Chill out! We’re all right for a few more hours.’
‘I thought it was our room. You were snoring. I thought
it was you beneath the covers. Fuck, this is bad, so veryvery
bad. I feel really guilty. One of them could’ve had a
frigging heart attack. Right, we have to leave, Chris. I’m
not staying around here … no way! They probably thought
I was robbing them. Oh, that poor woman’s face when she
saw me.’
‘Come on, Si, people must make the same mistake all of
the time.’
‘Do you reckon?’
‘Actually … probably not.’
‘Bollocks! We need to leave immediately.’
‘Si, relax. It wasn’t your fault. Come on, it must be after
seven, let’s grab some breakfast. I think we both need it.’
Racing frantically around the room, we throw everything
into our rucksacks and make our way cautiously
towards reception. We make our final apologies and head
sheepishly for the exit.
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