Bicycicular Jaunts in the Fylde.

Another tale that I can tell goes back to my early childhood and centres around my use of my bicycle, rather two bicycles.

A fixed-wheel jobbie for short trips to the beach and around the small town of my residence, Cleveleys, to do the shopping for my Nan & Pop, and my drop-handle-barred and ten geared-racer for longer trips to the Pennines, Pilling-Sands, Glasson Dock and the Lake District.

The latter area was visited when I scaled the highest mountain in England, Scarfell Pike. However, the trip was not done on bicycles but by car.

A Ford Zodiac, more of that later.

It was in the early sixties and I was about seventeen at the time. Scarfell Pike is located in the Lake District National Park, in Cumbria and has an elevation of 978 metres (3,209 ft) above sea level.

This is how it looked from the bottom, with Wastwater Lake in the foreground.

Please excuse the photographs taken on this venture. They were recorded on my then newly acquired as a birthday present camera, a Brownie 127 I think it was called.

Today Scarfell Pike and its neighbour Scarfell are climbed regularly by hikers and tourists. I am told that part of the trek is now paved and even wheelchairs can negotiate some of the climb.

Back in the sixties it was an adventure with a capital “A”, the climbing and conquering of Scarfell Pike was then a quest, a mission. A major exploit for four young, athletic and enterprising young lads, particularly as its peak was covered in approximately three-foot of snow!

This is us at the summit.

And a spectacular view of its neighbour Scarfell just 3162ft, 47ft lower!

We opted for the easiest ascent from Wastdale-Head village green, as there was a secure area where we could park the car and the drive to the nearest establishment that served alcohol was only five miles away.

I should perhaps make it clear that when I say “Easy” I mean it’s easy relative to the other routes; it’s an unrelenting climb and the crossing of Lingmell Gill can be dangerous, particularly after rain, but with the freezing temperature and snow on the ground, for us it was a doddle.

You will only have to look up the number of call-outs the Wasdale mountain rescue service had in the sixties to realise that navigation errors can lead to serious mishaps. However, to us the rugged beauty, breath-taking grandeur made our ascent a memorable experience that I still remember sixty-five odd years later.

We, Frank Holford, Nigel Fisher, and myself were in our school’s cadet force so we had experience with camping and had been involved in many orienteering expeditions when we went on the cadet-force’s summer training camps, unfortunately Mick Dyson, the fourth member of our team, did not have this experience or training. His major asset was; he owned the car that transported us from the Fylde to Wastwater Green.

It was the very spacious 1962 Ford Zodiac.

The Zodiac was the luxury variant of The Zephyr and were made by British Ford from 1950 till the early seventies, they were the largest passenger car on the market and they guzzled petrol. Mick was very fortunate in that his dad owned a Ford dealership in Blackpool, so a car and fuel were no problem.

I befriended him in my second to last year at school. As my school did not teach Geology as an O-level subject, my headmaster arranged that I attend lessons at the nearby Blackpool Grammar School, a fifteen-minute cycle ride from my school, Arnold Boys on Lytham Road near the Pleasure Beach.

I cycled there three times a week and struck up a friendship with Mick who was also studying Geology and loved the locally produced bitter called Boddingtons.

After the final geology lesson of the week on a Friday, Mick would drive down to Yates Wine Lodge on the North Shore of Blackpool and order two pints of “Boddies” so that my pint would be waiting on bar when I arrived fifteen minutes later, on my bicycle.

Throughout those final two years our friendship blossomed. Mick loved showing off his Zodiac and was always keen to take new passengers, he was also not shy of sipping several Boddies, so he was soon introduced to Frank and Nigel, fellow imbibers of the smooth bitter.

I’m sorry, I digress. I started inferring that I would write about my memories of my youth involving a bicycle, but I have taken you up the highest mountain in England.

Then, bicycles were usually the only means of transportation I had in my late teens, so without either hitching, which I did annually down to London to be involved in NYT productions, or scrounging a lift off Mick, I pedalled my way to many obscure places within a twenty-five radius of my home.

Friday nights were nearly always a pub-crawl or pub-pedal. My mate, Grid, his nickname for Chris Gradwell. Grad-Grid, you get it? Well, almost. He had the misfortune to get his head stuck in some iron railings while under the influence of some Boddies-bitter, so the name Grid stuck.

Grid and I always chose public houses that were well outside our small town, this involved a pedal on our bicycles. We chose establishments that involved crossing the Wyre river and took us to the villages of the Fylde like Poulton, Preesall, and Pilling, this was about an hour’s cycle, and we passed through Thornton, Stannah, Little Thornton, Hambleton, and Staimine and started our consumption of either Boddies-bitter or a bottled stout like Guinness called Jubilee.

The pub in Preesall is now called the Black Bull, its name then escapes me, perhaps The Preesall Arms, but nowadays all the pubs as we knew them are gone. They all had men’s-only bars, called public bars, they also had a small area for women only called “snugs” and lounge bars were the sexes could intermingle. The public bars were always equipped with a dart board, each pub having a resident dart’s team. A few of them had pool tables and there were always several packs of playing cards available for use in a game of snap, cribbage or even bridge.

Today all these pubs, the communal meeting place, have been converted to up-market eating establishments catering for the middle class and vehicularly mobile generation.

I remember on one occasion we avidly listened to the great Brain London, a local Blackpudlian-boxer, getting pummelled by the invincible then Casius Clay. It was scheduled for fifteen rounds, but London was knocked out in the third round.

That night we bid a hasty retreat to the Shard Inn which was close to the Wyre bridge for our third pint. There was a toll fee to cross the bridge over the Wyre of two pence or threepence. Once over the Wyre we stopped at the Lodge in Thornton, a quick pint and then onto my favourite pub the Bay Horse at Thornton’s rail station.

This place had a snug, a public bar and a lounge. Stools and benches in the public bar, benches and a table in the small snug and Chippendale furniture in the lounge.

The ideal pub!

Fish and chips were then the ideal ending to the evening jaunt and these were acquired back in the Cleveleys town centre.

Here the bicycles came into play as they were used to mount the pavement and ride directly up to the counter, where the order was placed. Cod, chips and “Crosserlies”! “Crosserlies” were all the discarded bits of chips and broken batter that accumulated in the fryer, and Biff gave them away free.

Biff was the owner of the Chippie called in those days, Abbots, because Biff’s surname was used; he never once complained of us riding our bicycles into his chippie.

And always welcomed our arrival with a cordial “‘allo there! Usual eh lads?”

Today apart from us being arrested as juvenile delinquents, we would no longer find the chippie.

It was demolished in the eighties and now a Thai restaurant is across the main Victoria Road.

Progress I suppose.

But that won’t get in the way of many other bicycle adventures to Fleetwood, Royal Lytham St Annes golf course, Garstang, and Glasson dock, some of which can be found by reading earlier blogs. Enjoy, thanks.

Accidents do happen.

My first major accident occurred at the tender age of seven. It happened at home in the garden.

My grandfather was a compulsive gardener and grew a vast variety of vegetables for home use; any over-abundance was quickly retailed after the Second World War on the flourishing black market in exchange for the exotic things in life like fresh home-made butter, sugar that came from the local army camp, bananas and the occasional pineapple.

He had built a greenhouse in which he grew the most delicious tomatoes, and to this day I have not tasted a tomato with such a superb taste as Pops’. He maintained that the taste was enhanced by his constant watering with his secret pigeon-shit concoction brewed in an old ten gallon diesel drum next to the compost heap at the bottom of the garden.

We also had three apples trees which received the same medication during the flowering and early fruit forming period. These apples too were absolutely delicious and at harvest time we had a queue of neighbours lining up to buy them.

I have to take some credit for both the apples and the tomatoes as every Saturday morning I was ordered to get down on my hands and knees and scrape up the pigeon-shit from the pigeon-loft floor and breeding shelves. It was a grimy and arduous task and I hated it. But with hindsight I have to congratulate myself producing the best tasting apples and tomatoes on the Fylde coast.

The Fylde Coast is a coastal plain in western Lancashire. It’s roughly a 13-mile square-shaped peninsula, bounded by Morecambe Bay to the north, the river Ribble estuary to the south, the Irish Sea to the west, and the Bowland hills to the east. The eastern boundary is approximately the location of the M6 motorway, constructed in the mid sixties.

It is a flat, alluvial plain, parts were once dug for peat, and it is the western part of an area formerly known as Amounderness. The name 'Fylde' is of Scandinavian origin, meaning "field".
With all this in its favour the region became a vegetable man’s paradise with is rich sandy mixed clay loam soil. We lived in Cleveleys a small town to the north of Blackpool and south of the fishing port of Fleetwood.

It was spring but I had been bed ridden for three days with a terrible dose of flu. On that third day I donned an old dressing gown of Pop’s and went to the vegetable patch in the back garden. 
Just in front of the pigeon loft was the veggie patch, I could see that Pop had already got two rows of spring baby potatoes in as the rows were highly ridged. I guessed that the next row would be his climbing runner beans as he had half built his cane trestle for them to climb. How could I help? I noticed that the blossom buds were just beginning to open on the apple trees adjacent to the pigeon loft. He’d not done his round tree soil loosening.

Ah ah, I could do that. This job entailed the use of the pitch fork. The ground around at the base of the trees had to be turned over and loosened creating a circular trough around the tree in which I would pour the pigeon-shite mixture.

I darted off to the tool shed and brought out the pitch fork. I didn’t bother changing out of the dressing gown and slippers as I sussed out that I would be able to hear, my mother’s lover boy’s at the time, car pull up to drop her off after she finished rehearsals.

On hearing it, I could dart back to my room, which at the time was the large downstairs front room, which had been converted in a self contained flat-let for my mother and me. I’d throw myself into my bed and pretend I’d been a good boy and spent the whole day in bed as I’d been instructed.

This was not to be. On my third downward plunge of the pitch fork my right foot was on the receiving end of the motion!

I uttered a scream that would have made Russel Crowe proud had he used it when he heard of the death of his wife in the movie Gladiators.

The moment of acute pain coupled with the shock of disbelief at my stupidity subsided quickly. Doctor Andews our local GP leapt to the forefront of juvenile grey matter, and he’s only four houses away on the corner of York Ave.

To this day I do not know how I managed it, or what drove me to hop on my right leg, clutching the pitch fork embedded through my slipper and left foot, down the drive-way through the gate along the street and into Dr Andrews’ surgery.

The waiting room was full but gasps from the waiting patients alerted old Molly Suttcliffe, the doctor’s assistant, that the figure of a child with a pitched fork impaled in his foot required immediate attention. An enterprising young waiting patient picked me up in his arms, “Where do you want him?” he asked.

“In Doctor’s accident room.” Replied Molly opening a door.

I was laid down on an examination bed and the next words I heard were, “So Pooley boy, what’ve have you done this time?”

Doctor Andrews was in his late fifties with a craggy lined face and he constantly smiled exposing his brown nicotine teeth acquired from his 60 a day Craven A. He peered at my foot. 

“Well, well that’s remarkable,” he said as he looked at the metal prong that was about three inches through my foot. At the same time old Molly who was now holding the pitch-fork with one hand grabbed an Asprin and with the other, gave it to me and said, “Swallow that!”

“Missed everything! Remarkable!” exclaimed Doctor Andrews. “Let’s get it out.”

“Right between the metatarsals, remarkable.” he continued as he deftly withdrew the pitch-fork with both nicotine sets, upper and lower teeth, exposed.

I let loose a second Russel Crowe scream.

“Alright alright, calm down Pooley, I’m going to give you a local.” He said as he filled a large syringe with a translucent liquid, “You won’t feel a thing.”

And sure enough I didn’t. 

Within a minute of the injection I felt as if I no longer had a left foot.

Bizarrely this is almost the same way a fellow thespian forty years later explained how he felt as I axed off the tip of his middle finger of his left hand in a production of the Scottish play aptly named “Mac-Bed”, as it had a giant hydraulically powered bed, which was meant to roll up and down a ramped stage as its centre piece.

This production was in the early eighties and the enlightened Israeli director proclaimed that Mr Shakespeare’s Scottish Play was all about the sexual relationship between Macbeth and his villainous coercive wife. For this reason a giant very slow moving bed working on an hydraulic powered system, was assembled in front of a large back-drop of scaffolding and all the scenes between the two protagonists were played on the bed.

In the latter part of the play when the fighting starts between Macbeth and Macduff the mattress was removed and the base with the scaffolding became the setting for their fight. This meant we clashed blows precariously balanced on the scaffolding making dramatic leaps onto the bed-base. 
It was during a final spurt as Macduff swung towards my head that I parried his blow and swept my sword down aiming for his arm. Unfortunately Michael, playing Macduff was at that time meant to grab hold of a horizontal scaffolding bar and swing with Tarzan-like dexterity onto the bed. A loss of spit second timing and my sword caught his hand still on the scaffolding.

Michael a true Thespian landed on the bed, let out a huge roar and charged at me pushing me off the stage were he was to deliver the fatal blow. All to the rehearsed plan!

The iron bed began its cued trundle down stage giving me time to let out my dying scream off stage.

 Michael  whispered sotto-voce in the wings, “You fucking Asre-hole!”

He grabbed my fake plastic head dripping blood from an assistant stage manager and sauntered back on stage for the final scene.

I met Michael in his dressing room after the curtain call and it was immediately assessed that a trip to the local hospital was in order to re-attach the dangling nail of the middle finger of his left hand, which had only been saved from a trip on the hydraulic bed by the fact that Michael had been wearing some very robust leather gloves.

It was a Tuesday night so the casualty department was virtually empty and not bursting at the seams with its weekend victims of alcoholic poisoning.

Michael was quickly examined by a junior intern on duty who told us to get to the x-ray facilities and get the hand x-rayed. 

This done we returned to casualty to be greeted y the smiling face of a doctor we both knew. Dr Kushlic the husband of a local theatrical diva who we both knew.

Dr Kushlic and the intern looked at the x-ray.

“Nothing broken, luckily just caught the finger nail” said Dr Kushlic, “But I’m not into fingers as I’m a gynecologist,” he continued with a broad smile on his face.

Michael and I both laughed catching Dr Kushlic ‘s double-entendre.

“You’re going to lose the nail.” He said as he instructed the intern to clean and dress the wound.
The rest of the night and well into the early hours of the morning Michael and I consumed of bottle of a fine malt whiskey. We slept most of the following day and performed in the evening.

After the performance when asked how he was Michael gave exactly the same answer that I gave to my mother when she returned from rehearsals.

“I’m fine.”

The show must go on even  though "Accidents do Happen'.

Equal and Opposite

Recently whilst enjoying a relaxed state of inebriation with a fellow Thespian I began to formulate a theory related to our profession. 

We were half way through a game of Scrabble and the fact that my “Toddie” was empty and the flagon of dry red my friend had brought with him was almost finished, may have been the reason we were having to consult the dictionary with increasing rapidity.

“Actinism” was the word in question. My friend, Iain Walter Mcpherson another jobbing actor going through lean times, was eager to use his “Z” on a triple letter score. I had no idea what the word meant never mind how to spell it.

I was pleased to discover from my Penguin Concise that it was spelt with an “S” not a “Z” and enlightened to learn that it is the intrinsic property in solar and nuclear radiation that produces photochemical activity.

I was amazed at my friend’s in-depth knowledge of the world of physics and enquired as to when and where he had come across the word.

“Ach,” his Scot’s lips mumbled, “I was playing Rabbit at the time in an adaptation of AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.”

“So,” I acerbically retorted, “You gave your character an Einsteinian-like bent?”

“No,” he replied seriously.

Not catching my creative drift he rambled on, “It was roond abute the late eighties and I had to wear some buck teeth over mi own front teeth and during a matinee performance I lost them.”

By now Iain was beginning to lose me too, as my alcohol-bemused mind could find no connection between the loss of Rabbit’s buck teeth, nuclear physics and solar radiation.

My eyes glanced down the page of the dictionary and I came across the very short definition given for an “actor.” A performer in a play for stage, film or television.

My God, I thought. What cheek!

It’s about time the world was given an explanation of what I and thousands of other jobbing actors are, what it is we do and why we do it.

I must formulate an Einsteinian-like theory.

Iain mumbled on as the last dregs of red wine in his enamel mug sat precariously balanced on his knee. He was completely oblivious to the fact that I had crossed into another dimension and was in a world of my own. We were suddenly two reminiscing monologues performing simultaneously in the same time and space.

My monologue took me back to my early days of training at the Royal Academy. A brilliant improvisation teacher, Mr. Keith Johnston, told us we were actors. “Whatcha mean by that?” piped up an ingratiating American student.

“An actor is someone who uses every part of himself, not just his voice, like a singer. Not just his arms and legs like a dancer. Not just his hands and eyes like a painter or sculptor. He uses his whole-being, he has to feed on every physical and mental attribute that his body can muster.”

Deep words for a bunch of young aspiring thespians to grasp.

We all stood dumbfounded in his class and waited for his next words of wisdom.

“Right,” he said, “I want you to blow up these balloons, and you can start by using your lungs.”

As I was blowing up mine I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he too was inflating a balloon, but before he started he took a syringe filled with some liquid out of his briefcase and injected it into the balloon. “Now we are going to take a trip inside one of the vilest monsters you can possibly imagine and one of you is going to slay it,” he said, holding his limply inflated balloon in his hand.

A ballsy female student, Annastasia Vampkov, from Bulgaria volunteered to make the trip.

Had Ms. Vampkov been born in the eighties she would have been excellent in the role of Lara Doon in the 1999 film of The Tomb Raider. This very attractive sultry looking red head was blindfolded and two male students leapt at the offer to be her guides on the trip.

The rest of us, apart from myself who was given the role of storyteller, were to be the insides of the monster. Following my draconian narration finger and toe-nails became teeth, sweaty bodies
became the tongue, hot garlic smelling breath of two Italian students became the breath of the monster, the inflated balloons, arms, legs, fingers, and torsos became the walls of the stomach and intestines.

The teacher whispered an instruction in my ear. “Now, you’re reaching the vital life- sustaining organ of the monster,” I said quickly modifying my narration to fall in line with Keith’s instruction, “if you reach out you’ll be able to feel it.”

The wet liquid-filled partially inflated balloon held tightly stretched between Mr. Johnson’s hands was placed in easy reach of the terrified Ms Vampkov. “Grasp it with both hands and rip it out”, I intoned in her ear.

She did just that. As the balloon burst covering the unsuspecting lass with water she screamed loudly and suddenly vomited. A perfectly natural reaction I thought for a Bulgarian vampire slayer.

It was at this stage in the formulation of my theory that Iain suddenly burst into an hysterical fit of laughter.

“Ye know were they were? I’d spat them rite out! They were sitting on top of this old grandma’s head in the front row of the audience!” he guffawed as he licked the remaining droplets of red wine he’d spilt off his knee.

 It just goes to show that all actors, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are right. At any time, in any space, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Cabbages, Ripe Tomatoes & Eggs

The title of this post should clearly tell you what actors and politicians have in common.

Both these professional groups have been on the receiving end of all three.

The two professions of course have other things in common. They tell lies or porky pies if you are more familiar with the Cockney rhyming slang.

Ronald Regan, ex-president of the USA and Arnold Schwarzenegger ex-governor of California are two very well known actors who became successful politicians.

The actors that have dabbled in the machinations of governance cover all countries.

Eva Peron from Argentina, Sidney Poitier US ambassador to Japan, Stephen Harper a conservative ex-Prime Minister of Canada, Jaya Bachchan an MP in India, Gina Lollobrigidia an unsuccessful candidate to the European Parliament, Jaroslaw Kaczynski a Prime Minister of Poland, Glenda Jackson a Labour Member of the UK’s Parliament. The list goes on and on and can easily be found by doing a Google search.

In the last few years Nigel Farage leader of UKIP, David Cameron the UK Prime Minister & Ed Miliband leader of the Labour opposition have all been pelted with eggs while campaigning for support, and others have received cabbages and rotten tomatoes.

The one and only time I have been pelted with assorted fruit, vegetables & eggs was when I was in the company of Charles Hawtrey of The Carry-on movies fame, Peter Bowles co-star of the BBC sit-com “To the Manor Born” with Penelope Keith, and John Challis.
  

 

 John was a young actor at the time and was yet to gain fame as Boycie in “Only Fools and Horses” and “The Green Green Grass”, both highly successful BBC comedies.

We were all in Tom Stoppard’s wonderfully satirical play about a Parliamentary Select Committee called “Dirty Linen & New-Found-Land”.

It is actually two separate plays but Stoppard, for some unexplained reason coupled them together.

Dirty Linen is a masterpiece of cynical political comedy. They are a pair of plays that are always performed together and were seen first as an Ambiance Lunch-Hour Theatre Club presentation at Interaction's Almost Free Theatre on April 6, 1976.

New-Found-Land is slipped in between the two halves of Dirty Linen. The curtain falls after the first half of Dirty Linen and then rises again for New-Found-Land in which an older and a younger man, two other Members of Parliament, briefly discuss the naturalization of an American into British citizenship. They laud the American nation as a whole, including every American patriotic cliché they can remember. 



After another fall and rise of the curtain the audience is returned to the Select Committee of Dirty Linen for the closing scene.

The production enjoyed a critical and box office success in South Africa and was invited to what was then Salisbury in the UDI state of Rhodesia.

Thus theatre entered the realm of politics. The whole cast was approached and after much deliberation it was decided that we would go to Salisbury for one week, Bulawayo for one week and have two stops at the towns of  Kwekwe and Gweru, two mining towns in the centre of the country.

At the time Rhodesia was in the state of what can only be described as Marshal-law. Driving between the major cities had to done in convey as both Mugage’s ZANU forces and those of ZAPU under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo, were roaming the country.

The South African producer and the producer from Rhodesia that invited us made a huge mistake.

They assumed that the reaction from the audience in both countries would be the same. The quasi-liberal theatre going audience in South Africa at the time enjoyed the way Stoppard ridiculed the UK parliamentary committee system and the producers expected the same reaction from the Rhodesians.


It was not to be.

Little did they know the Rhodesians were very Pro-British, loved the Queen and were enamoured of the UK Parliament, so anybody who said anything bad about the system would be in for a bad time.

Throughout our opening night in Salisbury we did not get the expected laughs or rounds of applause, just a few gasps, titters, and occasional boos.

When the curtain fell instead of the rapturous applause we received in Cape Town and Joeys, we got boos and were pelted with eggs,cabbages and over-ripe tomatoes.

Charles Hawtrey and Peter Bowles, the stars were quickly whisked away in the producer’s Mercedes back to the hotel, leaving us junior actors to fend for ourselves.

John and I went to the front of house bar and had a couple of drinks before going to the car park to our hired vehicle.

It was here we were confronted by about eight burly soldiers from the Rhodesian Front Army, these were the young white Rhodesians who were conscripted into the local army. The confrontation was what can be described in military terms as “A stand-off”. They hurled insults at us.

“Commie-Bastards!|” seemed to be the most insulting. “Monkey-Lovers!” and “Libby-Limeys!" were another two.

John and I decided to skirt around the group off soldiers and make our way to our car, but we were out-flanked by two enormous young men who blocked our path.

“Toddie” came to our rescue.

“You like a drink?” I said as I offered “Toddie” to the larger of the two.

He grunted a duo-syllabic reply, “What’s it?”

“Good Commie-Polish vodka, you can’t get it here.” I said.

He looked at his mates, and took a huge gulp. The normal coughing spluttering ensued, “You trying to poison us as well?”

“No”, I said, “Trying to make friends.”

His buddy laughed and grabbed “Toddie” and took a sip. He smiled and said, “Kowalski”, offering his hand. I tentatively took it and almost had the blood squeezed out of my palm.

“Please to meet you, Cess Poole,” I said.

The ice was broken and the tension eased, and within the next hour John and I were being introduced to the night life of Salisbury by Dave, Stephen, George and Stephan Kowalski. The latter was of Polish-Jewish extraction and his parents had been moved from Warsaw to Rhodesia during the last years of the Second World War.

During our conversations on that night I learnt a great deal about the Terrorists and the war going on in Rhodesia.

The news filtering through to the world was very one-sided as most liberal European countries were siding with the Africans and supporting the independence stance of ZANU & ZAPU. But I had no idea of the amount of arms that were being smuggled into the country from the communist block.

Hungarian and Czech tanks that were being reconditioned by the South African company Armscor were appearing on the battle front. American small arms and the Russian rifle, the Kalashnikov, were also appearing. The young Rhodesian soldiers where capturing arms from all around the world. They described the situation as “A total shitty mess of money & politics”.

They informed us that Britain, for one, kept on supplying oil to the rebels. Washington was dealing in strategic materials, especially chrome. The Soviets accounted for more than half of Rhodesia's illicit deals. These transactions were arranged through pliant companies in Austria, West Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. Heavy machinery came from the East, usually in shipments brought by Yugoslavs who had no qualms about flying to Salisbury, as long as their passports were not stamped.

My eyes were opened and continued to be on stalks even on the next day, when Dave and Stephan took John and I into the African township called Harare.

It was here that I was introduced to Rape & Mopani worm stew.

These worms are not worms but caterpillars and are found usually on the Mopane tree and known in Zimbawe as Macimbi if your’e from the Ndebele clan, or Madora if you’re from the Shona tribe.

Dave and Stephan said they were an important source of protein and were a common snack for the “Ters” and themselves. The stew was delicious. Cooked on the roadside in an up-turned metal dustbin lid, it slid down our gullets and was washed down with a Carlsberg lager bought from a near-by “shebeen”.

I often wondered why the African name for an illicit drinking abode was stolen from the Irish, but that’s another story.

So the Danes were in on the illicit trading deals!

I digress, sorry.

We learnt that the worms are hand-picked in the wild, often by women and children. In the bush, the caterpillars are not considered to belong to the landowner (if any), but around a house permission should be sought from the resident. When the caterpillar has been picked, it is pinched at the tail end to rupture the innards. Then they squeeze it like a tube of toothpaste to expel the slimy, green contents of the gut.

The traditional method of preserving the worms is to dry them in the sun or smoke them, whereby they gain extra flavour.

The dried worms can be eaten raw as a crisp snack, as Dave and Stephan had told us or they are soaked to rehydrate, then fried until they are crunchy, or cooked with onion, tomatoes, spices and the green spinach like vegetable called Rape.

After our tour of Harare we were returned to the Meikles Hotel where we were billeted, to be told by the rest of the cast, that we were only going to do two more performances in Salisbury before we travelled south to Kwe-kwe , Gweru and Bulawayo for our final week. The producers had cancelled the other mid week performances and we would only be doing the last two shows on Saturday.

John and I were delighted as this meant we had more time to spend with our newly found friends.

We invited them for lunch at the hotel and they told us the whole history of the Meikles Hotel. It was named after the founding family who came to Sothern Africa from Strathaven, Lanarkshire in Scotland in 1915 and they gave us the address of one of the great-great grandchildren who now lived in Bulawayo. A young girl of twenty one called Wendy. John, who unlike me, at the time was unattached, quickly jotted down the name and address for future reference.

 

 The rest of the week was spent visiting the Salisbury Sports Club, which is now the Harare Sports Club and hosts all the international cricket teams that visit the country.

The ground is surrounded by Jacaranda trees and has a beautiful gabled pavilion. It’s in the heart of the city and was an easy walk from Meikles Hotel for John and I to avail ourselves of the cheap alcoholic beverages on offer.

We bade farewell to Salisbury and travelled in convey on Sunday to Kwe-Kwe for two performances on Monday and Tuesday, then another convoy to Gweru on Wednesday for three shows, before we moved onto Bulawayo the following Sunday.

The production was received far more cordially in Kwe-Kwe and Gweru.
 
The audience was composed mostly of ex-Brit-Pats who worked in the chrome and coal mining industry in these towns. They were working class Brits and warmed to Stoppard’s cynical ridicule of the Uk’s parliamentary system, and particularly enjoyed our leading lady’s entrance clad only in her bra and panties.

Our final week in Bulawayo was also better received than Salisbury but even so the early week performances were cancelled and we only performed on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

This gave John time to track down Wendy and discover that she had a younger eighteen year old sister, so John and I had a foursome swimming pool party on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in Douglasdale. The suburb was named after The Douglas family, descendants of William de Duglas , the leader of late 12th century Scotish clan.

The sisters were fantastic hosts and at a party after our closing night they served omelets to the whole cast with a side salad of fresh tomatoes just to remind us of our reception in Salisbury.

Tokoloshes & Leprechauns & Finger nails

I'm sure you've all heard of a Leprechaun the mischievous little Irish imp from the mythical tales of Oisin in Tir na nOg and Irish folklore.

Well, the Tokoloshe is the equivalent mystical creature of the Nguni tribes of Southern Africa.

They feature in many of their oral legends but unlike the Irish pranksters, who never harm people, the Tokoloshe is usually far more evil and nearly always brings trouble.

Many maids working in the affluent suburbs of South Africa place the legs of their beds on three or four building bricks. This increases the height of the mattress from the floor and prevents the Tokoloshe from climbing into any of the orifices the maid has on offer. Should a highly superstitious African think that he or she might have been visited by the dreaded Tokoloshe, off they will run to consult the local sangoma or witch doctor hoping to acquire the right medicine or mootie as it is know locally, to banish the offending creature.

We Western Europeans do not have an equivalent malicious creature in our mythologies. So, the closest to my rather limited knowledge, is the leprechaun, who is said to be small, ill-natured and mischievous, and have minds designed for devilish cunning.  The Tokoloshe is also small and mischievous, however when he fights a person he usually kills them, but should he loose the fight, he then will teach the human his magic.

So, bearing all this in mind I openly admit that I have been both a Leprechaun and a Tokoloshe whilst on my travels both in Ireland and Southern Africa. On both these occasions I have been in civilian mode and was not performing on stage or in front of a camera.

The eating habits of both these fabled creatures are bizarre.

The Leprechaun has a great liking for the mystical four-leaf-clover and I am told nibble on a potato or two.

I was instructed on the culinary delights of the Tokoloshe whilst I was on my second pony trek in the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho with my friendly guide, Johann.

Sour milk and pebbles are two favourites of the Tokoloshe. The milk is an aphrodisiac for him and helps him in his sexual exploits with the fairer sex. The pebble is also a pretty useful tool for him, as by swallowing one he becomes invisible and can creep up on the unsuspecting female. So, who needs Viagra when curdled milk and a stone off the ground will do?

Johann, my guide on the pony trek into the mountains of Lesotho was being educated at the very upmarket school called St Johns College in Johannesburg. He was about to sit his matric exams, spoke excellent English, and was highly knowledgeable about the history of South Africa and in particular Lesotho.

He was the son of a local chief Mojaje. It was his mid term-break and he’d acquired the job as a guide with the Basotho Trekking Company high up on The God-Help-Me pass.

The God Help Me Pass, or Lekhalong-la-Molimo-Nthuse in seSotho, is a mountain pass in western Lesotho. The road ascends steeply from the village of Setibing, and near the summit is the Basotho Pony Trekking Centre, which offers a variety of trekking expeditions.

I had chosen the longest one on offer; a five day with four overnight stops. It was my second visit to the trekking centre so I was aware of what I needed to take. I had amassed, tins of corned beef, sardines, pilchards, a jar of gherkins, a case of beer, an assortment of boiled sweets, currants, peanuts, a full Toddie of good Polish vodka, and some jumpers which would come in handy on the cold nights.

All the heavier items would be packed onto the back of a very sturdy and sure footed pack-mule.

Part of the deal was free accommodation at the overnight stops which were going to be in the local’s huts at carefully selected villages. The final fourth overnight stay was planned at Johann’s father’s kraal.

On our first day out Johann told me it would be a very short thirty kilometer trek to the first stop-over. The shortness of the trek became highly evident after about six ks, when my backside said I should pause, as my privates were being squeezed up my rectum. We made six more stops and each time Johann told me all about how his country had developed and emerged as a single polity under King Moshoeshoe the first in 1822.

Moshoeshoe, was the son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, who formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804.

Between 1821 and 1823, he and his followers settled at the Butha-Buthe Mountain, and joined with former adversaries in resistance against the Lifaquane, a tribe which was associated with the reign of infamous Shaka Zulu in the early eighteen hundreds.

The bizarre thing about this was that Johann had learnt all of this whilst studying at St Johns in Johannesburg and not from his early schooling in Lesotho.

He was not too fond of the British and their intervention in the war between Moshoeshoe and the Boers in the Free State. This war was a series of skirmishes, and in 1854 when the British pulled out of the region, there followed a series of wars with the Boers where they lost a great portion of their western lowlands.

The last skirmish was in 1867, when Moshoeshoe appealed to the British Queen Victoria, who agreed to make Basutoland a British protectorate in 1868. In 1869, the British signed a treaty at Aliwal North with the Boers that defined the boundaries of Basutoland, which by ceding the western low lying and fertile territories, thus effectively reduced Moshoeshoe's Kingdom to half its previous size.

British diplomacy at its best!

My head was spinning with all this information and I was very happy when we finally arrived at our first night stop-over.

The chief was in Egoli, Johannesburg, mining gold for Anglo-American Mining house and his first wife Rosie was left in charge of the kraal. I was given my own rondavel which was furnished with a mattress, a small bedside locker, a very large metal wash basin, a small port-a-loo fashioned out of an old bucket and a toilet seat attached to the top with farmers wire.

I carefully unpacked my belongings and unrolled my sleeping bag when Johann entered.

“You will be eating just after sun down with Madame Rosie, she has prepared her celebratory dish of sheep’s offal, including the tail, which is a sign that you are an important visitor. You give her something in return.”

I thanked him and told him I would be outside in a minute and share a sundowner with him.

In the dying light of the evening sun Johann, drinking a beer, and I sat on ridge overlooking a vast valley and continued our chat. The conversation moved as the sun set into the area of the supernatural.

There had recently been a newspaper story about a lady who lived on the South African side of the Lesotho border and it told of her encounter with extraterrestrials. She had claimed that she had been adducted by aliens and had given birth to an alien’s child.

This sparked off our entry into the world of beliefs. I quickly steered the conversation to my time with Gypsy Rose Lee and how she’d taught me that most things mystical and paranormal were purely a trick by a very accomplished con-artist.

By the time the sun had set and we made our way to Madame Rosie’s evening banquet, Johann had mastered the art of “finger-clicking” and had learnt all the ins and outs of Rose Lee’s supernatural trick. His cool somber black African face tended to add more magic to the deception than I’d managed to muster dressed in my Indian turban as a child on Blackpool’s North Pier.

I entered Madame Rosie’s beautifully kept rondavel breathing in the smell of freshly braised tripe and carrying a great deal of pride for my young trainee. The interior was spotless although there was an earthen floor. A fire shouldered in the centre with the smoke gently curling up towards a vent in the thatched roof. Around the fire were scattered Lesotho woven rugs. These were adorned with cushions also covered in the locally made woolen fabric.

The tripe was superb, served on a bed of mealie pap, with a butternut which had been roasted in the coals as a separate veg. I complimented Madame Rosie on her cooking, “As good as what my Grandma made.” She beamed and said. “Not many of you Europeans like the tripe."

“I grew up on it. Pop, my granddad, loved it, although we usually had either beef or pig offal.”

I described how my Grandfather used to slow roast an entire pig’s head for a Sunday lunch once a month. It was his specialty, but I was never allowed to have the brain as he said, “Ya’s clever enough as it is Cessy!” It was many years later, when I tried doing it myself, that I realised what a delicacy my grandfather had deprived me of.

The meal was finished and a young girl came in almost out of thin air and cleared away all the cooking utensils, the wooden carved boards we’d eaten off and generally tidied the place up.

Then she did the most unusual thing.

After she’s taken out all the eating accouterments, she walked back in carrying an old cobbler’s shoe-iron and a chicken under her arm. She gently placed the shoe iron down about half a metre away from the fire. It was only once she had done this that I realized the chicken was attached to the shoe iron by a long piece of string made from hemp fibre.

“Why the chicken?” I asked Johann.

“She peck up the crumbs we dropped. It’s the indigenous Vacum cleaner. Eco friendly.” He said smiling.

And sure enough the little chicken, restricted by the string, started pecking all the eating area around the fire gobbling up, unseen to the human eye, morsels of dropped mealie pap and tripe.

“She also keeps it inside overnight so collect any eggs she lays. Fresh eggs are very scarce in the mountains.”

This amazed me as I’d seen hundreds of chickens running around in all the villages we’d passed through.

Johann explained, “They mostly Cocks, for the eating. Most females run outside, the eggs are fertilised and they get more chickens for the eating. Young layers are sought after for the eggs and they keep them well protected.”

This information reminded of advice given by my Grandpa. He was fond of the expression “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.” And he used many recycling techniques that are now gaining exposure on the internet and on our TV screens. With his pigeons, he followed the same regime as Madame Rosie, he separated the good female racers for breeding, and any unattached males made their way into Grandma’s pigeon pie.

If only this type of information were still passed on to today’s youngsters, what a far better world we would have. Less need to join the supermarket queues for the ready-to-eat salt ridden fodder that is guzzled down by most of the Western world today.

I have to admit that I was wandering down memory’s lane and not really in the here and now. It might have had something to do with the smoke from the pipe that Madame Rosie had lit up. The soft delicate aroma of the dreaded weed, dagga filled the rondavel.

As I pulled myself back into present situation, Madame Rosie smiled sweetly at me. Johann gave me a quick nudge in the side, “She’s waiting for you.”

“To do what?"

“The passing on of the gift.”

It suddenly clicked. She was waiting for my present to her. I waved at her pipe, took out my cigarettes and asked if she’d mind if I smoked. I then handed her Toddie, indicating that she must take a sip.

She took the hip flask and deftly unscrewed the top and took an almighty huge gulp, worthy of Jack Nicholson, of the Polish Vodka.
 
There were none of the usual reactions that people who have not tasted the vodka before exhibit. No coughing, spluttering and shaking of the head, just her gentle smile; and then she took a second slug and handed Toddie back to me saying thank you in SeSotho.

Johann excused himself saying that we would depart at first light tomorrow. He suggested that I did the same as the trek the following day would be over eighty kilometers to the Maletsunyane Falls, one of the magnificent treasures of the mountain kingdom.

I agreed that it was a good idea but Rosie’s actions had me riveted to my cushion. She was carefully rolling small balls of cotton wool and then pushing them up her nose.

Curiosity got the better of me. “Why are you doing that?” I said as I mimicked her motions.

She pointed at my cigarette and said, “That smoke not good!” as she smiled and puffed out a huge inhalation from her dagga pipe, “This good!” she continued.

I can’t remember what time it was when I returned to my rondavel. All I do know was, when I was woken in the morning by an eager Johann that Toddie was empty, and I had a mouth that was as dry as a Nun’s nasty. Fortunately I had packed another bottle of “Wybroka” in one of the pack mule’s satchels.

Dawn light was creeping in over the horizon as I left my rondavel. I had rinsed my face with icy cold water, brushed my teeth and completed my morning’s ablutions. Johann had said we’d breakfast on the trek, so I’d extracted some provita biscuits and a tin of corned beef from the mule’s side pack to put in my personal shoulder bag with a refilled Toddie.

Madame Rosie was there to wave goodbye, “I thank you for a wondrous evening.” She beamed as I handed her the tin of corned beef from my bag. She gave me a huge hug and pulled the ball of cotton wool from her nostrils.

We were on our way.

The trek to the waterfall which is near the town of Semonkong, the site of smoke, was grueling and energy sapping. I do not care to remember the number of times we descended on my pony’s ratcheted knees into a valley, and then climbed to the other side, but the view of the Malesunyane Falls was worth the pain and agony that my backside endured.

Words can not describe the beauty and magnificence of this 192 metre cascading waterfall. The sound also in the valley floor will resonate in my ear drums for years to come. That night we stayed at a back-packer’s hostel. I took the decision as the other alternative of riding another three hours to reach the planned kraal did not appeal to my bruised rear end.

The hostel too was the ideal place to test Johann’s finger clicking skill on the gullible visitors from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We ensconced ourselves at the bar and awaited our first punter. It was going to be a serious test of Johann’s hearing as the piped rock music was blasting from the speakers. I told him to focus and ignore all other sounds just pick out my clicking finger nails.

Although he did not fail, it was only by the third attempt he was passed with flying colours and I didn’t have to pay for a single drink that night. A smart move, as funds were as always low, and I’d decided to imbibe the very expensive Irish Whisky that was on offer.

Our third day was virtually a return trek along the route we’d followed to the Falls. We took it very slowly as my rear end was in need for a gentle massage by a Thai masseur. For part of the journey I tried riding side-saddle.

Whenever I’ve seen British royalty employ this mode of travel they always seem to be completely relaxed and a hundred percent in control of their horse. I quickly realized that it was not a technique that I would not master on this rocky terrain, and when Johann started laughing at me I reverted to the standard position.

Our third stop-over was uneventful, after another rich stew, this time goat shin, which was delicious, a few beers; I retired again to a rondavel especially reserved for tourists. It was more up-market than Rosies’ with a camp-bed, a small dressing table with a mirror, a modern chemical toilet and a wash basin in an old ornate wooden stand.

As the sun set Johann asked a village boy to find some fresh eggs in exchange for a bag of boiled sweets.

At breakfast in the morning after an early morning cup of tea, Johann said he had a surprise for me at breakfast.

I sauntered out of my rondavel to see a table laid out for one, with a white table cloth, and dressed with the finest silver cutlery. On it were three boiled eggs in silver egg-cups.

“You make the choice?” said Johann who’d dressed himself in the style of an English butler, wearing a bowler hat.

“Avoid the hydrogen sulphide.” he said smiling as he knelt next to the small fire toasting some bread.

I was fully aware of what might happen and held a napkin against my nose as I cracked the top off the first egg. A beautiful yellow yolk cooked to runny perfection greeted me and with Johann's fire-toasted bread it went down a treat.

The opening of the second one rocketed me out of my seat as the smell of an open sewer wafted up from the egg’s blackened innards. It was vile, worse than Crewe railway station in the days off steam trains!

Johann laughed his head off and explained that it was a childhood prank of his to get everyone out of the rondavel so he could steal some biscuits.

He then showed me the secret of testing an egg to find out if it's off.

This involved the use of the Tokoloshe’s favourite tool, a small stone. He showed me that the sound when a good egg is tapped with the stone is totally different to the sound emanating when a bad one is tapped. The difference is only heard by a well trained ear and he said it was his gift to me in exchange for teaching him the finger clicking scam.

“The Tokoloshe and Leprechaun both have good hearing.” He said confirming that the third egg was a good one. And sure enough it was.

He told me that the trek to his father’s kraal would be about eight hours and we’d arrive just before sun set. The chief’s second wife would be in charge of all the cooking and welcoming.

He told me that the first wife, his mother, had died five years ago of TB, a terrible disease that still ravages the rural African villages and townships. It has apparently increased dramatically since the arrival of the anti-viral HIV medications. Because the drugs are slowing down the HIV symptoms, they are making the affected people more prone to TB.

It was for this reason that Johann wanted to become a doctor and was aiming in getting a least six distinctions in his matric-exams. The drive, passion, and determination of this young rural African who was receiving a top class English education, was growing on me. My grouchy self was taking on a pleasant mood, I was hoping that in years to come I would be seeing his name on TV screens across the globe, either extolling the beauty of Lesotho, or performing the most revolutionary transplant surgery.

At about three thirty in the afternoon we arrived at his father’s kraal. We were immediately swapped by the children of the village who swarmed round Johann and took turns in hugging him, their eyes then turned expectantly towards me.

“Feta mpho” said Johann and I remembered the translation he’d given me after I’d given Rosie the tin of corned beef. “Passing the gift”. I moved over to the pack mule and extracted the largest bag of boiled sweets I could find.

“Scatter them,” said Johann, “It gives them a game and they’ll get divided equally.”

With a grand twirling motion reminiscent of the Naido’s action when catching the cray-fish at Disappointment Bay, I scattered the sweets. The children dived in laughing, screaming and thoroughly enjoying them selves picking up Beacon’s finest. Mojaje’s second wife Morwa, watched and applauded. She then guided me towards my quarters.

It wasn’t a rondavel, but a sturdily built oblong stone house, made from the local rocks, a small wooden door, and a window in each wall, a raised concrete floor and a thatched roof.

Inside a bed made from gum-poles, a dresser, a side table, a main table, a wardrobe, an antique basin dresser and what really surprised me, Hi-fi equipment, up to date 1980’s CD player, cassette and radio. It was without power as Eskom did not deliver that far into the mountains, but I discovered behind an old settee six 12volt car batteries.

After a quick wash down I was back outside to watch yet another glorious sun set. Because of the mountains the light vanished quickly on the western valley slopes yet hung like a never descending curtain on the Eastern side. This created a mottled almost surreal effect that transfixed the eye till the sun slid over the western ranges.

As I was sitting outside my stone cottage enjoying I was enjoying an ice cold beer. Yes ice cold. Johann had taught me and trick on our final ride.

“Let the sun cool them.”He said.

“How?”

“Evaporation.”

With my O-level physics I quickly understood, and wished he’d made the suggestion four days ago. We took three beers, and rolled a T-shirt tightly around them, placed them in a plastic bag, then immersed the whole lot in a running mountain stream. We repeated the operation with another three. Tied the two bags together and placed them across my pony’s saddle. Throughout the day we kept the T-shirts wet and let the sun evaporate the moisture. What a wonderful experiment to demonstrate Boyle’s & Charles’s Law of thermo-dymanics.

I was on my second when Johann joined me. He’d been in conference with his father and discussed all the tribal issues and his own future. It had been decided that he should go to university and his younger brother by Mojaje’s second wife would take over all the tribal roles. Johann had also explained to his father that tonight, him and I were going to demonstrate the trick of finger-nail-clicking, but he was not to tell Morwa, his second wife.

So the scene was set.

We had a splendid meal of roasted chicken done over an open fire. It was beautifully crisp and Morwa had spent many hours slowly turning it on the rotisserie, made from and fashioned out of metal coat hangers and carefully positioned stones around the fire. We had mealie cobs that were steamed in sawn off beer cans that had been placed in the hot coals.

After the meal when everything was cleared away Chief Mojaje introduced the game.

“Johann, he tell me he is now a physic. He can read peoples minds.”

“Eeish, no, no. Impossible. They teach him funny things in Egoli.”

“It is true,” I said interrupting, “I noticed it on the trek, we can show you, if you like.”

I emptied my pockets and scattered the contents on the floor, packet of cigarettes, a lighter, a bunch of keys, an assortment of coins. They covered an area of about a square metre.

“Now we tell Johann to go outside and we blindfold him.”

With the Morwa’s headscarf wrapped around his head Johann couldn’t see anything. I guided him out the door.

“Now Morwa I want you to pick any item. Any item on the floor, when you’ve chosen it I don’t want you to tell me what it is. All you have to do is gently touch it with one of your fingers.

She finally touched one of the keys on my key ring. Luckily it was the largest one.

“That’s it, now we call Johann back in.”

Johann entered and I guided to a seated position front of the objects. He hummed gently. A wonderful touch all of his own.

“I need to touch Morwa’s forehead,” he said.

I moved him to face her, lifted his arm and placed his hand on her head. He delicately moved his fingers across her face.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

He leant forward, increased the volume of his humming and slowly swept his hand over the scattered objects. I clicked my finger nails as soon as his open palm moved over the bunch of keys. He ignored it and moved his hand away over other items thus increasing the tension. Back his hand came over the keys. I clicked again. He paused holding his palm about ten centimeters over the keys.

Morwa’s eyes were popping out of her head. His hand moved down and covered the key ring.

“How! Eeeish! No! impossible!” said Morwa.

“Yes well done Johann, but which one?” I said. “Morwa take the keys and take them off the ring, lay them down in a line.”

This she did.

“Now try again Johann, I’ll move your hand to the start off the line and I’ll tell you when you’ve reached the end. OK?”

I didn't say a word and an eerie silence descended. Johann kept the tension building for about another three minutes until he responded to my “clickin ka monoana lipekere” clicking fingernails.

He picked up Morwa’s chosen key and removed his blind fold.

Morwa jumped up and screamed.

“Aih E-Tokoloshe ke ho eena!"  and ran out of the room.

Chief Mojaje laughed uncontrollably and then suggested that Johann go and find Morwa and let her into the secret.

Johann left leaving the two old codgers alone. I offered Mojaje a sip from Toddie and we  sank into a deep conversation about Tokoloshes, Leprechauns, the supernatural, and believe it or not solar power, inverters and how he was going to get his Hi-Fi unit in my cottage up and running.

In the early hours of the morning I explained the whole finger clicking scam to him and told him what a magnificent child he had.

Smiling he told me that Johann had told him about the game but he didn’t tell him what the secret signal was.

“So I knew it had to be a trick! His late mother said he was going to be a bright one! He was up to all the tricks in his childhood. Changing the bad eggs for the good ones. He always said, he enjoyed the smell. chemistry is one of is best subjects.”

I was touched that he’d pulled the prank on me that morning.

We continued to sip the Polish vodka and the conversation turned to his favorite topic. Religion, he had been brought up a Catholic but like myself, his belief had waned. However he was a great reader of the bible and he explained it was full of contradictions and riddles. Genesis he said was full of them.

As the sun lifted its glorious head, we moved outside to watch it rise. In the cascading light, which seemed to light up the whole beautiful panoramic view of Lesotho’s mountain ranges, he asked me to solve the following riddle. He didn’t want answer before we left but asked that I send him a postcard when I’d solved it.

“Give me the name of the man who lived before his farther, died before his father and was buried in his grandmother’s chest?” he asked. “The answer is in Genisis.”

Ten years later whist I was travelling in India I sent the postcard.

A Buddhist monk in the Nilgri Hills of India had helped me.

Mr Cess Du est Monsieur Foxy

 Mr Cess Du est Monsieur Foxy

C’est va? Noblesse noblige. Comment allez vous? Bon soir. Bon jour. Je m’appelle Cess Poole. Je t’aime. Qui, qui, madame. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? Comme ce comme ca. Je ne sais quoi. Je suis un enfant terrible.

The last stock phrase I would live to regret.

I explain.

“Qui”, I thought with a few pigeon phrases in the foreign tongue of French at my disposal, I felt very confident when I was offered a small cameo role in a movie called “Crime de Monsieur Stil, Le”. I was sorely in need of confidence, as I would have to perform the whole role speaking French.

By the end of my four week shoot I had a new understanding and appreciation of the stock French phrase, Honni soit qui mal y pense -Evil be to him who evil thinks.

The movie script was freely adapted from the novel “Crime in the Gabon” by Georges Simenon, the creator of the famous detective of the fifties and sixties, Maigret.

Gabon was a French West African colony till independence came in August of 1960. An enterprising and delightful young lady our director, Ms. Claire Devers had set her heart on making the definitive French film on the political chaos that occurred during the mass exodus of the French colonial masters in the years just before Mr. Leon M’ba assumed the presidential office in 1961. The movie was of the political crime thriller genre and the basic story line was full of promise.

The Gabon was in a stable, if somewhat autocratic state at the time. Africa’s longest serving president, El  Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba was in power and was running a smooth dictatorial African ship. But as a civil war was raging next door in the Congo, the location chosen for this made-for-TV-epic was the Northern Cape of South Africa. Our base camp and lodgings were in the small town of Keimoes and all our set locations were within a two hundred-kilometre radius of the town.

This whole region of Orange River basin and the surrounding area is renowned for the growing of grapes, critus fruits, the delicious yellow clingstone peach and the production of many fine wines.

Some farmers even brewed their own marvelous illicit concoction known to the locals as Mampoer. This is the South African version of Moonshine or Irish Potcheen. The latter two being excellent tasty beverages, I was very eager to taste the local rendition.

Fire-water-extraordinaire is the best description I can give this potent medicinal drink. The medicine is made from the skins and off-cuts of the yellow clingstone peach and was of exceptional quality. So “Toddie” and I were in second heaven.

Forty-one kilometres to the west of Keimoes lies another small town called Kakamas, and to the East another one-horse town by the name of Pofadder. The name Kakamas is shrouded in mystery, with the most likely explanation of the derivation is that it comes from the Koranna Khoe words for "poor grazing".

And that the area certainly is.

The town of Pofadder was named after Klaas Pofadder, a bushman or Koi-Koi Captain of the area. Pofadder again is surrounded by “poor grazing” and is the centre of the local sheep trade, and is well known to geologists and mineralogists because of the many interesting geological deposits found there.

“Kak” or “Kuk” as it is pronounced in Afrikaans means shit. And “Pofadder” or “Puffadder” as I -  a rooinek would pronounce it, is one of the deadliest snakes in Africa. I supply all this information so that you will note, to put it mildly, we were barracked in the back of beyond!

Mademoiselle Dever was a fiery lady and the producer from France; George Campana seemed to be on the ball. However as always in our industry, money is always the bottom line. The only reason the movie was being shot in South Africa was not the coup in the Congo, it was because the local English speaking actors, who had been cast in all the supporting roles, would cost less than flying in genuine French thespians.

This as you can imagine, caused problems, strangely enough not on the monetary issues but on the creative issues. Not one us of could string a single sentence together in French!

We all had a smattering of French. We had either studied it at school as one of our foreign languages or had taken it at University. Dialogue coaching from a young French lady was the order of the day. We practiced and practiced but never seemed to improve. We were told that we had to speak in French so as to help the French actors in Paris who would dub, and post-sync, their voices.
 
Brilliant! I thought.

They are never going to use our voices. All they are interested in is that our lips make the right movements. So I quickly made my character a man of many gesticulations. When he was pensive, he would talk with his hand half covering his mouth. When he wild and angry he would move his hands so erratically that they would cross his face every two seconds. And when I was totally at a loss for words and up-shit-arse-creek without the proverbial paddle I would spin around turning my back to the camera.

My character developed in leaps and bounds. After a few days Ms. Devers had me sussed. “Ah, ah Monsieur Foxy is on the set, bon jour.”  was her morning greeting to me.

She had observed my interest in keeping most of my face out of shot during the previous night’s shoot. Scene soixtante neuf ( 69, no pun intended) was four pages long. That’s about three minutes of screen time. All the non-French speaking actors were in it. Some of us had fifteen lines, some only six or seven, I was in seventh heaven, I only had one and it was only six words long.

It was set in the country club bar, a small area of twenty square metres. Ms. Devers wanted to get the whole scene in one traveling hand-held-shot. This would require the greatest skill from all the actors and the camera crew. Shooting the scene in ten takes would have been excellent if we had been speaking in English.

At 4.45 am. the following morning, ten hours after we’d started, we wrapped the scene. It had taken us forty-one takes! This was a record for all of us working on the scene. The French expletive, “Merde!!!!” was ringing in our ears as we crawled off to bed.

As Ms. Devers greeted me at twelve noon the following day, I was full of the, joie de vivre, the joys of life.

I had a day off. “Bon jour, ma pleasure mademoiselle”, I replied handing her “Toddie” so she could have a sip. She knocked back a hefty gulp and went into an immediate seizure, gasping and coughing.

“What is this?” she asked in between bouts of panting convulsions.

“She is the evil Mampoer mademoiselle, the medicine of the fox, the creme de la creme, a gift from enfant terrible.” I replied.

“Honni soit qui mal y pense - Evil be to him who evil thinks Monsieur Foxy”, she answered as she walked away laughing in the African sun.