Strip Pan Wrinkle

by David Fletcher

  ‘I suppose the Lords will be on a meter as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ confirmed Brian. ‘And the whole of the rest of the Establishment, all those non-executive directors, all those members of remuneration committees, all those bosses of quangos… ’

  ‘Which is all very laudable – and very aspirational,’ interrupted Sandra. ‘Erhh… but how does one do it?’

  ‘Well, Big Bang possibly. You know, a revolution. Or, more likely, some sort of Somali slicing… ’

  ‘Do you mean “salami slicing”?’

  ‘Yeah. You know, a few minor changes here and there – that nobody will really notice – until this “having your turn and clearing off ” mentality becomes embedded in the psyche; so that everybody, including the Establishment, accepts it as the norm.’

  ‘And the first changes… ?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe newsreaders. I mean, who wouldn’t like to see the back of that Huw guy? And then maybe TV chefs. And I can think of any number of them who shouldn’t have had a turn in the first place. And I’ll tell you another one: siblings. Just think what moving them on could do for improving Christmas. And you could still send them a card.’

  ‘Right,’ announced Sandra, ‘that’s quite enough. I think you’ve had more than your fair turn with the bat and you now ought to give it a rest. And me a rest. I don’t know whether I’ve ever said this before, but you do go on. And sometimes on and on and on… ’

  ‘Well, you were encouraging me… ’

  ‘Not to arrive at recycling my brothers… ’

  ‘Well, that was just to dramatise my point.’

  ‘Or to illustrate its total non-viability. It depends on one’s perspective. Talking of which, you really couldn’t ask for a better outlook, could you? I mean from where we are now.’

  Sandra was peering at the waterhole again – and Brian got the message. It was essentially: ‘Savour the moment, and don’t crowd it out with more of your ramblings. Yes, please, please, no more of your ramblings.’

  So the rest of the evening was devoted to a quiet contemplation of the scene outside the lodge, a surreptitious bit of back-scratching on the part of Brian, and a mental turning-over by Brian of his mildly flawed hypothesis. Because… if he could only introduce some motivation into the equation – or even some blatant duress or a threat of naked violence. After all, one should never become squeamish when one was pursuing a great idea…

  Just as one should never become reserved about admitting how tired one was, even though it was only eight-thirty. So Brian did and discovered that Sandra was weary as well. It had been a very long day with a drive and a flight and then another drive (albeit not at 200 kph), and they had every right to feel knackered. So, very soon they were back in their tent, Brian was having another clandestine scratch, and Sandra was probably worrying about the early symptoms of intellectual impairment. Or… she might even have been worrying about the possibility of intellectual impairment brought on by ant-bite. But not for long. Because, within just a few minutes, both she and Brian were fast asleep, and Brian was dreaming about Ed Miliband – at Asda. He was stacking shelves there – with packets of chocolate digestives. And behind him, serving at the meat counter, was Gordon himself – looking surprisingly neat…

  26.

  The good news was that his front, his face and all his limbs were perfect – at least from a therapeutic if not an aesthetic perspective. But the bad news was that Brian’s back was far from perfect. In fact, it was worse than it had been the previous day, and he had become aware of this deterioration in its condition during the night. He had not been able to ignore it: a stinging, prickling sensation over the whole of his reverse, right down to his waist, and acute, blazing discomfort whenever he moved. And now, in this first morning at Motswiri, it was clear that he had something that was potentially serious – and a serious threat to his enjoyment of the lodge.

  But he tried. He tried to ignore the pain and the burning at breakfast and again while he and Sandra took in the view from their tent (it having been decided that in his present condition, anything more than sitting and staring might be unwise). But even here it was difficult. It was increasingly hot as the morning proceeded and a wind had blown up, not a cooling wind but a roasting wind. It was as though somebody had switched on a giant hairdryer, and was intent on adding to Brian’s distress by first overheating him and then by agitating his shirt against his back, and so causing him a further escalation in his suffering.

  Well, it was time to ignore it, time to focus instead on those groundscraper thrushes and those golden-breasted buntings – and then on the prospect of lunch. For lunch would be preceded by a drink and, judging by the restraint that was evident in the breakfast offering, it might even be manageable…

  It wasn’t. It was, for both Brian and Sandra, a pair of lavishly packed baps. And that is lavishly with boiled egg and tomato sauce. So now Brian, back on his bed (with a soothing wet towel beneath him), could focus only on the promise of the next distraction – which, of course, was the afternoon drive.

  It commenced at four o’clock, just as it would have done the previous day if Brian had managed to fit that Merlin engine into his Land Cruiser, and it was a drive into the managed game-farm that surrounded the lodge.

  Brian and Sandra’s guide for this excursion was Jacob, and Jacob was a young South African of rugby-player build who was here in Botswana learning game-farm management. This learning process was part of his university studies which, when completed, would allow him to take up a position in his chosen profession back in his home country – where game-farms abound. He was therefore enthusiastic, modest in his level of achievement (he was still sorting out his birdcalls and the birds themselves) and he was eager to make the drive as interesting as possible for his guests.

  He managed this task pretty well, considering that it was largely a drive through Kalahari thornveld in which there were very few animals. There were some kudu and waterbuck about and even the odd oryx and steenbok, but not a great deal else, and in the end Jacob was reduced to finding aardvark holes at the side of the track – with flies at their entrance (as flies hovering around indicated that there was an aardvark in residence even if one couldn’t see it). And then there were the rhinos…

  There were twelve on the farm (which apparently extended over sixty thousand hectares of Botswana and was owned by a guy from Sunderland(!)), and five of these twelve had been born on the farm. Unfortunately, they all had an intimate knowledge of the farm – and where to go to avoid the prying eyes of visiting guests – and none of them was seen. However, the consequent hiatus in game-viewing did provide Brian with an opportunity – and this opportunity was triggered by a fly.

  It was on Jacob’s head – at the centre of his scalp. Brian could see it because he was seated directly behind Jacob in his safari Land Cruiser (!), and he could also see that Jacob was unaware of its presence as he was driving. This was not good – as the fly, from a creationist’s perspective, did not have the appearance of something put together in that great production plant known to them all as “God Enterprises Inc”, but instead something that must have come from that unlicensed set-up down the road, which traded under the name of “Surprises from Hell”. Or, more prosaically, it was a red and black, ominously-squat fly that looked as though it was trying to decide whether it wanted to bite Jacob or bore into his brain. Brian advised Jacob of its presence – and Jacob brushed it off. He then expressed his gratitude, because the threat to his person had been a real one. What Brian had just removed from his head was a scarily named “cattle louse fly”. And these flies are apparently impossible to kill – even with a hammer – and even if they don’t bore into you, they often bite you to leave a painful bump that can last for up to three days.

  Well, that was it. Here was the perfect opening for a discussion on the subject of ant-bites, and maybe on their appropriate treatment. Brian leapt in, and within just seconds was revealing his red and pimply back to a concerned an
d solicitous guide. Jacob was fascinated by what he saw and concluded that, whatever had bitten Brian, what was apparent now was a very nasty allergic reaction and probably one that should be looked at. This was good. Brian now had an opinion, not from a doctor, but from somebody who knew a great deal more about the potential dangers of Africa than he did. But it was also bad. Because really he needed an opinion – and possibly some treatment – from a doctor. And based on the number of people within a hundred-mile radius of where he sat on this Land Cruiser, there might statistically be just 0.005 of a doctor in the same area – which equated to effectively no doctor at all. He was in a fix.

  But no. He wasn’t. There was a doctor in Ghanzi! In fact, according to Jacob, there were two doctors there. And if, tomorrow morning, Brian and Sandra stopped off at that less-than-metropolitan settlement, they could easily seek out one of these physicians and secure whatever advice and treatment was required. This was great news and, on the scale of really welcome good news, was only just eclipsed by Jacob’s subsequent announcement that it was time for a drink. It was sundowner o’clock once again.

  So, very soon, the Land Cruiser had been brought to a halt and the gin and tonics poured, and Jacob had embarked on an earnest conversation. He wasn’t a “British” South African but a Boer South African, but that didn’t seem to stop him regarding two Britons from another hemisphere as two people in whom he could confide and with whom he could share some intimate thoughts. Maybe it was Brian’s compassionate eyes or Sandra’s angel-like features, or maybe it was just that he was stuck out here in the middle of sixty thousand hectares of nothingness, meeting only a trickle of visitors and with only Morlin and a man from Sunderland to talk to. But, for whatever reason, he was very chatty and very forthcoming in his views.

  Essentially, they concerned his fears for the future of his country and what might happen to it in its post-Mandela phase, a time when resentment towards the ANC could only increase – as all those to whom it had made promises became more and more disappointed and more and more disillusioned. And certainly disappointed and disillusioned enough to give a hearing to people like Julius Malema (who, it may be recalled, is the former ANC youth leader whose behaviour has been compared to that of Hitler’s – albeit not his taste in cars and accommodation, which is a great deal more extravagant than that of the Fuehrer). Anyway, Jacob was convinced that matters would only get worse and, whether justified or not, that there was now a siege mentality developing in certain parts of the country, which was not always just mental. In some instances it was accompanied by the creation of stand-by redoubts stocked with food and ammunition.

  Brian wasn’t sure how to react to these revelations, and he could see that Sandra was equally uncertain as to how to respond. It all sounded rather implausible. Maybe it was just a gross exaggeration of the actions of a few seen through the lens of a distant and out-of-touch farm in Botswana. But there again, Jacob appeared completely rational, and very clearly, for him, this potential Armageddon was all very real. And then, he told them, there were all the problems with immigrants in South Africa, all the impoverished refugees from Zimbabwe and Mozambique, not to mention those from the somewhat less than stable Congo… Which is when Brian decided to attempt to reroute the conversation – to deflect it towards an area that was a little less “intimidating” and a little more in tune with their immediate surroundings. To somewhere like the husbandry of rhinos…

  This was an inspired intervention. Jacob immediately shifted from the end of South Africa as we know it to the challenges imposed in keeping and breeding rhinoceroses. However… he soon slipped into the challenges imposed by the poaching of rhinos, and it therefore became intimidating all over again. Because even though rhino-poaching in Botswana was still rare – and hadn’t yet happened at Motswiri – Jacob was in possession of all the bad news concerning such poaching in South Africa and was eager to share this stuff with his two captive guests.

  So, to begin with, they learnt that there had been over three hundred incidents of rhino poaching in that country over the last year, and that one of the contributors to the continued rise in these incidents was none other than the South African Special Air Services! Yes, it appeared that when one was dismissed from this service, one was rather neglected by the government and one could easily be seduced into using one’s special skills to assist in the harvesting of horn. One could, for example, be helicoptered into a protected game farm under the cover of darkness, locate a rhino with one’s night-operating skills (and presumably some retired SAS kit), do the necessary and be out again before the game guards had got out of bed. And there were, Jacob assured his audience, enough of these retirees to make a terrible impact on the poaching statistics, not least because the deterrents in terms of sentences and fines were weak – and there was a huge amount of money to be made. And this is where the conversation became not so much intimidating as downright defamatory. Because this is where he focused on the identity of those who supplied these huge amounts of money – and on their behaviour in general.

  Well, their identity can be guessed pretty easily. But just to confirm it, there was, as one of the points in Jacob’s presentation, a review of the counter-measures one could adopt against poaching. And for rhinos, these include the periodic removal of the horn (because, as it is simply a form of hair, its cutting causes the rhino less distress than it would suffer at the hands of a poacher – and it grows back) or, alternatively, the poisoning of the horn! This is best done with an arsenic compound and does no harm to the rhino as the arsenic does not enter its system. It just stays within the hairs of the horn. However, it can, of course, do a lot of harm to anybody who is stupid and irresponsible enough to ingest any products made from the horn into which the poison has been injected. Which might go some way to explain why, a few months after a particular poaching attack in South Africa, there had been a crop of arsenic-induced deaths in that place known as China… Yes, one game farmer had been liberal with his use of arsenic, and when one of his animals disappeared, so too did the life prospects for a number of Orientals. And so enthused was he by this result that he now proclaims on signs set around his farm that all its rhino horns come not with a promise of lither limbs, longer lives or stiffer willies – but with a promise only of a painful demise. Great! And why aren’t all rhinos given this same toxic treatment? Cheap, effective, protective, and the worst possible news for every rhino poacher in Africa and every one of their odious paymasters. And well… somebody has to do something…

  Jacob also told his guests that the problem had got significantly worse since some demented Vietnamese cabinet minister had claimed that a rhino-horn concoction had cured him of cancer – but clearly not of his imbecility. Since that time rhinos had come under increasing attack, especially in areas where there were Chinese workers about – and not many elephants left. So, all in all, he was a bit despondent, and in the absence of mass horn-poisoning or mass horn-removing (before the poachers got to them), he could see matters only getting worse.

  This is when Sandra tried a bit of conversation rerouting – by talking about test cricket. She’d been clever enough to notice a passing reference to a cricketer that Jacob had made earlier. And she was spot on. Jacob was a cricket enthusiast of the highest order, and even admitted that one of his greatest ambitions was to watch Australia playing England at Lords (yes, not South Africa, but Australia). It proved a much less contentious topic for discussion than either the future of South Africa or the murdering of rhinos, right up to when Jacob made a comment about spot-betting in cricket. It was something along the lines that we now had to look to the east for most of our problems – to the Far East for the problems caused by nonsense superstitions and to the nearer East, the Indian sub-continent, for the problems caused by widespread corruption.

  Well, for Brian, this hadn’t been the most uplifting of sundowners (Sandra please note) but it had been rather stimulating – and memorable. How many times in the future would he watch the sun go down wit
h a G&T in his hand, a rash on his back and his head full of thoughts about arsenic and Boers? Not very often, if at all. And probably never with a dinner with strangers to follow…

  Brian and Sandra had been deposited back to the lodge by Jacob, had freshened up, and were now expecting another dinner for two. But instead there were four. After they had set out on their drive, a young German couple called Lena and Wolfgang had arrived – to use a tiny camping site beyond the lodge – and had decided not to make do with a camp fire but to sample the food on offer at the lodge. And so they would also have to sample Brian and Sandra’s company, as all four of the visitors to Motswiri were seated around a single table (principally, of course, because the lodge only had this single table).

  It all seemed to go quite well (and inevitably all in English). And this despite Wolfgang being a worker in IT (another practitioner in that most recent branch of the dark arts) and Lena being a German lawyer! Maybe it was something to do with Wolfgang insisting that he wouldn’t inflict even a mention of computers on his fellow table companions and Lena confirming that in Germany there were far too many lawyers –‘just like in Britain’. She even suggested that their numbers ought to be slimmed down – to a level that society could afford and one that didn’t generate a raft of dodgy practices – which was now the only thing that was keeping all those bloody lawyers afloat. Wow! At this rate, Lena would soon be on Brian’s Christmas card list, or he might have to lean across the table and kiss her. But no. Not recommended. Instead, he’d ask her how they’d got here. What route had she and Wolfgang taken to end up at Motswiri?

  Well, a similar route to Brian and Sandra. That is to say, they had started in Windhoek, had driven into Botswana (below the Caprivi Strip), then to the Okavango Delta, and were now on their way back to Namibia with this stop at Motswiri. So a smaller loop than that performed by the official loopaholic, but one that, in at least one respect, was even more challenging. And this was that their lower entrance point into Botswana had meant that they’d had to tackle a very long demanding sandtrack – in a 4x4 that wasn’t either a Land Cruiser or a Land Rover – and, in fact, they’d got stuck. It had taken them four hours to dig their way out.