If you’re sitting comfortably then I’ll begin.
In early 1992 a few friends and I went on a duck shooting expedition in Heilongjiang Province, North East China. Oh no, he’s off on that jag again. Well bear with me. I’ve not told you this before. I had been enticed in part by an alluring description of a hunting lodge on the banks of a lake in the easterly steppe marsh-lands quite apart from the tales of abundant duck. We were sold a pup. There was scarcely a duck to be seen. The only poor creature shot, late on the first day after we had endured a fruitless five or six hours crouching in the reeds, turned out to be a bird of prey and a protected variety at that. In the course of the week we barely managed half a dozen duck between the five of us. It was a sore disappointment for my four companions who were all keen if moderate shots. In the absence of our prime prey we wandered around the bogs for miles and miles and every now and again a snipe would fleetingly present itself. I loved it.
As far as I was concerned the real disappointment concerned the “hunting lodge”. The “lake” by which the lodge sat was more like a large muddy puddle. The dwelling, which I had pictured in my head all pinewood, log fires and cosiness, consisted of some concrete slabs corned together with corrugated iron sheets place on top. In the middle of the living room, decorated with a single photograph of Chairman Mao, was an inadequate sulphuric coal fire place around which we shivered for a few minutes each evening before hastening to rickety uncomfortable beds. A tanker arrived every other afternoon to deliver some tepid, foul smelling brown, bath water.
But if you know me you will appreciate I would have coped uncomplainingly even with all of this if only there had been some decent food and fine wine to be had. Wine? Not a drop. There was beer, pungent with formaldehyde, which gave you a headache just to look at. The food though was on another level of awfulness. If you’ve been watching I’m a Celebrity Get me out of Here, nothing that any of the stars had to sample in their various Bush-tucker challenges came close to what was served up to us passing for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
That was apart from one evening. There must have been a little warning bell ding-donging in my head before we left Hong Kong for our trip of a lifetime. I had gone Olivers in the Princes Building and bought a large bar of Toblerone ( which we ate on the train from Harbin to Qiqihar ) and two cans of haggis. I don’t know what came over me really. I’d never had canned haggis before – nor since indeed – but on the third evening in China I retrieved them from the depths of my rucksack announcing that we would dine like kings that night at least. I ventured into what passed as the kitchen, a small dark room with a contraption that appeared to be an oven above which was a large metallic chimney. In the absence of a tin opener – this was 1992 please bear in mind – I managed to open the cans using a knife. Ludicrously neither was there a spoon anywhere to be found so I prised the haggis into a large greasy wok using a pair of chopsticks and I stood there heating the haggis as carefully as I could. The gas fired hob was more akin to a blast furnace and required concentrated and frenetic stirring with said chopsticks. When the haggis started to sizzle a bit I deemed it done and with a triumphant flourish distributed it as evenly as possible onto our plates. It was a magnificent success though I say it myself. My joy was dampened however when I felt the top of my head ( I had a decent crop of hair in these days ) and discovered to my horror that leaning into my cooking with such gusto I had brushed repeatedly against the extraction chimney and my considerable mop ( those were the days ) was coated with a thick layer of burnt greasy cooking liquefactions.
Bit precious? Woteva. I have been mentally scarred by the moment and thus – time for a commercial break – this weeks initiation on a China A share by our analyst Richard Huang resonated strongly with me.
Hangzhou Robam 002508 CH self cleaning range hoods
So that’s good news. My word, China’s come a long way since 1992 the same year, coincidentally, that the first stock foreigners were allowed to invest in began trading on the Shanghai B share market. Strangely appropriate to my story. Can you name it?? I’m glad to say I dodged that bullet.
Now, I wasn't going to bother telling you about the wildly social week I’ve had. I was out on the town two nights in a row. There’s life in the old dog yet. On Monday I went to a Primal Scream concert in Cambridge and then on Tuesday?? Well I only went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the O2. How totally cool is that?!
Anyway, the thing is I was talking to my mum on the phone as I walked to the station the following evening, feeling a little weary I must admit, but I thought if it was OK to brag to anyone about my high-jinx it would be to my mother. So after listening to her tell me how dark it was up in Scotland I mentioned that I'd been at a concert and didn’t get to bed till nearly 1.00am the evening before. I didn't bother telling her who the band was. Dear old Mum. She'd give us all a run for our money in most respects, but when it comes to contemporary music her knowledge really ends at Val Doonigan. So I knew she wouldn't have heard of the RHCP’s.
She was having none of it and I was soundly admonished off for being so blinking condescending. "Ah, how dare you" she said when I revealed the name of the band. "Not only have I heard of them. I know someone who had them play at their daughter’s wedding. " I was suspicious. I really was. But my parents have one or two very wealthy friends up there in the Kingdom of Fife and as I had already had one verbal skelp on the lug I decided to leave it at that. Mum, now she'd got me on the run, couldn't be stopped. She wanted to know all about the concert, the venue and indeed why we had gone to see them. I told her it had been the most amazing concert I'd ever been to. A friend of mine is bezza’s with the drummer and has promised to get Bob a set of drum-sticks from him, but I admitted that really I’d got tickets because Jimmy is so fixated with the lead singer. “Oh” she said a touch tentatively, “I’m surprised they’re Jimmy’s thing, but anyway, I didn't know they had a singer. I thought the band was just a drummer and a few men playing the bagpipes.”
And then I put two and two together. She thought I’d been rocking at the O2 with 25,000 others to the tunes of that renowned Scottish group, the Red Hot Chilli Pipers.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hot_Chilli_Pipers
I negotiated the treacherous London Wall/Old Broad Street junction with tears streaming down my face and my mother yelling at me down the phone that I’d better not dare tell anyone about this....so if you bump into her maybe don't mention that I’m looking forward to sitting down to a big family Christmas dinner and the opportunity to ask her to pass the salt and piper.
If I still have you maybe you’ve time as we rock on into Christmas for one quick heart warming story from the land of Hen. She got a parking ticket in Brighton the other day. She told me she was particularly affronted because someone had parked in her reserved space and, knowing she would be at risk of the zealous local traffic warden leaving the car where she had to, she had scribbled a long and elaborate note explaining her predicament which she left in the windscreen. In the interest of time all you need to know is that she was going to the Lewes bonfire night that evening and felt she needed a gas-mask to protect her eyes and lungs. She’d spotted an old one in a nearby antiques shop and would literally be away for five minutes. And that’s as long as it took for the traffic warden to pounce and write her ticket. A few days later she felt she’d better do something about the fine and to her surprise discovered that the envelope had already been opened. Inside was £5 and a letter from someone saying that they had read Hen’s endearing exposition and watched aghast as her van had been ticketed regardless. A fiver was all they had in their wallet, but they hoped she would accept it as a small contribution towards her parking fine. Is that not the sweetest thing? Only happens to Hen. Strangely appealing world she lives in.
No comments:
Post a Comment