ARTICLE AND COPY SHOWCASE

In the Begining: (Written in the style of the goons).

Who the devil are you? Well, you may ask that question, and, you may get an answer and then again you may not! It all depends on the weather. If the wind is blowing from the East, which it rarely does, Scotsmen may feel a favorable breeze up their kilts, in which case you might, but if the wind is blowing from the North then definitely not! In fact it would be extremely unwise to even raise the subject.

But to get back to the point of who you are, WHO ARE YOU? Oh, sorry, who am I? well I suppose that I am a Charlie Britanicus that got knocked off course some one score and a half years ago somewhere off the straights of Gibraltar. Instead of going straight ahead we were blown right over to the left of where we should have been by a savage storm, Horace, and ended up in the hostile seas of the Mediterranean. Shipwrecked, we were, we landed at a lonely port called Haifa.

Carried off by the natives, stripped of my bowler hat, umbrella and school tie, I was kited out in baggy shorts, khaki shirt and the strangest of all hats that looked for all the world like an inverted ice-cream cone and put to work milking huge black and white beasts, the type of which I had never seen before and not a cup of tea in sight.

It was a torturous existence in which I was bitten by huge man eating flies during the day and by even bigger man eating mosquitoes at night. In fact, I turn into a red blotch with army boots sticking out of the bottom.

But not to worry, help was at hand in the form of kind maidens armed with bucket fulls of various creamy substances all designed to calm the suffering of the red blotch. Finally the Blotch shrunk enough for my lips to protrude and to utter the words “ullo, thar’s a bonnie lass, whur’s thar frum”.

For some unknown reason they retreated in sheer panic shouting, “He speaks in some incomprehensible dialect that’s impossible to understand!” Upon which a ragged array of translators from far and wide were brought forth to my bedside to try to fathom out my strange dialect. Finally, a blond type wench from Broadstairs was summoned to my side. I politely said, Ullo, “what’sup wi all o’ this lot”?

On hearing my utterances she turned to the congregation of inquisitive female types and pronounced with a knowing expression, Oh, not to worry, he’s just a Yorkshire man!”

Then ensued a period of uncontrollable giggling and muttering which I thought to be most impolite, particularly as it was in a language of which I knew nothing. The only thing that consoled me was that I had the undivided attention of the many exotic wenches all dressed up in exactly the same attire that I was.

Actually, it felt for the entire world like we were dressed to play as extras in some old desert rat war movie. To tell the truth, they even had the guns, but for some reason that did not seem strange.

They seemed to walk around with various models on new and ancient weaponry as though they were fashion accessories.

“Were you in ze army in your country?” seemed to be a question which they all favored for some odd reason, to which I answered “Nay , Lass, if tha goes anywhere near them places tha knows not if tar’ll be back. No, better leave that sort o’stuff fo the airy chested sorts”.

Most of the conversations seemed to center around the subjects of army, commandos, forced marches and other such bravadery. All of which made me feel extremely insecure due to the fact that I was still just a skinny red blotch from Yorkshire.

That night a suspicious sort hailing from Guatemala approached me and asked me if I had seen any red mushrooms with white spots on. To which I replied “A you taking the p…ss Jim”.

“No, No” he replied “is mui serioso, is good for make ju feel happy”.

“Sounds illegal to me, Jim.” I replied.

“Anyway, I wanted to talk to ju about somtheeng else” he continued.

“What’s that Jim”, I answered.

“Don’t lock jur room door at night” he added.

“Why on earth would I want to do that Jim?” I asked.

“Because tings moves around in ze night and something wants to move jur way.” he replied nudging my arm surreptitiously and giggling.

Now far more worried than I had ever been five minutes before, I walked alone to ponder about these strange predictions”. Long and hard I thought about the merits of leaving my door open and parting from my Chapel upbringing. “Oh ‘Ek” I seem to remember myself repeating numerously. The era of the hippie and free love had finally caught up with me.

I decided there and then to sacrifice myself to this new cause fully and unreservedly. Come what may I was going to be a convert. And so I waited, and waited, and waited night after night door unlocked and later ajar until finally wide open. The only things that entered my room were more mosquitoes and one scorpion.

Finally, taking pity on me, one woman came to suggest that I consider closing my room door again because Jackals had been seen around the buildings and they would not hesitate to investigate a sleeping body. So the door was shut and locked once again. At least I would be able to get some decent sweaty sleep.

To be continued!