pgkevet

I've been a bit pre-occupied with winding up my business and trying to push through the contracts and delays on buying my new farm...still not sorted but looking like it may be about 3-4 weeks and completed... then there's the huge issue of sorting it and moving. And the even bigger issues of getting to grips with pre-winter land works...planning the orchard, growing areas will need ploughing, greenhouse bases..the usual stuff.. Poor excuses, I know. I'll buckle down and write some more. Watch this space!

Invoice them. From past experience you'll end up ringing head office when it's not paid but they will pay up eventually. The owners attitude is typical for a certain type of owner.

If you look at the environmental footprint of many 'green' technologies they fail to stand up..the toxic cost of mining and making solar panels.let alone the disposal afterwards of goods. I think someone pointed out that one of the best was an old low technology petrol car kept maintained and running for 20yrs...avoids all the manufacturing, electronics, scrappage damage, plastics etc... just doesn't work for an economy based on selling unnecessary rubbish to folk to keep the money circulating....

Shoving adrenaline into someone is not a trivial thing to do. Just remember your body's reactions last time someone crept up behind you and went 'boo'. If you're going to start carrying emergency meds then oxygen would be first on my list..but the fire hazard is real. Second would be intravenous fluids..but again it takes some practice to set that up. How about adder bites on the way to the tree? A defib in the truck too? Actually it would be nice for folk to be trained in the above- perhaps more for general skill on the way to and from work and in their neighbourhood.. As for H&S.. well even hospital A&E departments have to have the green box! I had a stupid conversation with an H&S inspector in my early days..they came to the surgery to look around and demanded where my first aid box was. "You're standing in it"..didn't go down well. And when they demanded to know where the triangular bandage was they weren't impressed with a drawer full of splints, cast materials and several dozen rolls of different bandages..or that local A&E is 10 mins away. They also focused on the 'toilet duck' in the public loo we had "In case a customer drank it" - my answer to that went down like a lead balloon too. "If they're that stupid then good riddance"

I'm guessing that if you can cut the outside radius on a plank/beam first then fix the chainsaw down and use the outer radius over some rollers to cut the inner one? There's bound to be an historical site detailing how this sort of thing was done in the past by hand. Our ancestors had some cool ways of working these things out - hanging weights from rope to get the curvatures they wanted for weight loading then making up jigs to follow that profile....turn the thing over for an instant arch!

He found that: a) You can't milk chocolate? b) Making love in a cornfield goes against the grain? c) A homosexual sparrow that flew upside down for a lark?

Yup! And my wife reminds me of it regularly:biggrin:

Terry Thomas in 'how to murder your wife' should be every man's role model. I speak as a founder member of the modern male chauvinist pig society and draw yur attention to an old but very relevant 'Wednesday Play' from the 60's where the husband kills his wife because she served tinned peas instead of fresh ones - justifiable homicide indeed. With my wife it's a bit more of a lottery. If the dogs run away from my plate screaming then it's likely going to be a dodgy dinner day.....

Toby Tale To jog folk’s memories, Toby was the pointer cross road accident that I ended up keeping. He was definitely a dog of character although sometimes his character was very much ‘a dog of his own’ or ‘perfectly trained when it suits me’. He did have a habit of wandering off if opportunity arose and was very much a dog that liked to have barking contests with possible rivals although he didn’t go as far as scrapping or fighting. As I have described before he liked to be in my car and went almost everywhere with me. This short story describes the time I took him along when I went for a job interview. There was an opening at the RSPCA clinic in Putney, South London. I was interested because whilst the wages were nothing remarkable, the major RSPCA hospitals do get the neglected trauma patients and, in those days before insurance, often got the complicated fracture patients where owners would not be able to afford private fees. I was always more interested in the cutting than the medicine side of my profession as a vet. Like any younger lad going for a quality job interview I put on the Burton’s best, shone the shoes, had a good scrub and just the faintest hint of aftershave and made sure I would be in plenty of time with London Traffic. I was more than plenty in time by a good forty minutes and a nice beckoning day invited me to take Toby for a stroll along the river. I know the river well from my University Rowing days but for those that don’t then the embankment by Putney Bridge is a shallow slope for all the rowing clubs along there to boat from and then going upriver towards Hammersmith Bridge the bank rises higher and the sides are steep concrete with regular steps down to the low tide mark. The Thames is Tidal to Richmond lock , some 6 miles upstream from Putney. Just before Hammersmith Bridge another famous landmark is Harrods Depository and when the wind is blowing down river that is about the extent of the ‘aroma’ from the sewage farm up towards Kew. Someone in their wisdom had decided that the smell of sewage wafting downstream would be improved by the addition of copious amounts of lavender. This turned the rich full stench of fermenting human excrement into an eye-watering haze of nauseous proportions that might have come from the Women’s Institute Great Aunt’s Whist Drive following a free dinner of dodgy seafood or perhaps a similar effect could be achieved with a captive audience in a small lift, a flatulent bulldog and an accident at Boot’s perfume counter. Either way Toby and I were getting the wrong sort of fresh air on our walk. I had had Toby on the lead as we strolled along the Putney ‘hard’ and to the river pathway. Up towards Hammersmith I let him off to run about. I could see further ahead than him and it was clear of trouble, there was a fence to my left and the river to the right. He had nowhere to run away. I checked my watch and turned to go back. It would have to be a brisk walk to make the interview time. The river was at half tide going out. It flows pretty fast, faster than walking pace at that stage and a barge was dropping down on the tide coming out from under Hammersmith Bridge. That was when Toby spotted the terrier aboard the barge. Toby rushed to the edge and started barking. I would guess that the language he was using was none to polite; certainly canine scatology and I would speculate it not only addressed the terrier’s uncertain parentage but probably insulted on a more direct level regarding his personal freshness and fondness for canine and human intimate areas. Whatever the truth of that, those insults had the intended effect and the Terrier replied in his own coarse and common way. (I take a little artistic licence here but it was a Barge Dog). Toby became incensed at the Terrier’s rebuke and started jumping up and down, pouncing towards the edge and back to add visual threats to his tirade of barked insults. In so doing he misjudged things, lunged too far and the next thing he was skidding down the concrete banking and splashed into the river some fifteen or twenty feet below. Toby was panicking and scrabbling at the concrete side, as he was being washed downstream at a pretty pace. I raced to the next set of steps and plunged down them as fast as I dare but Toby was washed past me before I got to the bottom. I could see he was staring to get tired from his efforts and I had no idea how long he would be able to swim in the filthy river. Whoever had been responsible for perfuming Auntie’s excrement had obviously decided to purge the system and it wasn’t just Toby washing down the river bank. I raced back up those steps and dashed downstream trying to keep right to the edge and watch Toby’s progress. He was going too fast to get any doggy grip on the steps as he went past and I wasn’t going to get to the next set in time to get down them and catch him again. So I belted ahead and skipped that set and made for the next. Once again I poured myself down the concrete steps hoping not to slip. I got to the bottom just as Toby was being washed towards me and from his look it was obvious this was the last chance. There was no time for finesse or care. I squatted down and grabbed him by the collar as he came in reach and swung him upwards as hard as I could…over my head and the fifteen feet or so up onto the towpath and then sprinted up the steps to see if he was hurt. As I had ripped him from the clutches of the Thames a deluge of water had arced up with him and a lot of that was now mopped up by Mr Burton as Toby and I panted on the top of the bank. Toby recovered first and gave me a huge wag and slobbery kiss and then shared his part of the Thames by shaking most of it all over me as well as some more evil solid bits of flotsam. I have often wondered why I didn’t get the job at the RSPCA. Perhaps they had a better candidate that day. After all I was only thirty minutes late and I had had the good manners to take off my jacket and tie and just wear wet trousers and a shirt. Or perhaps I had been a bit too heavy with the aftershave?

Is the river under any responsibility from the waterways authority?...likely if parts are navigable or used for pleasureboats. Otherwise I'd guess it is the responsibility of the bank owners whether they like it or not...it's their tree. The bridge would probably come under waterways if a navigation..like rail bridges being part of the railways..otherwise it has to be highways and council.. But a classic mess of different departments that are supposed to be part of oen country

I used to do them in the dim and distant... Basic rules are keep it simple and clean unless it's a technical site.. lots of white space and short words. Ideally make it obey rules of accessibility (but that's less important now with browser capabilities) Check cross browser comparability and mobile phones. A few scattered small pictures you can always click to enlarge is better than huge one's. Stick to what the site is for - no one really cares if you got a certificate for underwater snooker at age 9 .. BUT do supply lots of links to related sites and try and get back-links from friends etc..

I think it;s something like £250 to get it signed off...obviously designed so folk don't bother DiY'ing the actual fitting...

Design is in the eye of the beholder so no comments there from me. From the technical viewpoint you need to check and view the site in all common browsers..include opera and safari as well as firefox and explorer. Have you checked it's mobile phone friendly? The email address link should open ready for posting. Looking briefly at the source code you should add shedloads more content descriptors. Links go a long way to upping some search engine priorities..nowt wrong with linking to how to light fire sites, safety, stove manufacturers etc etc

Is it sell-able as decorative chip for gardens? May depend on your local demographic..

I wondered what your concern was... No, it was one of the many wild deer from Epsom Downs and no deer farming around here. If farmed deer it should have identification anyway to comply with disease, movement and medication regs:001_smile: ..and I hadn't got around to shoving anything into it.. was loaded and ready but died beforehand..

I had my guess and was wrong so time to play sherlock holmes: Something unusual enough to be worthy of comment but common enough that there's a chance to guess it: Unused condom, clean toilet paper, a 15yr old virgin, an unused scratchcard..that sort of thing....:-)

I was reading up on this recently.. no expert or arb by any means.. but my interpretation is that if the tree poses a danger then it can come down...if possible leave it until end of bat breeding season and perhaps cover yourself by discussing with Conservation +/- the derogation licence.. Presumably if an immediate danger and you are happy to state that then you get on with it

A spare copy of the body language of trees?

Why? It died in front of me by bleeding out into its own pelvis from multiple fractures and there were no signs to point to a public health risk when I dressed it out. I'll admit my meat inspection course was some 15 years before that came in but I'll still spot the major diseases...

Night Calls The veterinary classic joke was the young vet who was rung up by a client concerned that her two dogs were tied together mating and she couldn’t get them apart. After offering many suggestions such as throwing a bucket of water at them, making loud noises or offering food: the owner insisted the vet had to do something. “OK,” he says “Give me your phone number and I’ll ring them right back.” “How is that going to stop them mating!” Shouts the angry owner. “It worked here ” sighs the vet. One call I had was a very aggressive woman who demanded I see her dog immediately because it has a fifteen inch gash down it’s shoulder. I would never refuse to see anything like that and was trying to ask more about the wound but this woman threw a tirade against vets who don’t want to come out at night and all manner of resentments. “My daughter is a final year medical student and she says it must be stitched at once!” was one of many shouted statements. I was quite happy to see the dog and arranged to meet at the clinic. The woman turned up with a happy yellow Labrador with a long red crusty line down it’s shoulder. I started cleaning it from the bottom and simply washed the dried blood away until we ended up with a tiny puncture wound at the top. “I think you will agree there’s not much to suture.” I offered while giving her some antibiotics. “Of course not. How much do I owe you” She was still angry. “Fifteen pounds please.” This was some years ago. “Fifteen pounds just for that!” She shouted “No Madam” I answered “I have charged you one pound for disturbing my sleep, getting me out of bed, driving to the surgery, opening up the building and waiting for you to get here. I have included my fee for examining the patient, cleaning the wound, dispensing the medication and all taxes and fees associated with that. The other fourteen pounds is for your daughter’s education and I think you will find that is better value than she’s been getting.” I can be sarcastic too. Then there was the man who rang late one night. “My dog has half a rose bush stuck up his nose” Now that sounded fun and definitely worth a look. Thorns up the nose aren’t going to be nice. Again I arranged to meet them at the clinic. It was a dark night when I got the there and met three men waiting outside. One was carrying the dog and the other two were struggling to hold the rose bush steady in a huge plastic bag of soil! It had never occurred to them to cut the bit stuck into the dogs nose off! I pruned him free but had to anaesthatise him to remove the barbs – painful. A young colleague I employed rang me late evening. She wanted some advise about a pregnant bitch that was overdue. The owner was some sort of grand lady that usually went to the supposed up-market practice a few miles away but they were not answering their phone. I went to the clinic to have a look and just when I got there another emergency turned up. This was one of my normal types of clients, simple earthy folk worried about their puppy. And then yet another emergency with a road accident cat. This really was a triage situation sorting the problems into an order of urgency and coping with them in rotation. We got the cat stabilised and on fluids and comfortable. We could get back to fixing his injuries once stable. The pregnant bitch was examined and we decided to try and induce her and while we were waiting for the results for that we got on with investigating the puppy who tuned out to have a foreign object wedged in it’s bowel. Between prepping that and getting the whelping bitch started on her deliveries and the puppy x-rayed and opened up, the object removed and the pups delivered it was getting to be a long night and somewhere around 1 am I started getting hungry. I was instructing my colleague about the bitch and suturing up the puppy when I suggested my colleague rang the owner and asked them to bring some food. My colleague argued that she was embarrassed to ask such a thing but I pointed out that we were helping these folk out, I was getting grumpy hungry and we were all going to be up for a lot longer. People don’t mind being asked under these circumstances. So she rang. We had all the animals stable and doing well when the doorbell went and I answered it. I was expecting my sensible earthy clients to be there with some munchies. But, no, It was the grand lady clutching a small bag. “I hope these are all right.” She said “The help was away and I have never made sandwiches before.”

..so whose brother on the council owns the lifting machinery?

From the non-arb - just general thoughts: Whatever you do depends more on self appraisal and temperament. Having determination is all very well but if you can't sell - yourself or your services - then it's going to be tough. I've known all kinds of folk with all kinds of qualification and lack of qualifications that have blagged their way into jobs they knew nothing about and done well or been highly knowledgeable and failed. On of the many realities I've had to face is that as you get older it takes longer to learn .. certainly to develop muscle memory .as well as the item it takes to get back tot he active retention of knowledge from books and lectures. 40 is no age at all but if it's going to take 3-5 years of book work then you will be getting towards that wall. Another thought for you: within any trade there are subsets of that trade.. whether you continue these plans and chop wood and sell or climb and climb or plant/grow/advise... the same doubtless applies to your sparkie past. I'm guessing that in a recession folk aren't needing as many house wires..but often the funds get used for small extensions or a few lights on the patio or the time for small businesses that can't now afford to relocate to tidy up their present setup etc..that and all the hideous needs for certifications. You may do better financially by sticking with what you know and finding a niche you can tolerate.

George the swan was brought in with a broken leg. Somehow he had managed to catch it flying over some wires. Swans are huge when you get close up and there are some interestingly big bugs crawling around on them too. But George was a patient and my job was to fix them. That was why I joined up and I never cared whether something was vermin or common or whatever. If I could fix it then I would have a go. So we mended George’s leg and he was carefully penned by the wildlife rescues folk while he healed up and then went back to Mrs George. He cam back in the next year with a broken wing. That has to be the most embarrassing thing for a swan. Not so much the broken wing but the fact that this time he’d hit a bright red double-decker bus. “Doh! Didn’t see it.” Around April we used to get the fox cubs being brought in. I didn’t always trust the wildlife rescue to devote the time needed and most years my daughters had a fox cub or two to nurse. My youngest daughter became quite good at it. First the basics of picking all the external parasites off it and bathing it so it would be fit to sleep on her pillow! Body shop dewberry shampoo probably isn’t a natural fox smell but daughter liked to use that and none of the cubs ever complained. She would take the job seriously and every 2 to 4 hours depending on the age of foxy she would have the alarm wake her and feed the baby. Of course the rescue folk argued that the cubs would be too tame but this way they got to live. One year we had a young fox with a weird problem I never did solve and he would lose his sight for a few hours or days and then recover vision again. He spent the first couple of weeks in the dining room but that started getting a bit too rancid-fox-smell. By then the dogs had got used to him being around so he had the run of the house. He went missing in the kitchen one day when something spooked him and the kids were heartbroken that this foxy had vanished.. We searched the whole house and for some reason I included the cellar. It turned out there was a hole in the floorboard under the kitchen units and foxy had fallen through. He was curled up fast asleep on the cellar floor when I found him. Because of his intermittent vision problems we figured we might as well keep him as a pet fox. They do tend to lose the strong smell as pets although house training is an issue. This story ended in tragedy though and a few weeks later I found him floating dead in our pond. Baby squirrels were regular houseguest patients too. They are really cute and friendly when hand reared until they get to a certain age and pee all over you and scream and bite so release them as soon as possible. One young squirrel my daughter was hand rearing she became particularly fond of. She had to go away one weekend and I promised to watch Squidge. It was easiest to keep him in a shirt pocket and attend to his needs regularly that way and carry on working. It was a puzzled cat and owner when Squidge popped his head out to see me attending to the emergency cat. I had completely forgotten he was there and he had head and front paws on the shirt pocket lip and chattered at kitty. Betty the badger baby has her own story but remains one of my favourites and while I’m sure that treats of jam sponge aren’t a natural diet for young girl badgers she had to have something to make up for walking around with dressings on two legs. It amazes me how tame most of the wildlife it. I’ve had mature 2 year old foxes brought in in baskets and a little patience and talking to them and it’s usually possible to scruff them and then stroke them. Mature badgers will just keep chewing your fingers until they come off, though, so well worth treating with respect. I had one panicky woman wanting an emergency call one Sunday after hitting a frog with her lawnmower and cutting its head. I went out see it. The cut didn’t look too bad so I ran the tap and put him under the jet to wash the wound and have a better look when the owner screamed at me “You’ll drown him”. .. Another woman came in one morning with a wounded blackbird. “Vets treat wildlife for nothing so I want this blackbird mended. I’ll pick him up at five o’clock because he belongs in my garden. And of course I shan’t pay” That really isn’t the most diplomatic request. That client was a bit odd. She once rang me up to ask if cats were waterproof because hers wouldn’t come in from the rain. I told her to ring me back if the cat started to dissolve. Probably my all time favourite for being unusual was the small black and white bird someone brought in. We hadn’t got a clue what it was either but it was the pinnacle of cute. It walked around upright more like a penguin than a duck and was just very friendly. Whenever I went near its cage it would come to the door to be stroked and picked up. I got the wildlife folk down to identify it and a bit of bookwork and their assistance and it turned out to be a young little auk. It must have got blown thoroughly off course from the Arctic Circle. One of the airlines did us a favour and flew him to Iceland as a freebie. We have had a couple of deer brought in too although we really aren’t geared up for looking after them. The police brought the first fallow deer in after being hit by a car. I had only just started to examine it when it died from internal injuries. Still that gave me the opportunity to charge for the call out and disposal . Disposal involved my dressing it out and jointing it for the freezer. The trouble was that I couldn’t eat it. Somehow the fact that it had been a patient just made that wrong. So my vegetarian wife, V, ate it instead. It wasn’t against her principles.

You know that's not what I meant. I, too, used to work a 60 hr week and be on-call for another 3 nights for emergencies. That didn't include doing the books or checking for better ways of buying in more economic quantities or negotiating better supply rates...and when i first went self-employed I did all 7 nights duty. It's the new generation brought up with mantras of work/life balance and an idea that they get something for nothing that gives us grumpy old men something to moan about:001_smile:

Coming up Roses V and I discovered Jamaica in the mid 90’s courtesy of a last minute on line deal that was too good to miss. I bought a new state of the art digital camera just for the holiday. Back then memory was small and expensive so I had chosen a Sony with floppy disc drive. For its era it was pretty good. Jamaica rapidly became my favourite country. In many ways I preferred it in the 90’s to the changes since then. Back then walking out at Montego Bay airport we were met with a colourful mass of hustlers and vendors trying to scrape a living from the tourists; followed by negotiating slow potholed roads on the way to our hotel. These days Mo’Bay airport has expanded. One gets off a plane through a tunnel instead of steps and the airport arrivals section has no hustlers at all and just a couple of franchised cafes. And the main roads have all been repaired or bypassed with new highways. It’s far more practical but nowhere so much fun. The flight out was the usual Virgin Atlantic cattle-class affair where someone my size is cramped intolerably. Hey, it was only going to be 9 hours!. Except. Except that is that halfway over a fracas broke out several rows behind and the flight ended up diverted to Norfolk, Virginia while police came aboard and the offenders were removed. We were stuck on board for those extra hours. Naturally I dug the camera out and took surreptitious shots, shooting blind since I had unlimited storage on the discs I had brought and I couldn’t move in my seat. It passed the time. The landing at Mo’Bay was obviously late and with the potholes the coach time to Runaway Bay was almost 4 hours. We were booked into a small hotel. After registering we were shown to our room by a chap who introduced himself “Hi dere, I’se Leroy. I run da security here. You wan’ Ganja or Charlie den ask for me..Yaman!” V’s look at me made that offer unlikely. The room was small but OK. A typical small Jamaican hotel room with wooden louvers with a fly-screen, cheap chipped bedside table but a king-size bed for the US guests, badly grouted plain white tiling in the bathroom but very clean even if the paint is chipped and the ceiling rendered to hide cracks. The rest of this hotel’s grounds took about a minute to explore. There was a small kiosk, closed at this late hour and a tiny pool. A superb Ackee tree by the kiosk hung heavy with open fruit ready for the small edible part to be pulled from the purple seeds, several ornamental palms as well as the obligatory coconuts and sour sop and breadfruit and then the crotons, bougainvillea, and hibiscus shrubbed by the walkway. Palm therapy works for me. I just stand under a palm tree and all my business worries wash away. But do look up and check there are no heavy nuts coming any time soon. That could ruin a holiday. What we call a ‘Germolene moment’. Reception explained that beach access was via another hotel and that I could rent a safe behind reception with a fifty-dollar key deposit. I took that up. Food would mean invading the other hotels or crossing the man highway outside and chancing the takeout there. We took the takeout and found a bar. I have been in some rough places in my time but the bar next to the takeout place was high on the all-time roughest list. I think it’s the only time I’ve carefully picked a table in the corner with a direct view of the front door and an exit route door to the back near me. And I didn’t look down at my drink or the table: strictly eyes on the patrons and one hand on the cane chair next to me in case I needed a shield. We got approached by a group of three rangy looking guys; the sorts that floss their teeth with barbed wire and bite the heads of rats as crunchy snacks. I tried to look bigger and tougher and frisked them with my eyes for weapons. But it turned out they just wanted to chat, didn’t even go the heavy hustle route.They wanted to thank us for not being the sort of tourists that hide in the all-inclusive resorts. As they rightly said; that way the tourist money all goes to the American hotel owner and ordinary Jamaicans have no chance of earning. But they didn’t turn down a free beer or some of my fries. I figured they might be allies if a brawl started. Oh, and did we want some ganja or Charlie? V’s look at me made that offer unlikely. The reality of Jamaica is that most people are really poor. The average wage is around forty pounds a week and shop prices are not cheap. Folk struggle and many live in places smaller than your garden shed. There is little excuse for going hungry on a fertile island like that but life is a daily struggle. Apart from a few insane folk every Jamaican recognises his country depends on tourism and he has no interest in damaging his income by harming a tourist. He’ll try and talk you out of money but that’s a fair game. Walk down a street at night covered in jewellery and cameras and get robbed but that will happen anywhere. The real violence is gang related or political and any tourist stupid enough to get mixed up in either of those probably gets what they deserve. In some fifteen trips to Jamaica I’ve had no problems of that sort at all and V and I have driven around that island and stayed in some colourful places; even hotels that usually rent by the hour. V is the first one to admit that she feels safer walking down Negril beach alone at night than she does where we live in Surrey. Jamaicans have good memories for names and faces and whenever we go back I get folk calling my name and reminding me that they know me from a previous trip. Back to this story. Runaway Bay hasn’t got much to commend it unless you are in one of the bigger hotels so the next day we called Island Rentals and had a car delivered and off we went sightseeing. On the way back that afternoon I spotted a public beach and fancied a swim. I pulled into the parking area out in the middle of nowhere, locked the car, pulled off my trousers with my swimsuit underneath, checked my keys and dove into the surf. Plonker! The air in my swimsuit pocket turned it inside out and the keys vanished into the sand under the breakers. Thirty minutes of diving for them and I had to give up. Those car keys and hotel safe keys are still somewhere in the Caribbean. V gave me a severe haranguing for my stupidity. The nearest place was a restaurant we had spotted en route about a mile and a half away and we had to plod there, hammer on the door to get an answer and beg the use of a phone to call the car rental place. They pointed out we were 3 hours from their nearest depot and sent someone. We walked back to the car and I chose to take a short cut across some grass just as the sun was setting. Three paces in and a cloud of insects rose up out of the long stuff and covered us both. I am immune to such things but V could feel them biting her and she hates bugs. By the time we had got back to the car the thousands of bites were already blistering on her legs. I wasn’t marked. V gave me a severe haranguing for my stupidity. We hadn’t been back at the car long before Jamaicans started appearing out of the bush. The jungle drums must have been working overtime. Everyone was friendly and having a laugh at my stupidity and being sympathetic to V’s plight. I had my camera and entertained the kids and adults by taking their pictures and showing them the results on the screen. They soon had a bonfire going and my few bits of loose change was enough to go fetch supplies with although I would guess not much was actually paid for. Dinner was on the go, V’s legs were rubbed down with bush remedies she claimed didn’t help one bit and neither her temper nor the soreness responded to a ganja tea rinse. Perhaps I should have made her drink it. I thoroughly enjoyed the wait for the rental car guys. I had a stomach full of food, was happily munching fruits and chatting and taking pictures of all the folks. Later I sent them a small album of the images but I have no idea if they ever got it. The rental guys brought us a new car and added $100 to our bill after breaking the lock on the one we had had and giving me access to my credit card. Back at the hotel they had to call out a locksmith to drill the safety deposit box; another $50 charge. V gave me a severe haranguing for my stupidity. The next morning V stayed in bed. Her legs did look nasty. I plodded up the road for some cortisone cream and then sat in the hotel grounds reading a paper back and staying out of earshot. It didn’t look like that $150 was going to get forgotten anytime soon. Around mid morning I was approached by a couple of people that turned out to be TV reporters. They said that I was the only passenger on the flight that they had managed to track down and would I do an interview? I said ‘No’. I’ve done TV interviews before, hadn’t seen much on the plane and I was on holiday. They persisted. I wasn’t interested and then they offered $50. We settled for $100. I did the interview for them and then asked if they might be interested in the pictures I’d taken. For anyone that remembers the TV special on the major air-rage scandal with a montage of stills on the screen; well they were mine. V’s legs were responding to the cortisone when I went back to the room and threw $175 at her and she claimed I was the only one she knew who really could fall into a cess-pit and come up fresh.