Shotgun Alley

Photo of the week: Lady Wakumba chills up a tree

Highlight of the week: Gid and Adrian, Ian and Alicia, and myself challenge the birthday boy to 3 pin bowls. Keith strikes and wins a bowl. We lose an orange. And the bottles all fall down.

Lowlight of the week: 3 tsetse bites so far and a multitude of skitters. 

Maximum temperature: 30 degrees Celsius

Rainfall: A crack of the whip. Simultaneous blinding light. And a massive tropical downpour.

I travel back in time. The dial stops at 1991. I clamber out and get my bearings. I’m on Newcastle town moor. Surrounded by travelling people. Brightly dressed and wide as you like. Heavy engineering structures hurtle and spin. Sounds and smells assault my senses. They call this a fair. People come here for fun. But my personal opinion is that it is not appropriate to splice those 2 words together. The combination of spin and height particularly offensive to me. But my erstwhile self is here at the Hoppings. Putting on a brave face. Dating the new man in her life. Wanting to impress.

Funfairs are not my thing. They leave me cold and sweaty. If not totally vertiginous.

Every June, the Hoppings, an annual travelling fair, fills Newcastle’s town moor. It’s fair to say that the normally quiet, outdoor space, becomes full of smiling, high spirited people who appear to be having fun. They laugh and often they scream. Music plays and merriment goes round. The screaming might of course have other grounds. Other origins. Negative not positive?  I’ve always chosen to keep my feet firmly on the ground. Hedging my bets.

The buzz brought to Newcastle is apparently infectious. But I am far from being the index case. Perhaps I am protected by herd immunity? This particular bug has not yet found a way into me. Keith naïvely has invited me out for a second date at the Hoppings. Perhaps he wants to whisk me off my feet? He is, as yet, blithely unaware of my aversion to putting the words fun and fair together.

My smile is unreadable. I don’t decline the invitation, and somehow the die is cast. Second dates are second dates. I’m wary of saying no, since I’m not yet weary of Keith’s allure. Inertia results in me standing in a queue for a ridiculous ride tagged Death Roll. My smile is no longer alluring. But Keith is too excited to notice my increasingly agitated state. There is no dignified way out. I sit next to Keith meekly, and a flimsy protective cage is locked around us. The roll starts its deathly march, slowly at first. Within 10 seconds we are upside down and my stomach clenches. The roll soon matches its deathly name. We spin aggressively. My determined silence breaks rank. And my language becomes rank. Nay blue.

Poor Keith’s eardrums are pummelled by my involuntary yells: I scream. And I scream. And I scream. Amazingly no one is sick. Centripetal forces on the trapped occupants inside the cages of The Death Roll would automatically oblige any emetic fluids to be shared equally and in opposite fashions. Somehow we stay dry.

Keith hears the high emotion and feels the tight grip on his own hand. His head is in a dizzy spin. Could this be love? Too early to say, but his date is certainly a live one. The five minute trial by ordeal is certainly not a fair test. Neither is it fun. Keith mistakes the woos and the waahs and the vice like grip on his hand as an invitation to press on. We happily leave the death machine behind. As he guides me down amongst the sideshows.

This is where Keith first shows me the delights of Shot Gun Alley. Emblazoned above a side show he reads the prophetic words out aloud. But the prophecy is for future hazards. Thirty five years away and too abstract for now. Shot Gun Alley for now involves shooting clay pipes with an air rifle. Rewards of primary coloured cuddly toys the immediate upshot. Keith’s misspent youth means that he is confident to impress. A bright blue elephant is an easy prize. But the elephant needs a foster mum. So on Shot Gun Alley I start my dalliance with elephants and another elephant lover. Almost accidentally we begin to identify common threads. African inclinations.

The dial of the time machine is reset for more current affairs. You find us entertaining Mike and Sal at Kwetu this January. After dinner conversation turns dark as we are enveloped in Yorkshire gloom. Sal’s tongue, loosened by wine, challenges our positive outlook. Mike and her have been feeling mortal. Having already entered Shot Gun Alley themselves. Despite wearing good genes on the inside and following doctor’s orders to the letter they have been dodging pot shots from the age of six “O”. Sal fires a shot over our bows. Watch out Keith, from April you will be a marked man. Try to keep your head below the parapet if you can! Ginny also, you will find yourself in the cross hairs from July. Mike backed up the received wisdom with some stats. Actuarial data confirms that 15% of people in the UK are picked off between the ages of 60 and 70. But if Keith can negotiate shot gun alley and reach 70 he should then get to 85 without too much bother. If I can keep my head down as we venture forth from the trenches I should crack on to a ripe old age of 87. That’s two years of making my own coffee in the mornings. Either that or I will need to find a toyboy.

We abandon the time machine to find ourselves in the present. Keith turns 60. I try to distract him from the ever present cracks of sniper fire with a real birthday treat. Fortunately Keith’s long service in the Valley opens doors for us. We take cover in two sumptuous lodges: Chichele and Chinzombo. At least if Keith succumbs at the entrance to shot gun alley he will die happy. And I will at least still have someone to bring me coffee.

The 12^th April comes earlier than most days. A 04:45 wake-up call, for once triggered by Apple, rather than our baboons. We pause briefly to scoop our breakfast favourites from bowl to mouth and grab a latte to go. John immaculately dressed is our guide. He offers a smorgasbord of possibilities. We drool at the offerings. Plan A could offer leopards. Plan B would see us happening upon hunting wild dogs and Plan C will depend on the calls of the wild. All of our plans are dreams, but John offers to turn them into reality. As long as we are flexible.

Flexible we are. Keith is already dodging bullets. His habit of being supple surely allows him at least this glorious morning. A short respite from sniper fire bought through regular yoga and occasion fasts. Contact calls fill the crisp bright morning air. Lion. Informing pride mates of their locations. In absence of what3words and google earth, the king of the jungle summons John’s merry men as well as the pride. John is not to be daunted by Somme-like fields, thick bush and ungraded roads. We bump and slide through the mud and splash through the puddles. Somehow we reach the river bank and wait for more calls. But the calls peter out and the trail goes cold. Well, in truth, the trail is too wet. We admit defeat. Plan C is abandoned.

Flexing we head off for other possibilities. Our plan again is plan A, but we soon stumble upon plan B. Wild dogs materialise as we head for leopard country. 12 dogs a lying. Looking lean. John talks up our dream scenario. Lean dogs don’t like to fast. And wild dogs are fast dogs. We watch as they stretch and greet. Yap a little and then sneeze a little. The votes are cast. Each dog sneezes once. All willing and democratically involved. They trot. They have impala on their minds and in their sights. The dogs commit to the hunt. Impalas pronk. No time to send out alarm calls. The hunt is silent. Instinctive. The quarry appears doomed. The impala have no chance to outrun this pack of endurance athletes. But best laid plans today are destined to change. The dogs path is crossed by a herd of edgy buffalo. 200 strong. Impenetrable and unchallengeable. The dogs know of the reputation of buffalo, so the alpha calls off the dogs. The pack trudges off toward our lodge, but via impenetrable bush, swamp and forest. I now have the benefit of a foretold future to tell you this. So John, Keith and I decide to stick to plan A.

Lady Wakumba is waiting for us, but where? We know of many favourite spots. The butcher tree? Two other favourite seats in trees? Our search seems forlorn. Her spots are numerous. Her camouflage immaculate for long grass and leafy trees. At the end of the wet season she is a needle in an overgrown haystack. And we have no magnet. No meat hanging in any known trees. There are too many unknown unknowns. Plan A seems doomed. And yet Lady Wakumba is watching a baby puku. We spy the leopard crouching in long grass. The puku are close, but non-the-wiser. Her leopard-skin coat blends her perfectly into the grass and the trees. There are no baboons to offer an opinion of the location of a hungry leopard. Lady Wakumba steals a few yards. We watch without breathing. The puku family know nothing. But puku are prone to calling false alarms. Dad shouts out to watch out. Paranoia feeds the herd. And despite not being heard nor seen, our leopard knows the hunt is off. She changes her plan, licks her lips wistfully and heads off for a seat in a tree.

Keith’s birthday hunt is over. He jinks and the snipers miss their quarry. Each hunter is out manoeuvred. And Keith lives to hunt another day.

Early morning buffalo

Wild dogs following the impala scent

Lady Wakumba in full repose

The sun rises over South Luangwa

Keith gets both a birthday cake and a song

We celebrate the 60th with Gid, Adrian, Ian and Alicia