[Update]

Against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be persuaded to tour Nairobi by night. This is generally a decision I arrive with the feeling a lot like those of early Christians when they witnessed consignments of very large, very hungry lions being unloaded at a Roman port – things were always going to be interesting very soon afterwards.

The first port of call was our usual pizza joint. Placing a large order of pizzas was but a moment’s work. As we sat there a finger tapped my shoulder and I turned to face the beaming and eager face of Anna who is registered in the Book Of M as an acquaintance and will remain this as long as the sun rises in the East.

Anna: Hi!
M: Hey!
Anna: Fancy meeting you here!
M: Well … a chap’s got to eat. What’s up?
Anna: Nothing. Just chilling with a couple of friends. Come say hi?
M: I’d rather paint a boat with my tongue Well…

I hesitated and was lost. Exactly five seconds later I was being dragged across to meet the friends.

The friends were many, energetic and seemed to talk all at once. Names shot at me like bullets and passed me by completely. There were eight hands to shake and I somehow seem to have shaken fourteen. A waiter appeared armed with notepad and pen.

Waiter: So, are you ready to order?
Girls: Not really hungry…. any light snacks?
Anna: Ah! M! You owe me a pizza!
M: Well…
Anna: Yes! Don’t try and escape! (Turning to waiter) Peri Peri Chicken. Large. Girls?
Girls: (Speaking at once) Chicken! Hawaiian! Beef! Peri Peri! Potato & Mushroom! Chewing Gum & Banana! Cow & Chicken! Fish And Cornflakes!
Waiter: (Writing industriously) Got it. And you sir? Can I add anything to your bill?
M: (Incredulously) What do you mean ‘my bill’? Have you put those 9 pizzas on me?
Waiter: Yes sir.
M: Krrkmtz!! Well, if I’m going to feed the multitudes I’d better do it properly. Cancel those pizzas and bring five loaves, two fish and a baskets for the leftovers instead.

The line between the public coffers and my coffers has never been a blurred one, and that is a state of affairs unlikely to change.

Fast forwarding into the night, and to another establishment, there occasioned the altercation between two gentlemen we’ll call Bill and Phil over an unbelievably leggy recent entrant into the establishment. My knowledge of these gentlemen was pieced together from assorted facts placed before me before and after the action.

When he was a small boy, Bill’s imaginary friends refused to play with him on the grounds of his marked preference for inertia of rest and his general disinclination towards exertion of any sort. Non biased observers would side with the imaginary friends on the grounds that Bill had yet to imagine each of them (the friends) to completeness. Each lacked either a head, forelimbs, hind limbs or any combination thereof.

Phil’s imaginary friends were not happy with their creator either. They would hide behind sofas and in dark rooms when his solid footfalls approached. Their gripe with their maker was his inability to be stirred by anything under sun or under moon.

Under the powerful influence of Johnny Walker, Alexander Haig and Jack Daniels, as well as the soothing tongues of Counts Popov and Stravinsky, Bill and Phil were energized beyond belief, and this night those gentlemen had been hard at work. Jeff the barman was heard to complain as he rubbed a sore shoulder of overwork.

The leggy entrant appeared suddenly at the door. Millenia of evolution has yet to rid man of his instincts. As one man the entire male population detected the change in the atmosphere and turned door wards. She was welcomed by appreciative looks. Experienced connoisseurs within seconds had taken her apart and put her together again. Her dimensions were taken expertly and filed in the IN tray. Comprehensive 3D models or her were constructed and saved for future reference.

Bill put down his tankard and got to his unsteady feet at the same instant Phil did.

Both men eyed each other suspiciously.

“Where do you think you’re going?” They demanded simultaneously.

“Where do YOU think you’re going? I saw her first!” They roared simultaneously.

Startling revelations came to each simultaneously: that the other was a threat to their progeny; that the other was interfering with God’s very simple, very plain instructions: “Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth”.

Without further ado these gentlemen closed grimly on each other. I turned to inform my lads of the free entertainment but they were only too aware.

ROUND 1
I don’t know much about fighting, and it has been quite some decades since i bore arms in defence of self or honour. However there was something about Phil’s technique I feel very sure was fundamentally flawed and unlikely to catch on. Phil’s technique was a simple one, and it seemed to consist chiefly of hitting Bill’s fists with his face.

Bill felt sure his payload delivery would be 100% as opposed to its current 33.3% if the damn floor would keep still for a damn minute! Each salvo of three blows would generally be along these lines:

• His first right cross whistled past Phil’s head and acutely dislocated the club’s ambience.
• His second uppercut whooshed past Phil’s right ear and tore a jagged hole in the club’s soft lighting.
• His third left cross landed solidly against the side of Phil’s head sending him staggering wildly into the arms of a bemused patron.

ROUND 2
Phil decided that he needs a new strategy. Bill’s blows seem to have loosened his brain from its moorings and he can feel it whooshing around in his head. To this he objected. He lowered his right fist to the level of his right knee and with a war cry that Shaka Zulu could have done well to take notes from jerked himself forward and swung his fist upwards in the general direction of Phil’s three floating heads, making practical use of his knowledge of statistics and trying for the median.

Popov’s soothing charms had slowed his speed somewhat and by the time the blow arrived where Phil’s head had been, Phil had moved, and quite some time previously. The fist of fury hurtled on with a mini sonic boom, and it pulled Phil after him. The line between a table and assorted pieces of timber and toothpicks can be crossed by a body hurtling across the room and landing on said table.

ROUND 3
Two bouncers got hold of Phil from either side and pulled him to his feet. Bill looked at them warmly as brothers and allies. Now these were friends in need, and friends in deed, holding up his opposition! His fist bunched and was streaking across the air before he knew it.

Phil saw the fist whistling towards his head and quickly jerked to the left, simultaneously pulling one of the bouncers into the path of the fist. The impact bounced the bouncer’s head back. A second later the bouncer left little doubt of the disdain in which he held Mahatma Gandhi’s views on eyes for eyes.

ROUND 4
Our good deed for the day was preventing that bouncer from arranging an urgent meeting between Phil and his maker.

Five minutes later, unaware of the carnage she had left behind her, the leggy Kristina made her departure.

WORD OF THE DAY
Asinine: Government that can spend 50 million shillings sending 100 nitwits, wastrels, idelers, incompetents and morons to the UN two days after begging the international community for 24 million shillings for famine relief

PIC OF THE DAY

Start of the Botswana Savannah

SHAME OF THE DAY
Me busting my behind to pay taxes so that an orc can fly to the US at my expense and find it preferable to have his trousers around his ankles as he runs after his juniours. (Thanks to Ni2 for the reminder)

Ace Of Base – Happy Nation