By Major Harold Wayne-Bough (Ret'd)
After the Memsahib implied last issue that I’m second cousin to Old Nick, I’ve heard some pretty rum comment about my (alleged) tendency towards nocturnal metamorphosis, comparisons to Michael Howard, etc. I’ve laughed them all off, of course. But the truth is, that isn’t the first time I’ve encountered mysterious forces at work …
Last September Fatty Fortescue, Bodger and yours truly left the Memsahibs at home (in fact Fatty did that in 1983) and went off on a male-bonding survival weekend in the Pieniny, including a white-water rafting trip down the Dunec. We started off from a guesthouse in the mountains which can only be reached by a rather perilous ride in a Land Rover up the mountainside. We had arrived in the evening, so this took place in pitch darkness, much to the glee of Bodger, who had been wearing his regimental balaclava since Kraków, and was by now sporting his night vision goggles from the Russian market as well. He kept his Action Man outfit on through dinner, fortunately Mrs Akiko has seen stranger sights than Bodger trying to eat noodle soup through a hole in his mask (knitted by Mrs Bodger).
After dinner we settled down in the lounge to relax on the eve of our battle with the Great Outdoors. Fatty found a video left behind by some Swedish hikers who’d just left. Much to his chagrin, it wasn’t a Swedish movie (and I’m not talking Ingmar Bergman, I think you chaps will know what I mean), but an action film called “Deliverance”. We rather liked the beginning, three chaps canoeing down a river, come to mention it I did bear a striking resemblance to Burt Reynolds in my younger days. However, by the end of the film everyone had gone a bit quiet. Especially Fatty. We all turned in, but I don’’t think Fatty had a peaceful night, I heard his bed creaking everytime he turned over, which was about every minute. I think he was dreaming he was a doner kebab being gently basted with soy sauce by the charming Mrs Akiko.
The next morning, after a copious breakfast of dried seaweed and sushi we set off bright and early for the river, armed with a picnic donated by the kind Mrs Akiko, who waved us off laughing merrily. I think she was amused by Bodger’s frogman get-up. We boarded our raft and pushed off to pit our wits against the mighty Dunec. Fatty sat up front, which meant that Bodger and I had to sit well back to counterbalance him. Bodger wasn’t much help, frankly, his oxygen tanks were hindering his paddling and I was doing most of the work. The river wasn’t too difficult to negotiate at first, and we spent a pleasant few hours meandering downstream waving cheerily to the locals, who appeared periodically on the river bank to wish us well. We planned to do half the run, heave to somewhere and sleep under the stars, then continue down to the pick-up point the next day. We’d got a fierce rhythm going, and Bodger was coxing with a Fijian dragon-racing chant he’d learnt on manoeuvres in the South Pacific. The river started to get quite fast, and in the end we went into a spin and had to just go with the flow, literally. Fatty lost it completely, and lay flat on the floor of the raft screaming as Bodger and I skilfully steered through the most perilous stretch of the river. This is where training shows through, and my experience on the spinning teacups at Alton Towers last summer gave me quite an advantage.
By the end of the first day we were exhausted, but mighty pleased with ourselves. We built a fire and were sitting around it re-living the day’s highlights, when a couple of local yokels appeared out of the bushes, carrying our sleeping bags and looking a bit cross. They’d been following us all the way along the river in a pick-up truck with our bags, and had been trying to signal to us from the bank the safest places to stop but we’d just waved back happily like foreign idiots and kept going. It turned out we had done the whole run in one day and were about 500 yards from the pick-up point. We felt a bit silly, I can tell you, and tried to placate them with some tofu sandwiches and a couple of Daphne’s dainty iced fancies which they spat out again. The Memsahib would not have been impressed with their table manners. They were real hillbillies, the elder one was boss-eyed and the younger one, who was toothless as well as gormless, kept looking at Fatty in a queer sort of way. Eventually we thanked them profusely, gave them a few bob and shooed them on their way.
Come bedtime, Fatty looked distinctly uneasy, and spent a long time checking the Chubb locks on his sleeping bag. I started singing “Duelling Banjos” - “Dinga-ding-dang-dong” - to wind him up, to which his muffled voice replied from inside his sleeping bag “Sounds like Match of the Day”. Eventually I drifted off to sleep as the fire died, and didn’t know another blessed thing until the morning, when I awoke to find Bodger and Fatty polishing off the last of the raw squid, and looking a bit shifty. “The queerest thing happened in the night, Harold,” said Bodger.
He had been startled awake by a noise, and had awoken to find our two friends from the Countryside Alliance rummaging in his Bergen. First of all he’d reached for his 12-bore, but then remembered he’d sold it back in 1982, so reverted to old regimental survival tactics and pretended to be asleep. He heard the mountain men getting closer and closer to Fatty’s sleeping bag, and was wincing as he remembered scenes from the film. Male bonding was starting to take on a whole new meaning. Bodger was wishing to blazes that video had been Swedish Night Nurse on the Job. All of a sudden there was a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and the bumpkins ran off in fright. Bodger had peeped through a hole in his sleeping bag to see, in the dawn’s early light, a large, blond, Scandinavian-looking chap in hiking gear sitting on a rock listening to a Walkman. Cripes, thought Bodger? He sat up and said hello. The hiker gave a big smile and said “It’s OK, you’re safe now”, and went back to softly humming “Dancing Queen”, which lulled Bodger back to sleep in no time. When he awoke it was daylight, the hiker had gone, and Fatty and I were snoring peacefully.
He asked me what I made of it. I had a vague feeling like when you’re desperately trying to remember a name, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite think of it. Damnedest thing. I suggested to Bodger that perhaps he’d had a dream. But he showed me footprints of great big hiking boots close to where we’d been sleeping – they couldn’t have been our prints, as Bodger was wearing his flippers, Fatty had his Pathfinders on (with animal tracks) and I was in my trusty green wellies. And – incontrovertible proof – Bodger pulled out of his wetsuit the cassette cover of “Abba Gold”.
I told Daphne the story some weeks later. She looked quite unfazed, and said simply “Sven”. “About four o’clock in the morning,” I replied. She gave me one of her withering looks that have been known to make a compass needle turn south, and said “Not when, Harold. Sven.” and carried on polishing the silver. I remain baffled to this day. The truth is out there, somewhere.
After the Memsahib implied last issue that I’m second cousin to Old Nick, I’ve heard some pretty rum comment about my (alleged) tendency towards nocturnal metamorphosis, comparisons to Michael Howard, etc. I’ve laughed them all off, of course. But the truth is, that isn’t the first time I’ve encountered mysterious forces at work …
Last September Fatty Fortescue, Bodger and yours truly left the Memsahibs at home (in fact Fatty did that in 1983) and went off on a male-bonding survival weekend in the Pieniny, including a white-water rafting trip down the Dunec. We started off from a guesthouse in the mountains which can only be reached by a rather perilous ride in a Land Rover up the mountainside. We had arrived in the evening, so this took place in pitch darkness, much to the glee of Bodger, who had been wearing his regimental balaclava since Kraków, and was by now sporting his night vision goggles from the Russian market as well. He kept his Action Man outfit on through dinner, fortunately Mrs Akiko has seen stranger sights than Bodger trying to eat noodle soup through a hole in his mask (knitted by Mrs Bodger).
After dinner we settled down in the lounge to relax on the eve of our battle with the Great Outdoors. Fatty found a video left behind by some Swedish hikers who’d just left. Much to his chagrin, it wasn’t a Swedish movie (and I’m not talking Ingmar Bergman, I think you chaps will know what I mean), but an action film called “Deliverance”. We rather liked the beginning, three chaps canoeing down a river, come to mention it I did bear a striking resemblance to Burt Reynolds in my younger days. However, by the end of the film everyone had gone a bit quiet. Especially Fatty. We all turned in, but I don’’t think Fatty had a peaceful night, I heard his bed creaking everytime he turned over, which was about every minute. I think he was dreaming he was a doner kebab being gently basted with soy sauce by the charming Mrs Akiko.
The next morning, after a copious breakfast of dried seaweed and sushi we set off bright and early for the river, armed with a picnic donated by the kind Mrs Akiko, who waved us off laughing merrily. I think she was amused by Bodger’s frogman get-up. We boarded our raft and pushed off to pit our wits against the mighty Dunec. Fatty sat up front, which meant that Bodger and I had to sit well back to counterbalance him. Bodger wasn’t much help, frankly, his oxygen tanks were hindering his paddling and I was doing most of the work. The river wasn’t too difficult to negotiate at first, and we spent a pleasant few hours meandering downstream waving cheerily to the locals, who appeared periodically on the river bank to wish us well. We planned to do half the run, heave to somewhere and sleep under the stars, then continue down to the pick-up point the next day. We’d got a fierce rhythm going, and Bodger was coxing with a Fijian dragon-racing chant he’d learnt on manoeuvres in the South Pacific. The river started to get quite fast, and in the end we went into a spin and had to just go with the flow, literally. Fatty lost it completely, and lay flat on the floor of the raft screaming as Bodger and I skilfully steered through the most perilous stretch of the river. This is where training shows through, and my experience on the spinning teacups at Alton Towers last summer gave me quite an advantage.
By the end of the first day we were exhausted, but mighty pleased with ourselves. We built a fire and were sitting around it re-living the day’s highlights, when a couple of local yokels appeared out of the bushes, carrying our sleeping bags and looking a bit cross. They’d been following us all the way along the river in a pick-up truck with our bags, and had been trying to signal to us from the bank the safest places to stop but we’d just waved back happily like foreign idiots and kept going. It turned out we had done the whole run in one day and were about 500 yards from the pick-up point. We felt a bit silly, I can tell you, and tried to placate them with some tofu sandwiches and a couple of Daphne’s dainty iced fancies which they spat out again. The Memsahib would not have been impressed with their table manners. They were real hillbillies, the elder one was boss-eyed and the younger one, who was toothless as well as gormless, kept looking at Fatty in a queer sort of way. Eventually we thanked them profusely, gave them a few bob and shooed them on their way.
Come bedtime, Fatty looked distinctly uneasy, and spent a long time checking the Chubb locks on his sleeping bag. I started singing “Duelling Banjos” - “Dinga-ding-dang-dong” - to wind him up, to which his muffled voice replied from inside his sleeping bag “Sounds like Match of the Day”. Eventually I drifted off to sleep as the fire died, and didn’t know another blessed thing until the morning, when I awoke to find Bodger and Fatty polishing off the last of the raw squid, and looking a bit shifty. “The queerest thing happened in the night, Harold,” said Bodger.
He had been startled awake by a noise, and had awoken to find our two friends from the Countryside Alliance rummaging in his Bergen. First of all he’d reached for his 12-bore, but then remembered he’d sold it back in 1982, so reverted to old regimental survival tactics and pretended to be asleep. He heard the mountain men getting closer and closer to Fatty’s sleeping bag, and was wincing as he remembered scenes from the film. Male bonding was starting to take on a whole new meaning. Bodger was wishing to blazes that video had been Swedish Night Nurse on the Job. All of a sudden there was a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder, and the bumpkins ran off in fright. Bodger had peeped through a hole in his sleeping bag to see, in the dawn’s early light, a large, blond, Scandinavian-looking chap in hiking gear sitting on a rock listening to a Walkman. Cripes, thought Bodger? He sat up and said hello. The hiker gave a big smile and said “It’s OK, you’re safe now”, and went back to softly humming “Dancing Queen”, which lulled Bodger back to sleep in no time. When he awoke it was daylight, the hiker had gone, and Fatty and I were snoring peacefully.
He asked me what I made of it. I had a vague feeling like when you’re desperately trying to remember a name, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite think of it. Damnedest thing. I suggested to Bodger that perhaps he’d had a dream. But he showed me footprints of great big hiking boots close to where we’d been sleeping – they couldn’t have been our prints, as Bodger was wearing his flippers, Fatty had his Pathfinders on (with animal tracks) and I was in my trusty green wellies. And – incontrovertible proof – Bodger pulled out of his wetsuit the cassette cover of “Abba Gold”.
I told Daphne the story some weeks later. She looked quite unfazed, and said simply “Sven”. “About four o’clock in the morning,” I replied. She gave me one of her withering looks that have been known to make a compass needle turn south, and said “Not when, Harold. Sven.” and carried on polishing the silver. I remain baffled to this day. The truth is out there, somewhere.
