Sweet and sour pork

Hello all

Thanks to finding a ten pound note in the middle of the road the other day, I have been able to purhase some petrol for the generator. Not only were we able to watch an hour of television last night, but I have also been given permission to spend fifteen minutes on the computer. Such fortune does not come our way very often, so I thanked Dolores fulsomely and set to work. I could spend the next 14.5 minutes (my 15 minutes started when I fired up the internet browser) telling you how lowly we have sunk, but that would only make me depressed. Instead, I'm going to finally reveal the ending to Ravel's attempts to recover his intellectual property rights in China. I understand this may be the slowest serialisation of a short story you have ever encountered, and I do apologise for the circumstances in which I find myself. Anyways, here goes....

Ravel was down to his last few yen. There was perhaps just enough for one more hand of 5 card stud. He hadn't won a hand all evening - 3 hours of increasingly stressful effort for nothing. It was all about to slip away in a near-empty warehouse somewhere in Beijing. His dreams of bringing the man who stole his world-cup replica trophy idea to justice were now torn. It was the last role of the dice, so to speak, and not spark of sympathy was evident on the inscrutable faces of the dozen men in suits who now stood breathing down the back of his neck, shouting and gesticulating each time he turned over a card. Ravel held the cards as close as he could to his chest, peeking only at the corners, but he time he looked at a card, he felt like the men behind him were peeking aswell.

This last round of 5 card stud preceded like all the others. No matter how much Ravel bluffed, his opponent would always call and raise. No matter how good his cards were, his opponent's were always better (when Ravel saw them, which was rare). This time, he was forced to fold almost immediately as there was no more money in the pot. His opponent gathered up the cash on the table and added it to his sprawling pile. Rather clumsily, thought Ravel, considering his opponent must have been in this situation before. It was almost as though presumed Mr Foo couldn't see very well, the way he simply stretched his arms out wide and gathered everything within reach. A few times during the night money had fallen off the edge of the table to be left on the floor. Ravel has not once been tempted to pick it up.

As the last hand came to its near-inevitable conclusion, Ravel simply pushed back his chair and made to stand up. His egress was halted, however, by several pairs of hands pushing him firmly back down into his seat. Unable to wriggle free, Ravel had no option but to pay attention to the presumed Mr Foo, who was now leaning forward as if to get a closer look at Ravel's face. In doing so, he made his own face visible, and Ravel saw for the first time that the presumed Mr Foo had cateracts in both eyes. Essentially, as you will no doubt have deduced by now, the man was blind.

Ravel swore in a Bulgarian dialect, using words he promised at his late uncle's deathbed never to utter to a living soul. The intended effect (which Ravel describes as ' ball shrinking') was somewhat lost, however as none of the targets seemed to understand. Their response was to laugh and cackle, slap Ravel on the back and point to the ceiling of the warehouse. Looking upwards, Ravel was more than a little surprised to see one of his world cup tropy replica's being lowered, spotlit, on a rope. Even more suprising was the sound of laughter from the assembled crowd on top of Nessun Dorma as sung by the three Tenors to a beaming Diana Princess of Wales all those years ago.

Now, I have been confused a few times in my life (see blogs passim), and as result I hope I have learnt how to handle the occasional deus ex machina, but even this would have had me in spasms. Within the space of a minute, a darkly serious situation had transmogriphied into farce. Ravel tells me that he was not only lost for words but quite unable to move despite the fact that he was no longer being held down. He was totally captivated by the descent of his replica trophy, that eventually landed on the table in front of him with a soft thud. It then toppled over, to reveal a piece of paper stuck to the bottom that Ravel had not so far noticed. On the paper was a symbol - reproduced below as a warning to others...

I say 'warning' because if you ever come across this sign, I advise you to run back to where you started your journey. Not because it signifies some type of mortal curse, nor because it is an assassination target, but because it belongs to a maverick television company (name witheld for legal reasons - we will call them Wang-Toon) who specialise in lampooning con-men and revealing them to the nation through setting up elaborate scenarios such as the one just played out in that warehouse. As per their usual form, after the symbol is 'disovered', by the con-artist, their presenter steps forward and takes a polaroid picture which he then reveals to the audience with a flourish and a cry of the Chinese equivalent of 'Gotcha!'.

Ravel was slack jawed as the presenter went through his routine to a camera that had emerged from the shadows. All around him people were laughing and chatting as if they had all enjoyed the same joke. But for Ravel it was no joke. He didn't know this was a TV stunt as he couldn't understand the director shouting 'Cut!', he didn't know what to do next as he couldn't understand the instructions being given to him by a lady with a clip-board and wearing a Wang-Toon badge. He didn't see the police man come from behind, but did feel the handcuffs. He also quite clearly heard the policeman say 'You arrested for fraud. Come with me.'. At which point, Ravel was helped up and out of the warehouse, into a police car and off to a nearby station, where another TV camera recorded his entry inside....

************ TO BE CONTINUED!************

(sorry, I have run out of generator time, and must attend to my chores. I hope to blog again soon and finish the story.)

Prawn Crackers

Hello all. It’s been a while since I was in a position to write anything owing to our continued need to ration the amount of petrol we put in the generator. We huddle together in the evenings to fend against the bats that have taken roost in the barn. On more than one occasion I have awoken as the flying menaces swoop down to snatch at one of our other resident populations – moths. They are attracted by our single lightbulb hanging from a hat stand that Ravel scavenged from a car boot sale a week ago. Yes, dear reader, the credit crunch has hit the McCrumble household very hard indeed. All income streams have dried up and we are now living more frugally than I ever imagined to be possible. This blog entry is only appearing because I didn’t wish anyone to think we had actually given up completely. I’m also not doing it to ask for charity. The McCrumble spirit will prevail!

So, anyway, I must finish Ravel’s tale of his time in China. At the end of the last post he was about to face the music, so to speak, at the card table. Men in suits and sunglasses approached the table as he offered to call on the tenth hand of the evening. The presumed Mr Foo wanted to keep raising but Ravel’s confidence had abandoned him after losing the previous nine rounds of 5 card stud. The pot of money given to him by the lawyers was rapidly diminishing, and by Ravel’s reckoning wouldn’t last another 2 or 3 hands. Ravel desperately wanted to switch the game over to Texas Hold’em, but his knowledge of Mandarin was somewhat limited even by tourist standards (he could just about pronounce ‘Beer’ after being in the country several weeks. Trying to signal his wishes using the charade of pretending to be wearing a ten gallon hat whilst cuddling himself didn’t work either.)

His hesitancy was beginning to annoy the assembled crowd of men in suits. They appeared to be urging him onwards more aggressively with each hand, moving closer to the table as failure piled up and his stash of yen all but disappeared. The tenth hand fell as all previous hands had fallen and now the suits were just two feet behind him. There seemed to be twice as many now, all wearing the same suit, sporting the same sunglasses, the same shoulder-length hairstyle. Even with his army training, Ravel knew he would have trouble fighting his way out of his predicament. There seemed to be no option but to play until the money was gone and then try to leave quietly.

Such might have been Ravel’s idea, but he couldn’t tell anyone, and I doubt they would have listened. For this was no ordinary game of poker, and no ordinary crowd of gangsters. Sometimes, the truth of a matter is beyond the comprehension of those involved, hidden behind dark suits, sunglasses, aggressive movements. A distraction perhaps, something to ensure that one of the players takes his eyes off his cards. Such deviousness was happening right there in that warehouse. But not, dear reader, for the reason you might be thinking. I’m just about to shut the generator down so I can’t write what happened next just yet. I promise, though, to beg borrow or steal some petrol so that I can finally reveal the astonishing ending to Ravel’s adventure in China.

******** TO BE CONTINUED!! **********

Chinese Laundry

Hello all


The last message suggested that Ravel's revenge adventure was about to be unwound and turned into rice noodles by a text-message of gloom. The message simply said that the lawyer (let's call him Mr Woo) who had managed to penetrate the organisation producing fake copies of Ravel's World Cup trophys had to prove his prowess by playing a rival of the boss (let's call the boss Mr Wong and his rival Mr Foo) at poker in a high-stakes game that evening.


'Why is this a disaster?', asked Ravel.


'Mr Woo cannot play poker to save his bacon. He will lose bigtime and not get the job with Mr Wong. Then Mr Wong will will get new lawyer and we are doomed.'


Ravel contemplated this latest twist as he ate some rice crackers in the hotel bar. The lawyers had decided they would go shopping to help clear their minds, and Ravel was quite glad to have some time alone. He tells me that he almost gave up the idea of getting one over on Mr Wong at that point, but that his pride and sense of injustice kept him propped up just enough to eventually come up with a solution to the problem. He would, he decided, take the place of the incompetent lawyer at the table on the pretext that the lawyer had fallen sick after eating poorly cooked duck's feet at a backstreet stall.


The lawyers were not sure Mr Wong would fall for the sting, but could not offer an alternative solution. So they told Mr Woo to feign illness and offer Ravel as a substitute. To their initial surprise there was no objection, but it then turned out Mr Woo had persuaded Mr Wong that he operated as part of a team and that Ravel was a former Bulgarian champion who could provide Mr Wong with enough money to fight any legal challenge to his activities.


'I think this is what they call 'no-pressure-then'?', said one of the lawyers as they took Ravel to the designated meeting place. Ravel smiled grimly. He was no Bulgarian champion, and was indeed feeling the pressure. His last winnings had been whilst in the Bulgarian army, and his opponent had been a drunken youth boasting that he'd never been beaten. To make matters worse, he had a headache and was feeling a bit sick from too eating of many rice crackers (incidentally, this is the first time in the years I have known of Ravel showing any signs of nervousness. It softened some of my own inedequacy fears for a while).


The meeting place - where Ravel had been instructed to enter alone - was an empty warehouse on a small industrial estate. Inside was a table with 3 chairs. One chair had a man, wearing a dealer's visor, sitting facing Ravel as he entered. Another, bald headed man was facing the table but Ravel could not see his face. Around the table stood four other men in dark suits and sunglasses. One of them stepped forward and told Ravel to sit at the table. On taking his place, he noticed that the bald man (presumed to be Mr Foo) was sweating quite profusely despite the dim lighting and ambient temperature. Immediately Ravel suspected something was not quite legitimate (his soldier's instincts were kicking in despite the rice-cracker induced nausea), but he also knew he could not blow his own cover. It was a tense start.


The tension was not helped when the dealer began explaining the situation in Chinese. Ravel had picked up a few words whilst in the country, but the localised rules of poker were not in his phrasebook. The only word he recognised was 'money' - after it was said the bald man put a wad of notes on the table and Ravel followed suit (the lawyers had clubbed together confident in their man to deliver a hefty winnings). As the hefty bundle hit the table, he bit his lip in frustration at not discussing the gameplan more rigourously with the lawyers - without knowing what they had told Mr Wong he could not risk appearing anything less than fluent.


The presumed Mr Foo pushed a few notes into the centre of the table. Ravel copied him, trying not to reveal his nervousness. The dealer began to shuffle the deck and deal the cards - one face down and one face up. Ravel correctly recalled this was the opening round of 5 card stud. To many poker players this would have registered as just one of several games with the same probability of success. But to Ravel it spelled potential disaster. For some reason he'd never been able to fathom, 5 card stud was the one variation that the drunken youth back in his army days had used to trounce him time and time again. In fact, as Ravel recalled, it was only a last ditch gamble where he put up his stash of bisongrass vodka on a round of Texas hold'em winner-takes-all that won the day. With no bottles of vodka about his person, Ravel could only pray inwardly that Mr Foo could not read his mind and pummel his self-doubt into submission. It was going to be a difficult night....

*********** TO BE CONTINUED!!!! *************

Chinese noodles

Hello all

When I last wrote, Ravel was in deep trouble in big China. His compatriot lawyer friends were essentially helpless as they watched one of their team being escorted in the wrong direction. It looked for sure as if they would have to abort their mission just to stay safe. None of the lawyers had any idea of what to do except to start walking slowly back towards the main road. Their fierce skills in the arena of marital disputes was of little use to anyone at that point. Only Ravel had any training in jungle survival, and even he was taxed as to how they might continue without a car. It was growing dark, and they were getting hungry again, having eaten all their packed lunches much earlier during the day. I don't know if you, dear reader, have ever spent any time in the Chinese countryside with hungry lawyers. I haven't either, so I have to take Ravel at face value when he said they started acting like (I quote verbatim here, so do not assume this is my sentiment) - 'women chasing last chocolate bar'.

After about half an hour of squabbling and having just walked a couple of miles towards the main road they heard a car coming towards them. Ravel recognised the sound of the engine - it was the same car that had escorted their compatriot away. Everyone tried to find cover exept Ravel, who by now was determined to face down anyone - and steal their vehicle if necessary - in order to prevent the lawyers scratching each other's eyes out. He stood in the middle of the road waving his arms. At first it appeared as if the car was going to stop, but the engine suddenly revved firecely and the mud was splattering everywhere. Ravel had but a moment to throw himself out of the way as the car sped past. Glancing towards the car as it passed, he saw two figures in the front seats. One was the man from earlier. The other was the lawyer he had escorted away. Although only catching the briefest glimpse of his expression, Ravel saw quite clearly that the lawyer was smiling.

'Look here!' shouted one of the other lawyers a minute later when they all came out of hiding, 'he dropped something!'

'Crispy fried duck and rice?', asked another lawyer, running towards the first man.

'No man. It's a note. Listen up. It says he phoned for help and a car is coming to pick us up. It also says he has made a deal with the head of the operation to defend him against accusation of selling fake goods.'

'Aaaah!' cried all the other lawyers in unison, as if a tipping point in their understanding of the situation had been reached, and they knew what this meant.

'What does this mean?', asked Ravel. Despite travelling with them for some weeks, he was still flummoxed on a regular basis by their cryptic mechanics of reasoning.

'It is easy. He is worst lawyer amongst us by a long, long way. He knows he cannot successfully defend businessman. He will have tipped off authorities. He will give poor information to barristers. We just wait now for trial and job is done. Ok?'

Ravel was not entirely sure but could offer no solution. The lawyers were adamant that their colleagues incompetence would win the day and so thy waited for the car to pick them up. The driver was know to some of the group, and they were so pleased to see him that they dived straight into the car and told him to drive as quickly as possible back to their hotel. Once there, they waited for more news. There was nothing that night, but the next morning Ravel was awoken early by someone knocking on the door. It was one of the lawyers brandishing a mobile phone. 'I just got a text', he said forlornly. 'Bad news. Sit down....'

*********TO BE CONTINUED!!!*********

Chinese mud

Hello all

There’s nothing like an international crisis to prompt action in the McCrumble household. We’ve been largely unaffected by things until the other day – after all, if you have nothing to lose then what do you have to fear?

To bring you up to speed on events in recent months I’ll spend a short amount of time relaying what happened to young Ravel, my faithful assistant who was last heard of when departing his Bulgarian homeland for the Far East, notably China, where he planned to confront the criminal mastermind behind the theft of his physical and intellectual property (viz a viz wooden replicas of the World Cup trophy).

Despite early promise of progress – namely the name and address of a possible perpetrator, Ravel soon hit soggy ground – literally. They (Ravel and his team of Chinese-Bulgarian lawyers) were sent on a wild goose chase through marshlands to reach an isolated village where the man was reported to have his factory. About half way along their two hundred mile journey they were caught in a rainstorm that rapidly turned the road to mud. Needless to say, they got stuck. No amount of legal expertise, nor even Ravels well conditioned thighs and biceps could extricate them from their situation. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a road less well travelled, and not a soul passed the bedraggled gang for 6 hours. It was only Ravel’s training in story telling that prevented the lawyers from suffering further – he told tales of my misadventures (see blogs passim) that apparently had them ‘pissing in the mud’ with laughter. So many stories, in fact, that the 6 hours passed in no time at all (or so Ravel says - he may have embellished his story a little).

Eventually someone driving a pickup coming from the direction of the factory. One of the lawyers (disguised as a manual worker) flagged the car down and asked for help whilst the rest of the gang hid behind some trees. The car was hauled out of the mud and the lawyer started the engine. It was at this moment that the driver of the other car asked where the lawyer was going. Since there was only one place he knew lay at the end of the road, the lawyer was obliged to give its name, since to lie would have aroused suspicion.

What the lawyer didn’t know at the time (it was later explained during a game of double-or-quits poker) was that the place in question had 2 names – one for people who weren’t trusted by the informant, and one for those whose business did not clash with the inhabitants of that place. On hearing the lawyer’s name for the place, the man became immediately suspicious and ordered that the lawyer turned around to avoid ‘bandits’. When the lawyer refused, the man produced a gun and waved it around as if to emphasise the point about ‘bandits’. He offered to escort the car back to the main road and see him on his way towards Beijing.

Fearing that the man with the gun might be willing to use it, the lawyer had no choice but to agree. He did not so much as glance towards his compatriots crouching in the undergrowth, but simply got in the car and drove slowly away, ahead of the man with the gun. Ravel and his legal aides were now stranded, a hundred miles from the main road and with no prospect of reaching their target anytime soon. For all they knew, the man with the gun might have been carrying Ravel’s precious wooden trophies. A suspicion that was, in fact, actually and very positively confirmed when one of the stranded lawyers used his high powered zoom camera to take a picture. What should he spy but this….

**************** TO BE CONTINUED!!!!!!!!!******************

Home alone....

Hello all

Today I'm all alone at home - Dolores has taken the children to see her mother, Mrs McHaggerty, who still lives up in the north of the country. By mutual consent we agreed I would stay behind - my relationship with my mother in law has never recovered since I accused her publicly of being a kleptomaniac on the front cover of my book. Understandably, perhaps, she has said if I ever say a bad word about her again she'll sue me for defamation of character. So be it. I will make no defamatory remarks about her whatsoever in this blog from here on in.

I've had a couple of requests to give an update on my faithful assistant, Ravel. First of all let me just assure you all that he is safe and well. What appeared to be a successful kidnap attempt by a gang of Chinese-Bulgarian lawyers (sanctioned by the local police chief, no less!) was in fact a misunderstanding on my part. They no more wanted to whisk Ravel away for ransom any more than I would like to see my mother in law take the place of a crash test dummy. Rather, they had arranged to take him back to Bulgaria in order to begin a legal case against the people who stole Ravel's replica-world-cup-trophy idea (see blogs passim). Ravel knew the lawyers through his uncle - a prominent judge in Bulgaria, apparently. They were in the UK for a conference when they heard about Ravel's predicament. Being half Chinese, they had inside knowledge of the legal system in that country, and promised to help the young man in his fight against the criminals.

What Ravel didn't tell me is that they are taking the fight to the enemy. I found out because he told Dolores not to tell me. She didn't tell me, but Twin Y overheard their telephone conversation and said he had valuable inside information that would only cost me a twenty pound top-up on his mobile phone. Wanting proof that he had such information, I made him sign a guarantee that, if the information proved less than invaluable, I would not only take away his mobile phone, but make him write letters to everyone in his phonebook apologising for his lying ways. I was tempted to threaten him with spending two weeks with my mother in law - who, incidentally, is is not an embittered old hag with a face like a mouldy walnut - but such a threat could easily backfire if they joined forces, so I let it go.

So, to cut a long story short, Ravel is on his way to China, accompanied by two of the lawyers who took him away from here. Twin Y told me that they plan to track the perpetrators down and serve them with the appropriate legal papers. I only hope they manage to get in and out of country without any problems. How exactly they'll find their targets I'm not sure. The criminals who stole Ravel's business are unlikely to be amateurs. I'm becoming more than a little concerned for his welfare - more concerned, even than I would be for Mrs McHaggerty if she, say, took up eating lightbulbs as a hobby to while away the kind of long and lonely nights that are often experienced by people with no social skills and unpleasant body odour issues.

J McC

teaser

Hello all

This is just a teaser. Sorry for the long delay since last posting. All will be, er, Raveled (geddit?) as soon as I get the opportunity. Since he's been gone I've found myself incumbered by all manner of parental duties that were formally his domain. I'm beginning to think No.3 in particular might now actually recognise my status.

As per Daphne's suggestion, I'm going to start doing shorter posts - just to keep my keyboard from rusting up, mainly, and to hopefully make it back up Kim Ayre's blog list.

cheers

J McC