The Unpopular Tourist

Many, many years ago, in my teens, we had a family holiday in Portugal. My father hired a local to take us out for the day. He teased my younger brother all day, making 'donkey ears' at him and at many of the black-clad women we passed as we drove through teeny villages with even teenier roads.

Amongst other places, he took us to a modern church to show us the guarded tomb of one of Portugal's great and good (we never did find out who). Upon leaving, our driver collapsed in tears of laughter over the bonnet of his car. One by one, we spotted an ancient old man carrying a wicker basket with grey smoke pouring out of it.

Unsurprisingly, this man got increasingly annoyed as we all failed to hold back our less than sympathetic gales of laughter. Our driver eventually managed to let him know what was going on. He up-ended the contents of his bag and proceeded to tap dance on them to put out the flames. It didn't help any that he was wearing T-shirt, Bermuda style khaki shorts and 'Desert Welly' sandals. Needless to say, we were less than useless on the help front!

Walking the Cat

My former home, a flat, was located on an inner city square surrounded by traffic. Consequently I never let my mad tom cat, Maximus, out on his own. We would go for a walk together, most often on a sunny day when the square was full of people, including the occasional village drunk or two...

"Oi, Missus, did you know you've got a cat on that lead?"

Looking down, then at the drunk, at his mate, back down, back to drunk 1, and repeating

"Bugger, what the bloody hell have I done with the damn Alsation?"

Drunk 1 exits confused 

Drunk 2 falls back into the flowers

The Pink and Hard

One otherwise unremarkable summer's evening in a bar about ten years ago saw a cocktail created in my honour. 

Take a chilled tall glass

Sugar frost the rim

Add equal measures of Vodka and Campari

Add crushed ice

Top up with pink grapefruit juice 

Add a splash of fresh lime juice

Serve!

Salute!