Bedbugs and Bloemtics

Hi all

Let me first simply describe East London , as per Lonely Planet:

"Few cities in the world with this many inhabitants are as dour as East London, yet a strange inescapable malaise hangs over the town....The eastern end of Eastern beach and the area around Nahoon River mouth are not considered safe to walk on....take care on the Esplanade and get a taxi home from anywhere in East London after dark".

Mike Atherton , writing from London but reprinted in a local paper this week described East London as "grim". He really endeared himself to the locals!

East London is called the Buffalo City. The cricket ground is called Buffalo Park. The main Street is called Buffalo Street. I would bet my mortgage that the mayor is called Buffalo Bill. On the day we arrived the paper was full of civic disturbance at the town hall with an angry mob of protesters being subjected to pepper spray to control them.

In a nutshell , it is not difficult to imagine how East London first got its name.

I hope by now those who havent been here before are getting a picture of what a nice relaxing place this is.

We decided to save ourselves a bundle of taxi fares by staying in the Sugar Shack Backpackers , smack bang in the middle of the Eastern Beach. This establishment was closest to the ground ( or so we thought ) and very reasonably priced , but sometimes basing choice on cost only can prove false economy , as I will describe later.

Our temporary home was a collection of garden shed sized wendy houses perched precariously on a sand dune and surrounded by fortified fences with rusty steel tips and barbed wire so I immediately felt at home.

The short walk to Buffalo Park was enhanced by the local prostitutes selling their wares in the public park on the way at 10am.

The first day of the practice match started well enough with England batting first. In the early afternoon I ran into Graham Swann outside the changing rooms taking a breath, so to speak.

" Its gonna piss down soon. I hate it when we're not playing" said Swanny. Soon enough it was bucketing down and we retired to the local pub called Buccaneers along with fellow supporters Will, Will, and Bury Phil. As the rain showed no signs of abating we imbibed and after a delicious meal of ribs and chicken, most of which ended up on the floor (to be devoured by Will and Tremers - a meal ordered is a meal eaten ) returned to our wendy house at about ten pm.

Unfortunately due to a high tide , the slippery path and the darkness I took a fall and had to be helped into our luxury shed by Tremers.

It was at this point that my personal nightmare began as the bedbugs began their ferocious work.

The following morning feeling and looking like Ben-Hur's mother going to the Valley of the Lepers I went down to the communal shower at 6 am to find a couple indulging in what comes naturally in the centre shower. We never established the identities here, although the two Wills who were staying at the Sugar Shack strenuously denied any involvement. Tremers was simply insanely jealous.

The day was spent lying on the grass bank watching some fairly meaningless cricket although Paul Collingwood was free with his advice when passing us on the way to the nets. " Looks like you lads with your guts hanging out over your shorts need to join our fitness session".

I suppose to him we must have looked like a school of beached whales .

Our responses were more than adequate. " Weve spent a lot longer perfecting our physique than you". " Come back and talk to me when you are 51 mate" etc etc.

Mr Collingwood retired glumly to the nets to be attached to a rubber rope and spent the next hour playing tug of war with himself.

Tremers engaged Ashley Giles who was kind enough to come and talk to us so I showed him my bites. " Insects? Looks more like f***ing leprosy to me" said the sympathetic Gilo. He must have watched Ben-Hur too.

The first exhibition game ended in a tame draw although Swanny took six quick wickets in the afternoon which gave us a sniff for a while.

That evening at Buccaneers - which is indeed almost the only fit place in town to have a drink - I had an altercation with one of the local rednecks.

On leaning over the bar to talk to the barman and order drinks this lunatic came back from the toilets and verbally assaulted me thus:

" Go and speak your foreign language elsewhere. There is a pretty lady coming to sit where you are standing".

We exchanged words and I retired with the beers. When the pretty lady arrived she looked like Susan Boyle.

That night in our wendy house the bedbugs were very active again and I emerged from the shed in the morning looking like Peter Gabriel's Slipperman- go on I dare you to google it.

The second exhibition game started on time in brilliant sunshine and England batted first. All the top order made runs with Strauss making a century and Cook and Pietersen fifties and we posted 300+ which would surely be too many for the SA second string tomorrow.

In reality the SA Xi put up a very good fight and almost got to the target but were cleaned up just after tea on day two.

After an uneventful nights sleep apart from another 200 bites, I emerged from the shed this time looking like the leg of ham in Tom & Jerry cartoons with the big chunk bitten out - in my case my elbows - and I resolved that I had taken enough punishment and would broach the subject of checking out a day early and move to a clean hotel. This we did and found that we were sharing our new one night venue with the England players and backroom staff plus a few of the SA XI players who had participated earlier that day. One of the latter rather worse for wear came up to me during the Manchester United v Aston Villa game to check my football knowledge as he was also a fan of United.

" What was the name of that good Irish player who wore number nine for United before Cantona" he pressed and unable to think of the answer I gave up. " Ian Rush".

That famous Irish United forward. God only hopes they manage to bring some sense to bear here before the World Cup.

On checking out this morning for our 500 km drive to Bloemfontein we encountered the England boys at breakfast having problems with the toast machine - clearly a bowling machine is much easier to get the hang of - and fairly glumly boarding the coach to East London Airport. " Fancy a lift ?" said Tremers to Ashley Giles and Andy Flower. " We can get you there in three days and much cheaper". They declined our offer.

The drive to Bloem was long and hot, it was 19% when we left EL and 36% when we arrived at Bloem. The music station on the radio started off with soft toned English sounding presenters playing classic FM but the further North we got the harder the tones and mix of Afrikaans / English until the last presenter we heard sounded like a passable imitation of Herbie and his " this is an illegal game of cricket" speech.

We both shouted " speak English you Dutch ****" to the radio at regular intervals.

On the journey we have learned how to differentiate a village, town or city in SA.

A village has one KFC outlet.

A town has two KFC outlets.

A city has three or more KFC outlets.

Beats worrying about building cathedrals.

We passed a village called Jamestown which was in the middle of a desert and bore more than a passing resemblance to Slough.

Now arrived safely in Bloem although on the way we visited the Anglo-Boer war museum.

I wouldnt say the commentary there was biased, but it seems the Brits lost 1.4 million men in this armed struggle compared with the Boer losses of 37 killed and two wounded.

It also seems that despite losing nearly every battle, the Brits actually reluctantly won in the end.

I simply wrote in the visitors book:

" We will beat you at cricket as well!".

Love as always
Midnight