I was born near Washington in the north east UK, the original Washington of US president fame, not one of those cheap ‘knock offs’ that followed. As a teenager I roamed the area, part of it now a wildlife reserve, but then a source of targets for my air rifle, picking up bushcraft skills to avoid capture by the local lords gamekeepers, told my mother the pheasants came from a friend.
Little did I think that my involvement with Washington would not end there, but it would flourish into my passion for anthropology with primitive beings, great times lay ahead, and those bushcraft skills would come in handy.
Years later I found myself in one of the ‘knock offs’ and this is where the story begins.
Thickiam was having a bad day, the cold wet rain trickled into his eyes, running straight off his bald scalp, the hairs on his back were sodden and matted and the hairs on his palms itched. As he squatted behind the bush that served as a toilet for him and his 36 brethren he regretted having that extra hot chile sauce on the delicious Skunk roast his wife/sister/mother had cooked for him. ‘That skunk sure smells sweeter than you honey’ said his wife/sister/mother when she served it in the hollowed out skull the family treasured as kitchenware. ‘It’s only two months until your annual bathe in the Potomac, you must be excited ?’. Thickiam grunted, ‘ You think I have money to burn on toiletries? I need that money for server donations, you know how important I am to that clan?’. His wife/sister/mother shook her head, as far as she knew the only friend he had was his pet rat that shared his bed, the only thing that would put up with the smell.
His once faithful hound was ignoring him too, after being excluded from the ‘pick up’ truck his brother/cousin/father had ‘found’ by the side of the road. Thickiam thought the term pick up was for courting and used the truck on visits to woo his auntie bucktooth who he’d long fancied, word is a little thicko is due soon?
As I discovered during my subsequent studies delusions ran rampant in his brain, there was plenty of space after all, what was real and imagined were to him the same. But I digress, I had been sent by my mentors in the UK [ Duc, Duck and Duckies] to visit this primitive tribe in ‘knock off Washington’ and see what stage of civilisation they had reached. This was to prove a challenge, never before had I encountered such savagery and debauchery, I needed all my wits and experience for this one.
My sponsors said I was to be ‘inserted’ into the tribe, let me tell you I did not like the sound of this at all ? Remember at the time it was thought I was dealing with a Rambo, only later did it transpire that Rambo was a Mary Poppins. As the tribe were quite literally, how do I put this nicely, intermingling, insertion needed defining. Once the terms of my placement were cleared up, my adventures began, my instructions were to monitor behaviour patterns and see how far up the evolutionary scale they had clawed, unfortunately as I found out, the nails were clipped.
So on that fateful stormy day I strode onto the property to introduce myself, a pack of dog treats in my pocket (neighbours said they were partial to chicken flavour). My first sight was Thickiam squatting behind the bush with the family gathered around awarding scores on what he produced. Suddenly a huge bolt of lightening lit the sky up, the family went rigid with stupid grins on their faces, then it slowly dawned on me, the fckrs thought they were being photographed, this was going to be challenging.
To be continued