Zambia World Wide

Life in the postal depths wasn�t as remote and disconnected as previously either. I could nip upstairs at will and have a chat with someone of like disposition, which wasn�t everybody, for sure. Within us expats, there existed a coterie of unlikeable weirdoes: one a bearded hippy-type with a really serious disposition, who considered the latest intake of UK secondees as unspeakably racist and imperialist. He was determined to take on the burden of responsibility for all the alleged misdeeds of the British Empire, in a fashion which the rest of us pronounced to be sucking up of the most heinous description, as, indeed, it was. Since one of his amigos was an over-promoted UNIP activist called Nkunika, one of those hard-done-by, smouldering-eyed, non-combatant �freedom fighters� with a hatred for Brits built-in to his DNA, the ultra-liberal Tony Jones was easy to dislike.

It was speedier to develop an animus for�his type in a group, so we did, especially in the case of a tall,�suspiciously tanned, exuberantly coiffed, effete creature, whose shorts were just a�little too�skimpy and a touch too clingy for our chromosomic comfort. Irvin clearly was horrified by anything approaching knockabout working class behaviour. Luckily he left the service soon after, no doubt disgusted by our impure male existence, highly intemperate language and low-life habits. Can't say that I blame him.

And so we settled down to a fun-packed existence at work, in Number 19 and throughout Lusaka. There was plenty of female companionship, but it mostly strayed no further than that, for most of us practicing virgins. The exception, of course, was the Blessed Browning, who only had to stroll through the shopping district, to end up with a notebook full of telephone numbers and immediate dates. On one occasion, he met a firmly engaged girl, who fell so heavily for his piercing blue eyes and BS chatup lines that she consummated the�contact immediately in the�back seat�of�his Vauxhall VX 4/90, then returned to work, as did he.

Nine months later, we saw her pushing a pram in the company of a distinctly glum spouse, previously a fianc�, who had never calculated an extra-curricular,�vehicular liaison into his family planning and was evidently suspicious about his new parental responsibilities.�The Libertine of Lusaka�had no conscience about this,�and, when all�s said and done, he barely remembered the seed-spreading moment, so why should he have? Plus, the infant was plug ugly. Apart from in my existence at the time, sex is a two person tango and, luckily for both parties,�this incident took place�at a point�well�before DNA tests were discovered.

And that wasn�t even a hundredth of the Browning effect. It was fortunate that we had parquet flooring throughout the mess, as any carpet on the route to his bedroom would have disintegrated from the sheer volume of incoming girlie�heels and the subsequent�drenching effect of bitter tears, shed�during the outgoing�trudge of the�ravished and summarily�ejected from�that particular altar of broken dreams. On several occasions I was roused from deep sleep, to find a barely clothed female begging me to escort her back to her husband/fianc�/family/residence because Browning, passion spent, had turned over and gone to bye-byes, callously abandoning his recent paramour to her own devices, half naked and thoroughly used.

To my own disappointment, I�usually acceded to such requests without the moxie to demand a sexual reward. Who'd have believed that a Glaswegian would have a�more�developed moral compass than a�Lothario from Lancing? Especially�when, oftentimes,�I was�subsequently accused of tom-catting, when�observed dropping a tearful wife/woman/daughter home in the middle of the night. I didn�t blame outraged paters or cuckolded consorts for leaping to the wrong conclusion, but, to say the least, it was a mixed blessing to be charged with the offence, without ever benefiting from the alleged crime. On the other hand, I couldn�t object to the unearned�gain of a reputation as a squat Priapicist, since no victim ever wanted to reveal the real truth and that did plenty to build my confidence with the opposite sex. Well, it was a start, at least.