15A Moroccan a donkey and a whole lot of trouble

15

A Moroccan, a donkey and a whole lot of trouble

1986

Band:- Simon and Garfunkel:- song:- homeward bound.

Band :- pet shop boys

Song :- west end girl

Band :- big audio Dynamite

Song :/ E=MC2

I’m sitting in the railway station got a ticket for my destination,

These words were on a loop navigating their way around my head as the day began,

and with the early morning frost melting away, the sun rises to light up a brand new day,

I’m sat on platform 1 minding my own business, just patiently waiting for that precious train that would finally take me to the edge of my destination, yes a place called home.

with last night now a distant memory, my thoughts were only focused on the day ahead, and with my emotions now in check I was ready to start the final leg of my journey,

it was precisely then when I once again let my barriers down as I believed I would be on home soil this very day.

When out of the blue this young guy, who I’d peg at around twenty years of age approaches me,

oh for fuck sake! I thought,

have I got fuck buddies tattooed on my forehead? because this lad introduces himself as Azzam, and seemed eager to start up a conversation, he told me he was from Morocco,

his back story was that he was selling his camera equipment for cash so he could get back home to Morocco,

now you can call me a knob, but this lad was a cheerful chappy, he had the gift of the gab and was a very likeable lad, he would stand a couple of inches taller than me in height,

but he did have a big fuck off Affro,

he went onto say he was at university at Amiens ( a small university town some forty minutes or so from Paris,)

and after a twenty minutes conversation over coffee,

(paid for by me by the way,)

I end up coughing up a few francs, (French money back in the day) for the said camera and equipment,

And do you know, it only turns out that I’d be passing by that very town on my way back home,

so Azzam suggested I accompany him for the day, and he would show me some of the sights of Amiens , you see he also was going down to Amiens to pick up some of his belongings before heading home to Morocco,

Now did I question any of this,

did I fuck,

did I want another adventure,

Maybe

is this gonna be a straight forward journey,

I do not believe so,

So I really should stay on the train straight through to Calais,

We caught the first train of the morning straight to Amiens,

now as a young man of the world, I was under no such elusions as to what may happen, so the first thing I do as soon as we depart the train,

I go looking for the first available hotel,

which luck would have it stood right across the road from the station,

perfect for an easy getaway, if one was needed one would think,

but already like my fucking shadow Azzam decides to follows me to the hotel and into the reception area,

Which of course I was not expecting, I presumed wrongly he would wait for me where we

originally arranged to meet, at a coffee shop just down the road,

but now he thought it would be a great idea to stay in my room tonight , and when I inquired why

He twisted my mind with what he had to say next, “Well Johnny I know a couple of young ladies that would be up for a romantic assignation followed by rampant sex, and your nice clean hotel room would be the ideal place to round off the night, and it certainly beats a shitty uncleansed university dorm that I have at my disposal”

So with that thought I rang the bell at the reception,

well I say reception it resembled nothing short of a horror movie set,

there was this big fuck off mahogany front desk, with what can only be described as 2 statues of gargoyles

standing to attention on either side of it,

and when I rang the bell, well what I should say is I pulled the chain hanging there and the chime of hell rang out, and with that a ten foot man /monster appeared before us,

He had the look of lurch,

he wore a scraggly black pinstripe suit full of bird shit and stains, white as snow straw like hair with birds nesting in it,

fingers so long he could stand in for Freddy Krueger,

(God I’m looking forward to staying here tonight) we were given a key to room 69, (well I never, that’s a bit of a nod for tonight’s shenanigans )

“Follow the staircase around and around till you get to your room” lurch mumbled, in his pigeon English, ( no lifts in this dump then!)

do we really want to be go up there, I was thinking as each and every step took the two of us closer to the top and to our fate,

what the fuck is behind the door of room 69 anyway,

And I reiterated this to Azzam ( as the sound of what can only be described as wolf hounds echoed the halls of this fucking scary beast of a hotel)

Azzam at this point was so close to me he could have hopped on for a piggy back,

We’re now stood silently, outside the door with the number 69 painted onto it in blood red,

I have my hand on the key in the lock,and was about to open up, and enter into a new world that this room has to offer,

when a hand comes down hard on my shoulder, “Jesus Christ all fuckin mighty” I screamed,

I turn and Azzan who is in fits of laughter, says to me, “I’m not sure we’ll get the girls to come to this shit hole my friend,” no shit Sherlock,

I throw the door open and the two of us are standing there aghast, our jaws dropped to the floor, eyes wide open, just staring for a second or two

Because what we see before us you are never gonna believe!

It’s only your fucking average clean hotel room, with tea and coffee facilities, short bread , and what looks like a very comfortable double bed,

sorry, but lurch also turned out to be a very nice eccentric loon pot,

and there were no monsters or Ghouls to be heard of I’m afraid,

but what it did have later on that evening, was two very sexy French girls with a very big appetite for the art of love making,

except we never really had the time to get to know them quite as well as we’d have liked that evening,

as we had to flee the hotel before the room could steam up with the hot and passionate shenanigans,

and I am about to tell you why.

First we left are bags in the room and shuffled off towards the university quarter of the town, where Azzam was as good as his word ,

there were indeed two friends of his waiting, well I say waiting they were just there, as it’s a big student hang out, and Azzam just got lucky,

Elise and Gabriella, and if memory serves, two bright young starlets, both girls were brunette, very intelligent and very very horny,

now believe it or not, I was not a bad looking young chap back in the day,

but even I was astonished to how brazen these two young beauties were,

Azzam on the other hand was not, it seems he knew them well, very well indeed,

Unfortunately I would not get the chance to be that lucky,

The evening started swimmingly, the four of us flirted over cocktails,

there was laughter and singing, and as the night wore on it was down to me to see if we all wanted to move onto somewhere else,

and I’m sorry to say,

I did used the line do you fancy a night cap at mine on the girls,

which actually caused some confusion as the girls replied we’d prefer a shag! (In French of course which sounded so much more civilised)

Jesus you Frenchies are so blunt,

Azzam by then had them on their feet, and was pushing them up the road into the direction of the hotel before the bar tab was paid, which of course was left to me, again, ( fucking hope this is worth it)

We are climbing the stairs, and the girls seem to be oblivious to their surroundings, they just kept going up and up giggling, and taking off a piece of clothing with every step,

and just behind them Azzam and me were also giggling with every step,

but for very different reasons, I suspect our giggles were just masking the anticipation of what was about to come,

we were also aware though of the spooky side to this creaky hotel,

so we’re at the door, four together huddling, us boys still mostly clothed,

but the girls total naked,

I turn the key and we all fall through the door and land in a tangled mess, arms and legs everywhere, like some weird psychotic game of twister, I raise my head laughing,

but I sense something is wrong, something is not quite right,

I try to dismantle myself from the limbs that were on offer that night,

and I stood to assess the situations,

on the one hand, I could not keep my eyes off two beautiful naked young ladies fondling each other right in front of me, but on the other hand, I could not shake the sense of urgency that crept up slowly all over my body,

Azzam felt the same, because when we made eye contact he was already hurriedly getting to his feet,

“what’s happened to the room” Azzam says, now there was not much wrong with the room, only that we knew the bags were in the wardrobe and not on the bed, as they were now,

the sideboard draws were open, but we went straight out without touching them,

and the camera equipment was gone,

and since I had just purchased them from Azzam, I knew where I had put them,

this was all assessed in seconds, and as we looked at each other and then the girls, my feeling was as only the camera equipment was gone, (I had the camera with me for photo evidence of this night,)

And before you think why carry a camera with you on a date

well we did not have mobile phones back in the good old days, so there was no portable life in your fucking pocket,

so as I say, as it was only the equipment that had gone, I thought it was maybe a good idea we let it go, and carry on with what could turn out to be a very fruitful night,

well Azzam was having none of it, he looked physically sick, he started to sweat, although it was a cold night, and there were two hotties right next to him, “their looking for me” he screamed, “we have to get out of here right now”, I say “hold up mister, what the fuck you ranting on about”

well his story goes, that he had borrowed the camera and equipment from a photographer, who was working at a wedding he was at in Paris, and he is guessing that the injured party may want his shit back,

now as I have the camera around my neck I’m thinking yep I think you might be right, let’s scarper and reassess,

so we calmly check are bags and then checked the girls, we cry a little and we say our goodbyes,

but we are totally ignored as the two frenchies have progressed to the bed,

and are completely engrossed in each other, “dam you Azzam” I whispered as we look at each other and leg it, we are on are toes down three flights of stairs before we come to a sudden stop at the bottom, where we find lurch is waiting, his right hand holding a chain which is connected to what I can only describe as a big fucking monster of a wolf,

but in hindsight it was probably, a lovely family doggy,

“so my friends you’ve had visitors, they gave me money i show them room, they say meet at station across the road, and all will be fine with the world,

so I think you should leave and no police will be informed,”

and on that note we fucked off via the kitchen and out the back door,

now being in a rural place there were some obstacles to be addressed,

and we did this by running like mad men jumping garden fences crossing dirt roads,

fields full of shit from whatever animals had been roaming there earlier, water filled ditches from the rain that has steadily fallen since are unexpected exit,

and fences that were unnaturally high,

Pretty soon we had decided we were far far away,

and believed it would be safe to stop for a breather, but

It was only then we realised that we were only maybe a mile from where we started, we had been going around in fucking circles in the fucking dark, it was at that point I came to the conclusion Azzam was either shit at direction or maybe he does not know this place as well as I thought? (He did know those girls though)

the sign post which we were resting only confirmed this,

we we’re now standing on a narrow dirt road wet and heavy, with are clothes weighing us down with all that rain water and cow shit,

now this is where it gets heavy and scary!

Headlight beams from what was a far away car hit the hedges just a short distance from the two of us,

and at that moment we both had the same idea, in unison we both dived at speed over the hedge we were standing near,

and again in unison both landed face first in the cow pat, horse shit, and rabbit droppings that must have gathered over the past few months, waiting for two silly twats to go swimming in the mire!

Eeyore, Eeyore, was the sound that greeted us as we both shook the shit out of our ears and managed a glance upwards, only to be faced with the long nose and big teeth of the solitary donkey watching over the two of us,

we turned to each other then back, and as I looked back at Azzam, I could literally see the light bulb over his head as he spoke these words, “this is our salvation, our way out “ I replied simply “fuck off” “no no I have a donkey back home and there very fast” I replied “fuck off” “no listen let’s mount him now and we can head for that gate, and he pointed to the distance, as if I could give a shit, there that’s our escape route” I replied “fuck off” and with that we both mounted the donkey,

Azzam at the front and me at the back and started our trott to freedom,

to be fair the donkey could shift even with the weight of two shited up refugees sat upon his back,

but alas not fast enough for my liking, you see as we past through the gate and headed up the narrow lane I could still see the headlights, albeit some way off, but defo gaining quickly,

clippety clop clippety clop, away we go! Oh Jesus Christ I screamed, their gaining fast,

that was my last look before I decided to dive off the speedy beast and leg it cross country, it was then I spotted in the distance a barn and I thought this would be a great place for a hiding place, I’m maybe a hundred yards away from it when I chance myself a glance over my shoulder, poor Azzam, the Range Rover I could see clearly now, had caught up with him, as the poor old donkey had given up the ghost, it had stopped dead in its tracks panting only like a donkey could pant,

and Azzam was being pulled from its back, by the scruff of his neck,

I dived shoulder first in sheer panic at the barn doors only to bounce ten ft into the air backwards into more fucking shit, my thoughts at this time we’re, what would be my chances with those two lovelies I left back at the hotel in my present state.

and my conclusion was that any vagrant on this planet would turn me down, but you have got to laugh don’t ya,

So here I am sat in shite looking like shite and feeling pretty shite , completely exhausted, jut leaning back on the barn doors my legs crossed my arms down by my sides just watching the two thugs semi drag Azzam closer to me, Azzam feet are goin ten to the dozen trying to keep upright,

as the three of them approach me , coming to a stand still some ten feet away from were I was sitting, the two thugs let go of Azzam collar, and he crumbles to his hands and knees, head drooped,

slowly he lifts his head to look into my eyes as I am circled by the two big blokes now known as thugs,

Azzam then took me completely by surprise, by askin me if I could give back the camera to his father and uncle, as his sister who was just married is completely devastated that he Azzam had took the camera with wedding photos on the film, all because she had upset him with a remark about his wedding attire!

“Really!! Fuckin Really!! “ I look down to meet Azzam eyes “Are you kidding me ,

I have just rolled around in so much shit for the past few hours, pissed myself, not to mention mounting a donkey! Oh and let’s not forget I said, there was no getting laid by to hot frenchies, which by the way you promised all because you got pissed off with your sister”

he gets to his feet gingerly, and turns his palms upwards and shakes his head slowly before saying “sorry Johnny, I thought it would be a laugh trying to get away from these goons”

which got him a slap across the head, by the thug i presumed was his father,

so what happens next is simple, I retrieve the camera from my back pack, (luckily the film was still intact, and hopefully so was my dignity,) and it was back with its rightful owners and on its way to Paris the very same night,

Azzam and myself, well as soon as we’re presentable We’re gonna find the girls and see if we can smooth over the unfortunate misunderstanding and carry on where we left off, well of course Azzam was positive they would be up for anything,

and I thought what possibly could go wrong,

but first we had to convince lurch if we could get cleaned up and get our heads down for a few hours,

because you may be aware that we stunk to high heaven and were some what fatigued after galavanting around the countryside in the pissing rain,

and since we had paid in advance, or should I say I paid in advance,

and with a little extra palm greasing, at lurch’s insistence, of course, we got the key for room 69 again,

so up we trotted three flights of stairs

The key is in the lock, and we look at each other smile, I say are you ready Azzam, and he nods,

I throw open the door, and what we find inside will live with us forever.