It Is… Pt55 into… Tales from the Hip pt/pg8

‘It Is… Pt.54
‘cf’

… Ad lib – that’s right, I listened back for the first time to last weeks rant and was unhinged enough by the preamble twaddle to want to just get straight to the amble twaddle, which by the way folks may soon be condensed into a chapter and sought thereafter only of pay per view channel, or maybe YouTube or dry roasted peanuts, mmm, they’re nice, it’s new, media on a peanut…

Tales from the Hip

pg./pt 8

… ‘Busy this morning’ Jax surmises to the second Hola of the day. Still not finished his breakfast banana and the place was awash with excitement. ‘I thought I booked the quiet wing of the beach here’, he hollers amidst the tents rising heat, and pulls back the flap for air. There, squat once more on their haunches were Dan and Megan grinning like a couple of mud larks seeing if their friend wants to come out and play. Megan holds out her hand, ‘here you go’, a slender freckled arm extends a sugar-coated treat. Jax pegs her for Dan’s wannabe, but already senses her mind. There’s a pixie waft of ‘just friends’ vibe and a, perpetual optimistic ‘you never know’ sweat from his loins.

‘Pastry’, she purrs, ‘Mexico’s staple breakfast for everyday on the go’ – ‘l’d give you a go’ Jax thinks, struggling to conform to etiquette and accepts the gift with an exaggerated, ‘gracias. Distant rippling waves breaks the silence when Dan quickly perks up, ‘pastry for breakfast, made for champions. All the go here, and with a café con leche on the side too, or it would be if El Pedro let us take the glass away. El Bastardo. Yeah, in a glass, I tell you Jax, these Mexicans are crazy.’ He mock twitches.

‘Come on, get you shit together, we’re going to the Night of the Iguana’, Jax hangs a slight puzzlement in the ether tearing into the sweet roll coated in icing sugar, ‘Shame on you Londonite, the Night of the Iguana we told you yesterday numb nuts; Richard Burton and Ava Gardener’s pad. Huge film Jax… huge’.

‘Come on it’ll be fun’, prompts Megan, ‘We’ve got some pot too.’

Within a couple hours they were passing a slow armadillo on a lone road up country. Dan acquired himself a rental jeep. The out-of-town Alaskan was a born loco local now, dressed for the part too in flip flops, grubby shorts, flowered up shirt and bent straw hat, he was wasted wearing moose 9 months of the year.

‘I aint doing none of that tourist shit Jax’

‘Does that mean we have to eat armadillo’

‘Ha, shit yeah brother.’

The high road’s tarmac cut through jungle patches and low bush. Adjacent each side of the road dust gravelled verges disappeared with no hurry into the vegetation. There was something vast and volcanic it about it, Hawaiian almost. The road felt real high but reality only hugged the shoreline a thousand or so feet below. They found the small track Dan was told about, it wound down to a small hidden grove where they parked, and got out to explore. Lush evergreen trees stood fast, guarding the jungle heat. The nearby sea’s aroma hung in the wind like crystal fairies. Wild orange blossomed petals popped where they fancied, offbeat and free. They walked a path ghosted by nights of passion, giggling love drunk movie stars in linked arms through paradise. Carelessly they tumbled to a building’s wall in a clearing. Thin red bricks spanned several arches. Odd looking. Grandiose one day perhaps. Jax thought it looked like several giant pizza ovens. Megan laughed, ‘double armadillo on thin crust please, and don’t spare the tabasco.’ These oldies were cool, Jax reminds himself. She was hot. They stop and drink from their water bottles, walk on, and loose themselves in the jungle’s wallpaper, alive and dormant in the same breath of forgotten time. Dan’s excited, Jax is intrigued. All this talk about how this resort where Ava Gardner stayed was so special, but the end of the day is just an abandoned ruin. No one else is there. Anyone can come and go. No security, no signs, no side hustles selling cans of pop and armadillos on a stick. It’s just an old building. Easy to configure the beauty it once held, but now it’s eroded brick and stone is slowly being reclaimed by roots and salt. Jax loves this kind of stuff, but is lost why it hasn’t been Disney-fied, and for that reason likes it more. It’s Ava Gardner and Richard Burton’s pad for fucks sake. They move round, talking shit, fooling, searching for new more interesting avenues, ‘This way looks neat’, Dan settles in a pile of rubble once was a room. Grey stone rock walls, crumble away leaving them half erect. Jaz thinks it’s like an old strongpoint building he had for his toy soldiers. But this room is vast and pans out like a Roman emporium jutting out to the gaping sea. They sat on those crumbling walls of the decaying outpost and smoked a joint.

Where you from, what you doing here, the idle chit-chat of folk getting to know each other ran void in the un-wanting trade of the ocean’s breeze. Obvious small talk irrelevant, just like the time they first met on the beach. There was no interest in anything but what is happening now, in that surrounding abandoned beauty, deep there within that barren stoned ruin, the idyllic moment enough for their simple stoned minds. But chatter they did, in those ruins, about Richard Burton’s love of rugby, about whether he talked liked that at home, ‘abrupt and slow, abrupt and low,’ Dan suggests. ‘Do you play rugby in Alaska?’, ‘Sure, it’s called dog mushing.’ There in those ruins a skirting silence of reflection enclosed them into their own silent thoughts. The wheat was fine. The surf comforting.

Jax sat on the edge of the outpost and watched a column of ants run a gauntlet of an ever-subsiding hill. They’d formed a trench and traversed its edges with precision team work, carrying leaves, grains of sand and each other. One sat in that trench beckoning his mate. And it became instantly familiar. Jax zoned into the face. Jax was looking down from a distance, maybe 50feet away but could see like watching a film, was close enough to see its features. A soldier. Not a soldier ant but a human. He was frantically waving someone his way. He was sat in the trench close to a river as the figure ran his way through a barrage of explosions. The man running for cover trips head long into the trench and smashes face first next to his feet, Jax’ has closed in and he recognises the man calling, that pudgy nose. The fella diving into the trench bends his back in a way no contortionist would attempt, it sways like a pole vault only in the wrong direction, till his lower spine almost touches the back of his head then flips back into a slumped form. He yells in silence, the battle rages. He grabs for his lower back, legs twitching, a face full of pain and rolls over on his side. Pudgy nose grins… Waves crash against the rocks and seagull squall overhead and Jax looks up. Megan is smiling at him. He looks down and the ants are busy as they were…

till page/pt 9 folks…

He sat at the screen and pondered…

 … while he gets the bends, let’s go to the World News…

The Singapore airshow this week’s is the country’s 9^th, Asia’s biggest, has a thousand companies from 50 countries, but that’s not the big shabam. Yeah, some Boeing’s will be bought and yeah, some Airbus’ will roll down foreign parts, but the real who ha is China’s Ehang outfit, a company who make electric vertical take off and landing… things. Yep, these, things are hot and will be all the rage. So, look out at an airport near you.

UK is developing its biggest timber village. The Pheonix, located in Lewes just outside Brighton will house 650 homes powered by renewable energy, with gardens, community spaces and mobility hubs for e-bikes, cars and buses… and maybe vertical take-off and landing things.

India is prepping for next month’s Travel for Life Summit. Set to be the fastest growing in bound market for South East Asian nations. They plan to drop short term visas for Thailand and Malaysia and open up more flights in Bangalore and Mumbai. ‘Based on visas, frequency of flights and seamless connectivity, plus the choice of hotels and price point per night, India is a winner, so says Paul Childs CEO of a high-end travel agency, who it sounds like take people to places that could be downtown in the middle of every other place they’ve never been to before. Isn’t India all about getting about by yak, sleeping on telephone wires and immersing into the dabbawalla system. Plus, the likes of India and China and still buying oil from Russia but I promised I wouldn’t go here, there or do anything for love but that.

Aussie in the meantime is buying 15 new warships. That’ll up their spending by AU$11.1bn over next ten years, and takes their fleet to 26 which has never been so big since the second world war. It also ups their defence spending to 2.4% of their GDP compared to the recommended 2% for their NATO allies. It’s all a precaution for the geopolitical tensions between the US, Russia and China over Indo-pacific region. For someone who bangs on every week about, ‘doesn’t do politics’, seems heavy on the state of affairs this week.

Tha tha that’s all folks

Keep it turning keep it wheel, keep it radioPrimco.com

Till next weak folks – spelling correct.

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