... as No Good Boyo was in his response to my last post - the funniest thing I ever saw in real life was in Uzbekistan. I was sent there some months ago by my employer. (Nonetheless, their plan backfired when they mistakenly gave me a return ticket).
Anyway, Tashkent is a city woefully short on diversion for the sober, morally upright gentleman; and so it was that I found myself trudging the shabby streets one evening in company with a work colleague. Tashkent was apparently a beautiful city once, before an earthquake damaged it and commie builders finished it off. The concrete that may have looked modern and impressive 40 years ago is now crumbling to dust as you walk on it. This probably explains the event we witnessed - a small shabby looking gent in a fur hat leaned on a lamppost which then - its concrete footing having crumbled into critical weakness - fell over into the street, just as we walked past.
The lamppost - motivated by the malevolence all non-sentient objects harbour for the sentient - was prevented from hitting the ground by a parked Mercedes, through the windscreen of which it plunged with a glorious noise of shattering glass and crumpling metal. As the shabby gent looked around in horror, a large nouveau-riche looking party emerged from nearby with body language which unquestionably identified him as the owner of the Mercedes in question.
Though I speak next to no Russian, I nonetheless found myself able to follow the ensuing conversation perfectly:
Merc owner: YOU ****ING MUPPET! WHAT THE **** HAVE YOU DONE TO MY ****ING MOTOR?
Shabby gent: Not my fault gov, it just fell over like.
Merc owner: JUST FELL OVER? WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR MY ****ING WINDSCREEN?
I mentioned this to my (Russian-speaking) companion, who responded that that was indeed uncannily accurate as an executive summary of the language which rose upon the Transoxanian evening air....
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4 comments:
Tashkent is still fragile, it's true. I once hopped over what had been a low wall the previous week only to vanish into a 10-foot chasm. The heavy load of vodka I'd just taken on was all that saved me from injury. The wife of a friend was chatting pleasantly to us one day when she disappeared from site down an open manhole. Full of surprises, the Orient.
Alcohol is a great preservative against falls. I fell off the Sacher Gate of New College Oxford many years ago climbing out at 1 in the morning after a particularly fine party, and plummeted 8ft flat onto my back on tarmac. I was winded but otherwise unharmed, partly because duffel coats provide a surprising amount of padding. I put it down to drunkenness making you floppy.
Plus they Stevenses had just tarred the drive so she was still all sogg.
One balmy summer night I performed a drunken forward roll over the handlebars of my bicycle into a ditch near Poole, in Dorset. My biggest fear was being rescued by locals fresh from a cocaine- and cider-fuelled showing of Deliverance.
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