Joys of the unexpected

From a dramatic and newsworthy point of view it is the unexpected that’s the thing. Your normal, plodding routine is of no interest to anyone.

Still – sudden surprises can be of the most trivial nature and yet serve to either entertain or demolish one. The most recent personal example of this involves a frog. While engaged in the tedious task of laying a table for a forthcoming dinner party – trying to muster enough soup spoons, sort out bowls and glasses without chips, etc – a friend dropped by. “Look”! she suddenly exclaimed, backing away and pointing under a chair. I bent down. Something leapt past my face. Help! Guess what it was – a frog! All thought of cutlery abandoned, the next 15 hysterical minutes were spent on all fours trying to steer the leaps out of the French window. Was that a stimulating bit of nonsense, or what?

Another equally trivial, but quite distressing incident took place on a ferry en route to Sweden. After being smitten with pangs of hunger, I enjoyed a delicious sandwich. “What was in it”? I enquired subsequently. “Horsemeat,” came the answer. Now, why would that information turn something delicious into something quite revolting? But it somehow seemed akin to eating cats and dogs and made me extremely suspicious of Swedish food thereafter.

“Well, better not go to China,” I can hear you say. “Unless you want to be regaled with puppy-dog steaks and pussy-cat stew.”

And, talking of China, it’s certainly unexpected to learn that the Chinese are heading for annihilation at the rate of 3,000 a day due to their addiction to tobacco. And who is promoting this? Not the profit-hungry western tobacco giants, but their own state-owned corporation, which oversees with apparent pleasure the use of their products by customers such as children and doctors. No, I have no desire to become one of the 3,000 daily casualties. Or dine off dogs.

Surely, though, one of the most unexpected events to befall a peaceful community was that experienced by the inhabitants of Baltimore in 1631. Then, in the middle of a June night, a contingent of Barbary pirates from Algiers stormed ashore and rounded up the population, taking them off to the slave markets of North Africa. The captives consisted of 34 women, 50 children and 24 men, who ended up in harems, or as galley slaves. This curious episode seems to have been airbrushed out of history, but has been revealed by Des Ekin in his book, ‘The Stolen Village’.

As unexpected occurrences go, this shows the potential narrative qualities that they have and it is such events that I have celebrated in my own book, ‘The Hungry Walk’, recently published. The difference is, though, that the stories in my book do not have catastrophic endings, although the life-style of most of those depicted is similar. Some are based on the harsh reality of threatened eviction, or forced emigration, of isolation and penury. Albeit, by happy chance, or by sheer guile, the protagonists manage to exploit the unexpected occurrences to their advantage.

Another unexpected aspect of the book is the number of copies that have sold, to which no small part of the credit is due to Michelle Gannon, who designed the eye-catching cover. I am thus extremely thankful to her, as I am to all the people who have been sufficiently interested to buy the book.

Now I am planning on launching another one. Remember Doris, the OAP who encountered a criminal en route to a Bingo game and who got away with some of his loot? Her exploits were published in this newspaper and hopefully gave ideas to other OAPs as to how they might get up and go.