TOM JACKSONMy daughter has just come back from two
weeks in Mexico and has been laid up with
a nasty stomach bug – what I believe is known
as Montezuma’s Revenge, from the same
micro-organisms that brought you Delhi Belly
and the Kathmandu Quickstep. She got it
a few days before flying home – some tepid
chicken broth in Tulum the most likely culprit- and it’s taken her a good few days to shake
it off. Rachel’s bad luck reminded me that I’ve
come back ill from quite a few foreign trips
over the years, most notably with a bout of
dengue fever contracted in Malawi.
Plus mild frostbite in Moscow, but that
was my fault. Go out without hat, boots
and gloves in Red Square in December and
you’re asking to end up with extremities
like Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
Those lost, bedridden days post-Jamaica,
Cuba, Belize and Hong Kong were down to
my own stupidity too, to be fair, the result of
consistent, committed, continuous long-haul
heavy drinking.
Soiling the bed in Turkey was my bad
as well: sunstroke had got the better of me
after eight straight hours pegged out in the
Anatolian heat. Symptoms included a fever,
shivering and, yes, a minor loss of bowel
control in the wee hours. Poor form. It was
1990, the first foreign holiday Nicola and
I took together. Many women would regard
the surprising lack of potty training in a
26-year-old as a dealbreaker in the early
stages of a relationship. Nicola, bless her,
saw fit to overlook the incident.
While also telling anyone who would listen
all about it in the subsequent 32 years.
If that episode involved serious
embarrassment, other foreign excesses have
resulted in shame pure and simple. Like when
I was caught smoking on Kenya Airways. I’d
like to report that was several decades ago. But
no, this was 2013, long after the ban came in.
I knew exactly what I was doing, which
was smoking clandestinely in the lavatory. I
thought I’d perfected the “three quick puffs
down the bowl and it doesn’t set off the
detector” method. But I hadn’t reckoned
with a fellow passenger with a nose like a
truffle hound coming in straight afterwards
and dobbing me to the purser.
“I know you did it, sir,” a very polite Kenyan
insisted in a whispered exchange next to
the rear exit. “No, I didn’t,” I replied, equally
politely, even while exhaling cigarette smoke
in his face, sticking to “never apologise, never
explain”, a dictum variously attributed to the
Duke of Wellington, Benjamin Disraeli and
Admiral John Fisher, to the letter. To my
shame, it worked. Not that the chap believed
me for a moment, but neither was I led down
the aisle in manacles at Heathrow.
I’m not proud of smoking in the loo on an
aeroplane and I haven’t done it since, not even
as revenge on Ryanair. The affair was in a way
the culmination of many years in which I often
behaved overseas (or at altitude) in the worst
kind of arrogant Englishman abroad fashion,
as if not only the law but also the rules of
social etiquette did not apply to HM’s subjects
when away from home shores.
On my German exchange as a 15-year-
old, my friends and I thought it amusing to
goose-step off the high board at the local baths
in Remscheid, Westphalia, left index finger
placed horizontally under the nose to signify a
moustache, right arm rigid at 120 degrees. Very
poor form. Especially when you consider that
on July 31, 1943, the city was almost completely
destroyed in a mass RAF bombing raid.
On the journey over on North Sea Ferries,
our same band of miscreants marauded
around the ship, bursting into cabins and
water-pistoling the sleeping occupants in their
bunks. At some level, we thought it was OK
because we were British.
While I’m in a confessional mood,
I should probably ask for 114 other offences- shoplifting, fare-dodging, drink-driving,
absconding from restaurants without paying - to be taken into consideration. I’ve never felt
comfortable condemning the hooligans who
periodically smash up European cities when
following the England football team. Because,
while I’ve not done anything remotely as
heinous, I have committed numerous crimes
and misdemeanours that belong on the
same spectrum and spring from the same
quasi-imperialist mindset.
Even as a supposedly fully grown adult
I’ve behaved disgracefully abroad. In a hotel
in Paris, I lost my temper with the TV remote
control and methodically stamped it into
pieces. Housekeeping accepted my explanation
of stepping on the device by accident and
sent up a complimentary bottle of champagne
as an apology for the inconvenience caused.
I don’t go in for guilt overmuch, as a rule, but
that one has been on my conscience. It helps
to put it out there. n
[email protected]‘I’m not proud of
smoking in the loo
on the plane – and
I haven’t done it since,
not even on Ryanair’
Beta male
Robert Crampton
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