Rubbish

Last Friday morning my female staff was sitting in the waiting room prior to her eighteenth of thirty radiotherapy treatments.  As usual I was with her in spirit, watching her invisibly from the top of the coffee machine.  I like to sit there on chilly mornings when I go to the clinic with my female staff because its nice and warm on the old testostricles.  In theory animals who have crossed the Rainbow Bridge have the choice of being visible or invisible when we visit our living staff.  Now that's all very well if you happen to be a cat or a dog.  Everyone is always happy to see a cat or a dog, especially the Chinese and Koreans, but most humans are not so pleased to see rodents, particularly in a medical establishment, food shop or a restaurant; not even rodents like me with a halo and tiny angel wings.

Anyway, my female staff was reading the latest Vague Magazine.  "The magazine for fashion conscious menopausal women."  Apparently there was a fascinating article on incontinence pants.  Various brands had been "road tested".  There was a photo of half a dozen glamourous middle-aged women with expensive hairdos and expertly applied makeup.  That is they would have been glamourous had they not been standing there wearing just their bra and various types of incontinence pants.  Anyway, glamourous or not, they all looked surprisingly happy considering that they had just had to stand in the road and wet themselves - which I suppose is how you road test incontinence pants.  Actually I'm rather surprised that the police allow this since I can't imagine anything more distracting to drivers than six scantily clad women standing in the road trying to pee in their knickers.  I guess they would have had to drink a lot of water prior to the test or half of them would have only been able to do a little dribble at best.  Anyway, it turns out that the best incontinence pants are made by the Aussie company Driza-Bone and are called Matildas. Look out for them, they're very good, at least according to Vague Magazine.  I must say though that I thought the article was very unfair as it featured a cartoon liable to make middle-aged women laugh suddenly, thus reminding them of their need to purchase a pack of the featured product.  I guess the magazine must have been a British edition because the cartoon showed an elderly lady looking at a British Ferries advertising poster.  Over a picture of a large drive on - drive off ferry were the words Dover for the Continent.  Then underneath the picture some young smart arse had scrawled Eastbourne for the Incontinent.  Now if you're not British this may not mean a lot to you, but by way of explanation I can tell you that Dover is a big terminal for trans English Channel ferries and Eastbourne is a town famed for its retirement homes and aging population.

Now then, what was I going to talk about this week?  It must have been important.  Ah yes, I remember.  Rubbish.  Now then, the first reader to say "But Billy, You're always talking rubbish" gets the inside of their thigh bitten for stating the bleeding obvious.  I'm going to talk about trash, garbage, rubbish or whatever else you like to call the stuff that you humans produce by the millions of tons every single day.  A fair percentage of that ends up in my staff's dustbin because every time my male staff goes for a run he picks up whatever litter he finds as he goes waddling past, his tummy wobbling, making observers feeling decidedly seasick.  Actually after a recent holiday he actually trod on his own belly while out running, tripped and sprained his ego.  He had to spend a week with his feet up on the couch eating doughnuts to recover.  Anyway during yesterday's four kilometre run  he collected two empty cigarette packets, a cigarette butt, a McDonald's french fries carton, a McDonald's Chicken McNuggets carton, complete with the empty sweet chilli sauce dip container, a Carlton Mid beer can, one of those ridiculous caffeine drink cans; you know, the stuff people drink when they want to stay up all night so that they can get pissed and toss rubbish from their car.  There was a little snap-lock plastic bag which may have once contained God knows what (My male staff decided sensibly for once, not to sniff it.), a plastic shopping bag (Which actually proved quite useful for putting the rest of the stuff in.) and one of those little single serve butter containers (without the butter).

The amount of stuff he comes back with is quite incredible and it seems to be getting worse every month.  He's even talking about taking the wheelbarrow with him to put it all in.  Wait, no, maybe that was to put his belly in so that he doesn't trip over it again.  Why are some of you humans so lazy?  What's wrong with leaving the stuff in your car until you get home?  Then you can just drop it into your own bin.  You'll find that it probably takes less effort than winding down the car window and lobbing it out, then winding the window back up again so that people like my male staff can't lob it back into your car.  Maybe you've sold your own dustbin to fund your crack habit.  Who knows? My staff's neighbourhood is a pleasant semi-rural/residential area with mostly neat, well maintained gardens.  The folk who live there don't appear to be the type to spread litter around so it it must be people from elsewhere.  maybe their own streets are already so full of garbage that they have to find fresh streets to dump it in.

Australia used to be virtually litter free, at least outside of the big cities.  That's not to say that litter bugs didn't exist, of course they did.  In remote areas where the horizons are as wide as my male staff's butt local councils would erect a sort of soccer goal beside the road every couple of hundred miles so that mindless drivers and their equally mindless passengers could through their trash out of the car while travelling at eighty miles an hour to see if they could score a goal.  This had the twin advantages of  entertaining morons and confining the rubbish to fairly small areas, which made clean-ups easier.  I don't think they have them any more.

In Britain they have Tidy Town competitions.  The winning town gets the honour of displaying their achievement on those little signs you see as you enter the town.

Little Dumping on the Wold

Tidy Town Winner 1991

Welcomes Careful Drivers 

I'd like to see similar signs awarded to the winner of the wooden spoon too in order to warn drivers of what they are about to drive through.

High Stench

Britain's Untidiest Town 2014

Twinned with Wye Pass, Nevada

and Seau de Merde, France.

Drive how you want. We don't give a shit.

 

BACI'S BALONEY

Plees peepul don't like just throe yor garbij owt of the car window.  Its very bad to do that cos snaykes can get there heds stuck in beer cans and that's reely not at all funny.

Also littul animals like me can like eet the garbij wot gets throne owt of the car and that can make us very pawly, in facked we can evun like dye witch is werse.  Poor Uncal Billy like dyed wunce and we haven't seen him since.

Me pretending I'm like ded.

Kalahari Ferrari

Allow me to introduce you to the humble solifuge.  Also known as the camel spider, the wind scorpion and the sun spider.  It grows up to six inches long and looks as though it could kill you with a single glance, though those lying bastards at Wikipedia say they are in fact harmless to humans.  Not that anyone with any sense would hang around long enough to find out.  They are a type of arachnid, but are neither spider nor scorpion.  They prefer to live in dry climates - like the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa where they are known as the Kalahari Ferrari.  They move liked greased lightening and are photophobic, which means of course that they hate people who take selfies.  Don't worry, I'm joking.  It means that they don't like light, especially bright light.  This causes much hilarity amongst humans because when a solifuge is caught out in the open during the day they will race at high speed towards the nearest shade - even if the nearest shade is the shadow of a human.  naturally, seeing this monstrous creature charging towards them the human squeals and runs in the opposite direction, waving their arms and screaming "aaiii-eeee!" as loudly as they possibly can.  Of course the solifuge follows the shadow, and the human, thinking that the beast has got it in for him or her starts running around in circles in a desperate attempt to escape, while his or her so called friends stand around laughing.  That is they laugh until the solifuge's target shadow and that of the amused spectator's intersect, at which point the solifuge starts chasing the spectator's shadow.  It is then their turn to run around shrieking in terror until their shadow and someone else's intersect and so on and so forth, like a game of tag for people with no sense of direction.  So far my staff have not encountered one of these creatures on their travels, but I look forward to the day that they do.  Can you imagine their irate seagull impressions echoing across the African continent?  "Faaaaark! Faaaaaaaaaark!  Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark!"

The solifuge. Six inches of pure evil.

The name Kalahari Ferrari is remarkably apt when you think about it, since both the Kalahari and Italian variety of Ferrari tend to spend most of their time in dark holes (or garages as they are sometimes known) and when on the rare occasions that they are seen in daylight both types tend to zoom around aimlessly and never actually go anywhere.

Their diet consists almost entirely of camels (hence the camel spider moniker), which they consume whole while the camel is sleeping by dislocating their jaws which open surprisingly wide for such a small animal.  (Baboon spiders kill and eat baboons in the same way.)  Once the majority of the camel has been digested, the hump is regurgitated.  Solifuges are quite health conscious and camel humps are very fatty.  It is a little known fact that nearly all desert sand dunes began as a camel hump discarded by a solifuge.  Over the millennia, wind blown sand piles up against the hump and gradually builds up.  If you dig down below the tallest dunes in Namibia you will find a perfectly preserved discarded camel hump, mummified by the arid climate.  Not so surprising is that consuming an entire camel in one sitting inflicts terrible indigestion on the unfortunate solifuge.  If when strolling through the desert you hear loud burping and farting coming from under a rock or from inside a hollow log it will almost certainly be a solifuge, or my male staff, both are equally likely.  This is of course how the solifuge became known as the wind scorpion in certain parts of the world.

The baboon spider. The world's only primate eating arachnid.

Now some of my smarter readers might be beginning to doubt the truth in what I am telling you about the solifuge.  I can hear you all muttering under your coffee and chocolate chip cookie scented breath  (That would be Earl Grey tea and digestive biscuit scented breath in Britain of course.)  "Hang on just one cotton pickin' minute there Billy.  I don't think I can believe all that you are telling me about this solifuge creature.  In fact," I hear you mumble, "I have the distinct feeling that you are taking the piss."  Okay, I admit it.  I throw my paws up in acknowledgement and contrition.  Certain things that I have stated as fact in the above paragraph might not be entirely true.  For one thing, solifuges do not feed entirely on camels.  No animal could eat nothing but camels, that would really give you the hump.  No, at least fifty five percent of the solifuge's diet is made up of goats and cattle which it dispatches and consumes in the same way while local loincloth clad, spear toting herdsmen are distracted by their smartphones. These herdsmen often mistakenly put their stock losses down to lions, leopards and hyenas.

So there you have it.  The solifuge.  Google them, They're amazing.

BACI'S BALONY

Woah! Dudes, if I eva like sore wun of those things hedding my way there'd be like this Mount Kilimanjaro sized pile of bush chocolate behind me and you woodunt see me four dust..............and bush chocolate.  I'd be like up Uncal Billy's male staff's leg beefour he could evun say "Hay Baci! It's time yoo had yor clores cut!"

Stop The Boats

As a guinea pig it is my sworn duty to point out stupidity in humans wherever it rears its ugly, brainless head.  You may have noticed that our very own Australian Prime Minister The Right Honourable? Tony Abbott has been one of my favourite targets because I used to think that he was so utterly and obviously stupid that I simply could not bring myself to believe that he would ever be elected.  I honestly thought that he was so blatantly deranged that even the Australian electorate would never vote for him.  How wrong can a deceased, fat, fluffy rodent be?

Being as smart as you obviously are you will have noticed that I said "used to think" he was stupid.  Now, like the bloke who used to think he was indecisive I'm not so sure.  I can't make up my mind whether he's stupid, cynical or a little of both.  I'm leaning towards the later at the moment.  He came to power by scaring the living bush chocolate out of everyone and appealing to Australia's inner racist, which sadly is becoming less and inner and more and more overt.  "STOP THE BOATS" screamed the most used of his many simple three word slogans, referring to the steady stream of refugees arriving in Australian waters by the thousands in leaky boats carrying desperate people from various trouble spots around the globe.  Think of the terrorists that might be on these boats?  Do you really want to invite such people into our country?  He and his ilk said.  Indeed, something did need to be done because so many of these poor souls were drowning as these over crowded unseaworthy tubs sank to the bottom of the Indian Ocean or foundered on reefs or rocky outcrops.

However, any decent, humane government would have at least made an effort to stem the flow by doing something constructive to make living in these war zones safer so that fewer people felt the need to escape.  But no, Abbott, like many other Western Conservative governments decided that that option was too hard, and anyway it would not appeal to their target voters.  Instead these Conservative governments decided to cut foreign aid and increase the number of bombs they dropped on the despotic tyrants they had been propping up for years and now suddenly decided that because these tyrants were making life so bad for their own population that they were leaving in droves and heading towards there own shores they'd better do something about it before their own rich countries became inundated by people of a different hue to themselves.  So Abbott and his buddies decided to do "whatever it takes" to stem the influx of  ragged humanity by turning the boats around and sending them back to the staging post - usually somewhere on the Indonesian archipelago.  This in itself is a dangerous and inhumane act and we'll probably never know how many asylum seekers have died due to this policy because whenever Abbott or his Immigration Minister is questioned by the press the answer is always the same.  "We do not comment on operational matters."  Obviously the government believes that the Australian public, while stumping up the funds to pay for this barbaric policy, should not have their pretty little heads worried by the potentially fatal results of it.

Unpopular Conservative governments around the world are skilled at playing the fear card when they realise that they are in trouble with the electorate.  Tony Abbott's old boss John Howard did it in October 2001 when a boat load of asylum seekers was accused by Howard, Immigration Minister Ruddock and Defence Minister Reith of throwing children into the sea in order to compel the Australian naval ship HMAS Adelaide to rescue them.  "We don't want these callous people in Australia. The sort of people who would throw their children into the sea." Said Howard and his cronies and produced photos of children floating in the ocean.  The trouble is it turns out that the photos were taken after the boat had sank and not one child had actually been thrown into the water.
However, by the time the truth was revealed in an inquiry into the incident Howard's illusion of a government intent on strengthening Australia's borders to repel undesirables had been successful in getting them re-elected.

John Howard, although an utter twat, was at least a smarter utter twat than Tony Abbott is.  Having rightly called the people smugglers who operate these rotten old crates carrying asylum seekers towards Australia criminals and the scum of the earth, Abbott now refuses to deny or admit that Australian border protection vessel crews have been paying people smugglers thousands of Australian tax payers dollars to turn their leaky wrecks around and head back to Indonesia from whence they came.  At least Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton had the sense to say "No" when asked by the press if the reports of these payments were true.  Now, they may well be lying.  I'm led to believe that it wouldn't be the first time a politician has told a fib, but at least they didn't spout the same old tired line that Abbott trotted out.  "I do not comment on operational matters." He said.  "We will do whatever it takes to stop the boats."  So, is the Australian government paying these "criminals and scum of the earth" to turn back or not?  One thing is for sure.  More and more people smugglers will now be filling their death trap boats with desperate humanity and actively seeking out Australia's border protection vessels rather than trying to avoid them in order to get their hand out of tax payers dollars for turning back to Indonesia for a few days before returning a couple of week's later to try their luck again.  It's a win-win situation for them.  They get paid thousand of dollars by the refugees whether they make it to Australia or not and if they're lucky enough to get caught by a border protection ship they get paid a shed load more money to turn back.

If this really is the Australian government's policy - to hand out wads of cash to bribe foreign criminals to turn back in their stinking hulks full of desperate men women and children - I'd like to see how Tony Abbott justifies that to the merciful Christian God that he purports to believe in.  If guinea pigs paid tax I'd certainly be withholding my payment.  I wouldn't want any of my hard earned dosh going directly into the hands of people smugglers.  So there!  I bet you wish you hadn't asked for my opinion now don't you?  Oh hang on a minute. You didn't did you?  Sorry about that.

BACI'S BALONEY

Wen I herd Uncal Billy's staff diskussing sumthing called pollyticks I natchrally thort they were like banging on abowt sum parrott wot has swallered a watch, but it terns owt I was rong, witch is unyoosual four me.  It seams they were torking abowt the peepul hoo like to think they own the cuntry.  Parruntly all these peepul live in a plaice called Canbra witch is like a reely boring village in the middul of nowear so they've got nothing betta to do than make evrywun elses life a mizarry and parruntly they are very good at that.

Bouncers

My female staff has now finished the first of six weeks of radiotherapy treatment that she has to undergo to mop up any remaining cancer cells having recently had a tumour removed from her right boob.  Naturally I am there with her to see that the job is done correctly.  I don't trust private clinics, they are too money focused and are just as likely to zap her with nothing at all to save a few cents rather than use the radio waves.  How would you know?  The whole radio therapy thing could be just a huge scam.  They stick you on an impressive looking machine that whirrs and clanks and hums but otherwise does bugger all.  The cure, if it occurs could quite easily be just a placebo effect.  The poor, simple human believes he or she is getting the latest, most effective treatment and so the cancer cells shrivel up and die like moths at a flame.  Did you like that analogy?  Not bad for a guinea pig eh?

Anyway, after the first treatment my female staff told my male staff that while she was having the radiotherapy she felt not only my presence in the room but also that of her late mum.  Then as the week went on she felt the presence of more and more of her late friends, relatives and animals.  It seems that the word had spread and people and animals were coming from all over Heaven and the Rainbow Bridge to supervise my female staff's treatment.  By Friday it was really very crowded in the treatment room and I was having to be very careful that I didn't get trodden on by some late human's gallumping great size eleven foot.

Both female staff's parents were there, her dad stomping up and down repeatedly looking at his watch when the radiographer was running fifteen seconds late.  Male staff's mum was there too, though she spent more time chatting to Hannah, my male staff's late family dog (a brindle boxer cross), and feeding her dried apricots.  When Hannah was alive she had her own tin of dried apricots on a coffee table in the living room and whenever she felt like a dried apricot she'd mooch into the living room and indicate with her nose to any human who happened to be in that room that they were required to remove the lid from her apricot tin and give her one.  Then once the fruit had been devoured she would lie on her back and compel the human to tickle her chubby pink tummy.

Also in the room was Best Friend.  You may remember her from an earlier post.  She was my male staff's middle-aged neighbour when they lived in a charming little English town called Oakham.  She and my four year old male staff really hit it off on their first meeting as my my male staff peddled his toy police car around the front garden, his fat little legs pumping like pistons.  He told the neighbour "You're my best friend" even though they had only just met, but for the next thirty something years until her death she was known to my male staff's family as "Best Friend".  Best Friend loved animals, particularly my male staff's family's boxer dog Jonathon.  Like most boxers he was prone to slobberiness - if that's a word.  While in Best Friend's living room one day he shook his head and sent an impressive glob of slobber flying up to the ceiling where it stuck and hung like some sort of avant-garde lampshade.  Best Friend's husband Tom got the blame for that, though how she thought poor old Tom managed to get about half a litre of slobber up to the ceiling is unclear.  Best Friend was introduced to my female staff by my male staff early on in their relationship, which I imagine must be the reason for her concern over my female staff's health.  Anyway, I thought it was kind of her to show up in the crowd waving a hand embroidered "Get well soon" banner.  On Friday Best Friend had Jenny, my male staff's hamster in the pocket of the pink floral apron that she seemed to be wearing whenever my male staff saw her.  Jenny and Best Friend got on like a house on fire and she was the first person to be invited to Jenny's state funeral when she crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 1964.  She wore her best red hat for the occasion and a solemn expression on her face as my male staff, wearing a plastic world war two American soldiers helmet lowered Jenny's little cardboard box coffin into her back garden grave.

My female staff's grandparents were there too - Nanna and Gars.  Her family's farm dogs, Bun, Bob and Jodie were there, not to mention the late farm horses - Merrylegs, Dandy, Sues, Polly, Threepence, Penny and Sandy.  This meant that the late humans really had to watch where they put their feet.  It also meant that I had to be very careful not to stand still for too long anywhere near the horses' rear ends.  In total I counted thirty seven spirits, both humans and animals (not including myself) present in the room making sure that my female staff's treatment was administered properly.  At times it became rather rowdy, and when the radiographer made an appearance she was roundly booed and my male staff's Auntie Ethel had to be restrained from whacking her with her walking stick by my female staff's mum, who then had to explain to her that she was, despite appearances trying to help my female staff.  Auntie Ethel was also a great animal lover despite having once had her arm broken by an irate and overly territorial swan while minding her own business walking next to a lake in her local park.

Anyway, due to the increasing interest, growing crowds and rowdy behaviour at my female staff's radiotherapy treatments the big guy upstairs has decided to employ a couple of bouncers for crowd control at my female staff's next treatment this Tuesday.  I must say that I find it satisfyingly apt that a pair of "bouncers" are to keep order at a breast health clinic.  The problem is that there is a distinct shortage of brutal bouncer types on this side of the Rainbow Bridge.  The best the big guy has been able to find are Liberace and John Inman so I guess Tuesday's treatment session is going to be interesting.  I for one do not want to miss it.

 

God's bouncers

BACI'S BALONEY

Dudes! Like gess wot.  You remember Uncal Geoff whose lap I like pidduld on a wile ago?  Coarse you do cuz Uncal Billy rote all abowt it in his blog called "Strictly Ballroom" on September 14th last yeer.  Anyway if yoo reddit yool remember that poor old Uncal Geoff got ackused aqueuesed akyoozed like blaimed for being incontinent by his wyfe Auntie Cath.  Well, Uncal Billy's staff went to meat them again at a restaurant for dinner and afterwoods wen they were all warking home Uncal Billy's female staff notist that Uncal Geoff had a whole in the frunt of his trowzas and she cood see his undapants and evryfink throo the whole.  When my female staff poynted this owt to Uncal Geoff he like blaimed my wee for like rotting a whole in his trowsers. Onustly! Yood think Uncal Geoff cood afford a noo pear of trowswers cuz he's like a solissitter and can print his own munny.

Fighting Hippos

Don't say you weren't warned.  I threatened weeks ago that I'd inflict a new blog post upon you on June the first, and here it is.  Let that be a lesson to you.

As many of you know I've been in South Africa and Botswana for a couple of weeks ensuring that my staff didn't start some sort of civil uprising or cause a humanitarian crisis by creating a continent wide banoffee pie famine.  In the end I think I did a pretty good job, though they were charged excess baggage fees by the airline on their flight home for the several kilos of blubber that had somehow attached itself to their bellies during the two weeks of their holiday.  Now of course I have to take on the role of personal trainer to try to get rid of all that flab.  Its true what they say. "Brain cells come and go, but fat cells last forever."

The last of the four bush camps my staff inhabited was situated on the banks of a crystal clear lagoon of Botswana's Okavango Delta.  It was a small camp and the staff there spoiled my spoiled my staff rotten. There was an elderly chef who did all his cooking in a makeshift bush oven which was basically a large steel box around which he piled the appropriate amount of hot embers from the wood fire.  You would not believe the delights he produced from this piece of rudimentary equipment.  The first thing my staff sampled was an absolutely perfect chocolate cake, so moist and chocolaty that it would make an angel weep.  Then there was Camembert cheese in filo pasty.  My staff swear it was a miracle and in fact wrote to the Pope in an attempt to have the old bush chef canonized, and by that, I don't mean they wanted him shot from a canon.  No, they wanted him made a saint for his services to mankind's stomachs.  The filo pastry was crisp and light and the Camembert cheese within was perfection itself, just barely beginning to melt - exactly the right texture. This old fellow would have won any Master Chef competition you care to name; as long as he was allowed to use his old camp oven.  In the wet season the bush camp closes for the wet season the old chef has to go and work in one of the larger camps in the area.  The problem with this is that the larger camps have proper kitchens and the poor old boy has no idea what to do with a modern electric or gas oven. Food would get burned, pans would be ruined, fires would be started, dreadful smells would fill the kitchen, implements would be thrown and foul language would be used.  In other words it would be pretty much like an average mealtime at my staff's house.

Male staff proudly displaying his newly acquired man-boobs and wobbly belly which will probably take about four years of painful dieting to deflate.  The signpost next to him says ELEPHANT. It is supposed to be the name of their tent but if you want to apply 

to my male staff I understand entirely.

This last camp was very comfortable.  Apart from the amazing food my staff's tent also had a baby scorpion who liked to scuttle about upside down on the canvas roof just above my male staff.  Fortunately he had a small tail and huge claws which indicates a relatively harmless beast, or so my male staff says.  Wait! Maybe it's the other way around.  A big tail and small claws indicates a harmless scorpion.  Either way, my male staff didn't seem too worried and he slept like a baby every night.  Hah! By "slept like a baby" I mean of course that he woke up every forty five minutes, crying and demanding to be fed.  I'm joking of course.  Actually both my staff were snoring as soon as their heads touched the pillow.  In fact the snoring was so loud that two hippos actually waddled from the lagoon in the middle of the night, woke the camp manager and complained about the noise.

Each guest tent at this particular camp had a separate shower tent with a bucket shower hanging from a tree above it about ten metres from the guest tent.  One night it was dark when my staff returned from their game drive and they asked the camp attendant to fill their bucket shower with hot water so that they could freshen up before dinner.  Twenty minutes later my staff were enjoying a nice hot shower together, although it was quite a tight fit in the tent given their expanding butts.  They had almost finished when my male staff slipped on a bar of soap and grabbed at the tent wall in a desperate attempt to stop himself from falling.  My female staff made a grab for his arm to try to steady him.  He was too heavy for both her and the tent and the whole thing collapsed in a heap in the sand with water from the bucket shower still sprinkling upon their pink, naked bodies, their large, wet backsides glowing romantically in the African moonlight as they scrabbled about searching for a foothold on the slippery collapsed canvas.

 My female staff in front of the shower tent before she and my male staff destroyed it.

It just happened that the camp laundry lady was making her way along the path not far from the shower tent with an armful of clean towels fresh from the laundry.  Visibly shocked by what she saw, she threw the towels down and ran to the campfire, around which were sitting half a dozen other guests, three guides and the camp manager.

 "Batho! Batho!  Potlako pedi kubu go iwa mo go bothibelelo!" Screamed the laundry lady.  This roughly translates as "Everyone! Everyone! Come quickly. Two hippos are fighting in the camp."
The three guides leapt into action, running to where the laundry lady had pointed, the rest of the camp residents hot on their heels.  This was exciting for the guests.  It's not every day you get to see two hippos fighting at close quarters.  They were not disappointed at the sight that confronted them, but I would have thought at least one of the guides would have offered to help my staff to their feet instead of just standing there laughing.

BACI'S BALONEY
Uncal Billy's staff promist us piggies that wen they went to affricka we wood be going to a resort wear there wood be like lots of girly piggies.  Gess wat.  Wen we got there there were no girlie piggies at all.  Boy wuz I kross. I wuz like so livid that I bit the hoomun whooz job it wuz to look afta us.  That mayde me feel betta for a wile but it didn't allter the facked that the only piggies in the place were boyz and they wuz evun uglier than Alfie, Tom and Toby and that's saying somefink.