Cold and Humourless Interrogator: So, already you're on the defensive. 'A harmless event...'
Defensive Blogger: You can't start an interrogation by quoting from the introduction to its transcript. It's illogical.
CHI: (snapping) Don't quibble!
DB: Sorry.
CHI: Did you or did you not take part in a coach trip around the tranquil island of La Gomera with a rowdy party of villagers?
DB: They weren't rowdy, they were perfectly well behaved, just out for a good day's...
CHI: Answer the question! Did you take part?
DB: Yes I did. But they weren't.
CHI: One might wonder why villagers born on the island, who certainly know the place like they know their own kitchen, would wish to spend an entire day being driven around it.
DB: It's a beautiful island! The landscapes change by the year, by the day, by the hour! They change with the weather, the sun and clouds, the state of mind of the beholder! This is an island full of history yet unspoiled by the concrete footprints of commerce. An island where humankind lives largely at peace with the natural world. An island of dreams and magic, where anything...
CHI: Oh for goodness' sake.
DB: What? Well okay, enough said. But it is.
CHI: Let us proceed. The coach stopped on the main road outside the village for you all to climb aboard. Some of your fellow villagers were seen loading two very heavy containers into the luggage bay, with the help of the remarkably indulgent coach driver.
(Silence)
CHI: Well?
DB: Well what? That wasn't a question.
CHI: Were or were not two heavy containers taken on board?
DB: Yes. I didn't know what they were. Mind you, it didn't take much guessing.
CHI: (ominously) We'll return to those later. First let's address that business in the tunnel. There are several tunnels on the north road, the GM1 towards Hermigua, are there not?
DB: Yes. What's that got to do with...
CHI: And during your trajectory through the longest of those tunnels, in darkness, someone was heard making crude and offensive sucking noises as though lasciviously kissing. Was that you?
DB: No! I think that was just Rubén clowning around. We've got several clowns.
CHI: So you're denying that anything happened.
DB: No I'm not, he made crude and offensive sucking noises.
CHI: (sighs as though in pain) Very well, let's move on. Your first halt was in the town of Agulo, where the coach pulled into a car park at the entrance to the town. Why was that?
DB: Call of nature, some of us are no longer young. There's a café.
CHI: Which you entered. And ordered what?
DB: Coffee. Café con leche, coffee with milk.
CHI: Nothing else? No little extra glass with...
DB: Nothing!
CHI: (disbelievingly) Very well. There was, however, an incident in the queue for the gentlemen's toilet.
DB: Was there?
CHI: You elbowed your way in front of Paco, a small and vulnerable individual who surely deserves consideration and protection.
DB: He thought it was very funny, it cracked him up. I let him go first really. After we'd had a fist fight.
CHI: You surely didn't...!
DB: Oh come on, can't you recognise a joke?
CHI: No.
(Silence)
CHI: From Agulo you drove to the famous and very popular tourist attraction, the Mirador de Abrante, is that correct?
DB: Yes.
CHI: You drove directly to the Mirador?
DB: Yeah. Well, almost. We stopped first at...
CHI: (triumphantly) Ahah! Precisely. You stopped first outside the Centro de Visitantes at Juego de Bolas.
DB: The Visitor's Centre, yes. It's good, examples of all the native trees and plants, stuff about geology and history, a typical cottage with a gofio mill and things. Loads.
CHI: But none of you went in there. Not one of you.
DB: Well no, we've all been round it lots of times.
CHI: Instead you extracted from the luggage bay of the coach, and then opened, the two mysterious containers. Containing - remind me?
DB: Well, one of them was a thermal coolbox with orange juice and Coca Cola. And bottles of water.
CHI: And?
DB: Okay, a few bottles of wine.
CHI: So at - what, about 11:30 in the morning, these bottles of wine were already being opened? Corks popping while you, personally, thrust forward a plastic beaker to be half-filled with red Rioja?
DB: You're making it sound evil.
CHI: The British Medical Association would be unanimously horrified.
DB: They should come and live in La Gomera, get a life.
CHI: (ignoring this provocation) And the other container?
DB: (defiantly) Cake!
(Pause while CHI shakes head in sorrow)
DB: (still defiant) Really nice cake, sponge, cooked by one of the local ladies. With orange peel and things.
CHI: (sighing) Let's move on. Your next stop was the Mirador de Abrante, an architectural miracle, a long glass cage projecting seven metres into the air from the very top of a high cliff.
DB: Terrifying.
CHI: Where one of your party was seen at the furthest extreme of the glass cage, balanced on one leg with his arms outstretched and flapping. Was that...
DB: No, it was not me. It was Felipe being a seagull or something. Most people do something daft in there - seeing Agulo hundreds of metres beneath your feet does your head in.
CHI: And of course, there's a café-bar attached to the Mirador...
DB: Yes, safely on terra firma. And no I didn't! Well, only a small one, to recover.
(The Interrogator, smiling grimly, adds another entry to the notepad on his knee)
CHI: Lunch was taken in the equally famous restaurant Casa Conchita in Arure, noted particularly for its excellent potaje de berros?
DB: Watercress soup. Very traditional.
CHI: And of course there is little doubt that you...
DB: (holding up his hands) Yes, yes and yes. Too much soup, too much tuna with salsa and potatoes, too much red wine served from a magic carafe that kept refilling itself. Actually there was a very funny bit where two of the old blokes pretended to have the shakes while refilling each others' glass. One shaking the carafe, the other shaking the glass, wine dancing around like rum in a cocktail shaker, and they didn't spill a drop. Not a drop. Can you believe that?
CHI: No.
(A long silence, then the Defensive Blogger rises to his feet)
DB: You are a miserable, bald-headed pile of dry bones and you've got a bogey up your nose. I've had more than enough of you and I'm not going to tell you what happened at Verduñe, so there.
CHI: I already know what happened at Verduñe. And I shall know what happens at your next communal debauchery, the Christmas dinner-dance on the village square.
DB: Yes, and I know - you see, I'm not so stupid! - I know exactly who you are. You're wasting your time, I stopped listening to you decades ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment