General Pinochet, the Dog Shit
Incident, and
Mexican Fetish Bandits.
The President of Chile dodges the
bullets.
It
was Good Friday lunchtime and I was considering the possibilities for the
weekend. Where to go, what to do, and who with. So far the week has been
hilarious. Having been contracted as an extra in the recent Stallone movie, Von
Panzer has suddenly gone all Hollywood on me and announced his intention to
become a famous screen writer.
My
role in this imminent disaster was to act as creative sounding board for a
myriad of stupid ideas. Not content with simply writing, Von Panzer announced
that we had to enter into the spirit of the whole genre. For the last three
days and nights we had been locked in my room with nothing more than Coffee,
Marlboro Reds, and several bottles of bourbon. By day three we had created our
first blockbuster. It's a spaghetti western set in the future, and centres on
the machinations of evil genius Walt Drively.
Drively
is the mastermind movie mogul behind a string of giant theme parks, and hidden
within one of these is a time machine. Drively has been using it to supply his
vast chain of fast food outlets across the globe, K.F.D. (Kentucky Fried
Dinosaur) His time travelling butchers are a platoon of German SS Durlwanger
Stormtroopers whom Drively has transported to the future from 1944.
Along
the way we meet The Rubber Bandits, a gang of Mexican bank robbers with a
fetish for latex, The Presleytarians, a religious sect dedicated to Elvis, and
it all revolves around the hunt to find the whereabouts of something called the
D.U.M.B Bomb. Dumb being an acronym for Detonator
Up Margret’s Butt. (but that's not revealed until the end) Von
Panzer thinks it's genius and he's going to sell the rights to it for thousands
of pounds.
To
be honest I'm not really feeling like a big weekend. I've been drunk for 3
days. Von Panzer had insisted that sleep was kept to a minimum and any amount
of forty winks had to be taken exactly where you were sitting and fully
clothed. However, as it's Easter, I kind of feel like I should make the effort.
I got back to considering the options and decided to give Jeanette a ring. The
insanely gorgeous, as well as quite literally insane, Jeanette, is from Berlin.
She's an art house pixie with the sexual morals of a dog, and she was over in
London for a year’s study as part of her degree. She sighed as she informed me
that partying is off the agenda for the whole of the long Easter weekend. She's
house, baby, and dog sitting, down in Surrey for her Auntie.
I didn't really
feel too much sympathy for her because her enforced incarceration was not in
some crappy little council apartment in Guilford. Jeanette’s Auntie Anna was
part of Madonna’s management and lived in a mansion on the very posh and gated
Wentworth Park Estate in Virginia Water. The wine cellar was stocked to the
gills and the fridge was the size of transit van. I could think of worse places
to be marooned for the weekend. Now, there was an idea!
By
four o'clock I was heading south out of Waterloo and rubbing my hands together
at the thought of what delights might be waiting for me in leafy Surrey. The
fridge was full if nothing else. I
finally found the tiny lane that led to the house, and was buzzed through the
gates by a security guard. It's like a quaint country lane flanked by groves of
enormous trees that in turn provide some privacy for the even more enormous
houses on each side of the road.
I find number 19 and Jeanette seems very pleased
to see me. It's a good start. She then fluttered her eyelashes and dispatched
me a mile back to the fucking railway station to get her some cigarettes. On my
return I was passed in the lane by a convoy of blacked out people carriers.
They drove passed my destination and turned immediately in to the next door
drive way. A
man in a dark suit got out and spoke briefly to another man who seemed to be
guarding the top of the driveway to the house, before the cars then crackled
their way down the gravel towards the house. Upon returning with the smokes, I
asked Jeanette who lived next door. Brucie? Tarby? Chris Evans? Cliff Richard
maybe?
'General
Pinochet', she says.
'Fuck
off' I say.
'Nein
really', she laughed.
It
was indeed true. Some weeks earlier, the Butcher of Santiago, known more
commonly as the President of Chile, had made a stop over in the UK en route
back to South America. Upon touching down on British soil, Spain had demanded
his arrest on charges of genocide and he was currently enduring a very comfy
house arrest on the Wentworth Park Estate, until such time as the whole grubby
mess was sorted out in the courts.
Jeanette’s
job was hardly a difficult one. Her aunt and uncle were spending the Easter
weekend in New York with Madge, whilst Jeanette baby sat her 2-year-old niece
and walked the dogs. I woke up on Saturday morning with a champagne hangover
and wandered in the basket ball court sized kitchen to find some juice. Rocco,
the dog was crossing his legs and flipping summersaults by the French windows.
I let him out into the garden where upon he immediately deposited an almighty
dump right in the middle of the manicured lawn.
I began the job of raping
Aladdin’s fridge and concocting breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages,
and a jug of Bucks Fizz. Jeanette appeared in a bath robe, looking equally
rough, and immediately spotted the brown mound in the middle of the lawn. Her
comedy German accent rang out.
“Ze
dawg hess done a shiddy on zer gartan! You vill heff to clear it up”
30
minutes later we were both three parts pissed again, having demolished the jug
of Bucks Fizz. I decided to get the doggy issue out of the way before the day
deteriorated any further. However, the thought of placing a small black plastic
bag over my hand and picking up warm dog shit was not one I was relishing. I
would investigate the garage for a shovel and scoop it into the flower beds.
I
rounded up Rocco from the end of the garden, and whilst I was outside, I
glimpsed something through the thick Leylandi hedge that separated us from next
door.
Some
80 metres away I could see an elderly man in a wheel chair. He was on a small
terrace by a swimming pool, a tartan blanket over his legs, and reading a
newspaper. Thin silver hair swept back over his head and wearing obligatory
Bono-style shades.
I immediately recognized who it was. General Augusto
Pinochet, President of Chile since 1973 and one of the biggest mass murderers
in modern history. It was at that point that I disguarded any thought of
finding a shovel. A bendy bamboo was much more appropriate.
The
first one was more of a range finder. It went straight over his head and
plopped into the pool. However, its entry caused the General to look up from
his paper and look around, wondering what had just gone plop into his pool. I
needed to get the next shot a bit lower over the 15 ft. Leylandi and not fling
it quite so hard.
The
second shot was a peach. Rocco's freshly minted stool fairly buzzed the top of
the hedge, missing Pinochet by a whisker, and splattering against the
balustrade of the terrace. He sat up straight with a jolt, folded his
newspaper, and began to wheel about like a demented Dalek. I definitely had him
ruffled by now, but I was now down to my last piece of ammunition; at least
until tomorrow. I changed position and tried to get a bit more head-on. I let
fly with the last nugget but failed to connect with the evil old goat. However,
this time he clearly saw it splat on the French windows and shouted for an aide
to wheel him back inside. There was a lot of shouting and gesturing in Spanish.
“Un hijo de puta es tirar me disparó.
ahora me llevan en el interior!”
Some
bastard is flinging shit at me. Get me inside now!
I
ducked back towards the back of the house and continued to watch through a gap
in the trees; giggling like a school boy. Some security type dudes appeared on
the terrace and took a walk around. The doggy butt nugget was spotted in the
pool and fished out with a net. The guy with the net had clearly put two and
two together and decided to return the compliment by flinging the poop back
over the hedge of trees. It flew right over our garden and splattered on the
side of next door's conservatory. A house that was currently being rented by
Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.
At
this point I was told, in angry Teutonic tones, that I was to come inside NOW
and stop causing trouble between the neighbours. It was a small victory for
democracy and the common man. Rocco had played his part well. Some years later
I was working with a Chilean guy in Stockholm. He had told me some horror
stories about growing up as a teenager under Pinochet's regime. I told him the
doggy doo story. Some months later, having returned from a trip home, my
Chilean colleague handed me a letter from they mayors office of his home town,
Rancagua, in Chile. I was commended for my actions and further told that I was
probably the only man alive who had ever thrown shit at Pinochet and was alive
to tell the tale.
I
returned to London and informed Von Panzer about the weekend’s jollity. He
thumbed his chin and sparked up a Marlboro. 'There's got to be a film in that!”
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