Tag Archives: Ottoblogs

Otto the Hill

OTTO THE HILL 2. Whose Land Is It Anyway?

Good morning good morning good morning what a hearteningly marvellous morning it is too! Gosh, a sunny crisp winter morning is just what the doctor ordered.

Because good heavens these are trying times if you’re a British hill like I am. Which, if you’re reading this is unlikely, I grant you, but let me tell you things have been fraught with tension here in the Sussex substratum.

And there’s only one reason for it: Brexit.

I first heard that dreadful term a few years ago, but I could never have envisaged how it would come to represent all that is most moronic about the humans occupying my surface. And that, coming from the island in whose name other hills the world over have been stabbed by British flags simply for being populated by people of colour, is up against some pretty stiff competition.

I honestly have no idea why, but Brexiteers keep alluding to the Blitz spirit (apparently remembered best with bunting and teacakes, not bunkers filled with terrified civilians), surviving the War (many didn’t, we’re still at war and survival is apparently the best we can hope for now) and stopping duplicitous foreigners taking the jobs nobody wants but without which the country will grind to a halt like cake-baking during rationing. Result: a green and pleasant land populated by nose-less spited faces.

Well, none of this truly affects me of course because I’m literally part of the scenery and you all come and go so swiftly to me. But I do rather resent being used as the rallying cry by those who have at best a nodding acquaintance with my geography and history.

And it gives me the hump. Or hill.

So here’s a reality check: you know that speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II? The one about this royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle, blabla demi-paradise, yada yada this earth, this realm, this England, cue orgasmic crescendo of Jerusalem? Ok well that’s not where it ends.

No, it goes on rather prophetically:

That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,
How happy then were my ensuing death!

Everyone always forgets that bit.

Otto the Aid Worker

OTTO THE AID WORKER 1. Bailed in Bazimbi

I don’t know if you’ve ever been sucker punched? You know: you set out on a lovely morning, a-brim with vim and ready to smile upon all and sundry, when you step on a hibernating bear and wonder how fast you can do nought to sixty up a tree?

Well, dear reader, I have. Only yesterday in fact.

Not literally stepped on a bear of course (not sure they have bears in Central Africa), but metaphorically my life has recently become wall to wall angry ursines, all equipped with running shoes. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to complain or appear ungrateful, but things seem to have taken a slight turn for the worse here in Zabarindi since my last sitrep.

And to be totally honest with you I’m not entirely, one hundred percent convinced this is what I signed up for.

Let me explain.

My life before all the recent events was completely fine, ticketyboo and tinketytonk, the seas were calm, the going was steady. But I must admit it also had all the zing and joy of the last gluten-free tofu sandwich in a British Rail food cart. I baulked at the thought that reaching the dizzying heights of winning the Latin Poetry Recital prize at Oxford was to be my only achievement, impressive though it undoubtedly was. Makes an enterprising young gentleman feel like a bit of a lemon.

So in an uncharacteristic fit of impetuosity, I threw caution to the wind, carpe’d that diem and signed up for a stint with GAWD: General Aid Without Divisions.

Imagine Oxfam in combat boots and a flak jacket.

My goal: to See and Change the World, Do Good, Make A Difference, Help the Less Fortunate. (The capitalisation helps.) Preferably in a warm climate.

Except it’s now starting to dawn on me that – and this may surprise you – my efforts are not earning me the kudos I assumed would be heaped upon me like golden shekels upon Gideon.

I arrived in North Zabarindi a month ago (of course it’s not North Zabarindi anymore since the border was overrun, but that’s a story for another time) and ever since then things have been a little… well, fraught.

Again, not complaining, wouldn’t dream of it.

But I mean to say: detaining me under the Zabarindi Terrorism Act just for popping out after curfew for a quick snifter at the local watering hole is a bit thick.

The first inkling I had that something was wrong was when I arrived back at the Bazimbi guest house, having taken a taxi from the bar.

I had just finished haggling with the cabbie (only $60! I drive a hard bargain), when all of a sudden two enormous policemen with unnecessarily lapelled shoulders and aviator sunglasses appeared out of nowhere and started yelling at me in the local lingo. (Quick sidenote: did you know they don’t speak English in Central Africa? French! Who knew!)

When it became clear from my slack-jawed expression that their incomprehensible diatribe wasn’t having the desired effect, they gestured me into the police van with their Kalashnikovs. Bit brusque, I thought, but a gentleman always complies with the long and chiselled arm of the Law. So into the van I popped.

Now, I’m just a press officer ok? My job is basically making sure people back home (donors) know what we do in the field (think we’re heroic), speaking to journos to promote what we do (get them to warzones and back safely in return for positive press) and staying on message no matter what (navigate the minefield of internal GAWD politics which is just stupidly harder than it needs to be).

My point is I am a stranger to the rough-and-tumble world of skirting the law: the only time I had ever crossed paths with the local constabulary was when I tripped and spilled wine all over Chief Constable Mwanga at the embassy May Day reception. (I remember because it was a particularly agreeable Château Pétrus.)

Back to the gentlemen with the guns. After much yelling, arm-waving and pointing at the clock on the wall, they were able to apprise me of the fact that I was under arrest for straying into the Green Zone during a military curfew and the only thing still up for debate was whether I was suicidal or just criminally stupid. There’s a slight chance I may also have been a little trollied at the time. (Apparently leaning out of a taxi as it speeds past the local copshop and loudly singing “Mobutu’s Dumplings are Round and Sweet” while brandishing a bottle of Glenfiddich is frowned upon in the tropics.)

So here I am, in Bazimbi’s main police station, trying to remember why I came out here in the first place. The capitalisation helps… GAWD help us.

Next week: Otto accidentally goes on safari.

Otto, Nero's violin tutor

OTTO THE TUTOR 1. Nervous With Nero

Erm… Is this thing on? Can you hear me? I haven’t got long (His Imperial Bipolarness is just catching a show in the Colosseum), so I’ll make this quick.

Right. So my name is Otto, although given this forum I think you already knew that. And I work for the Emperor Nero – yes, the one who made Rome nice and toasty – as his violin tutor. It could be worse. I could be his official food taster and have a life expectancy of three meals.

My boss, let’s face it, isn’t very popular. I mean, he’s not even a Marmite sort of bloke (you know, hated or loved); he’s more a flatulence kind of guy. Only the dealer likes the smell, the rest of us stand upwind. I just pray he never finds this tablet as I’d be crucified along the Appian Way faster than that hippy in Judea.

Luckily he’s also the dumbest man since Severus the Simple headed north to “talk some sense into the Visigoths”. Nero, in short, doesn’t know his culus from his cubitus.

Which is a good thing, because his capacity for inflicting agonizing pain is frankly impressive. In an age when casual sadism is celebrated as heroism, when 8 out of 10 Big Cats prefer kosher meat, and when the main form of exercise for women is Escape the Rape, you’ll understand what I mean when I say Nero makes Genghis Khan look like a hypnotised sloth in a floatation tank. Oedipus was a well-adjusted first-born compared with He Who Can Not Be Shamed.

I confess, he makes me a little nervous. I’ve had to put three smallish fires out already this week, and I’m running out of ways to say “E Minor, not A Major” without implying that he is less musical than Tarquinius the Tone-deaf Tenor. (You know: the one who was publicly lynched for his rendition of Mamma Mia in the forum. His own fault: there’s nothing more dangerous than an angry mob maddened by tritone dissonance.)

I’d better go. I can hear screams of agony from the corridor and the pitter-patter of tiny feet running for their lives; ah the little tell-tale signs that His Unhinged Majesty is on his way and has a story to relate.

Next week: Otto fiddles while his toast burns