5th March 2007
Everything was going fine until the camel in front of my camel farted.
However I’d better begin at the beginning.
On holiday in Lanzarote I was looking at the brochure of holiday attractions that that wonderful little island has to offer when my eyes alighted on the words, ‘You will have the possibility of riding a camel’ included in the advertising literature for a trip up Fire Mountain, Lanzarote’s most famous attraction. Untroubled by having only the most basic skills in English Language, what the writer of the blurb probably meant was ‘You will have the opportunity to ride a camel’; for a possibility it most certainly was not, certainly not for me at any rate, because having succumbed to the delights of camel riding on a previous visit to Lanzarote twelve months ago I wasn’t about to tempt fate a second time. Once bitten, twice shy, as the saying goes, although to tell the truth I wasn’t bitten by the camel, just merely deposited on the floor and kicked a couple of times.
The muzzle adorning the camel’s hairy snout might have warned me that the beast I had been persuaded to ride atop would prove to be not as sweet-natured as I would have liked; The fact is I didn’t need much persuading as I had been presented with a chance to show off, and as I don’t get too many nowadays I seized upon it without concerning myself at all with the possible consequences.
It is in fact very unusual to ride on top of the camel on these trips in the foothills of Fire Mountain as all the camels have two seats suspended to their sides, rather like large saddlebags, in which the passengers are carried. However there was an odd number in our party and I was the odd one out when everyone else had boarded. Spotting this, and no doubt seeing me as a man of action who would take it in his stride, the camel drover invited me to sit on top of the camel, rather than in one of the seats. I took this as to be nothing but good sense as to sit in one of the seats would have meant that the camel would have had an unbalanced load. In fact even if I’d spurned the camel drover’s invitation and chosen to sit in one of the seats the camel’s load wouldn’t have been half as unbalanced as its state of mind when the camel in front farted.
Animals are known to have a keener sense of smell than humans but as the stink that emanated from the camel in front’s arse was by far the worst odour it has ever been my displeasure to inhale God alone knows what it must have been like for my camel.
I have never attempted to ride a bucking bronco but after what followed I would have gladly swapped the ten seconds or so that I spent on the camel for an hour on the buckingest bronco known to the Wild West. I will never know exactly what happened when the camel went berserk because all I saw was the world going round and round and up and down at about a hundred miles an hour, before suddenly stopping to go up, but still round and round, when I hit the ground with a thud that must have been heard in our flat back in Puerto del Carmen. Before I could get to my feet the camel had kicked me in two places – where I was and about five yards further up Fire Mountain, where its first kick had deposited me. The camel drover, between laughs, couldn’t have been more apologetic. I would have preferred a smaller apology and less amusement. Fortunately only my pride was hurt, apart from a couple of large bruises, but I had rode my last camel.
Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.
You can write to me at –
Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL
Dear Air 2000
Football Crazy
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Razzamatazz
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
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