Monday 20th June
Uncle Jamal went mad and was deported back to England last night. The authorities escorted him in handcuffs to the airport, and didn’t leave until the aircraft was pushing back and they were satisfied that he was on his way. Muck FM is slowly but surely becoming the St Trinians of radio stations (unfortunately minus the slutty schoolgirls though), a notorious pariah causing havoc wherever we descend. Or more accurately wherever the boys descend. We’re already banned from Ibiza, and if we continue alienating ourselves at this rate we’ll be holidaying in Bognor for the rest of our lives.
The day had started so promisingly too. We had chilled on the terrace, then as the sun went down headed into town to have something to eat. We ate Thai and everyone was in high spirits. The wine and sangria were flowing, and by the end of the meal everyone was feeling merry. For once the atmosphere was jovial and even the twins were in good humour. Handy was holding court, telling anecdotes about his time in the navy, and the summer season a few years back where he understudied Denise Van Outen in Chicago.
Sandy was busy flirting with Fifi, much to the consternation of his little Portuguese cutie. I say cutie, but as the week has gone on in Sandy’s company the bags under her eyes have multiplied, and her looks have faded noticeably, each day looking like a new progression in a crystal meth awareness campaign. To be honest, this is what happens to anyone who spends any length of time with Sandy. The poor girl is starting to look like a cross between Keith Richards and Alice Cooper, and Sandy’s only still keeping her around because he’s got her hooked on crack and is making a fortune selling her rocks at inflated prices. He’s told her that if she can’t afford to pay then she’ll have to start working the streets, and that he’ll be her pimp. He’s started wearing flared linen trousers, wearing a wide brimmed Panama hat and walking with a cane. He keeps saying “who loves you baby?” in the mistaken belief that it was Huggy Bear’s catchphrase, and his faux Croydo-Jamaican patois has slipped effortlessly into a generic US ghetto drawl. He went on to announce that he’s thinking of changing his name to Snoop Sandy Sand and releasing a duet with MC Check.
At this point Handy chipped in, saying “I wouldn’t bother darling- I’ve had several duets with him and let’s just say they are less 12″ remixes and more three minute radio edits. There’s no intro and the song finishes terribly abruptly. Very disappointing all round really.”
The girls were all looking as glamourous as ever, and Jamal was sitting next to Sandy, practising his ghetto accent and kissing his teeth continually, so that it sounded as if the crickets had sprung into life in the long grass as dusk settled around us.
I actually started to relax in the company of the others for the first time this holiday, and for a short while everything was right with the world. I know what you’re thinking- how can someone as streetwise as myself (I went on Sandy’s Street Talk And Bling (STAB) course remember) be so naive? How could someone so down with the word on the street, and who is so hip, cool and dope (I think I need the STAB refresher course) be lulled into such a false sense of security? It must be those joints that Sandy keeps passing round. They’ve kept me in a semi-catatonic state all week, like a chemical cosh- which as we all know is Sandy’s weapon of choice.
Whichever way you look at it, I hadn’t reckoned on the J-Factor, and it wasn’t long before things started to deteriorate.
The first sign that something was wrong was when Jamal started giggling uncontrollably for no apparent reason. Soon he had slipped off his chair and was on the floor of the restaurant in fits of laughter. Just as we all started looking at each other not knowing whether to be amused or alarmed, Jamal sprung up from the floor, like a jack in the box and stood rigidly upright, his legs slightly bent at the knees with his arms outstretched as if surfing, and his nose pointed up into the air sniffing like a bloodhound. He turned to us and told us with glazed eyes that “it is time.”
I don’t think that in all my years on this earth I’ve ever heard a more ominous sentence, and was immediately prepared for the worst. Before I could worry any more he ran out of the restaurant mumbling incoherently about “our alien overlords” and giggling insanely.
I caught up with him almost immediately, because he hadn’t gone far. I actually nearly fell over him because as I turned the corner of the street outside he was crouched on the pavement on all fours, with his head pointing forward, once again sniffing the air intently, this time like a gun dog.
“It is time!” slurred Jamal, his eyes darting all around him and a little trickle of drool escaping from the side of his mouth. His moustache sagged down over his mouth while his eyebrows were raised so far above his eyes that it gave him a look of slight mutation and complete insanity.
If I’d seen the state of him I wouldn’t have approached him, but as I had stumbled over him as I came round the corner here I was face to face with him- or at least I would have been if he’d been standing and not on all fours. Not for the first time on this holiday I felt in danger in Jamal’s prescence, and nervously and ever so slowly started moving backwards. I was sure he was about to start baying at the moon, and by now a small crowd of interested onlookers had gathered round to see what was going on.
I was torn between self-preservation, public duty and curiosity, but of course I stayed. More to rubberneck than save necks if I’m completely honest, but stay I did.
Then, like some awful recreation of An American Werewolf in London, Jamal, still on all fours, did indeed start howling and began to strip his clothes off until he was quite naked. The crowd gasped, as if at a firework display and the elderly woman at the front looked like she’d never seen anything like it. Not for a few years anyway.
Jamal stood up, exposed and shameless, and proceeded to wrap his yellowing Y-fronts around his head until he looked like a very poor Middle Eastern Rambo tribute act.
Instead of a rampage, or indeed a spree, he puffed up his chest, stretched his arms out wide and started singing offensive and obscene football chants at the top of his voice. At this point I still didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or what action, if any, to take. I’d heard mutterings from the crowd about “policia” (from the locals), and cries from a group of drunken English lads at the back “oi, get ‘ere sharpish John, someone’s gone mental!”
Jamal continued chanting, and moved on to a rendition of “You’re going home in a Muck FM ambulance!”
Oh shit.
It was down to me. The time had come to confront Jamal at last, and to save what was left of Muck FM’s reputation.
I had to take Jamal down. As you all know, I’m a lover not a fighter, and this was going to be the first time I’d thrown a punch since that time Handy got pissed on absinthe and started touching up Mrs Muck.
I steeled myself and wondered what type of punch to throw. The more I thought about it, the more sceptical I was that I was capable of knocking Jamal down. Even at the best of times that would be unlikely, and in his current deranged state I guessed it would be almost impossible.
I was weighing up a kick to the groin instead when thankfully the police arrived, just as Jamal broke into a chant of “you’re just a small country in Spain”
They don’t take any nonsense here, and Jamal was swiftly and professionally dispatched with a baton to the back of the knee at the same time that one connected brutally to the back of his head. His wrists were cuffed and he was thrown, still naked head first into the back of a police van waiting with flashing lights on.
I spent all night down at the courthouse waiting to bail him out, but was informed in the small hours of this morning that due to Jamal already having being convicted of camel rustling ten years ago in Lisbon he was going to be deported immediately. The judge issued papers forbidding him from entering the country again for twenty years, which means at this rate Jamal will be getting a Butlins loyalty card sooner than we thought.
On one hand I’m quite relieved that Jamal is gone. I’m not going to miss his unpredictable moods and violent temper. As much as the twins are nightmares, they aren’t (as) violent as Jamal, and we don’t need to hose down the bathroom with Dettol after each time they visit. Unfortunately the smell of his moonshine camel sperm is still lingering in the apartment, and the acrid tang pervades everything. I didn’t bring my Fabreze “Anti-Camel” with me- it’s the only thing that will get the smell out of upholstery, although I’ve been told that Mr Muscle “Camel Out” is pretty good too.
On the other hand, tonight’s episode was manic even for Jamal. I saw him through the peep hole into his cell at the police station, and he was foaming at the mouth playing “pat a cake” with an imaginary friend. I’m not sure what happened, and have never seen him like that before, even after copius amounts of camel seed. Maybe there’s a rogue batch going around, or maybe the stuff he got out here was so much purer than the heavily cut shit he buys back in Croydon. But he brews his own, so I don’t think it could have been that, as that’s pure and he can usually take industrial amounts of all camel related products. Maybe years of borderline personality disorder finally caught up with him, and his medication gave up and admitted defeat. Maybe it was sunstroke. Maybe he’s just a crazy bastard and we shouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. Or maybe we should- that he has never been deported before now.
Whatever it was, one thing is for sure. Jamal is gone, and I pray to God he doesn’t try and smuggle himself back here before Friday.
Now as long as the twins behave themselves everything will be fine. Only three days left…