Olde Worlde

I'm writing this from my fireworks shop in Worcester, where I arrived a few hours ago after travelling half way round the world, which never seems as big as people would have you think.

It seems particularly dinky right now because the Bummie bloke fitting the place out just told me he's got a friend in Bogota. "Ar. Me wife's mate. Bin there fuh years, she has. Er's a teacher." I knew exactly who he meant; I met Sarah last week at the Bogota Beer Company and she gave me lots of good advice about getting jobs at posh schools.

The last week or so in Bogota flew by in a blur of souvenir hunting, packing and checking I had my passport again and again and again. There's something about impending air travel that turns me into a compulsive obsessive. I get to within a whisker of the hand-washing and brick-counting stage.

John and Nicole had some terrible luck in the last week when they were burgled by a Colombian bloke who they thought was their friend. It seems he must have made copies of their keys at some point and then returned with an accomplice to steal everything they could carry, including a substantial amount of cash saved up by Nicole and carefully hidden in the flat. The Australians arrived home soon after the crime with Marco, a Maltese bloke who's teaching in Bogota to earn enough cash to finish building a house on the Caribbean coast. Just as they were noticing that things were missing a neighbour came to tell them that two suspicious-looking chaps had called when they were out. "One of them looked gay. He had an earring and a silly hat," she said. They instantly recognised the description as a bloke called Mosh, who had been going to their house quite regularly of late. Marco flared up. "Come on! We have to go to the pawnshop district. That's where we find the bastards!"

So off they went and, incredibly, they found the accomplice in the process of selling their DVD player. A fairly mild beating persuaded him to turn informant. "It wasn't me, it was Mosh, he's over the road in that brothel." Marco stormed in and extricated the thief from the arms of a fat and elderly hooker, and threw him down the stairs into the street. Marco (one of the mildest-mannered, relaxed people I've ever met) then set about him with John's belt, which eventually broke over the unfortunate's back. Mosh's screamed protestations of innocence and Marco's barrage of Maltese invective eventually drew the attentions of the local constabulary, who after hearing the story took Mosh away to prison. Then the hookers emerged from their various vantage points to swoon over Marco and offer him kisses, which he was loathe to accept given what, presumably, they had recently been doing with Mosh.

The footnote to the story is that after only a few hours Mosh paid his way out of prison with about fifty quid of Nicole's money. She and John were tipped off by a sympathiser at the police station when he was leaving, so they were able to have a taxi waiting at the prison gates to follow his movements. It turns out that he's headed up to Taganga, which, unluckily for him, is where Marco is building his house. He followed him up there the next day. "I needed to go up there anyway, and if I find him I will drown the bastard," he explained.

I had quite a treat on my last night in Bogota when, along with Dave, Margarita and Edward, I was invited to a posh restaurant to test a new creole menu. The place is run by an American chap called Dave, the scion of a long-established ranching family, who've been there long enough to bag the letter A as their cattle brand. The food was exceptional, but as I'd been invited in my culinary consultant capacity I tried to nit-picked for all I was worth. But after several courses and a couple of bottles of wine I was reduced to making appreciative noises and gesturing like an Italian chef describing his mother's way with tagiatelle.

And so to Miami, and the sudden shock of seeing fat people again. There are some porkers in Bogota, but these are usually big-bellied narco types whose lard rests on frames of murderous muscle. So one pretends not to notice. But at Miami airport you see some real wobbling waddlers. Colossal. The sort who have to throw their arms out from side to side when they walk, the better to shift their bulk. I saw one chap who, despite being unfathomably huge, was obviously some sort of courier. I wonder if the customer had a choice between express, standard or fat delivery? "Our big-boned service is much cheaper, sir, but it takes longer - particularly if there are stairs or bakeries along the way."

With such thoughts I passed a pleasant few hours before the uneventful flight to London. As on my last night in Blighty my friend Ian was good enough to put me up for the night. After a dash round Marks and Spencers I was soon salivating over a big plate of bangers and mash - you just can't get a decent sausage when you leave these shores, whatever the Canadians say. After catching up with the news I crashed out until the following afternoon when I woke up panicking that I'd left it too late to get a train to Pershore, and my brother's fortieth birthday party in the Talbot.

As it turned out I got to Paddington just in time for a train that disgorged me right on cue to wander into the pub as the party was in full swing. I should point out that nobody apart from Dave, my brother, had any idea I was coming home. The disbelieving double takes, particularly from my mum and dad, were like something out of an old Laurel and Hardy film.

A few days have passed since then, and I now find myself sitting in the back of a semi-derelict tyre-fitting workshop facing a month of paid incarceration.

The transition to work happened rather suddenly when my boss called at lunchtime. "George, I need you to get to Worcester and sort out the shop licence, right now." I reminded him that I didn't have a car at the moment. "Get an effing taxi - I paid for you to fly half way round the bloody world, I should be able to cover that." He explained that a woman who worked for him had been in and out of the licensing department getting fobbed off every time. Then he said something that I'll never forget. "It's got me right pissed off. I said to her, 'for eff's sake, I think you're just bloody incompetent, it can't be that bleeding difficult, for God's sake!' But you see George, she's a nun and she's lived a very sheltered life."

I'm still chuckling about that now as I write this and face a night sleeping in a cold, oily shed on a mattress made out of flattened firework boxes.

Fireworks

I've always had a knack for indecision, but since getting back from Choco this has been elevated to exhibition standard. Should I buy a house in Bogota? What part of the city is best? Should I buy a house or a flat? What should I do with it once I've got it? Should I get a teaching job at one of the eighty universities here? Or private students? Journalism? Spanish classes? More travelling? What about Christmas? Wassailing?

I'd more or less decided that I was going to hurry up and buy something and then go home for a few weeks of midwinter festivity when I got an unexpected call that changed everything.

It was my former boss, the geezer who opens the dodgy firework shops that spring up all over England on autumn mornings, like so many mushrooms. God only knows how he got the number for the penthouse. "Are you going to work for me this year, or what?" It took me a few moments to work out who I was talking to. "Goodness, well, I don't know. Hello! I've been thinking about it, of course, but, er, no, you see, I'm in Bogota. Colombia. South America. The other side of the world." His response blew away any remaining cobwebs of indecision. "I want you there as soon as possible. Book a flight. I'll pay for it. See you next week." It was said as casually as someone offering to pay for a short taxi ride.

So it is that I find myself preparing for a flight next Wednesday, with a return ticket booked for the middle of November. Then I can come back to Bogota and get back down to some really serious dithering about what to do next.

To be fair to myself, though, I should say that I've been fannying about more than arsing around. My dithering has been of a reasonably proactive nature, and has involved a lot of walking around the city exploring new neighbourhoods. I've found corners of Bogota that look like chunks Oxford that have somehow been transported across the Atlantic. Lovely brick-built houses with leaded lights, tall gables and sandstone lintels around the doors and windows. You can almost taste the cucumber sandwiches and hear the click of croquet balls. The quality of the architecture is one of the most surprising things about Colombia. Le Corbusier built a lot in Bogota, and the Bauhaus architects from Germany set up a school here. But, for me, the best areas are those built in 'estilo Ingles'. There does seem to be an appetite for all things English among Colombia's rich. You often see businessmen in the financial area, not in sober grey suits, but sporting ensembles of tweed, corduroy and Shetland wool. Club-style ties and brown leather brogues complete the look, which is usually carried off with aplomb.

Despite these appearances, the business style here couldn't be more different than at home. A good case in point is that of estate agents. At home you would never dare give one of these people your phone number, for fear of constant harrassment. "Hello? Mr Martin? I've got another place you might be interested in. It's not quite where you were looking, it's in the Outer Hebrides, and it's not so much a house as a fire-damaged abattoir. But I thought you might want to take a look . . . " But here it's a different story. "Hola," I say. "I'm a silly gringo with more money than sense and I'd like you to sell me a house." Ker-ching, you'd think they'd think, but oh no. "Oh, er, right. We'll call you back tomorrow." And, of course, they never do.

I've also been teaching a few private classes recently, and it's felt nice to have a bit of money coming in. On top of this I've been doing rather well with poker, which has become a bit of a weekly tradition. We only play for a tiny amount of cash, but a half-decent win can cover a good night out - with enough left, as my grandad would say about his two-and-six, for a bag of chips on the way home.