Camel Spiders

       In 1966, August, I was required to wander off to a place called Khormaksar. It is in Aden, which is part of the Southern Yemen.

       The very first thing you notice about Aden is that it is hot. It is very hot. We were experiencing temperatures of well over 55 degrees Centigrade in the shade.

       It is also humid.

      

       In the NAAFI (The ‘Navy, Army and Air Force’s Institute’, which is similar to the US Forces ‘PX’ facilities) we would go into the bar and order a beer. The beer came out of the pipes ice cold.

       We put the beer on the table and mopped ourselves down with the ubiquitous ‘sweat-rag’—a piece of ‘Terry’ towelling, to get most of the wetness off our bodies.

        By the time we had done that, the condensation from the sides of the glass of beer was running off the table and the beer was starting to get warm.

      

       Aden was the first place I ever came across ‘Fanta’ fizzy orange and, boy, was it both fizzy and ‘orangey’. A guy on a bicycle with a box full of dry ice on the back would sell it outside the camp gates.

       A chap called Abdul looked after our room. He was a star fellow in every respect. He spoke fluent English, was extraordinarily efficient and made the most wonderful cheese and tomato crispy buns ever. His coffee was also superb.

       Abdul invited me to his house one night. He said that his wife would be happy to make dinner for me. He lived in Maala—also known as ‘Bomb Alley’, so I demurred at first but he assured me I should be fine because I was with him.

       The reason he asked me specifically was because I had just come back from three months in Zambia and a few weeks in Kenya so I was extremely tanned. I also have a large nose so Abdul insisted I was part Arab!

       His beautiful wife made a wonderful dinner. We sat on the floor and ate it using our fingers. A new experience for me.

       After dinner there was the usual chat and then, as I was leaving, she gave me a brown paper bag with a treat in it.

       The treat was some homemade crisps.

       Now. Here is the trick of it.

       I have asked top chefs how this could be done and none can answer me. They all say it is impossible but I counter this by saying that I have eaten them and they were delicious.

       What’s the problem? Crisps are crisps. Well, not quite.

       These were made from thin slices of cucumber. They looked like wrinkled up cucumber and they tasted like cucumber so, I suppose, that they were made of cucumber.

       Of course, nowadays, everything is on the web so here is the answer--or, at least, one of them:

http://thecrunchychronicles.com/cucumber-chips/

       Soon after leaving Aden I could feel a lump on my leg. It was about a third the way up from the knee on the outer thigh. Occasionally it would itch but the occasions became closer together.

       Twenty years later it was sore. It still itched but scratching it was a dubious pleasure because of the pain. Fearing cancer I went to see the Medical Officer.

       He referred me to Rinteln Army Hospital—I was serving in Germany at the time.

       An Army surgeon called Lieutenant Commander Stephenson had a look, grinned and asked me if I had been to the Middle East—specifically Yemen. I admitted I had.

       He instructed me to lie down and told his Sergeant to get a local anaesthetic.

He was still grinning when he cut into me and then said, “Give me a No.15, Sarge. This is a big bugger!”

       Eventually he pulled out this large plug of tissue, showed it to me and announced that I had been incubating a nest of Camel Spiders but they had died and the nest was now rotting.

       I still have a hole in my leg now.

       There are some unkind people who ask if the nest had, perhaps, been in my head…