'Ello! What's This Ear?

I have a vivid memory of falling. It seemed to be a very long drop that was, it turns out, about seven feet—or a little over two metres. Not so far, then.

It was traumatic, though.

The circumstances were very simple, as these things tend to be.

I was drunk. Very drunk. It was a rare evening when we had time to visit the various watering holes around the town of Ndola in Zambia. Visit them we did.

Error number one.

We sampled a large quantity of the local brew with the idea that we should proceed on to the ‘Railton Club’ afterwards for a final ‘top-up’.

The ‘Railton Club’ was the haunt of railway workers, as you might suppose. It was well attended and we, as members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces were honorary members.

We liked the ‘Railton Club. It was convivial.

I never made it that night.

Having filled myself with beers I decided that I should not be able to make the walk up to the Club and would be best served by returning to our billet in the Adult Education Centre where we were accommodated in one of the classrooms.

Immediately in front of this centre was a large grassy area. Rather than walk all the way up to the paved path that led into our accommodation I decided that it would be far wiser to cut across the grass to the gate.

This was the second error.

Towards the fence there was a shadow across the grass that I took to be just a slight depression whose darkness was amplified by the dim street lighting.

Into this slight depression I stepped.

Error number three.

It was a monsoon drain with an approximate depth of, as mentioned above, around seven feet.

I have, thereafter, a vague recollection of hands helping me out of the drain but the main memory does not really begin again until I was in the clinic with the Medical Officer swabbing blood off me.

There were two local gentlemen hovering around with anxious looks on their faces. The story is that they had seen me fall into the drain but had not seen me emerge. They came over and lifted me bodily out and took me into the clinic.

I tried to reward them with large currency notes but they said that they should be in terrible trouble if they were seen with money; people would ask from whence it came to the point where arrest was a distinct possibility.

Denying any recompense other than my sincere thanks, they departed, leaving the M.O. to clean me up.

As far as I could make out, the contents of my wallet were intact. A considerable sum since I had been saving all my pay and allowances to get married—saving it in cash, moreover! No bank accounts in those days, you know.

The M.O. said that my jacket—a wonderful blue Moygashel linen from the Ulster Weavers, was very likely ruined. It was soaked in blood.

Attempts to remove the blood by immersing in cold water over several days failed miserably.

After working for a while on my head, the M.O. declared that the only injury he could find—given that the rest of me was still working, were two small holes in my ear.

“Something,” he told me, “has bitten you.”

What that ‘something’ was we never discovered but it still hurts today in cold weather.

Fortunately Malaysia is rarely cold enough to induce such symptoms.

I did return to the monsoon drain the next morning to see if anything had died in there as a result of dieting on my blood…