The Adventures of Almigo: Live from the Eldorado Flats: Adventures of Almigo, #2

By Al Shield

'Every stupid adventure has to start somewhere...' and for the radio announcer known as Almigo there have been plenty of strange places that have kicked off some very memorable and occasionally downright crazy moments. After not manging to knock himself unconcious through the first book, join him in his latest installment as he attempts to badly judge a karaoke competition, keep out of trouble with a horde of lunatic and occasionally deranged neighbours, tries not to destroy a half a million dollar sports car, attempts to keep his sanity with his radio callers and battles the elements with just a fridge box and some garbage bags for defense against the pouring rains.. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Shield
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386214809

Book preview

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

Dedication

The Adventures of Almigo: Live from the Eldorado Flats

INTRODUCTION

Now if you’re familiar with my first book (The Adventures of Almigo: One man, no plan and everything that happens along the way) then you’ll know that my time working in the radio industry has activated some kind of subconscious randomness magnet that lead me to experiencing some amazing adventures and in equal parts, some very stupid moments. (If you haven’t check it out online, it’s a fun read). I looked back at both the good and bad with fond memories because without either I wouldn’t have much to write about.

And so for this book I’ve focussed on the strange places I’ve ended up attracting randomness – from fancy clubs to truly terrible places to rent, from a multi-million dollar mansion to a car that should have been taken to the crushers a long long time ago and everywhere in between. It’s been a pretty big ride so far and after 17 years behind a microphone it’s not showing any signs of slowing down just yet.

Of course any adventure has to start somewhere and my radio one where the magnet got stuck in the permanently on position began in a very basic dwelling in the town of Hamilton known as the Eldorado Flats...

CHAPTER ONE – LIVE FROM THE ELDORADO FLATS

There are times when you hear something and you momentarily think ‘maybe this isn’t such a good idea and perhaps I shouldn’t go through with this’. I felt this exact way after the real estate agent handed me the keys to the property in King Street and remarked:

You know if you’re the handy DIY type we could work out something with all the painting and patching up a couple of things...

These are not the words that inspire any amount of confidence at all when you’re on the hunt for the first house you’ll ever rent after finally moving out of home. The very first place you’ll hang your hat while kicking off your career in the crazy industry known as radio. And yet for some reason I still walked the four blocks to the house to witness the unknown amazement first hand.

While the house looked okay from the outside (okay the garden could have done with a tidy up and blasting the front walls with a high pressure hose wouldn’t have hurt but I have seen worse) it was the first awkward steps down the hallway that really start to paint the picture that this was not a good idea. The floorboards had started to warp slightly and every single one of them made a noise when stepped on, like someone had attempted to make the world’s biggest and completely untuneable wooden xylophone . While that was pretty bad the main bedroom was worse as it took me a few moments to realise the floor was starting to slope down towards the back right. So if you had anything on wheels (like a bed or a tv unit) in there then it wouldn’t be long before you found it hanging out in the corner just minding its own business.

The kitchen was my favourite part as it had plenty of length for an entire catering team to come in and go crazy for your next crowd pleasing shindig...however there was hardly any width to it, giving you just enough room to turn around provided you hadn’t had breakfast that morning. I opened up the cupboards and a couple of doors came off. I opened up the oven and in a common trend in this house the door came off. After the third bit of convertible carpentry I gave up, walked back to the real estate agent, handed back the keys and returned to the list of available rentals.

The next one was $30 cheaper per week and while that should have raised mental alarms given the amazing value you get with a $100 per week house like the one in King Street, I still decided to give it the benefit of the doubt. So five blocks later I found myself face to face with the first unit out of a possible six at the Eldorado Flats.

How this block of the drabbest of drab units got name is anyone’s guess as that was quite simply the only exciting part of it. The walls were the cheapest brown available in bulk at your local discount paint store, the carpets that were possibly cream coloured once had turned a stone grey and the oven was of the best technology available...in 1972. But the hallway didn’t creak, the bedrooms didn’t lean and when I opened up a door in this place it actually stayed on the hinges which was a vast improvement. With such amazing features available I snapped it up, got mum to get my worldly belongings shipped up (which at the time amounted to a box of clothes, a single bed and a small beer fridge) and began the life of someone starting their radio career in a small rural town.

To compliment my truly boring surroundings I went out and lavishingly lashed out $100 on a three piece sofa set that looked to be made out of some truly rough looking curtains and the nice guy at the furniture shop threw in the world’s most unbalanced coffee table for a mere ten dollars more. I snapped some cheap pots and pans from the discount shop (note: Don’t do this, food stuck to these like a magnet) and scored a great deal from a co-worker on a Playstation that her husband didn’t use much anymore (she didn’t tell him she sold it to me until after the fact) making my flat a home...well a semi comfortable place to veg out and sober up at least.

It was about a month into my stay there that I finally realised that I was the sole resident of the flats and that the other five were vacant. Given that I didn’t have a car at the time and never used my car space for anything, it never occurred to me that I’d never seen anyone else parked there. Either this was a very quiet town or nobody else wanted to brave these poo brown flats. A few months later there was the one night I stumbled home at 3am to find 4 irritated police officers on the doorstep of flat number 2 where I got a flashlight right in the eyes and a very curt What are you doing here?

Er...I live in number 1.

Do you know the guy that lives here?

Eh? I didn’t know anyone had even moved in!

On your way then..

And 6 months later I still hadn’t seen hide nor hair of my supposed neighbour.

Being made of solid brown brick with very few moving parts nothing really went wrong with the flat save the kitchen drains which in possible protest to how much rice and pasta I’d eat during the week and washed down the sink, would block up on occasion. Pull the plug out and a sink full of water would sit then for four hours, draining out at roughly one millimetre per hour.  So I informed the real estate agent about the problem, they contacted the plumber, the plumber contacted me to get the low down and informed me that they’d send Mary the apprentice around to have a look.

Hands up if you just read that and thought I’d be getting a visit from a sexy plumber and the possible outline for a future Dear Penthouse letter? No, must have just been me. So you can imagine my surprise when a knock on the door interrupted my dream of saving the world again and I opened the door to a short guy with a tool kit and a big grin.

G’day mate, I’m Mary. I hear you’ve got a blocked drain?

I kid you not, that apparently was his name. Or at least a nickname that someone had given him once and he liked it so much he stuck with it, I never found out the actual story. He walked in and I explained that I’d put a full blast of Draino drain cleaner into the system but even that didn’t shift anything aside from a few grains of rice. So he plunged his bare arm into the sink (I guess plumbers are immune to the caustic effects of Draino or it’s just not as strong as I thought it was?) confirmed it was well and truly blocked and returned from the truck with what looked like a tea kettle with a metallic snake wound up in it which snaked through the pipe and unblocked everything quick smart.

(This however wasn’t the last time I crossed paths with Mary the plumber. Two years later at a random nightclub after quite a few bourbon and cokes I ended up in the long line in the men’s toilet and when I finally made It to the urinal the guy next to me started up a conversation:

G’day Almigo, remember me?

Sorry mate, I don’t.

The plumber mate...you know, Mary!

(Talk about some weird looks from everyone else in the men’s room. You could hear some very drunken brains behind us clicking away trying to comprehend that there was a bloke called Mary doing his business in front of them..)

Now here’s where things get very strange – when my lease was just about up for the year at the Eldorado Flats a co-worker suggested moving in together at the huge house on the hill (which is a completely different topic for another chapter) and so I took him up on the offer and let the real estate agency know that I wasn’t coming back for round two.  With a borrowed radio station car we moved 95% of my junk into the new place and kicked off even more adventures...

...only for some reason I still had a set of keys on me to flat number 1.

Part of me believed that it’d be