Across the Darien and other bonkers escapades

By Andy Kirkwood

Laugh-out-loud funny. A must-read for anyone seeking adventure, spiritual inspiration or a push toward living life.

Owen Wilkinson - G.V.S.R.

Complete and utter tosh. Good only for start

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781962313674

Book preview

Preface

Five years before my mother passed on, she gave me a paperback for Christmas. The cover didn’t appear too promising; a photograph of an elderly person standing on a rocky hilltop, but it was a gift from my mum, so I had a go at it. It was a travelling book of sorts, about a couple walking from Scotland to the Med, but they didn’t do it in one haul. They did bits which best suited the weather patterns, which I couldn’t help thinking was cheating. I’m not going to diss it, every piece of writing has its merits and they had put a lot of work into researching the places they visited, so I will just politely say that it wasn’t for me. I soldiered on for seventy pages before giving up. When I next saw my mother, I apologetically told her that I just couldn’t keep going with her book as I found it so, so boring, and she replied with a twinkle in her eye and an air of exasperation and, bearing in mind here that she was a very proper lady who rarely swore, exclaimed ‘Exactly! And they got that into print! Now will you please start bloody writing!’

Ellen Margot Amy Cleverdon Kirkwood – this book is for you.

Dinner party. Port Stanley. Ontario, Canada. June 2011, ten-ish, seven bottles of red and two spliffs to the good. The laughter stops for a moment. Hostess, ‘are you sure you aren’t making all this up?’ Me, airily with faux Wilde pomposity, ‘My dear, some people have led such amazing lives they don’t have to make anything up’.

Life. Everyone has a different take on it. Do you think we are here

by lucky chance? As a test, or maybe an opportunity to prove oneself?

How about a challenge, or even a punishment? Having accidentally thrown myself out there and survived, I believe that I have found my answer, and do not consider it to be any of those... Read on, and maybe, just maybe, you shall discover the reason for yourself.

Prologue

‘There are three things I look for in a girl. One – she should be human, two – she should be female, and three - she should be alive. But now I come to think of it, two out of three normally does it.’

- Andy Kirkwood

It is 1988 and I am just turned thirty, on Koh Samui in Thailand, and I’m loving it. It is five years before the island got trashed by the greedy Thai’s, and so it is still mostly an undeveloped stunning tropical paradise with untouched coconut groves, pristine white sand beaches, turquoise water and vibrant, thriving tropical reefs. It is hot, I am salty, and the sun is going down. I have arranged to meet new friends for a drink later that evening and am looking forward to it. The Scots, Jason and Eddy form the core of that crew. I had met them at Phillip Chews Guest House in Singapore a few weeks previously and, as I already had a flight booked and paid for to Bangkok as part of my round the world escapade, we had agreed to independently meet again at Bungalow Bills located in the centre of Lamai Beach.

‘Hard man Jason’, tough, focused, always physical and planning to join the army as soon as he had got his travelling year out of the way, and ‘Ill Eddy’ with his off-white, almost blue complexion, slim frame and wheezy Scottish voice, that had people regularly asking him if he was quite well, who’s easy relaxed manner was almost the polar-opposite of Jasons, were great travel-mates. Eddie was funny as you like, his simple catch phrases - ‘snaps another beauty!’ (every time he one handedly whisked out and clicked his cheap plastic camera), and ‘well why not lads? We’re on our holidays after all’ (every time a drink was offered) were, well, pretty catching.

Recently arrived on the scene was Mark, a very cool English guy with incredible trademark natural peroxide blonde hair. I hadn’t been too sure of him at first, fearing that his laid back, hammock lying-in, spliff smoking persona might have been a cover for an overbearing alpha-wolf, but it wasn’t. No hang ups, no agendas, just a lot of fun to be had and happy memories to be made.

‘Man! I get so sick of just whacking on the same old stuff when I go out in the evenings,’ I think to myself. No-one dressed up. Just shorts and tees every day - which was easy and fine, but sometimes I like to feel like I am going out-out. ‘And we are…so…’

Looking through my pack for the millionth time on my round the world trip I come across my trusty and very comment-able burgundy leather trousers. They had been bought in London at the height of the New Romantic era, when anything in men’s clothes goes, went, whatever, and I absolutely loved those trousers for travelling. They were warm in the cold, cool when hot, never needing ironing and instantly cleanable with toilet tissue and a teaspoonful of spit. Classless and individual, they could be worn to the fanciest hotel or the roughest dive. But now what to wear with them? Well, I have one clean cream tee shirt, that will do, and on my feet it’s either nothing or…inappropriately, my hallmark travelling shoes, the ‘white patents.’ These shoes were brilliant because they never failed to spark a conversation or at least raise an eyebrow. Made of gleaming white patent leather with black soles, stitching and laces, they looked like they had just danced right off a stage.

On my arrival in Bangkok, I was amused to see the great heaps of hideous worn sandals, flip fops and ‘Jesus boots’ left by order at the entrance of every guest house. I enjoyed parking the ‘white patents’ neatly on the top of the vile heap, and it never failed to amuse me seeing them looking as out of place as Snow White at a biker convention. I had always thought to take a picture and use it on the front cover of that travelling book that I was inevitably going to write.

So here I am. In high spirits, striding down the beach in the last glow of the setting sun, all washed and scrubbed and as dressed up as I have managed at any time in the last half year. I reach the simple restaurant and the guys are inside chatting to a couple of Kiwi girls. As I enter, I see the customary pile of discarded sandals, so dutifully remove my shoes and neatly perch the white patents on the top of the pile before going in to join the fun.

We have a great time. Lots of Mekhong whisky, rough as paint stripper but cheap as beer and just do-able with plenty of ice and Coke, and a hot jungle curry Thai dish are consumed before we decide to go out to the deck to look at the stars and smoke a spliff or two. As we pass the pile of shoes, I proudly point out the white patents, exclaiming ‘look at those little darlings! Sitting there taking it nice and easy, glinting in the starlight!’ And everyone has a bit of a laugh.

We end up sitting out there for quite a while and are getting steadily more relaxed, so I try to rally everyone by suggesting we move on to a cool little bar at the end of the beach below the grandfather rock, so named because of its gnarly erect penis shape. We all decide we want to go except Mark who says, ‘hold on, let’s not leave just yet’. ‘Why not?’ I ask him, to which he replies in complete innocence, ‘let’s wait a moment, because I just have to find out who the wanker is who owns those shoes!’

Chapter 1

The Universe conspires

If work were so great, how come the rich don’t keep it all for themselves?

– my father, James Kirkwood

I was twenty-nine and busily beavering away in the computer industry, along with a plate glassed office of other sleepwalking robots. I can be quite blasé about it all now, with the benefit of hindsight, and having survived what I thought then to be the end of my world, but without me doing a thing I unexpectedly found myself in a fight. A change that I didn’t choose was being thrust upon me, and at that time I was so entrenched in my job I didn’t want to consider tearing up my progress to date and starting again. Leaving the comfort zone that I had incrementally and painstakingly created for myself was certainly not on my wish list as I had no concept of evolving, or grasping any other opportunity that was presenting itself.

Everything in my life was pretty good. It was nineteen eighty-seven and I was in my prime. Tall at six-three and fortunate to have inherited a touch of my mothers’ Danish good looks, I was fit, educated, confident and gregarious with lots of great friends. Although estranged from his mother I had a young son, Kirk, who was healthy, happy and full of character. My hair was a little too long for my responsible job, and I was wearing unconventional suits that I had made to measure at ‘Robot’ (ironically) in London’s West End.

I had my own house that I shared with friends, a great job with a good salary, plenty of holidays, loads of perks and a fab car that I didn’t have to buy, insure or tax. I could set my own schedules, had my own desk, unlimited filter coffee, a secretary, generous expense account, regular trips abroad on the company, health insurance, my petrol paid and free meals, all of which added up to what most people would regard as a pretty nice way to make a living. Being stuck in the centre of an office under fluorescent lights, where I was unable to see the outside world, didn’t overly bother me, unless I went out for a sandwich in a raincoat only to find that the sun had come out two hours ago.

But even then, I knew in my heart that something wasn’t right, like the smiling Facebook pictures of someone on anti-depressants. It was easy to carry on filling my days with busy trivia as a kind of anesthetic that masked the quiet desperation that lay below the surface, but in moments of solitude I knew that something was amiss. I wasn’t unhappy, but I was unsettled, lacking inner peace and contentment, and was wrestling with a growing nagging feeling that I might be missing out on life’s great adventure, as if I were snoozing in a comfortable bed with the curtains closed on a lovely sunny day.

I was doing everything I had been taught to do in school. I was playing the game of life and I was winning. Wasn’t I? Certainly, compared to some of the awful jobs out there, I had it easy. I was financially successful, and that, I had been told, was supposed to be the main ingredient of happiness. The road to fulfilment obtained through a buoyant bank account and having escaped the prospect of ever having to do any real physical work. Real work, to my mind, is not about selling computer equipment as I was, it is doing something physically hard, monotonous and financially hand to mouth. Digging ditches or carrying bricks, that is real work. Getting stressed about hitting your sales target, while attracting a six-figure salary, is not real work. If you do this and don’t agree, then I suggest you spend a day or two digging and see if that helps you work it out.

But even in my most contented moments I had looked at the guys around me, who were largely ten years my senior, and none of them looked particularly fulfilled. Yes, they had all the things I owned times two, but their lives had become all about their ‘toys’: their holidays, their new company cars, their drinking capacity, the vast amounts of money they made and their latest scam. They ogled the secretaries at the photocopier and joked loudly about what they would like to do to them. On the odd occasion, when you might see them out with their wives, their personalities were unrecognisable, which meant they were living a lie, either to their wives, their colleagues or themselves. Or maybe all three.

So, deep down inside I quietly knew that the course of my life would need to change at some point, but that would mean taking everything I had been taught in school about success and stability and putting it in storage while starting again with a clean page, and I wasn’t ready for that right now. More than that, it would mean taking a chance. Truthfully, I don’t think I ever would have had the courage to have taken a leap of faith without what now appears to have been a healthy dose of divine intervention.

Who in their right mind would choose to tear themselves away from an enviable job and all the financial security and safety wires that it provides, simply to throw themselves out into the unknown world for no good reason? My father, James, had helped me keep a level head about my job, referring to the perks it provided as ‘golden handcuffs’ as, while they put me in bondage, they were too pretty and valuable for me to want to escape from them.

I had no idea what would become of me if I lost control and allowed myself to be taken to an unknown place. When the rumour of change rumbled, fear gripped me, because the one thing I lacked was faith that everything is going to be alright, better than alright even, in the end, if I were to just allow myself to relax and simply go along with the plans the Universe had in store for me.

As I would never have been able to make the jump on my own, the Universe, without warning, conspired for Gary the Git to walk into my life to give me the vital push. Gary was a ‘never was.’ Oh, he talked a good game alright, but he was one of those swaggering guys on whom the shit never stuck. He was overweight, untalented, had a poor track record and was a liability in a pressured sales situation. He was Image-Pixels’s newly appointed Director of Sales, and my new boss.

I am sure you are wondering how Gary got this great job if he was so mediocre at what he did, so I shall put you out of your misery. It so happened that Gary had one thing up his sleeve that none of the rest of us had. In a previous life, well, company anyway, he used to be the manager of our now UK country manager, Steven, who was now the top dog. So, Steven had appointed Gary for no other reason than to massage his ego, as this situation represented a complete role reversal. That was it. All he brought to the table was the opportunity for an egotistical man to feel even better about himself.

Gary hated me with a passion. He didn’t let me know this of course. Oh no, he smiled to my face and for months I mistook him for a friend and ally. It is a funny thing that, when you don’t have agendas or aren’t wracked with insecurities yourself, it takes a long time to realise that someone around you carries that burden. I feel kind of sorry for Gary because it must have been painful to have that amount of jealousy gnawing at his mind like a maggot in an apple. I never did really get why he had such a disliking for me, other than maybe because I was funnier than he was, more successful than he was, younger than he was, more handsome and fitter than he was, getting a lot more women attention than he was and was much better in bed than he was. Well, that was what his wife told me anyway. (Actually, I made the last bit up, but it makes me feel so much better about the injustice of it all.) I just think hated me because I was something he had never been, or ever would be, and that was enough to make him feel threatened, and begin the plotting of my downfall.

His first throw of the dice was to promote me. That, you may think, as I did at the time, would be a good thing, and I was stupid enough to celebrate my new position, having no clue that there was an ulterior motive lurking in the wings. You see, I was good at what I did, and had a five-year track record of that, so he couldn’t just fire me. It wouldn’t look good on him if the best sales guy in the UK suddenly became incompetent and that that event had coincided with his arrival. So the promotion to European Distributor Manager was bestowed upon me to take me out of my comfortably proven arena, and into an untested one, where he could start undermining me, dismantling my credibility piece by painful piece. I was thrilled with the sudden promotion, with a dozen companies in as many countries to liaise with and support, and was naively excited by the travel opportunities and financial rewards that this presented.

Flying to Europe several times a week, going to shows and being wined and dined at every opportunity is, I think we can all agree, a pretty nice way to make a living, and at the beginning I loved it. I enjoyed the travel, the meeting of new people, and I was good at it. I had come to sales from an engineering background and so knew the products inside out, so when I visited my distributors I would often find myself taking off my jacket and fixing problems with their equipment right then and there. I liked the attention that came with doing presentations, being on exhibition stands and I enjoyed the whole nomadic, expenses paid hotel lifestyle. It was great! Gary had to work pretty hard to put his spanner in the works as my distributors liked me too, but in my innocence and ignorance I was a lamb to the slaughter.

This next part is painful to recount, but Gary played out his dastardly war on me, like sending me to exhibitions to support my distributors, but as soon as I arrived in, say, Cannes, he would ring me with Steven in attendance telling me that I shouldn’t be there, and getting my secretary to book me a 5.30 am flight home. If I were to voice any objection at such a waste of effort or the early start, he would immediately ask me if I really wanted the job and whether I ought to think about handing in my notice.

He sent me on missions that he hoped I would fail at, and even if I pulled off a coup, reversing a companies’ decision to move to an alternative supplier, returning instead with a significant order, he would reward me with a written warning for coming into the office an hour late the following day, despite me having worked past midnight saving the situation the night before.

Anything he could think of to make me look incompetent or unprofessional he threw at me, and I took it all on the chin. I had been with the company for five years, and was one of the four founding members of the U.K. office, and so to be suddenly in such trouble was mystifying. I simply didn’t understand what was going on, and kept trying harder to please, like a whipped dog seeking approval.

So I worked harder and longer but still got nowhere, and slowly I found myself slipping into a terrible dark place. I had no idea that Gary was my enemy, and continued to put his seemingly poor decisions down to innocent incompetence. My naivety, in hindsight, was laughable. The stress started building. I was off my food, on the booze and not sleeping nights with my mind filled with doubt and insecurity. It was only when I found myself in a karate class with tears running down my face with the anger and frustration of it all that it dawned on me that something was very wrong, and that I had to take action before I was destroyed.

I felt like I was being forced to walk the plank with a knife at my back and I had no idea how deep or cold the water was or, terrifyingly, whether I could even swim. So, when I started getting pushed, I chose to hang on, with arms and legs spread wide and claws out, like a cartoon cat gripping a doorframe, fighting not to be sucked into space.

I first appealed to the Americans. After all, they owned the company and I had been making them a lot of money for quite a long time, and Gary had no track record at all. Surely they would see what was right and what was wrong? It soon became apparent, however, that my maneuvering was as hopeless as trying to win a game of chess, that has come down to the last few pieces, with my pawn battling Gary’s rook. He simply had more power than I, and could easily counter me, negating any move I tried to make. The crunch came when Gary hired a human resources manager, a nasty slimy, squit of a man, who proceeded to write a thirty-page manual outlining employee behavior, with everyone in the company expected to sign it, so that it wasn’t obvious that it was aimed at me alone.

Amongst its long list of instantly dismissible offences were swearing, drinking during office hours (including lunch time, which until now we all did) and being late, all of which sounded pretty reasonable, if applied with wisdom and proportion. Suddenly, even my customary mid-day bottle of Smirnoff, followed by me telling everyone to go fuck themselves if they pointed out that I that was an hour late coming back to the office, was now considered unacceptable! Outrageous! Of course, I never did those things but, as the application of such penalties was at the discretion of my manager, while it may have looked like everyone was included in the guidelines to provide the smoke screen, it was only me he was after.

All I would have to do would be to trip and release an expletive and I could be fired, so at last I realised that my time was up and that I would need to start working on an escape plan. I had never heard of constructed dismissal, and I suppose now he wouldn’t have got away with it, but that was then, and Gary had a loaded gun levelled at my head with the safety catch off.

Chapter 2

Guided by ‘Angel’ grace

Providence is wiser than you, and you may be confident it has suited all things better to your eternal good than you could do had you been left to your own option. 

— John Flavel,

I was miserable, despairing and incensed by how wronged I had been, and at a loss as to what to do about it, when my ‘Angel’ decided it was time to lend a hand.

Now don’t panic, as the next four paragraphs are not typical of the rest of the book but, in case you are puzzled by who this mystery ‘Angel’ is, I feel I should elaborate. Over the course of the next two years, I started to notice receiving inspiration and guidance like it was on a conveyor belt, with much of it appearing like magic at critical times. Now we normally consider fortunate events that unexpectedly happen to us to be a random coincidence or lucky chance, but for me, at that time, it appeared to be way more solid and reliable than that.

At the risk of digressing a little further, those studying ‘Natural Law’ suggest that the Universe interacts with us on many levels if we open our minds. I personally prefer the much-popularised concept of a ‘Guardian Angel’ who pulls the strings. I call mine Aurora, imagining her to be tall, blonde and very attractive; think Lady Galadriel from Lord of the Rings but with much larger breasts and no knickers. Now I know it sounds whacky, but it fits comfortably with me that it is she who keeps half and eye on me and processes my wishes into clues as to how to turn my dreams into reality. The mental image of her kindly smiling at my incompetent foolishness, while getting ready to interject, can be very comforting when things start getting seriously out of hand.

So, when I miss that bus, or don’t get that job I remind myself that this may well be for the best, for I, unlike Aurora, cannot see all ends. I may think ‘that house’ represents my dreams coming true, but I do not know, for example, that, should I buy it, one day I shall slip from the roof while fixing a leak. By this benchmark none of us should ever grieve events that go against our will, but should have faith that something better is probably around a corner or two.

At this time, however, I was oblivious to the concept of spiritual assistance being available. Up to this point things had been going pretty well, so I simply hadn’t been in need of any extra help. It took this period of adversity and desperation for me to seek help and subsequently recognise the Universe responding to my plight by not only providing me with a solution, but with ten times more than I could have possibly hoped for.

Anyway, back to the story, soooo, with timely intervention, Aurora stepped in and presented me with two miraculous visions. And where exactly did these epiphanies appear before me that were to change my life forever? In the mystical pages of two consecutive British Airways in flight magazines. Now how much money would I have bet against that?

I picked up the first magazine on a flight to Paris to find it contained an article with a cartooned front-page picture that immediately caught my attention. It was of two guys coming from a lift into an office. The leading guy was a Tarzan-like figure in a loin cloth, with flowing blonde hair and a physique. He was confidently striding out with a broad grin, thrusting a huge case marked ‘purchase orders’ in front of him. The other was a caricature of a small timid businessman in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat, insignificantly standing in the back of the lift compartment, anxiously clutching his tiny purchase order case with both hands.

The headline read ‘Are you a victimised over achiever?’ I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was exactly how I saw myself. Well, not as Tarzan exactly, but I was definitely a ‘V. O. A.’ and this article could only mean one thing; there must be a whole load of people in my situation out there! I wasn’t the only one! In fact, there must have been so many of us that it warranted filling up three pages in a B.A. magazine about our common problem! It was like I was suddenly part of some exclusive club.

If all that had happened now, I would have been tempted to set up a web site with the URL VictimisedOverAchievers.com and gather us together to offer advice, support and solidarity. Clearly thousands of us were out there suffering sleepless nights and miserable lives just because we were good at what we did! The penny dropped. None of this was my fault. I wasn’t bringing this upon myself. It was just a normal petty office situation brought about by other people’s insecurities and jealousy. Contented and relieved by this revelation I slept so soundly that night I can hardly tell you.

Only a few days later, on my very next flight going to Milan, I looked for the article again but was disappointed to discover that it had gone, as a new magazine had been published and had taken its place. I was gutted not to get a chance to re-read my enlightening Tarzan article, but this time an even better headline leapt out at me. It simply asked, ‘Have you ever thought about buying an ‘Around the World Ticket?’’ ‘Around the World Ticket?’ I had never heard of such a thing, but felt a little rush of adrenaline as I avidly read of hotel rooms in Tahiti where one could see under the ocean from your sunken window as you lay in bed, of doing Route 66 in the USA on a Harley, of dining in Singapore’s Raffles Hotel and of skydiving in New Zealand, none of which, incidentally, I have ever done as, of course, they were selling the idea to executives who might find the unheard of luxury of four weeks holiday on their hands. But suddenly, with an explosion of joy and excitement, I realised that this was exactly what I should be doing. Right then and there, I decided I would quit my miserable job and buy one of these tickets and go travelling.

Why the Hell was I banging my head against the brick wall that was Gary the Git? It was killing me, quite literally, and it was fear that kept me there. Fear of the unknown, fear of stepping through that door, of losing. It suddenly dawned on me that my view of the world was like looking out from the inside of a house through the letterbox. A view from a peephole was all I had been basing my reality on, and this was preventing me from appreciating the bigger picture and seeing this now obvious escape route. Suddenly, with those blinkers torn away, the new three-sixty-degree vista offered impossibly giddying opportunities that made my head rush.

Revealed for what it was, I now hated my job. I despised the whole thing that the company stood for, and what it had been doing to me. I was dismayed at the space I found myself in and I had no intention of going a step closer to the place of the living dead that I had been sleepwalking toward. I now knew that something better was calling me, but I needed to make the most of my new secret mission. Oh yes, there was a whole load of plotting to do to put my personal ‘Great Escape’ plan into action.

Chapter 3

The ‘Great Escape’

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

William S. Burroughs

Now, nothing could be more tedious than talking about 30-year-old computer equipment but, as this is a key to the events, I feel I should briefly explain. Image-pixels was a computer graphics company. The chip that instantly paints the pictures on the screen of your laptop or phone was what they were trying to achieve, but in eighty-seven their best machine was slow, taking several seconds to load a page, huge, the size of a washing machine, and expensive, at around fifty k pounds a pop. Laughably, that offering made them a world leader in the graphics industry at that time. Now, it so happened that the company had brought out some fancy new box that was supposed to do all sorts of things, including mimicking a product made by our biggest competitor. The slight problem with this new offering was that it didn’t work, hadn‘t worked for nearly a year and, frankly, didn’t look like working any time soon.

In essence our company had taken on the impossible task of copying a product that hadn’t been designed, but had evolved. To expand, it wasn’t like copying the plans for a nice new house with logical drawings of plumbing and electrics. It was more comparable to working out the goings on in some rambling heap that had been botched, patched and added to over generations, so nothing worked quite like the way you thought it should. If some guy in the Ministry of Defence, five years previously, had hung an order of twenty machines in front of our competitor, but for some reason wanted a modification so that a hash followed by a square bracket meant that the system went into dotted line mode, then that was what he got, and there were hundreds, if not thousands of these little quirks to discover. The net result was that we would plug our machine in to run the software and it would be fine for ten seconds, before coming across something it didn’t expect, or understand, and going haywire.

Updates to the firmware flowed from head office in San Jose, California like rainwater down a gutter and so I was surprised when I contacted the Americans to ask how the latest updates were progressing and El Fixo, the dubiously talented Mexican techy go-between, buoyantly told me ‘it’s a real solid version of the firmware that’s out now. We got over a hundred machines running at Nasa. It now runs sixty-three major packages without any problems at all.’ Somehow I doubted El Fixo’s version of events, but I asked him to put all of this on a telex (no faxes at that time) and to my surprise, he did. Step one complete.

Next, I went to Gary’s office and told him that he had won. I told him that all I wanted to do was hit my target and get out, but I wanted him to leave me alone to achieve this. I told him this had to be a good thing for him, as he had got what he wanted and he would also get a bonus from me succeeding, so begrudgingly he agreed. Step two ticked.

Armed with El Fixo’s telex, I booked myself a European tour of my distributors, unfettered from the random and destructive controls of ‘the Git’. Unbelievably, my sales commissions were paid not when the products were finally paid for, but on delivery and invoicing, so my distributors didn’t actually have to buy the products for me to get my commission. They didn’t have to hand over real money, they only had to be persuaded to order, take delivery and allow an invoice to be raised for me to get my cut. Bingo! Step three.

The European tour looked like one that Pink Floyd would have been proud of as I gallivanted around the continent applying a little pressure to my distributors as I went. At the eleven meetings, all in different countries, I told each distributor that the company was unhappy with them for their lack of performance, and that they needed to order five of these new machines immediately, at a bargain price of about a hundred thousand pounds for the lot, to divert their risk of being canned. I told them I was the good guy protecting them, and that this would ensure their future and get the Americans off their backs. Of course, they didn’t want to hear this, and they certainly didn’t want a hundred thousand pounds worth of junk on their hands, so I went into my well-prepared plan that explained that here was an offer that they couldn’t afford to refuse.

I showed them El Fixo’s telex, saying I had been assured that all the bugs had been fixed. I told them that I needed an order right now, but in return for such a speedy order I would give them all sorts of sweeteners. They would receive extra memory for free, we would deliver and invoice immediately (thereby guaranteeing my commission) but we would give them half a year to pay. This, I pointed out, would give them sales stock for immediate delivery to their customers, a demonstration model, and one that could be used by the service department until it was sold without them having spent a thing. We would pay for the delivery, and, if they didn’t sell them, pay for the return costs as well. Further, if unsold, we would accept them back, used or unused, and compensate them for their warehouse space. In short, they couldn’t lose, and any fool could see this was a great deal for them, and once I got my secretary to telex the details, I would dash back to the airport with the order safely secreted inside my Samsonite case, and head on to the next victim, er, I mean distributor on my list.

So, one day I am on the streets of Milan drinking Campari with Luigi, and the next I’m in a restaurant in Munich struggling with a sausage with a skin apparently made of used condoms with Wolfgang. I’m gagging down raw herrings in Gothenburg with G.R. (I never found out what the letters stood for), and each and every day I met another distributor who handed me an order before I left. I even did a deal with some complete stranger that I had arranged to meet in Zurich airport between flights, who gave me a six-figure order. It was all very surreal. Step four accomplished.

When I arrived back to the office Gary was still sat on his big fat arse behind his desk having done nothing and achieved even less. I calculated my commission and on target bonus and, marching in, slapped this down on the table with a copy of my one point two million dollars of orders which equated to over ten per cent of what the whole company had achieved worldwide in a year. I gave him my car keys, my letter of resignation and told him in no uncertain terms that if he messed me about with the commission payments, he should worry about sleeping soundly in his bed at night, and went home on the train. And just like that I was free! Step five, over and out. See you later Sooty.

The commission came through good as gold and equated to eight months of on target earnings. Even though I was now pretty flush, I didn’t have anywhere near enough money to come close to replacing the shiny black Audi I had just given back, and my ego certainly didn’t want to give Gary the satisfaction of seeing me driving around in some beaten up old Cortina, so I gave it some thought and decided to buy myself a fuck off motorbike from my brother Olly. It was a Honda CX 650 Turbo, very eighties and very flashy, with a metallic pearl half fairing sporting florescent orange and dark blue flashings. People often mistook it for a police bike, but where it should have said ‘police’ above the headlight it had ‘turbo’ written in reverse in corny computer writing for rear view mirror reading, and it had gold magnesium wheels. Yes, the CX was perfect for my purposes. It was top of the range, affordable and, importantly for my wounded pride, classless.

Next, I did my research about the ticket. Even though I owed it to them,