Zambia World Wide

Nonetheless, I stayed true to my Glaswegian street urchin principles and lied that my inability to provide receipts for the expenses I had never seen was due to having my wallet lifted on the train. Amazingly, the excuse was accepted. In my evil little brain, however, the careful registration of a grudge was made and, in situations that require retribution, generally I’ll wait as long as it takes for a chance to repay. My long-suffering wife records these events as a clear indication of just how nasty the workings of my deformed mind are (no doubt to support her case in any subsequent divorce proceedings) and she informs me that the longest I have waited is eighteen years. Her disdain is not for the length of time involved, nor any action taken to ensure cancellation of the original transgression, but the untrammelled and noisy delight I express when it happens. Not any sort of Christian attitude, says she, with careless disregard for my cloudy religious origins. My mother may have been correct about the perils of marrying out, after all. Stepping out into the crystal clear, sun-filled Livingstonian day, however, I felt pleased to be on the threshold of normality. Not that I knew where the Post Office was, of course, nor what I would find when I located it, but these were small difficulties. Watch out Charlatans, I thought, Gerry shortly will be on your case; just as soon as a dictionary is found that can define the title, that is.

Like Captain Customs, I burst through the doors to the sorting office, to find a sort of sepulchral calm throughout the large shed that housed it. This was because no-one was doing any work: not the postal workers or the customs team (Team? Hah! Two desks, one clerkess and a Zambian trainee). I scrutinised the walls carefully and no charlatans were hanging upside down, whilst a stripped-to-the-waist Bombardier Billy Wells character lashed them with a cat o’ nine tails. Although tres disappointing, the inactivity meant that I could devote some time to reading the dull government literature available to me and, given the paucity of any guidance whatsoever, even I was able to master the regulatory framework within an hour. I speedily realised that, by and large, I could mainly make it up as I went along, a standard I have adopted for every function I’ve undertaken throughout my subsequent career in retail. Try it. It works.

My predecessor had been one of the Federal officers who had decamped a few miles south to pre-UDI Rhodesia (bet he regrets that decision now, as he considers what value pension rights managed by the poisonous, self-serving Mugabe regime might be worth). He had also been working a personal go-slow for several months, whilst the regime change took place. I discovered later that much of the Zambia public service structure had suffered from the same malaise, from Police to Public Works Department, with the remaining processes being managed by often over-promoted ex-Feds and political appointees from UNIP, supported by junior staff who had remained and hastily recruited expats on short term contracts. The whole bag of tricks needed to be shaken down really quickly with minimal ministerial interference. In other words, it represented an impossible dream in a post-colonial world,where common sense and faith in the virtues of solid hard work and selfless contribution were in rare supply and desperation to self-advance and/or make obscene amounts of dosh were not.

As a schoolboy scientist, my minuscule IQ and determination to destroy the school lab with unauthorised experimentation with explosive ingredients, meant that the Nobel Award Committee never were going to be exercised by anything emanating from my brain, but even I remembered that Nature abhors a vacuum. Livingstone PO was exactly that and I hurriedly proceeded to fill it. ‘Deep Joy’ would have trilled Professor Stanley Unwin and more accurate he emphatically could not be.

With the aforementioned Hoover impersonation and, just to keep faith with clichés, more than a touch of blissful ignorance, parcels started to fly out of the moribund storage unit that, until May 24th 1965, had been Livingstone Post Office. Customised, part customised or wholly uncustomised, the whole constipated situation began to relieve itself of the parcel blockage and my tiny gang of incompetents were able to commence planning the attack I intended for the feathery denizens of the C world. Alas, I was recalled from my desk to the HQ complex, with a demand for immediacy and speedy  alacrity. Naturally, given my track record for being bollocked by bosses, I assumed that some mark had been exceeded and, twelve days into my first assignment, my card was about to be tagged.