It is around three o'clock in the morning. We've stopped to change a tyre. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The area is suddenly lit up by the headlights of an arriving vehicle.

Three young men saunter over. They soon make it plain that they are after cash - for drugs. I tell them, (in my 'Spanglish'), that I haven't any. ("No no no. No tengo dinero!!!") They emphatically do not believe me. One of them is by now, enraged.

Point-of-death statements apparently go something like this: " I'm going to be killed by a Mexican with a machete". Incredibly, such a thought at such a moment, is as 'unconcerned' as a commentary, or as detached as if one were deciding to add a little salt to the soup.

At this very instant, the weapon is raised to the left of my head. I know it is all over.

(pt. 2 follows)

Driving past the local rubbish tip outside a town in the middle of Sri Lanka at 1am in the morning, the driver decides to pull over to the side of the road to view the elephants rummaging through the tip. On a dark night with out a moon and only starlight, you may think you can't see an elephant.....but you can see their beady little eyes looking at you! Unfortunately, he hits something that rips open the front tyre!
The 3 of us alight from the car, 2 locals and me, to get out the jack to change the wheel. Uh oh! No jack!!
One of the elephants has now seen us and is cautiously approaching. Little traffic means we are kind of stuck and the very large looking beast is getting closer. My friend grabs me. I thought he was trying to protect me but the reality was he was scared shitless. Obviously, as a local he knows a bit more about elephants than me!
As I look around for a very sturdy tree to climb, the elephant is closing and now within a hundred meters of us watching with those devilish red eyes...……

To be continued...…..maybe.

MEXICO PT.2

I maniacally lunge for the upper part of his shirt and attempt the 'flying mare', catapulting myself onto my back and hauling him up onto the sole of my right shoe which, I can now feel beginning to slip off my foot. The airborne youth tumbles off to my right. I am aware that I've lost my driving glasses. I'm still yelling, "No no no tengo dinero!!!"

He leaps to his feet, presumably to locate his machete; but no: he's frenetically rummaging around in the grass near me. Now he triumphantly holds my shoe aloft just as I'm getting up. I can't understand his words, but he is gesticulating with the shoe in the direction of my feet. Evidently he wants me to put it on! Groggily, I do.

Now he is scrabbling around in the grass again, very close to me. A moment later, I hear "HAH!" He hands me my glasses. I am, (for once in my life, as both friends and protagonists would say), speechless.

Barring the absurdity of the dialogue that followed, (in which it was agreed that the whole thing should be regarded as 'a misunderstanding'), and their insisting on changing our tyre for us, it was all over.

Oh; barring the cheering, that is. They hurrah-ed and clapped us off into the night.
(pt.3 follows)

MEXICO - epilogue.
[Birth's a scream; Death's a shrug.]

The only people can who know as much about death as I do, would have to be those who’ve experienced it a few times. Not the fear of imminent death but, literally, the "instant before the actual bullet" so-to-speak.

Very few get a reprieve a few seconds before their final exit. We who “know Death” - (oh, all right, "I" if you want to be picky!), are not, at that instant, treated to a movie of our entire life's doings; and we do not shriek for God-Aid, nor bawl out "save me doctor" or "why me? or "long live the republic".

The end scenario is about as stimulating a performance as offered by the average fire-safety curtain in a theatre. Thinking may be monotone, but one's last conscious, unspoken commentary can be classified as truly deadpan!

Death, it seems, is a truly matter-of-fact matter.

___________________________________________