Return to England

Before returning to more civilised waters , I converted my ill-gotten gains to Krugerrands for safe passage.
In England, I became almost infamous for my after dinner tales.
I suppose compared to average folk who had to struggle day in day out just to pay their mortgage feed the kids and make their lawn look pretty, I must have seemed quite exotic.
If only these folk could have realised how lucky they were.

But we all need a change and a rest, so I wasn`t overly perturbed by their fond attention to me. In fact I was highly flattered.
It just seemed the more soirees I attended, the more people seemed to become addicted to my anecdotes.
I basked in the attention people gave me and almost felt like I was Blackbeard or some other pirate giving evidence in the dock.
Ironically, my proximity to the dock was pertinent.

One of my oldest and dearest friends who had facilitated my re-introduction into country life, while sitting in the wings as I blew hard on my amusing trumpet, surfaced in a dark and shady way.
Over the months that I enjoyed myself in England, he would of course be at some of the many, so-social events that I had become attached to.

For a casual listener, nothing I had said would have been at all self-incriminating, but for
a man in disagreement with the tax man, perhaps a collation of such information could be very valuable.

You, me, nobody would ever expect one's best friend to see one as a resource. But if a very heavy burden is put upon on one, perhaps the slow accumulation of mere facts that could save one's bacon, would become as tempting as a bacon sandwich.

I understand this form of weakness, but the underlying malaise is of such concern, that I found it essential never to communicate with Gordon again. Yes, I really miss the old him, the good times we had are not just memories but a serious part of my life. The decision to never deal with him again is one of the many hard calls I have had to shout.

.....Actually I quite fancy a bacon sandwich.