20:20 p.m.In a small villa called Banks, there lived a young storky man.Calm,suave,and rarely engage in long yakking.He did live in a single room where he is expected to cough out £200 four weekly.Other bills like grocery ,beverages, weekly bus fare,food,monthly money transfer to his mother and sister are not included.He was practically a hard, handy Andy kind of person ,absolutely determined to change his life and those of his loved ones.I knew nothing about his Dad,who probably as they say was not in the picture.Oops he once told me he lost his Dad at an early age in his life,as at when we met; this dude was 25 years old.He was not a sociable person by any description,and was never interested when pretty things fancy his muscular psyche.But i knew his weakness in this regard,he loves to see women doing the hootchy -kootchy dance,whatever that does to him;i got no- clue.Another thing i know that makes him different from someone who lives in a parallel universe is that, he is an ardent church man on sundays,except if he is compelled at work to do a compulsory shift on sunday.
The most interesting and fascinating aspect of his life ,was his resolve and determination to break the back of poverty whose root stems from Swaziland where he was born.He has a self acclaimed and orchestrated strategy.Firstly, never to step out of his door unnecessarily after work hours,because to his thinking if he does;he will spend money.Secondly,is that he was saving severely.Part of the reason,why he wouldn't want to welcome and entertain any friend ,male,female, or hermaphrodite in his humble abode.His thought was that,during the process of receiving a visitor to his residence,he will definitely be compelled due to blushing attitudes to purchase Coca cola, other fizzy drinks,cake e.t.c to enable him seem good relating to entertaining the visitor.He understood,afterall they aren't just going to be looking at each others faces,talking and talking endlessly .So he discouraged all forms of visitation.He saved every dime,penny by penny,penny by whatever name including the Swazi Lilangeni currency that came with him when he first arrived in the UK.This guy was practically saving as an Ant in its hole,he did saved like there was nothing else to do with money.
Every now and then he joked with us that he is making real progress,as he does long hours at his shift work.Every available overtime was seized as an opportunity to make money and saving by him.He literally couldn't do without overtime.When there is no overtime he gets angry with himself and never failed to let the bosses know about his anger.He was the man running the chain line,perhaps he was more of the chain machinery system himself.Typical coconut head and workaholic bulldozer.The management and other work mates loved his mad life of attempting to break his own back.He never cared a thing apart from work.He actually thought that the management genuinely loved his donkey attitude about work.The management used to remind him of the acceptable health and safety work hours,he did not bother.All he wanted was work and work.If you come knocking at his door,you might probably hear him snoring like a fallen Elephant.His sound of breath was so caterpillarish that you wonder if he was in a physical combat with Mike Tyson's 50 kg punches.An absolute work maverick.
Sometimes i pulled over at his,to joke and tease him about his possible closeness to achieving his targeted £1,000,000(One Million pounds sterling) and afterwards re-locate back to Swaziland kingdom.Each of such times he will tell me, that the money target is slow,hard and stringent to achieve but he never forget to reassure me that he will do it and leave everyone of his mates behind in the UK to be paying enormous tax and work for her majesty's treasury.He took the meeky too like everyone else.Indeed the man worked ,did press ups,go to the gymnastics at spare evening time.All exercises were geared towards developing more and more energetic strength to empower him for the engineering fabrication job which he was into.Can i just say that the young man was a major fan and consumer of Chinese energy drinks,no matter what brand, taste and horrible smell.His pay per hour was £5 and was so bent on not buying a Car,because he will be required to pay MOT,monthly Insurance,buy fuel,service the Car when necessary.The man simply refused to live a comfortable life.
This man was good for one thing,he knows how to shop for nice clothes and shoes,just to dress up very cool for himself and not the Bees as he would say.There was this unimaginable awful attitude of his,whereby he measured by scale, kitchen measuring beaker,whatever form of Millet,Rice and other edible grains to cook meals.He never wanted to be extravagant due to the fact that he was saving.At some point,the Ghanaian landlord of his,ran into massive financial palaver,the palaver was absolutely huge to the extent that the landlord's two properties was consequently re-possessed.Apparently this guy unknowingly to me,who i kind of mentored from a distance friendship,lied all through to such a time when the landlords two beautiful properties were repossessed by the bank mortgage lenders.He has been lying to me that his savings is in his personal savings bank account.He frankly had a bank account,two actually,but he was a bit timid to have let the sweet sugar coating tongue of the landlord to set himself up.
The landlord was a qualified Pilot in America,but was not yet a qualified Pilot in Britain due to the fact that it is relatively easy to study,qualify and fly in America and Africa's sky than it is in Britain.British cloud is lower to the ground earth while America and Africa's sky is higher from the ground earth.Consequently a few minutes up in the sky in Britain's atmosphere takes the plane into immediate clouds and absolute professional care must be taken to fly professionally safely.Due to this the landlord was spending huge fortune in Aviation school to qualify,quite a brilliant dude to be honest but the exams were in multiple choice questions(mcq) e.t.c Tough frequent regulatory examinations.This geezer had locked up with the landlord the sum of £6,000(Six thousand pounds sterling) and recovering the said sum was the worst thing ever.The landlord borrowed the money from him in a con style unfortunately.This same landlord used to also con me by swiftly borrowing a drive of my then classic ,he will promise to dash into the shops for a 3 minutes shopping spree for fruits;only for him to be back with the car in 3 hrs, setting off my panic buttons.With a hindsight and fairness now,i will say the landlord was such a good con man.He did loved the con,all he needed to swiftly get off with my classic was to literally force an Irish/Nigerian bottle of Guinness down my throat unsolicited.Such a weirdo!
His landlord got to a stage where himself and his wife was barely struggling to make ends meet.But his wife was a character from Hollywood and Nollywood combined.She was a fashionista with a size zero waist line,slim shaggy,dark to the palm and fingers,squeaky vocals like a pregnant toad.She adored and constantly wore stiletto high heeled shoes.The sort of lady who did not gave a monkey if the London skyline is falling on her husband.As long as her high heeled is making territorial sounds on the marble designed floored terrace house,she is alright.All other matters can be adjourned.That was the landlady.An accomplice and an aid abet in my view.She was a madam,who hated everybody and pretended to care about 3 peeps.One was herself,second was her husband,third was me.Why me? She said because of her husband.Ah ''the madam,the parliamentary landlady without a portfolio'' i used to call her and then she swells in her stomach.
Anyway, Mr young saver,demanded and insisted on the payback of his Six grand but never got more than £600 (Six hundred pounds sterling) from the landlord.Truth is Mr landlord had no money to pay back.The landlord was doing all sorts of credit card payment and assorted APR %.I felt so embarrassed and sorry for him.There were lots of times i momentarily saw him as an acquaintance,a great guy.Am pretty convinced that he would have loved to pay back but he could not.The landlord vamoosed to thin air.Swazi dude had no refund,he continued to work hard to score his goal of £1,000,000 (One Milla in this England?).But this time his passion,zeal and savings encouragement had dropped to the bearest all time low,since recording began by me in 1890 BC. The young saver has lost his dream of attending a British university and qualifying to practice Social Worker which he also desired to take back with him to help the under-priviledged in his native Swaziland Kingdom.
As part of his exit strategy similar to Mungo Park's first journey to Africa, he decided to sell his second handed,charity shop bicycle and flew back to Swazi and he did promised never to come back. Because according to him he didn't want to lose his skeletal back bone system for the man-made pounds sterling and coins.He also reminded me that the main reason he didn't want to come back to England ever again is because it was Mungo Park's second journey to Africa that killed him in 1806 in Bussa,northern Nigeria at the sad, exploratory age of 35 yrs old.While i saw him off next day after a grandeur all folks,all night;all free night party for him.At the departure hall i summed up the courage to ask him,who is going to make the dream of achieving the £1,000.000? He politely said to me:Hustle men ! Well i smartly giggled and bid him goodbye.
About the same time a century ago, as above.There were two lady friends.They drove to work in a private residence ,as you could assume that is the nature of their job.Both of these ladies were in-experienced about the Motorway drive and commute.But they were certified drivers,very eligible to drive .On this particular occasion,they both via off the dual carriageway from now-where.Only for them to see themselves suddenly in the M25 motorway.They marvelled at the sea of cars and vans.They wondered the numerous motorable lanes and logistics of vehicles.One of the ladies was determined to concentrate on her driving skills but the other lady sitting on the passenger seat was practically a moronic talkative.She is voluminous in size,shape and big mouthed.An argument ensued about who said what,when,how,did they get to a vast M25 motorway.They blamed and counter-blamed each other and were at each others neck for most of the time.Until one of them resolved to make a distress call.I remember instructing them to take the next available exit point.To this end,they immediately obeyed and carried out after 1 hr 25 mins of burning their fuel and globetrotting the orbital motorway.They eventually got to their own homes but never went to their place of work assignment.They were bliss enough not to have stormed into another vehicle in the motorway and also not to have been over-run by an innocent,inexperienced driver like them too.Finally,when i saw them after two days they were still recuperating from the experience.Both friends were done with their friendship,agreed to be permanent enemies for the rest of their lives.Then i insisted that all three peeps should meet and settle their differences.As we sat on the couch i could see that after two good days; both of them were literally dripping sweat in their respective sweaty Jumpers,like new arrivals on a war zone.Not Camp Bastion,they ain't got the guts to ever be there!
Kings Omozore
Writes from London.God bless you...
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