Free No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn Page B

been able to arrange a lift to the next big town south of here so we have a quick farewell drink with him before he departs, then we settle down to dinner in a courtyard flanked by snakes in tanks. After the meal Neil makes his first Basil Fawlty comment of the trip. A German couple is seated near us, and after we’ve all eaten, the husband pulls out a pipe and lights up in a cloud of smoke. As his wife tries to wave the smoke away from her Neil calls out, ‘You’re in a gas chamber!’
    There seem to be no hard feelings because next morning they ask us to join them on a drive looking for the lions that we heard during the night. We come across a pride led by two brothers, and the big black-maned one a cranky thing, mock-charging our vehicle and grumbling and growling at the tyres just by our feet. That afternoon we go out again and find the pride munching on a zebra. The big black boy must be full and content because, although he’s quite close to our vehicle, all he does is sit under a bush and eye us while he licks zebra gore from his whiskers.
    The following day we head for Etosha, but with a stop in Otjiwarongo for a return dental appointment. I’ve decided to replace my dicky crown and the dentist says he has the equipment to make and fit one in a couple of hours. This is most successful and I leave the surgery in high spirits, particularly after the dentist falls in love with the Troopy and asks if we’ll give him first option when we come to selling it. Naturally we say yes.
    It’s too late to reach Andersson Gate, the nearest entrance to Etosha National Park, before it closes at sunset so we drive on for an hour or so then check into a roadside lodge with relief, both now feeling very fragile from the worst effects of the giardia. We’re unable to keep down dinner and after some hefty doses of medicine, which I muster from our first aid kit, we go straight to bed.
    The next morning we wake feeling perky and enter Etosha with that fresh and optimistic feeling you have when you know you’re on the mend. We check into Okaukuejo Rest Camp and set off in the Troopy for a day of game driving, a leisurely safari on wheels through the bush in search of wild animals and good photographs. The evening is spent with new friends. Alisdair, the archetypal Scotsman, thinks he sees a like spirit in Neil and passes on his treasured copy of Grumpy Old Men on Holiday . Germans travelling en masse are his pet hate, followed closely by any number of Italians who might shout to each other across a room or burst into spontaneous laughter at any time.
    Sometime during the evening of idle talk and travellers’ tales it occurs to me that the tables have turned, and it is now Neil who is interrupting me when I’m halfway through relating an incident. As we walk back to our room I suggest this, that now it is me who is becoming annoyed by the constant interruptions and pirating of a story, but Neil responds that I exaggerate and embellish too much and turn an anecdote into a life story; he’s bored and so are the listeners, so he has to speed things up. He’s probably right but should have known when he married me that I come from a big family of storytellers who have never let detail beach an amusing tale as it sails towards the finale. Neil and I argue the point about whose stories are (a) more fanciful and (b) more boring until we realise how boring and fanciful we’re sounding, so decide to give it a rest.
    We have heard many stories about the great waterhole at Okaukuejo, which at any time can have all manner of animals chasing and catching each other. We visit four times and only see zebra once. The other three times there is absolutely nothing. Not even a pigeon. We start to suspect that everyone else is exaggerating or, worse, making up sightings. After one last unproductive waterhole visit we decide to forget it and go out into the park instead. We’re about to hop into the