FLY ME BACK TO KRIBI
Fly me back to KRIBI
I’ve told this story a thousand times, never written it down. Bee suggests you may want to order your food before reading it, you may want to eat first too. So first things first, here’s the menu.
TERIYAKI SALMON OVER STIR FRIED VEGETABLE RICE - £9.50
This funky little teriyaki recipe comes from Gordon Ramsay surprisingly and is bloody good stuff. The vegetable stir fry is my own and I think holds its own against the master of profanities.
GREEN BEAN SALAD - £4.00
A simple, refreshing blast of greenery with a lovely, gloopy French dressing to go with it.
CHOCOLATE TORTE, CRÈME FRAICHE - £5.00
A densely rich chocolate torte, the toast of many a wedding over the years and a firm favourite here at home.
Moving with the times! In line with the new rules we thought this is the perfect moment to launch our new AT HOME range
We do love a gathering, the more the merrier and Martin has been cooking exotic meals for a bunch of friends for over 40 years, it’s second nature to him. Of course the rough and tumble of the kitchen isn’t for everyone, so for those of you who would like to enjoy the catering without the caterer, we have put together this takeaway, finish at home collection, where you get the food and adequate instructions, without the cost of staff and hire-in usually attached to catering.
All the dishes are classic Bread and Flowers dishes that we know work really well & with minimal effort on your part, but will still create a delicious meal. Dishes can be collected from our HQ or delivery can be arranged. All dishes come with clear easy to follow instructions
Prices are all per person.
Minimum orders for 6 people & a minimum total order value of £100
Email - enquiries@breadandflowers.co.uk to order
THE STORY
Fly me back to KRIBI
A few weeks after our adventure on the mighty Nyong, we arrived somewhat bedraggled in the lovely coastal town of Kribi and sought out a particularly obscure beach on which to lick our wounds, not too difficult in that neck of the woods in the 70’s. It was a classic palm fringed little number, ticking every cliché possible, with not a soul in sight. Doubtless the jungle behind harboured, reassuring hoards which we would encounter in the days to come.
For now we had camped under a palm tree, shaded from the baking sun. Jimmy had gone into town to take his turn at trying to sell our inflatable dingy and I was left to entertain myself by the water’s edge. They really were endless days and so a couple of hours lying, half in the surf, being washed in and out of the ocean seemed like a positive way to while them away. The sky was blue, the beach steeply shelving, I with my back being massaged by the coarse sand as I was pushed and pulled up and down the deserted beach.
Call it intuition or premonition, I looked up, hauled my head from the sand and gazed at the breakers crashing onto the beach in front of me, and that’s when I spotted it hidden in the foam. On that part of the coast, ships come in to collect the spoils of the logging industry, but with no port, the logs, tree trunks, all of different sizes are taken out to the ships on barges and loaded skilfully offshore. Occasionally one or two don’t make it onto the ship and end up in the drink, slowly making their waterlogged journey back to the shore on the tides and currents.
You know when people say ‘it happened really slowly, almost like it was a dream’. They’re not wrong. As I was being dragged down the beach by the previous wave, the next wave was propelling this two ton log through the breakers and directly at me. I put my hands into the sand to try and get to my feet, but the grains were washed away and I hurtled towards the log as it smashed onto the sand and collided with my right leg, smashing that as well, then proceeded to roll up my body, towards my head.
I lifted my arms in a futile bid to stop it, lifted them, possibly up to heaven in a final appeal for salvation. It stopped on my chest, just below my chin and settled there, pinning me to the beach, having run its course for the time being. The other saying, ‘every seventh wave’, also runs true. The next wave that came in wasn’t big enough to lift it off me, although was big enough to cover my head with seawater for a while. It drained away leaving me spluttering, then the next one, and the next. Finally number seven shifted it a bit and I managed to start the trunk rolling down my body, towards my leg, the smashed one.
I knew, even though I couldn’t see, that it had pulverised the outside of my right leg, so I twisted and offered it the left hand side as it continued to roll away. Just below the knee it stopped rolling, the surf had it, and dragged it the rest of the way, dragging skin and flesh off the bone with it and shattering the ankle joint to boot, then disappeared back into the sea.
I looked down plaintively and was quick to discern that my foot lay at a really weird angle in relation to my leg, almost like it wasn’t properly attached. Realising I was in shock and momentarily unable to feel any pain, I set about trying to rearrange my foot to get it roughly back to where it should be, it was a focused task. At that very moment, whist wondering ‘I wonder what happened to the log’, my head snapped back and there it was, hurtling back towards me like a demonic avenger. This time I rolled and rolled sideways and avoided it’s clutches. It blundered up the steeply inclined beach, then immediately blundered back down missing me by inches. It was after me, it was hunting me down.
‘I’m in the shit’, I thought, head swivelling, eyes bulging, searching the jungle’s edge for any sign of life. Sure enough, not fifty yards away was a cluster of boys, about eight years old, gazing at the events unfolding before them with a certain amount of transfixed wonder. I summoned my best French and shouted for help, perhaps one of them could run and bring a grown up or two to help me out. That seemed to do the trick and after a prolonged game of cat and mouse with said tree trunk, I was hauled out of the ocean and carried to the dirt track which constituted the main road to town.
Once in the fug of the jungle and out of the anaesthesia inducing salt water, the leg started to smart a little and the blood began to run, which in turn attracted the flies and all manner of crawling things which coated my leg from knee to toes with a thick cloak of writhing insects, as I writhed in the dirt, in agony. This dance in the dirt went on for about forty five minutes until, eventually a bush taxi turned up, going the wrong way, but stopped anyway, unloaded his human cargo and turned around and headed back into Kribi with me in the back bouncing around with every pot hole we hit.
‘Well at least that’s the worst over’ I thought as we charged through the jungle towards the ‘hospital’ But as the third saying goes, ‘How wrong can you be’. To be continued.