Picture the tranquil scene of peace and quiet, as English tourist Alfred, goes to bed on his yacht, at a foreign marina.

At 6am in the morning, Alfred wakes up to absolute silence and closes his eyes again. Immediately there is a cacophony of loud noises.

Everyone is using power drills, saws, hammers, sanders and they are all shouting and yelling. Other boats go by, leaving waves of swell which hit his boat, splashing water all around, making the boat rock and swirl violently.

Everywhere he looks, people are laughing at him, waving their arms, jeering and shouting rude remarks in foreign languages.

Alfred has a quick look around, smiles . . . and goes below.

The sound of pots and pans, and a swirl of thick pungent smoke is noticed by all those around the boat. He secretly tosses ‘certain items’ into the water, which appear to swell up and float into the path of the oncoming boats.

A terrible smell emanates from the boat as Alfred surfaces, wearing a clothes-peg on his nose. A flag made from underwear is raised. A salute is made.

The oncoming boats suck up the Yorkshire Pudding into their intake pipes, overheating their engines. They career into other boats, knocking workmen off their ladders and ropes. 

The smell alone, makes the people on their boats and on the jetty, dive or fall into the water, making workmen dizzy and sick. There is a mass exodus of cars leaving the marina.

All is quiet once more. 

Alfred removes the clothes peg and smells the smouldering line of well-done English pork sausages on his skewer.

A surviving woman on a nearby boat, angrily throws a hard bread stick at him in defiance, but he casually hits it back . . . with a tennis racquet.

He calls out to her, mimicking her strange accent”

“You ‘av a nice big shiny bot”.

He then places three big, fat, charred sausages into the water, which float past her boat.

Blowing up a balloon and letting out the air slowly . . . and noisily, he calls out again:

“Theez eez from ma sheeeep!”

She faints.

He smiles.

(c) Stefan Nicholson – “Twelve Selected Short Stories” – Amazon Books

Notes: I thought a bit of comedy would help you to remember – “Stay your ground – Make a Sound”

All my books are available on Amazon and Kindle – just search for my name. Your purchase will be greatly appreciated and enable me to write more books. My new book coming out in April will be titled “The Jack Code” a sci-fi about AI (with a bit of comedy, tragedy, love and hope).