This year marks a full decade since I departed Mexico and came back to the United Kingdom. I still miss Mexico, warts and all. Indeed, it’s the warts that I perhaps remember most fondly and most vividly. Sure, the food, weather and lifestyle were fabulous. Mexico City gave me better material for blogging. I had two weeks off every Christmas, Easter and summer. And, thanks to being self employed, whenever else I wanted, personal finances allowing. But that’s the sort of standard stuff that is done and dusted within two minutes of a conversation starting. It’s the random, freaky stuff that makes a good story, usually finishes with a chuckle, and someone muttering ‘only in Mexico’.
There was this one time… Mrs P went to the local Pollo Feliz rotisserie to buy some flame grilled chicken for dinner, and came back with two boxes. One had the tasty chicken in it, ready for eating. The other had a live chick in it. As a gift from Pollo Feliz. Because it was Children’s Day. So of course. Why wouldn’t a chicken restaurant give away live chicks to families in Mexico City? We ate our chicken while its offspring ran around the kitchen floor, tweeting and pooping.
There was this one time…I went to go get my hair cut at Augustin’s salon, just fifty metres down a back alley from our place. But he wasn’t there, because he’d been murdered over night. Someone clubbed him to death with a toilet seat, peeled his face off and then did something with it. I never did find out what happened to his face, but I did find a new place to get my hair cut.
There was this one time… I got off the metro at Cuatro Caminos and found a load of spent bullet cases all over the place. Must have been a pretty wild party the night before. I guess. I kept one as a souvenir.
There was this one time… that there was a pretty big earthquake, late one evening. Big enough that everyone in the block evacuated. I ran outside in my T-shirt and boxers clutching a bowl full of my pet terrapins. The reputation also damage was immense. For years to come people would abandon their terrapins on my doorstep.
There was this one time… that posters appeared all over the neighbourhood, with an artists impression of a serial killer. He had just killed another victim. He had been nicknamed the Little Old Lady Killer. Except it wasn’t a he, it was a she. The culprit was a semi-famous female wrestler. Still, that wasn’t as weird as the time Super Porky’s pair of midget wrestling buddies were killed by an accidental drug overdose by some prostitutes they’d taken to a dodgy hotel for a night of debauchery…
There was this one time… that I was watching a guy on the street passing a metal ladder up to another guy on the roof of a single story building. They were carefully trying to navigate it between the wall of the building and some power cables. I thought that this was likely to end with a bang and one or two dead folk. I wondered exactly how they thought this would end. Then there was a bang and one or two dead folk, and I realised that I would never know how they thought it would end.
Perhaps one day I should write a book. I already have the title. There Was This One Time In Mexico.
