Excerpt from ‘Three nuns and a rastafarian’

Mr Wicksey had a wooden stump for a leg, and he was so fat it took three beefy men to lift him when he got drunk and couldn’t quite co-ordinate the prosthesis with the organic. He was not so much famous for his home-brewed ales as he was for the amount of food he could consume at one sitting.

According to Alfie’s great great grandfather, he could quite easily devour a leg of lamb with sausages and roast potatoes, a whole jar of pickled onions, and a small keg of brown ale for lunch. His favourite afternoon snack before tea was pork knuckles and cracklings. And if he were still feeling peckish he’d scrape the cold, solidified lamb fat from the oven tray onto a thick hunk of bread and top it up with piccalilli relish. Apparently his breath was always sour from the acidic relish, and he burped rather a lot.

The man was murdered one night by his wife, who used his wooden leg that he placed beside his bed, to smash his head in. A pickled egg was in his mouth when they found his body. Nobody knew whether it was his wife who did it before she split the scene, or that he was eating it in bed when he was killed. The half empty jar of pickled eggs still sat on one of the shelves at the bar of the ‘Three Nuns’.

I asked Marion why she didn’t rename the pub ‘Split skull and Wooden Leg’. She said that ‘Three Nuns’ had a juicier history. Apparently, Mr Wicksey’s mistresses were nuns before he charmed them into working for him as barmaids. When the nuns came to the village for their weekly shopping Mr Wicksey would hang around outside the pub talking loudly to his friends and making lewd jokes. As soon as his favourite girls walked by he would lift his hat and greet them with a “Mornin’ ladies”, and do a little tap dance on the cobbled pavement.

No one can confirm what actually happened that led Mr Wicksey to his prizes, not even Alfie’s great great granddad. But soon after, the three women exchanged their habits for scoop-necked tops and bodices, and the pub’s name was changed to ‘Three Nuns’.

Excerpt from ‘Cicadas for tea’

We returned home with a newspaper parcel of light brown coloured larvae the size of a fat child’s thumb. Ye went out to the back of the house to start a fire with a few lumps of coal which he placed in portable clay stove that had a wire netting on top. The fat wiggly larvae were then skewered with thin wooden sticks. He pierced 5 with one stick.

When the fire died down and the coals turned into glowing red lumps I saw our kebabs being placed onto the wire netting. Meanwhile the oil in the pot was beginning to smoke a little. Me Me lowered the gas fire and emptied the jar of bugs into the hot oil. A lovely sizzling sound accompanied the fine bubbles that surrounded each floating insect. Using a sieve with a long bamboo handle Me Me scooped the buggy snacks from the oil, put them onto a plate, and sprinkled some salt over them.

When the succulent larvae kebabs were nice and brown Ye piled up the skewers onto a plate and invited me to eat. I put one salted locust into my mouth and crunched it. It was crispy and salty but not much more. Then I tried the other bugs. They tasted pretty much the same except one of them had a sort of earthy flavour to it. Slightly disappointed, I picked up a sago larvae kebab and slid one off the stick with my lips.

Oh, it was heavenly. It had a crisp shell that wasn’t tough but collapsed easily between the teeth. The inside oozed out like warm custard filling with a nutty flavour.

Excerpt from ‘The dance of life’

“Hey, Sunil, can you take me back to my hotel? I feel sick.”

“But ve have not eaten. This is good food!”

“No, I really must. I feel faint.”

The room had gone all black; I was about to vomit. It was as if my soul had left my body. In fact, everything seemed to be in a great hurry to leave my body suddenly.

“Sunil, I have to go back,” I insisted with the brute force of a fruit fly.

Sunil’s persistence was starting to piss me off, but after a while, he reluctantly walked me to the auto-rickshaw. I struggled to make those last few steps. My entire body felt like lead and my legs like jelly. As I threw myself onto the seat I hit my head against the roof. At least the throbbing in my head distracted my mind from the meat grinder that my stomach and intestines were being squeezed through.

As usual, Sunil lit an incense stick, then a cigarette, which he handed to me. The sight of it brought my minced stomach up to my mouth. I flung my head out through the side of the three-wheeler, crashing against the side panel, and threw up. Then I leaned back, not even slightly relieved. In my semi-conscious stupor I was still able to force my eyes to stay open, but I should just as well not have bothered because suddenly everywhere was pitch dark. No street lamps, not a flicker of light from anywhere for miles, not even moonlight.

I could hear branches and bushes brushing the sides of the three-wheeler, and twigs snapping under the wheels. Apart from that, it was as silent as a grave. I deduced that we must be in a jungle and travelling on a narrow dirt path. I didn’t remember that road at all. It was time for a little chat with God. But I didn’t even have the strength to pray, or panic. So I decided to leave it to Sunil’s heart (or hormones) to decide my destiny…