Anything to Declare? by Jon Frost Read Free Book Online Page B

spoken to by Leonard and, after driving for a while, the driver would be instructed to head for the next petrol station. The Merc would be filled up and the hitch-hiker then told to pay for the fuel or face the wrath, threats and tantrums of the world-famous jockey – not to mention being kicked out of the car. The driver hated himself for putting up with all this crap and for needing the job, but not as much as we now hated Leonard. More stories followed of his appallingly aggressive behaviour to others. He really was a nasty piece of work. The fact that he was an un-disputedly great jockey in no way excused him being a total arse. It just allowed him to get away with it. Well, we thought, not on our patch, shorty.
    Two weeks later, on his way back from a meet in France, Leonard came through Customs. Oh, happy day! With exquisite coincidence, it was Patrick, our own softly spoken, jockey-hating, little Irish bloodhound, who had the pleasure of exacting the revenge. Pat immediately buried himself in Leonard’s suitcase, burrowing in like a mole and throwing clothes and underwear every which way. With his little legs practically kicking out of the case and his head muffled by clothing, we could just about hear Pat’s gentle Irish lilt saying, ‘No, no, nooo . . . can’t find it . . . nope. . . seems
not
to be here!’
    Leonard, twitching with outrage and embarrassment, launched into a foul-mouthed tirade at Pat, but our Pat simply carried on with the search, more clothes flying out of the case as though it was being ransacked by a hungry badger. Leonard finally snapped, ‘Don’t you know who the fuck I am?! I’m Leonard
Pinner
!’
    At this, Pat stopped dead, looked down at the bag and the clothes, which were now spread all over the floor and the examination bench, looked back up at Leonard and smiled enigmatically. Then he turned, walked over to our office, whose door was open, and shouted in, ‘Has anyone here heard of some jockey shithead by der name o’ Leonard
Pinnenr
?’
    He was greeted by howls of laughter from all the staff within the office and cheers and applause from passengers without.
    Pat walked calmly back to the bench.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr Pinner, der answer is “No”!’ And with that he disappeared back into the suitcase. Then, with a nice piece of sleight of hand, Pat re-emerged from the bag with a loud ‘Ah ha!’ and held aloft an envelope in his hand. We all now appeared from the office and, with the passengers, made a sizable audience. We genuinely didn’t know what ole Pat was planning here. Even Leonard stopped in the middle of his stream of verbal abuse.
    Pat ripped open the envelope and from inside produced a sheet of folded A4 paper. We all looked at each other. He unfolded the sheet and on it, for all to see, were large letters spelling ‘I AM LEONARD PINNER AND I REALLY AM A SHITHEAD!’ That was for all the ‘little’ guys who had for many years been shat on by one of the world’s shortest, biggest bastards.
    We left Leonard to pack his own bag and scurry away. Not one of his best performances. You could say he fell at the first.
    Sometimes animals even attempted to enter the country of their own volition, without human help. An Omega Air flight from Nigeria was a good example. Even though the flight was from Nigeria – one of the number-one target countries in the world because of the amount of illegal seizures – not many officers wanted to enter the hell that was this African aircraft’s cargo flight hold. Many of us would quite happily wait until the aircraft had unloaded before going anywhere near it. It was on such an occasion that I sat in the boarding car and watched an Omega aircraft being emptied. But about halfway through the unloading we heard a scream from the interior of the craft and two cargo men came barrelling out the rear of the Hercules aeroplane. I quickly stood up and stopped one of them to ask what was up.
    ‘
Fucking
enormous rat, Jon, is