Batty

I went away for a month & on my return to Hong Kong, the temperature was a wonderfully comfortable 30ºC with humidity in the high nineties.

I promptly turned the air conditioning unit on, only to find the thing eventually kick into action & deafen me with deep thuds each time some cog in it turned around. I turned it off, as I could not hear the TV, stereo or my brain.

Over the following week, I sweated it out, as the two electrical appliance shops on Lamma Island either wanted a photograph of the said unit or couldn't understand my ridiculous English/Cantonese jumbled up language. (I also don't move my lower jaw when speaking, which adds to the general confusion, as I can't be lip read).

My girlfriend had previously told me to contact the agent I had rented the apartment through. It took her appearance on Lamma to finally prompt me into action. Within fifteen minutes Jackson the agent had kindly arranged for some air conditioning guru to come round the pad & sort it out.

When 'Airconman' arrived, he removed his shoes, made a b-line for the unit, took the front off & gave it a couple of shoves. A bat suddenly appeared out of nowhere & started flying around my flat.

The chick had serious problems with this & decided to take it upon herself to scream, lift her arms in the air & run into my bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Unfortunately for her, the bat had obviously decided he wanted a bit more of that kind of action. He followed her in, managing to squeeze through the door before the slam.

Me & Airconman looked at each other & laughed.

Ten seconds later, we heard a massive scream & she came running out of my bedroom, again slamming the door behind her. This time the bat decided not to follow.

We thanked Airconman for sorting out the problem & bid him farewell.

I then opened the door of my bedroom to find the little fella having a snooze on some plug sockets. He looked really sweet & comfortable, snuggled up next to my mobile phone charger.

The chick had regained her confidence & came into the room with a plastic bag & told me to put it over him, pick him up, then throw him out the window. I tried to prise him into the bag, but he wasn't having any of it & shuffled under my bed.

A thought flashed through my mind to leave the chap alone, as he was obviously quite scared by now, then visions of the fun we'd experience in the twilight hours, kicked me into moving the mattress of the bed & finding him.

I've luckily got a long wooden tube containing some of the chicks artwork next to my bed & on spotting that, the little light bulb flickered on above her head. She took the lid off the tube & promptly stamped the opened end down onto one of his legs, probably breaking or at the very least fracturing it in 28 different places. Her second attempt was a bit more successful & fully covered our now close friend, Batty. I shuffled some paper underneath him & after a couple of power yoga moves we were in a decent window/long tube/hand/body position & set him free as a bat, as he fluttered into the sunset.