Deadbeat's creativity has been at a low ebb for a while. This is partly a result of the winter - (cold-weather induced torpor and low-sunlight SADness) and partly as a reaction to the generally deteriorating global situation. Then, recently, two deaths of trumpet-playing good guys - Humphrey Littleton without whom Sundays will never be the same and Nicky Flood who had been a part of my festival family for many years. Quite simply, Deadbeat has been finding it hard to spot anything to chuckle about. (Oh, except for a sticker seen on a bag of pebbles bought for £3.99 from Asda - Guaranteed for 30 days.)

Just last week, however, I was reminded of a particular training course which I ran in Togo (many years ago, whilst trying to be a businessman).

On my very first night in Lome I fell victim to the The Game. Clearly, there are many games played between businessmen - some of them illegal and/or immoral - but this one appears to be universal and can be light-hearted or deadly serious, depending on the players.
The Game starts by the home team (in this case delegates from all over sub-Saharan Africa) and the away team (me) going out and getting spectacularly ratted (on expenses, obviously). The Game proper is played at 9.00 am the next morning, with victory going to whoever can shrug off the residual drunkenness and hangover to function best.

In this case the Game was a very jolly affair - I was running a training course, so there was no financial advantage to be gained by my befuddlement - and was more to do with maxxing out expense accounts with a bunch of mates. In this very amicable way the Game was played to the hilt, and by some doughty competitors.

Just how good they were became clear to me at about 4.00 am, when I awoke in a disco somewhere in downtown Lome. A tooth-loosening vibration had been resonating throughout my entire universe since the beginning of time itself. Then a somewhat-concerned man lifted my forehead from the PA speaker against which it had been resting, and suggested that I'd be more comfortable in a bed.

I had no idea where I was (briefly mistaking even the country) and even less of an idea where I was staying. Fortunately I still had my room key (never hand in your key at reception - the counter-jumper immediately calls their cousin who goes and steals your camera*) and one of the taxi-drivers justified a fat tip by recognising the plastic fob and taking me home.

The hotel itself was pretty much a standard-issue intercontinental, with a large marble-floored expanse leading to the reception desk and a bank of lifts. Leading down was a wide staircase which led to the training suite - large meeting room and a couple of seminar rooms - which was mine for the next three days. Theoretically, this was a stage upon which my immaculate presentation skills would conjure life-changing revelations for my delegates but at that point seemed to me like the very pit of doom. I was very definitely losing The Game.

The foyer was vast and empty that night - a marble desert which, strangely, even managed to grow dunes and ravines through which I battled to the lifts, where I rested my weary head against the nice soft stainless steel until the lift came. Awakened by the Ping! of the lift I stumbled in, followed by someone who was clearly going to the same floor as me, because they declined my polite offer to push another button for them.

Out of the lift, into my room - my only thought being to drink as much water as I could and then fall on the bed, so straight into the bathroom and drink drink drink drink driiinnnkk, out of the bathroom - and there, standing by my bed was the someone from the lift. She very kindly helped me get undressed and into bed. Then, after a couple more helpful moments, suggested that I owed her thirty dollars (US currency only accepted).

The next day started with a Full English breakfast (or the Togolaise approximation thereof), delivered to my room. This was my crucial ploy in The Game - if you can keep it down, a Full English with Paracetamol chaser will pretty much clear your head, at the cost of only a couple of years off your cardio-vascular lifetime. In fact it works almost as well if you can't keep it down (Tip: don't put on your tie until the very last minute).

Despite my artery-hardening panacea, I was struggling to remember my name, let alone my Opening Remarks and Welcome (9.00 -9.15 am) when I got to the top of the stairs at 9.02 that morning. At the bottom of the stairs were the delegates, who had clearly been gossiping about the dreadful state they had left me in and making bets as to whether I would appear at all. I paused, gently swaying at the top of the flight, wondering how I could disguise the white-knuckle death-grip I had on the bannisters (Rule 1: Don't fall down. Rule 2: don't let them see how unsteady you are.) The conversation died to an expectant hush and 24 grinning faces (some with gratifyingly red eyes) looked up at me. I made my stately progress down the stairs.

Just three steps from the bottom, and a noise like machine-gunfire erupts in the mezzanine above. This gets louder until it is suddenly resolved as high heels (ridiculously tottery steel-tipped stilettos) rat-tatting on the marble floor of the foyer, heading this way. Everyone looks up astonished as at the top of the stairs, tottering and waving, appears the Person In The Lift from the night before. In the harsh fluorescent light of that hung-over, intercontinental morning the Person In The Lift is revealed as the brassiest of whores - mad orange afro wig, spangly lycra boob-tube, micro skirt, fishnets, the lot. Leaning over the railings, the nipples of her (really quite nice and otherwise unsupported) breasts clearly visible through the micron-thick boob-tube, she waves at me in an enthusiastic, jiggly sort of way and calls Cooee!

The rest of the conversation took place in French, and consisted of her saying how much fun we'd had and would I like to meet her in the bar that evening?
I very shamefacedly mumbled back that I was probably busy. She said that well she was probably going to be there anyway so maybe we would bump into each other. With a noise similar to G Para laying down suppressing fire to cover the retreat, she rat-tatted her way out of my life for ever.

I didn't know what to think or expect, as I turned back to delegates - after all, these were god-fearing souls of whose culture I was otherwise ignorant. For all I knew they were about to refuse to have anything further to do with this filthy foreigner who was over here polluting their women. But what I saw in their eyes surprised me. It was respect. Then it hit me: from their perspective, I had shrugged off a near-lethal combination of cocktails, shammed a coma in the nightclub to dump the lightweights and had then gone out whoring and carousing on my own. However dreadful my French grammar (never a strong point - subjunctives are a foreign language to me), however stumbling my delivery of the Opening Remarks and Welcome (9.00 -9.15), I had won The Game.

In Lome it was Genevieve,
the sweetest of the bunch -
But down on my expense claim
She was taxi, snack, and lunch.

(Apologies to whoever I nicked the original ditty off)

*Particularly in the UK

Cheers, more after Glastonbury.