There was a terrible loud huge banging on my front door that wake me up last Thursday afternoon which make me think for certain that the anarchist police had come for me and which therefore make me rush naked from my daybed and flush down the toilet all my unused flavoured condoms so that I could not be framed by them for hypocrisy. It took me six minutes and much poking with a roll-up copy of El Mundo before I could get the peach melba one to disappear, and only then did I notice that the goldfish was missing (before you are ask, I always keep copies of El Mundo in my toilet facility in case I am run out of extra-smooth soft velvet quadruple-ply aloe-vera-coated lavender-scented toilet tissue for men. Is not a political gesture: I find that it has fewer glossy pages than the other dailies, so there is less smear.)

Look Out! There are Thieving Foreingers Everywhere!

When I finally have got rid of all the evidence, I am feeling already like another lie down, but the clatterling on the front door is still going on in spite of me praying for the anarchists to go away; they do not listen to God, of course, but I was hope that he might smite them in his righteousness. Even after two hours of praying, the noise have not relented, so finally I make myself some strong coffee, take a glass of wine, eat some calamari, then brace myself for confronting indignantly the anarchists for making such a racket when all normal people are in bed.

Imagine my surprise then that it was not filthy scum anarchists at all but my next-door neighbour, Frau Mengele, who, it transpired, had been using an illegal immigrant’s forehead as a buttering ram in order to get my attention. She may be 95 years old and have titanium knees, but she is wiry like a Jack Daniels terrier and not the sort of person you are want to meet on the way home from origami class. Especially not if you have had a few. Even more especially not if she has.

“Señor Estímulo! Señor Manuel!” she was screeching in her gravelly throat-cancer voice. “Kommen sie with all due haste, bitte! Herr Mengele has been robbered!”

This was a terrible news. We are not have had a robbery on the Islas Canarias since the islands was first liberated from the indigent natives before the war. Of course, there are always the idiot British tourists who think nothing of urinating in one another’s mouths “for a lark” or showing off their fat hairy arses (both mens and women’s) but since they only injure each other and also leave their wallets hanging out of their trousers when they fall fast asleep in the gutter, theses are not regarded as crimes so much as a form of care in the community. I understand that if you walk down the high street of any English town today you will find it populated by stark barking staring mad loonies, all doing that famous ministry of stupid walks or singing the Philosophers’ Song from Merleau-Ponty’s Flying Circus. How they are ever had an empire is flummoxing me completely!

After I have wiped the grease and blood and spittle off my front door (most of it my own, but that is another story), I followed Frau Mengele as fast as I could up the path and all the way along the pavement to next door, down her garden path, and in through her front door, which was wide open, as is the normal custom here, and into the spacious dungeon where Herr Mengele was sitting distraught, with his hair in his hands.

“Put that foreinger outside!” he yelled angrily.

“No! Is Señor Estímulo,” say Frau Mengele. “He ist komme to help.”

“Not him!” say Herr Mengele. “That one under your arm!” And Frau Mengele realize only then that she was still dragging the illegal immigrant around in a gridlock, such is her adrenaline-soaked power when she is aroused. Horrified at her own absent-mindedness, she drop the foreinger to the carpet and with the side of her foot nudge his lifeless body under the exercise rack.

“What is being the problem here, Herr?” I am said all officiously. And also but solicitously.

“He is losing all his surgical instruments,” Frau Mengele esplain.

“Surgical instruments?” I was repeat, then turn to Herr Mengele. “I was not knowing you are a doctor, Herr. Herr doctor.” He look up at me and shrug his shoulders.

“I dabble,” he is said.

“Ja, and he have been dabbling for 70 years,” says Frau Mengele. “His instruments are being in pride of place here in the dungeon. We are having had many wonderful times using his scalpels, his drills, his pliers, his nipple clamps.”

“They are of great sentimental value,” Herr Mengele esplain sadly, with those great big puppy-dog ears. Such self-pity was so unlike him. Was like he had been emasculated. And with his own instruments to boot. To jackboot.

However, I clap my hands decisively and enthusiastically to lift the mood.

“We must not let the thieves get away with this. Nor indeed the public at large, who as we speak are already hiding the perpetuators of this crime. I have seen in the papers, Herr Mengele, the answer to all your problems. We are must form a vigilante gang, just like the ones in Italy that Herr Berlusconi is creating.”

“Jawohl!” said Frau Mengele, delighted. “We can have uniforms!”

“Si. I have been read all about in Italy, where they are now bringing back the vigilante gangs just like in the good old days, for fighting the crime, the illegal immigrants, the legal immigrants, the unions, the schoolteachers, the homosesuals. Is marvelous news.”

Herr Mengele brightened up immensely at this good news and the prospect of a return to the rule of claw.

“I will go und get my Luger from under the floorboards of the tortu- . . . bed chamber,” he said, but was surprise when I raise my hand and stop him in his track.

“Not so fast, Herr Mengele,” I am said. “I am afraid that as yet, we are not allowed the guns. They are still reserve for the police, traffic wardens, mafia, and owners of television stations. For the time being we are must use only our mobile phones.”

Frau Mengele harumphed.

“What good is a mobile phone on its own? At the very least you must also have lubricant.”

“Is for phoning the real police,” I esplain. “However, if I am remember rightly, in the grand old days of Signor Mussolini, his gangs was always carrying the castor oil, which they force-feed the miscreants to give them the diarrhoea on the spot. Was most hilarious by all accounts.”

By all accounts I mean both accounts, since Italian fascisti were not much given to reading and writing.

“Where are we will get the camphor oil from?” ask Frau Mengele.

“Not camphor oil. Castor oil. They are not having a blocked nose!” I say. “Beside, castor oil is not appropriate here. All foreingers who come here get the diarrhoea anyway. The local cuisine does that job for us. Instead, I suggest we carry with us the suntan oil.”

“Ja!” erupted Herr Mengele. “Factor 2! That will teach them.”

And thus it has been that for the past week that the three of us have been upholding the proud fascist tradition of vigilantism along the promenade, enforcing strictly the local bye-laws of topless bikinis, no mopeds over 3 kilometers per hour, and obligatory use of the beach shower. Any young ladies caught abusing these rules have been held down and massaged for 45 minutes for a first offence, an hour and a half for a second, and brought back to the Mengeles’ house for more probing interrogation if they persist in their naughtiness. All the evidence so far have only convinced me more than ever that women like to feel the firm spank of authority, and at last we are being able to bring it to them day and night and also to our mutual satisfaction.

You have heard my story. What are you doing to keep your neighbourhood safe? And which hole do you most like to have oil rubbed into (For me it is usually someone else’s)? Tell me now.

Besos

Manuel