24 HOUR JEWELLERY EXHIBITION

I was reminded of this event tonight and just wanted to write up the story.

After I finished the time in the village in Nepal where I was volunteering, myself and a couple of friends had a couple of weeks just to hang out before we went home. Some of what we would have got up to was curtailed by a general strike but as I have also written, we didn’t let it stop us too much.

Anyway, at a time when the strike wasn’t on, after a big night out me and my similarly shorthaired friend went for breakfast. It was about 10am Nepali time and here is the view from whereabouts in Kathmandu we were eating…

We were eating breakfast and minding our own business when a guy who did not look like the average Nepali decided to come and speak to us. He had a suit and a gold chain around his wrist and was prominently displaying his mobile phone, which is a thing not a lot of people had in that country when I was there.

He invited himself over to our table and began to talk, asking us where we were from what we did etc. The question he really wanted an answer to was how soon we were going home, which happened to be very soon.

That got him interested.

He asked us if we would be interested in taking something to London for him. At this point my friend and I exchanged a glance that meant a lot. ‘No’, we were saying, ‘neither of us is that stupid… but… lets hear what his bullshit story is before we tell him to f*ck off’, much more interesting that way - and it gives you something to blog about (even if it happened years before you knew what a blog was).

He wanted us to take what he assured us was only £2000 worth of jewellery through customs undeclared for him - which he said was entirely legal. I doubt it was only £2000 worth but that is beside the point.

“What for?” I asked him.

“An exhibition.”

“A jewellery exhibition?”

“Yes.”

Hmmm. So we decided to let him talk his nonsense and after a few minutes more his prominent mobile rang. Some sort of pretend conversation began which seemed to involve him trying to find as many ways as possible to include the word ‘exhibition’ in a sentence.

He finished his pretend conversation and turned to us and said…

“That was the exhibition.”

“In London?”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute, it is 10am here which means it is 5am in London.”

—quick as a flash—

“it is 24 hour.”

“A 24 hour jewellery exhibition?”

“Yes.”

Hmmm. I don’t know about you but I have never came across or even heard of such a thing.

After a few more random pieces of nonsense from the chap he finally popped the question and asked if we were going to do it.

“No, we are washing our hair that day.”

He wasn’t entirely amused when we laughed him out of the place.