Tom Gowans ( Hippo)

It’s been over two years since Tom Gowans aka Hippo has posted anything on his blog.
Like a thief in the night he has ghosted us all here in blogland and with him drifted the mysterious existence he led in an African bar, with a beautiful African wife and a life recently off the bottle.
Tom wrote well and with much humour.
He wrote better when he was drunk and his stories were woven around his military service , his family and the exploits of the locals who, I am sure, he was somewhat of a thorn in their sides

Tom posted today and a timely email from another blogger reminded me of this this morning.
She also reminded me of how much I miss his stories and miss him as a friend
For me and Tom are inextricably linked
For I saved his life once.

The story is an interesting one.
One night, no doubt under the anaesthetic which is a good malt, Tom caught his thigh on a thorn in his garden.
With true expat chutzpah he dressed the wound himself and got on with things, but the wound festered and with absolutely no health care available to him locally he turned to me for some advice.
I asked him to photograph his wound and to email me the results.
He did so the next day.

I will always remember the cold shock I felt looking at those photographs .
I was looking at a dead man walking.
The wounds had tracked all throughout his thigh.
Left untreated he would be dead within days.
And bluntly and with urgency I told him so.

We hatched a plan.
Tom would book the nearest plane to London and present himself to the best London teaching  hospital capable to dealing with a tropical wounds. Nuala suggested the best hospital and after wrapping his petrifying wound in newspaper and cling film ( I’m not kidding) Tom managed to stagger onto a plane to London where he managed to limp into A&E for intensive care, surgery and a lengthy hospital stay.

The hospital saved his leg but it was a close call and weeks afterwards he turned up into the village where he took tea and cake at Auntie Glad’s as if he had done so every week in his life .
I liked Tom, with his shock of white hair and sharp, all seeing eyes, so I was saddened when his disappeared from blogland and our very ordinary lives five years ago now.

He has blogged only a couple of times since . And has refused to interact with messages left which was a source of irritation for me at the time.
The difference in his short replies then still fuelled a idea that the writing was not from him and all manner of conspiracy theories sprang forth from different people who suggested that he was being chased by the local mafia, had fled to another country or had died in a pub brawl protecting the name of some exotic ex pat Ava Gardener type!

Whatever the truth, his absence has left blogland much the poorer
The video “ he” posted today was of a sassy black woman with sad eyes singing what I thought  was more a Latin ish song.

And wherever he his
I wish him well

http://hippo-on-the-lawn.blogspot.com/