Tuesday 24th April

I arrived in Shanghai with the Chinese lark, feeling far from fresh, and promptly leapt into the wrong cab. The Old Man, you see, true Briton that he is and given the earliness of my arrival, had been good enough to send one of his tame drivers over to Shanghai Pudong to pick up his firstborn. Said firstborn, that is to say, ‘me’, had spotted a likely looking fellow with the name ‘Thomas’ scrawled upon his pad:

“Thomas Mansfield?” I enquired, giving the ferryman a beaming, hopefully ingratiating, grin.

“Er…Mr Thomas?” he responded, giving his prospective passenger the friendly nod of a fella who, while clearly lacking in no other single quality, spoke not a word of English.

“That’s me, I guess,” I replied, admittedly considering that no-one really calls me ‘Thomas’, and that the fell surname ‘Mansfield’ was nowhere to be seen on his A4 sheet…

“Mr Thomas!” he agreed, however, and we were off.

It’s a fair old poke from the airport to the French Concession – the charming, leafy quarter of the metropolis which currently accommodates The Old Man and Katzenjammer – a journey sufficiently lengthy for the friendly driver fellow to field many a dozen frantic phone calls and to look back upon me anxiously and repeatedly.

Eventually, after a good few dozen kilometers, he flung his mobile back at me in something of a frenzy. Upon placing said telephone to the Mansfield ear, a polite but clearly concerned Chinese voice on the other end asked me, though not in so many words, ‘who the [*expletive*] I was and what the [*expletive*] I was doing in their car.

I shrunk visibly in the back seat, disappearing deep into the leather. The cab hung loose about me, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief. This was not my motor. This was the motor of a Mr. Tomas, a Dutch businessman in town for some kind of achingly boring conference thingy. My ride, if ever it existed, was still waiting for me some 50km back whence I had come.

The car was already turning back in the direction of the airport, my driver cursing under his breath in blue-tinged Mandarin – yet either side of the road stood the proud, familiar trees of the French Concession. I was so close, if only I could leap from the car…

A red light. A red light a mere stone’s throw from a metro station! Out of the car I threw myself, suitcase in hand, offering hurried thanks and apologies to a nonplussed driver as I slammed the door shut and dived down into the air-conditioned bosom of the Shanghai underground. A quick (read: ten minute) examination of the map told me my route, and within a heartbeat (read: longer than I’d care to say) I was at last strolling towards the fifty-plus storey monstrosity which now housed mon pere.

The Old Man’s new place was well-appointed and palatial, but all I cared for, at this juncture, was my bed, which opened its arms to me and hugged me close like a long-lost accordion. Having caught nary a wink of shut-eye during my four film flight, I napped and napped long, waking just in time to conduct a sub-standard telephone interview with some university or other – I forget which it was. Needless to say, they offered not unto me ‘the gig’.

Midway through this thankless audition, The Old Man returned. To celebrate this reunification of Mansfields, and also because I was, post-slumber, ‘Hank Marvin’, we hastened out for vitals and lubrication. We opted for a decent nearby joint called Azul, which served up Spanish/Peruvian taps, and then onto La Pétanque for French beers and a spot of dessert. The evening was rounded off at the Tipsy Fiddler for a couple of cheeky Guinnesses with Katzenjammer, who had been studying Chinese of an evening, bringing the total number of party-members who spoke a word of the language to a grand total of ‘one’.

Back at the flat everyone hastened to Bedfordshire – though for me ’twas but a preparatory nap. I had promises to keep, and miles and miles to go before I slept: that is to say, AS Roma had a 3.30am appointment for an unholy spanking at Fortress Anfield. Suffice to say, I’m very glad I stayed true to my beloved Liverpool FC, as they walked the first leg of their Champion’s League semi-final with frankly embarrassing ease, strolling it 5-2 while I drank silent, delighted beers and gobbled up late-night potato salad with significant relish.

An elongated, eventful first ‘day’, aye – but a highly enjoyable one all the same.

 

Wednesday 25th April

Having thoroughly destroyed my normal sleep patterns, a long, fitful night was suffixed by a lie-in of Herculean proportions. Like the teenager, I rose to eat the afternoon air, promise-crammed, luxuriating around The Old Man’s castle in the clouds, reading the occasional spot of Shipman and generally feeling as relaxed as that white glove your man banged on about, to which, at dawn, a brisk hand would return. Or something along those lines at any rate.

Once the wage-earning adults returned it was time to wash-up, brush-up and heave out the glad-rags from the glad-suitcase. We were hitting the town, or, to be more exact, we were hitting the Bund. Up we went to Mercato, a favourite Katzenjammer spot, for some seriously sublime Italian fare and quite sensational views over Shanghai Tower, the Pearl Tower and all the other #1 hits thrown up into the sky by Shanghai’s sky-high Pudong District.

It really says something about the mid-season form of the chefs that the food served matched the vistas afforded us by our window-side table, the moon beaming down, shining like a bus-driver’s trousers; the pastas and pizzas exploding in the mouth like tasty little parcels of nitro-glycerine. It’s gastronomic times like these which makes one thankful that one’s cave-dwelling forbears decided ‘this huntin’, gatherin’ sutff’ might be more than just a phase, and should probably be explored a wee bit further.

Once back home following a genuinely five star I binge, I attempted to sleep through the night like the angelic infant I assuredly was, nearly three decades ago. Needless to say, in this I failed, grabbing myself precisely zero hours of the dreamless. But then, my friends, who needs dreams when one has already eaten from the assorted bruschetta of the Gods?

 

Thursday 26th April

My unfeasibly early rise this morning was not at all in the script. However, having lain sans slumber from dusk to d. and choosing not to let ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’ like the poor cat i’ th’ adage, I decided to get on up, fit for treason, stratagems and spoils, among other things.

Having bathed, shaved and clad the outer Mansfield, and keen to get my bearings, I ankled along through French concession, attempting to connect the dots in my weak mind and place The Old Man’s new pad in relation to The Old M’s old p., where I had once spent an enjoyable November, back in 2016. Eventually, I found the former kingdom, and celebrated with a very early ‘lunch’ at nearby Joe’s, breaking my fast with a slice or two of New York-style pizza before about turning and heading homeward, walking back briskly in the sun, flying, if you will, much like the youthful hart or roe, o’er the hills where spices grow.

Later that day saw Round #2 at La Pétanque, seemingly a favourite haunt of The Old Man, on this occasion with a Malaysian-Chinese fella by the solidly Saxon name of ‘Brian’. He’s one of those merchant princes which scoop it up by the sackful out here in the East, and was good enough to stand a bloke a pint or two of strong Belgium beer, so in me he soon had a fan.

As aforementioned Brian had to shuffle back home to his apparently innumerable children, and with Katzenjammer again hitting the Chinese textbooks with Teutonic assiduity, I took the opportunity of shepherding The Old Man into a likely-looking restaurant named Yuan Yuan for what is technically termed ‘a succulent Chinese meal’.

[Top Tip: It’s always good, in these situations, to offer to foot the bill when a.) there are no Michelin stars knocking about and b.) the numbers of feasters are kept to a minimum. In this way one might hope to disguise the fact from one’s hosts that you are, in many accurate ways, somewhat parasitic.]

After some excellent eating (and quite skilful ordering, one must say) we popped over to ‘The Hop Project’, where we met another pal of The Old Man’s – a British Council Johnnie by the name of Matt – for a pint or two of the hoppy stuff. It was here that I learnt that Shanghai lasses, when on ‘dates’ with young men with whom they have no real interest in arranging ‘date number two’, will make their lack of interest abundantly clear by whipping out their phones as soon as the bill arrives, and paying for the whole dang lot using ‘WePay’ or ‘Apple Pay’ or some such wizardry.

This strikes me, a fella of limited means who has weathered more than his fair share of unsuccessful rendezvous with uninterested ladies, as a quite sensational practice which should be brought into the London dating scene by swift act of parliament.

Back at HQ I tried to ‘sleep’ sleep but ended up just ‘napping’ sleeping, waking up between three and four in the AM, just in time to watch the Arsenal stink the place up against a 10-man Atletico Madrid side. Sometimes, readers, it seems that ‘absolute mares’ beset both the sleeping and wakeful alike.

 

Friday 27th April

Another lengthy lie-in heralded the coming of the trip’s first Friday, the most impressively lengthy lie-in to date, taking a fellow almost up to cocktail hour.

As it happened, the first notable occurrence of the day was, indeed, booze-based, as I followed the crowd to a bar called ‘Abbey Road’ with The Old Man, Katzenjammer and her colleague Portlandia, who hailed from New England and was something of a Shanghai veteran.

Drinks at AR were followed swiftly by dinner at The Bull & Claw. Here the food on offer proved very fine indeed, though its signature claws of lobster were, as always, mesmerically difficult to access – especially after the various shots and aperitifs with which the joint’s owner had plied us. Thus feeling particularly well-fed and exceptionally well-watered, we hasted on, against our better judgement, to Sasha’s and then, foolishly, to Zapatte’s, for many unnecessary drinks.

Keen to impress Portlandia, who seemed to know her stuff, I demanded from the waiter “a bottle of the best from the oldest bin”, yet received various tequilas of low to very low quality. Proving, if proof were needed, that my Mandarin is still far from perfect. Either way, The Old Man and Katzenjammer were soon sent packing, as this was Big League drinking, and, as such, was the sole purview of those born in the nineteen-eighties.

In the end, it was a fiercely-fought contest, won by Portlandia, and I ended very much ‘one over the eight’, fated to crash out that night on the victor’s sofa avec Luna, the victor’s cat – a feline who struck a fellow as notably over-familiar. The following morning, I feared, as sleep took its hazy hold, was likely to be tricksome one.

 

Saturday 28th April

As it happened, thank the Lord, the next morning – and indeed afternoon – was notably relaxed in nature. Cruel reality back west obliged me to venture online to pay a few bills and to chase down 老鷹 for his rent money, but other than that and catching up with a spot of cricket, not too many clouds of toil crossed my idle skies. Later I enjoyed a splendid, simple dinner of Katzenjammer concoction in the flat, accompanied with a healthy percentage of a nice bottle of red – one of, it gives me no great pleasure to relay, the few ‘non-corked’ bottles which The Old Man had received from various acquaintances out east.

After this brief, peaceful sojourn, it was back out to tame the Shanghai whirlwind with Portlandia, who had been kind enough to offer a fellow a rematch, and some of her fellow ex-pat Yankees (not to be confused with The Yankee, of Straight Down from Chicago fame, of course).

Firstly we went to drink myriad beers and provide bloody sustenance for myriad mosquitoes up on the rooftop of Daga Brewpub. Then we hired ‘Mo-Bikes’ – yellow, app-based bicycles with the turning circule of the QE2 – to spirit us across to Catina Agave, where it was, apparently, ‘happening’.

After this things got a wee bit hazy for yours truly, but once again a fellow was woken up by the rough tongue of Luna, that most friendly of Bast’s children, at what many a gentleman would consider ‘an unearthly hour’ – evidence, perhaps, of another night well wasted.

 

Sunday 29th April

It being a Sunday I was forced by weak-witted convention to consume not breakfast, and not lunch (and most certainly not both), but brunch, mid-morning, at a popular spot called Liquid Laundry, which I had, I realised, mid-eggs, visited on my previous trip out east. The fare was, in all fairness, very good indeed, though I waddled out feeling at best 60% as healthy as I had done when I had strolled on in.

This particular Sunday was, in fact, the very day The Old Man and I were scheduled to hop across to Borneo, for a ‘lads tour’, as it were, to a former colony and current ‘top birding spot’. (Regular readers will remember that The Old Man is a keen twitcher and simply lives for our feathered friends.)

We therefore had a ‘chilled’ afternoon before hot-footing it to the airport, where we enjoyed a couple of eye-wateringly expensive but absolutely necessary pre-plane Stellas. Once aboard our ‘Spring Air’ flight, it looked, for one magical moment, as if we had struck gold and had been given the much-coveted emergency exit row seats. This would, dear reader, have been quite the boon, as Spring Air is much like Ryanair, but without western levels of leg-room nor its rude Celtic charm…

Sadly, lamentably, tragically, an accursed air hostess simmered over to inform The Old Man that he couldn’t read ticket numbers, that we were, in fact, in the row behind the emergency thrones, and that this flight to Borneo – and to the next blog post – would be spent with our knees around our ears. Damn, as they say. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.