Sleep with your mouth closed!

By Freda Rumford from the February 2011 Edition

A love story.

Recently at my husband’s “Wake” , people were asked to give memorable stories. Something that tickled the funny bone rather than the dreary and morbid! Very few people had courage to speak out in front of almost 200 people and so, on the quiet, I was told of this small remembrance of the two of us on a very early occasion in Manzanillo.

When we arrived in Manzanillo, it was the end of November and few places had accommodation over Christmas available. We could stay until Christmas Eve but after that time we had to move. As this had been the story all the way down the coast until we arrived in Manzanillo the town that we had decided
would be the southernmost point of our trip, we were

becoming a little desperate. New to Mexico and its Freda Rumford ways and with no knowledge of the surge of inland

Mexicans to the coast over Christmas, we were becoming a little desperate. We really had to find somewhere and quickly.

Our luck was in, we found accommodation in Las Brisas in a not bad looking, apartment hotel right on the beach. The price was incredible – only 1200 pesos for the month! Unfortunately, as time progressed we realised that this was the real value of the place, possibly even a little over priced.

There was however a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, so all was well. The kitchen boasted a sink & draining board, a shelf with 2 plates and mugs (one cracked) a frying pan and bowl and three spoons, two forks and a knife. At that price however, we decided that we could afford to splash out for the few more items that we needed to set up our temporary home.

Very quickly, we made friends with people staying down the beach and started to spend more and more time with them away from our rooms, as the dust and noise from the road became a little too much to handle.

The weather in December that year was very hot and dry and we found it difficult to sleep with any covers or nightclothes. I had been having difficulty in sleeping anyway and my husband usually slept like a log! One night, after finally dropping off, I was awoken with a yell from my partner, who was by the time I roused out of bed, frantically searching for something on the floor and under the bed. “What on earth is the matter?” I asked when I could find my tongue. “I had a cucaracha running up my leg” was the response. We couldn’t see the little devil until we turned out the light and, then by the light of the moon, there he was. BAM! All gone! Unfortunately, this happened a couple more times and Nigel was getting quite disturbed by our little uninvited night guests.

On exploration around the apartments we discovered that in the evenings, the concrete clothes washing station not far from our place was absolutely seething with the little blighters who had made it their home.

One evening our new friends came to visit and over a cup of tea, Nigel relayed to them the difficulty we were having with our unwanted guests who had by now visited on several nights and asked what did they suggest? Quite unwittingly, out of my mouth came the answer “Sleep with your mouth closed, darling!”

That comment, stayed with Rose until she saw me again 15 years later and reminded me just a week ago. What an impression we had left! That pretty much summed up our marriage though, wherever there is a problem, there is always an unexpected solution!

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