The last evening there and the homeward-bound flight as far as Spain are the bits that stay with me most now. Odd really. What had the makings of an exotic equatorial reunion for a couple of old mates - Jed the established rotator and me his guest - developed into something else.

We go back a bit, Jed and me. Two Northern lads who met in the Royal Marines. We did Ireland together and then got split up in the Falklands. As young military men we indulged in things bordering on the insane, the obscene or immoral; thriving on the tastelessness of it all. On leave he would brag over beer, leaning on bars bold and loud. I would snigger down my pint, red in the face. Unknowingly, he crushed me.

When we came out of the forces it was said that I was the one with potential but he was the bloke who got on, using his acquired military skills to build a career for himself. None of mine went to good use. Neither brains nor brawn. Never being able to stick at any one job, and slipping in and out of depression, I ended up calling numbers for naff prizes on the sea front back home. Instead, Jed got things done. He also got things - like a leather interior car, a patio-doored bungalow and Falciparium Malaria. He even managed to survive that in Sheffield Tropical Disease Unit, returning to the island for his usual one-month rotation at making a fortune in sea survival and safety training for one of the American oil companies. The recovery made him a champion in the eyes of the Guineans. A true English African.

'Come on over, Len,'� he insisted. 'I'll send the official invite, you gather your papers and we're laughing. Just like old times.'�

The idea of seeing Jed again punched the youth back into me. I was propelled to think positive. Do good. Save a life. I'd thought about collecting for the African children, taking over clothes, toys, sweets, money. Anything. This was my chance to do something charitable, something useful. Significant.

'Forget the lolly, pal,'� he advised me in cyber-chat. 'Got little bairns in need of serious medication and what do they go and do? Spend what bit they've got on mobile phones.'�

'What the hell do they do in the jungle with mobile phones?'�

'The mind boggles.'�

Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, just before the turn of the century. Not quite the West Africa of your glossy tourist brochures promoting exciting safaris or untinged talcum powder beaches. More of a scabrous place, where a democratically elected military dictatorship controls the booming economy in what used to be known as the armpit of the continent before the discovery of black gold; where those seriously unwanted are banished to the Black Beach and the locals amicably coexist with palm-sized spiders, mambas and miniature monkeys. To those working there, and enjoying free access to fresh drinking water, this of course becomes of secondary importance when in desperate need of some quality entertainment.

I recall about seventy punters trying to surge in the hall at once my last evening there. Among them, a swell of eager Christians - Catholics, Evangelists, converted Boobies and Fang - funnel through the back doors. They scramble across the plush air-conditioned hall to yank chairs into brief possession and rearrange them to their own taste around circular tables. The greatest social event that this tropical island has ever had bestowed upon it is about to take place and I am at the centre of it. The closest to celebrity - or so I think - that I'll ever get.

Jed tells me over the years various events have sprouted around the Cara-Colas area but failed to bloom. Barbecues, Hash House Harriers, quiz nights, all in the attempt to raise cash or create a sense of community between the oil workers and the other inhabitants of this disease festered place: the God Squad, the do-gooders who come to paint a hospital or renovate a church; and the hordes of visiting relatives hankering for the African experience. Then of course, there are the locals. The few who can afford to buy tickets and understand bingo in English, are here tonight.

The snowball has run itself up into colossal prize money since no one has yet managed to call on less than the established fifty numbers. So huge is the jackpot that Mrs Monroe, one of the initiators of the game, hasn't slept for weeks in fear of someone creeping into her room to do her and her husband in, and nick the lot. She and Mr Monroe have been hiding the cash in a box under the bed with the cards, felt-tip pens and the electronic number-calling machine brought over in a container of donated out-of-date drugs. Then Jed got involved in calling the numbers but he knew that was probably something - the only thing - I could do better than him. So, that is why, after numerous injections, pills and a bureaucratic battle for a visa, I waved goodbye to Bridlington pier and left for a temporary stay on a housing estate carved out of the edge of the jungle.

From the stage I look down at the buzzing crowd; a mixture of new arrivals and friends I have made during my stay here. I see Chuck, another ex-marine from Washington, who helped me convince the church groups that their participation in this does not automatically make them lapsed Christians.

'Yes, this is gambling,'� he agreed with them, 'but some of the proceeds are going towards a good cause. Alternative ways of encouraging people to donate are what it's all about.'�

He gestures for me to get started.

'Come on Lenny. Pull'em for me tonight!'� he yells from the front row in his 'I'm Proud To Be American' T-shirt. He's knocking back '33' tonight. Brewed in Nigeria and only to be drunk when nothing else is available.

I watch Sarah-Anne Davis, gazelle slender, breezing about the hall in a floral dress and long silk scarf, leaving a trace of rose scent in the air as she passes. She tussles with the wafting garment as she teeters across the room to stick up a poster which no one reads, except me: 'Love in the form of compassion and art in the form of poetry will save the world.' Her rock-pool eyes look up at me in search of approval.

She is anxious for everything to run smoothly. The snowball prize money must go, she hopes, before her church group departs for the States. After all, things were not supposed to get this big. I cannot help but glance at her that bit too long. She doesn't notice. Jed does.

'Bit late now you're both ready for off tomorrow.'� He winks at me.

'Both?'�

'Aye, the Evangelists are on your flight home. At least as far as your connection to Madrid."

Sarah-Anne had never specified her departure but our meetings had always been brief, sometimes sweetly embarrassing and only for organisational purposes.

'It's a brilliant idea of yours to donate a percentage of the snowball winnings to the school,'� she whispered one afternoon. 'All we need is for it to go before we do so we can be sure everything is in place.'�

Jed being Jed had objected.

'The cash gets diverted,'� he said at one of the social activity meetings.

'The punters might as well keep it. The local big guys have offshore accounts as fat as pigs for slaughter and that's where it ends. Right there, I'm telling you.'� He leaned back on his chair and took a deep breath fixing his eyes on the ceiling.

'Unless you renovate the school yourself, it won't get done. And anyway, their primary requirement is water. Clean water. It's as simple as that.'�

Sarah-Anne, nettled, was on the verge of tears.

'You might very well be wrong, for once. If we all thought like you, nobody would ever do anything for the less fortunate.'�

Giving to the less fortunate. Easier said than done in Bioko.

Jed had seen too much. Do-gooders come and go and those who'd done too much in the wrong places or at the wrong time, got rid of. He equated cash donations with a lapse of common sense. Something to avoid like cholera or yellow fever.

Inside the hall, the air is cool but tense. Outside, as darkness descends, the wing-beat flappings of the fruit bats accompany the mocking dance of the mosquitoes and moths circling over the last few stragglers. The crowd, with a million Central African Francs at stake, is hushed as the doors are closed.

Now it's eyes down ladies and gentlemen for your first numbers.

We get off to a cracking start. The first single-line call is a false one on fifteen numbers. Neither two fat ladies or blind ninety have been pulled, and that prize later goes to one of the many Obiangs, who decides not to accept the cash in case he's mugged on the way home. He changes his mind and leaves empty handed.

'Bingo good fun but money disaster,'� he smiles as he makes his exit.

Before the fifth full house some of them need a ciggy so I go outside and prop myself against a mango tree and reflect on what's going to come out of this fatal slice of charity.

Incidents of the past twenty days occupy my mind: the woman who was maimed by her husband for accepting a joint of beef from Jed; the dead baby I saw slung under a bush by its mother; the toddler who got beaten by a gang of teenagers because I'd given him a plastic pencil case. I'm comforted by the thought of how Jed managed to wangle the head-office ban regarding unauthorized people coming onto company property to draw fresh water from his garden well. He had his guard fit a length of hose to the standpipe, which meandered across the yard like a giant snake slithering into the bushes. I missed the multi-coloured ladies' comings and goings with vessels of all shapes on their heads, but at least they were able to get at drinking water without trespassing.

Soft warm air blows a fine white powder like dancing mist around the banana trees. The smell of pollen and oily fruits mingles in the atmosphere with the pungent odour of wood fires; a fragrance that will invade my dreams forever. Birds and monkeys shriek as I turn my back on the shrouded jungle canopy to call for the last couple of games. I'm unclear as to what I really want to happen to the snowball. It could keep on rolling till someone kills for it. Perhaps it's best I never get to know the fate that is to befall it. I realise how hard it is to simply give but then again I suppose Bingo and snowballs have no place in the jungle. What place do any of us have, locals apart, in the jungle?

The punters have a fabulous evening, making merry, drinking and singing. The hall throbs with entertainment. The single lines and full houses go to the Yanks and their relatives.

The snowball remains frozen.

The next day I'm due to leave for the weekly Iberia flight to Madrid. Jed taxis me in one of his European mechanically failed vehicles to Malabo airport, or rather tin shed. We stop off to get a few bottles in for my journey at the roadside shack we named 'The Beer and Brick'. 'Beer' after the main drink supplied by the owner Mr Salas, and 'Brick' after the sun-dried mud blocks he spends the whole day making and selling for construction.

'Bioko Bingo Man!'� he beams, shaking my hand as if he never intends letting go. 'You go home?'� He speaks in fragments displaying a perfect set of pearl-white teeth.

'You come back. We play. Bingo in Bioko no good when Bioko Bingo Man not there.'�

I smile and wave goodbye as we clamber back into the van and disappear down the potholed road.

Boarding the plane I'm greeted by a jolly bunch of Americans who refer to me as the Bingo Man that rescued them from boredom. The Evangelists, sitting together at the back, are already singing along heartily to the accompaniment of a guitar. I try not to think about anything and soon doze off.

About five hours into the flight across the Sahara I'm woken by bumps and jolts due to turbulence. Many of the oil workers who have been drinking since take off are unshaken. Suddenly, I hear a woman scream loudly then constantly, infecting the atmosphere with anxiety. Unsettled I crane my neck to find out what is going on and see a leathery-skinned woman gesticulating and yelling. She looks to have totally lost it.

'It's Sarah-Anne,'� she shrieks. 'She's stopped breathing.'�

Instinctively I stand to go over to where the ladies are seated but one of the cabin crew holds me back, her nails digging firmly into my arm. At first I hesitate then call Chuck. This time the hostess stumbles over me in her attempt to force me to my seat. Chuck starts marching up and down as if he owns the aircraft, giving the crew orders, briefing the pilot and trying to calm the passengers. The Evangelists' singing turns into a lamenting wail and in no time we have total chaos on our hands.

My only concern is Sarah-Anne. The woman is right, she has stopped breathing and I motion to Chuck to keep all other passengers at bay. The cabin crew allow me to take over when it's obvious I know exactly what I'm doing. I ease her frail body down the centre of the aisle inhaling the occasional waft of perfume as I crouch over her. I swallow hard. My hands go clammy and the back of my neck pin-prickly. I reach to feel the fading beat of her carotid pulse. The intensity of the scenario takes me far back, the memory filtering through. I see the blood on my arms and feel the hot sweat beads on my temples. Jed's huge square head was a blur looming over me. He was slapping my face. It would have been so easy to let go. To give in to the pain.

Soon our descent into Madrid begins and the cabin crew take their seats for landing. I have no choice but to start mouth to mouth resuscitation on Sarah-Anne. I wait, my heart thumping like I wish hers would.

Nothing.

What holds me are those tiny features of courage and tenacity embedded in an ashen-white complexion. Strangely enough I find myself praying, something I haven't done since the Falklands. A few more seconds then I reattempt resuscitation. I wait again. A rush of air gushes into her lungs and Sarah-Anne takes her first gasp, wheezing at life. I tremble in relief.

'OK Chuck, we're on it lad!'� I yell down the aircraft.

As we touch down the whole plane bursts into a round of applause. Only this time, not for the pilot.

'This is divine intervention!'� shrieks an elderly gentlemen.

Chuck and I attend to Sarah-Anne till the ambulance arrives to drive her off to Madrid hospital. Then we proceed to the hotel bar for a night of drinking before I leave for Manchester, and Chuck the States.

The next day I have a thick head and arrive at the departure lounge to discover that I am in the wrong terminal so I proceed on foot towards terminal two in the hope of walking off the hangover that is fast descending on me. The sound of a guitar and church singers somewhere in the distance rings familiar. It's Monday morning and Madrid airport is extremely crowded. Within minutes the Evangelist group spot me from a distance. They run towards me shouting glory in the name of the Lord and I'm almost mobbed as they approach, screaming, jumping up and down like frenzied pogo punks.

'It's the Bioko Bingo Man! The Lord sent him to us to make our lives meaningful.'� I am circulated by a crowd of applauding Christians, firm in their belief that I, the chosen one, was sent to save a life and disseminate the virtues of hope and charity.

They rejoice. My existence is blessed and I am praised. I try to break free from this moment of religious celebrity and at least come to learn that Sarah-Anne is doing just fine. She will be leaving for the States in a few days time. Some of the mob take my photograph, others ask for autographs. They play and sing to my departure as I steal away.

Bridlington takes on another dimension when I get back. The sky is brighter, the sea less murky, the amusement arcades merrier. Even the punters smile. As for the bingo. Well, within a few weeks I introduce a new cash game for Friday afternoons whereby twenty-five percent of the snowball winnings must go to a charity of the fortunate player's choice.

Jesus, do I make sure that happens.

Jed writes that enthusiasm for bingo in Bioko soon dwindled after my departure. People got scared, the whole snowball kitty was donated to the local government to use as they thought fit and Jed wanted nothing more to do with any of it.

The school awaits renovation.

I haven't as yet replied to Sarah-Anne's thank you card and gift. A snazzy silver letter-opener. I might even ask her over for a holiday. She's never been to Britain but I remember her once saying she never minded the rain. You never know she might even fancy a game of bingo. A game of Bioko Bingo; called by Brid's one and only Bioko Bingo Man.

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