PINS - Rule Forty-four: Disobeying orders

(“Inactivity means despondency; and an early decay.”)

Of course disobeying orders is a very serious offence, but it is one that isn’t covered in PINS. Maybe that is because the compiler of the rules of the game couldn’t countenance units disobeying orders. Yes, we have issues around morale. All units face that at some point, but these lapses would surely be solved by appeals to their better nature. They can toughen up, and think of the poor children in Africa who don’t get a plate of food each day, or think of their relatives killed in foreign wars, or those who had to go to the workhouse, or go into service. Others have had much worse tragedies than you. And if you don’t do as you’re told, you’ll go to the workhouse. Or be at the beck and call of someone else for the rest of your life, bowing and scraping, ugh. That kind of appeal normally stops any nonsense.

But imagine disobeying orders and becoming superhuman like Count Saint Germain, who ‘never dies and knows everything’. You’ve read about him in the World Atlas of Mysteries  book your mother doesn’t let you look at. She keeps it on top of the big wardrobe in your parents’ room and thinks you can’t get up there. Count Saint Germain goes everywhere and always looks about forty-five. He searches for secrets of the occult and lost knowledge. He was seen on different continents at the same time (there is a map of the world showing where the Count turned up. He is represented as the silhouette of a man). The book also tells you, “Some occultists believe St Germain never died. In January 1972 a Parisian named Richard Chanfray appeared on French television claiming to be him; as ‘proof’ he achieved an apparently successful transmutation of lead into gold using a camping stove in front of the TV cameras.” Also on top of the wardrobe are the books on how to bet on the horses your mother has confiscated from your father, who had started ‘dabbling’. Dad was showing off in Manchester to worthless friends and was ‘influenced’, according to Mum.

Up there, too, are car maintenance books from the 1960s on:

The Renault Dauphine

The Morris Minor Estate

The Austin Healey

The Austin Cambridge

The Vauxhall Viva

According to mum, dad’s a “hopeless squirrel”. 

Slide down the massive piles of hops in the oast house. You’ve never really been in the south of England before. You get your arse tanned by the farmer, and your skin itches like beggary afterwards. 

Remember to say nothing and let your mother speak, they don’t know we are English and they’ll never rent this place out to us. Or we’ll have to find a hotel. (This is a case of reverse disobeying, we are deceiving a Frenchie farmer, but it’s alright as dad says we can.)

He disobeyed his mother and ran off in 1918, went to America, had a photo taken, standing next to a big vase on a table. He was wearing his invalid uniform. 

Steal the gentleman’s relish from a posh supermarket in the Trough of Bowland. They can afford it round here.

Why are you such a fucking ponce with your long hair and crap teeshirts? Why aren't you one of Thatcher’s Children? Get a job! Pay your way!

Not paying your Poll Tax is disobeying orders. No one in this club likes that Margaret Thatcher, man, destroying the fabric of society, but paying your taxes is important. Can’t be doing with these student protests, man. A bunch of Cuthbert the softies, they are. [Sotto whisper, from your immediate left: “Whisht; he worked with Ellen Wilkinson and was on the hunger committees.”] So: pay your Poll Tax, don’t disobey. 

He was such a lovely soul, never did anybody any harm, always very polite and courteous and a stickler for the rules, such a shame he died early. 

Ring your wife: you are under arrest in a police station in Buenos Aires, claiming to be a member of HM Royal Navy, even though you have lost most of your clothes. One call; get the Navy to sort it out.  

Don’t get on the back of that dog, it’s not a horse, it’ll have your arm off.

Just don’t go to school, you hate it and anyway, that time when the man put his hand right up your bottom to see if there was anything physically wrong with you, and after all the blood tests and the times when you had to go to a child psychologist, how can you ever fit in with school again? Best read a book. Think of transporting yourself away to another world. You know you’re right but it’s hard to say what happened and it may take years. 

Run away with an older woman in the same town but break off all contact.

If you do disobey, do it with elan. For instance: reverse at 6 miles an hour through the pedestrian zone towards the entrance of the railway station. Ignore the shocked German citizens as you pass, tell them your mob was stationed here for too long protecting them from the Russian threat and you are a true-born Englishman so they can put that in their pipes and smoke it. Drop your son and his partner off, and then drive off, unchallenged, in search of savoury pastries, which your wife will then describe in detail, on a postcard. 

An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.