PINS - Rule Thirty-seven: On Manoeuvres
(Don’t tell your mother!)
It’s important to practise your PINS when possible. Otherwise you will never graduate into an elite unit or become a C.O.. Practising your PINS means going on manoeuvres. Lots of unexpected things happen on manoeuvres.
The Morris Oxford has a primitive tape player you can just about hear in the back, over the sound of the engine. We have one tape Dad found in Manchester for 40p, called ‘Golden Hits of 1958’. Its cover has a drawing of a foot, encased in a brothel creeper and a colourful sock. The running order has April Love, C’mon Everybody, At the Hop, Witch Doctor, It’s Only Make Believe, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands, Book of Love, Splish Splash, Sugartime, Sweet Little Sixteen, Do You Want to Dance, and Oh Lonesome Me amongst others. We like Witch Doctor. Dad’s favourite is Great Balls of Fire, which he always sings along to. He claims he saw Jerry Lee Lewis play at Newcastle City Hall, where there was “eeh, some trouble”. He won’t say anything more in front of Mum, but sucks his breath in and flutters his eyelids which normally means he’s amused by something. We look out of the Oxford’s rain-spattered back door windows at the flat landscape of northern France, the roadsides endlessly demarcated by straight lines of tall poplar trees. A game to stave off boredom is to squint through the reinforced glass logo at the bottom corner of the windows to see what the landscape looks like: a weird kind of prism, that’s what. Dad says, “we won’t get to find anything out about the world for a week, no BBC here!”
Your great great granda was known as Yorkie Bob! We went to find the graves of his family and found an old pub, still lit by gaslight. I’m not sure he was related to Shadrach.
I can sleep anywhere, even in the back of this ambulance. It’s easy.
Did these statues come from your garden? I’ve come to bring them back. They were in our kitchen. I have no idea why, I was getting ready for work and there they were.
Don’t buy the heather sprigs off the lady who comes calling, just the clothes pegs. The last time I bought the heather I got shingles.
Conky killed the Puff Adder! Made a belt from it.
No, no, listen to me, answer with a straight yes, or no. Yes I know you’re in the pub but we just need to know one thing, now. Do you want some fish?
I’m not doing very well here, am I? I know I’m a bit tiddly, but can you just pretend I’m doing well with you?
The next thing I remember was waking up in a place I had never been before. It was a front garden, on a completely strange estate. It was so cold, and I was there for hours. I tried crawling under the car on the drive but got oil all over me. So, before I died of hypothermia, I decided to walk as far as I could to find out where I was. I left and immediately walked to our house. I was asleep on next door but one’s drive… And I was so happy that I was back that I threw the crisps at you. Sorry about that, and the mess.
It’s not the bloody dog! I know human excrement when I see it! And no dog can balance on the stairs!
The officers were always daft. Young, just out of college. One was an amateur photographer, and he wanted to photograph a bull elephant charging and send the picture home to his sweetheart. So we went out into the bush in the Land Rover; me, the Sarge and this bloody Rupert with all his gear, a tripod and camera with one of those black cloths to put your head under, the lot. He fancied himself as an artist. We found some elephants at a watering hole and the officer got out and set up. Sarge put the Landy into reverse and told me to fire the Bren over this herd nearby. Five rounds rapid and this bleddy greet elephant comes honking over towards us. The officer had no chance; got picked up by the trunk and thrown into a thorn bush. Sarge reversed the Landy before it got any closer and we drove off out of sight so the herd would move on, and came back to get the officer who was in hospital for months.
You scratched the eyes out of the photograph with needles, later you cut the photograph in half and hid it in a box. All we could see on your part of the photo was one of his spats and a striped turn up: never trust a man with pinstripes and spats.
You fell in the smallest puddle in Manchester. You embarrass me sometimes.
Oh we lived in a garret on the Left Bank, myself and three other English girls. We would share the food we could get when the market was packing up, and wash our smalls in the sink. It was a wonderful life in a way. But then there was so much sadness and anger with Algeria, we remember seeing all the horrible slogans it was awful, “Para!” everywhere. Awful things written on the walls about Algerians. The French think they’re civilised, but really they can be savages.
(Remember to roll your eyes and suck your teeth after saying “savages”.)
You’re a good bunch, and we know a lot of you lads are serving the country but we can’t have nudity in the public lounge. Can you ask them sailors nicely, to put their keks on? We’ve got Sunday roast to serve.
Bloody Yorkshire! Remember when we threw that cooked chicken at them at the cricket?
Lancashire? Scum you lot, went back early in twenty-six.
Well, she went out there for a new life after the war, but people didn’t take to her in Australia for years, snooty there, not like here in Newcastle. They called her the “English woman” and ignored her. Imagine that!
Losing a boot in a bog on Pen-y-ghent, a boot your father wore on the Kenya-Tanganyika border. You had to put your arm down past your elbow in the muck to get it. You turned the air blue! All together now, Whernside, Ingleb’ro, Pen-y-ghent, thighest thills twixt Tyne an’ Trent!
I remember he was actually a pretty good medium pace bowler, he could cut a ball back and keep a line and length, no easy feat. It's always sobering to think how naturally talented he was at things! Somehow I'd roped him in to turn out for Accrington CC 3rds. I'd gone round to his gaff the next morning to find him bleary eyed, in a state of utter disrepair. The night before he'd been to a teacher training party in Bury or somesuch where, (as he told it), he'd rung the doorbell only to be let in by some flower-draped Sylvan nymph, and silently led by the hand to a bouncy castle in a back garden, where they jumped up and down for a few hours. And then she had him on the inflatable. He’d forgotten he was playing when I'd come to call. Running upstairs, he grabbed some “cricket clothes.” Which turned out to be some of his father’s old ones. Which, as you will appreciate, were cut for an older, more urbane gentleman who had enjoyed life at every occasion. The sight of him running into bowl; his lower parts looked like a grounded barrage balloon being blown across an airstrip. During the game his confusion grew. When we were batting together he flopped his way down the wicket to me and said, “I'm going for the middle ball.” As he claimed he was seeing three balls each delivery. [This is your first idea for a speech at the wake.]
They talk about having no food in the larder in Hungary, because it’s all on the tables. That’s their communism, you see. We know, we have family there.
“Eeeh, look mam, Uncle Jim’s on guard.” That’s what Anne and Charles used to say when I was on guard outside St James’s. I’d have to tell them a story each when their mam wasn’t looking.
An accompanying post to this Rule, with relevant illustrations, can be found in the Museum of Photocopies.
