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Authors: Spike Milligan
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bed.
The week followed with us going for walks, shopping for trinkets down on the waterfront and visits from Lieutenant J. Lee. He brings Toni flowers. The occasional bomb goes off somewhere in the city and on Thursday an Italian blows himself up and will soon be a Martyr. Soon people are putting flowers on the spot; scrawled on the wall is his epitaph, “Luigi Sapone morl per la patria ”. “It beats me,” says Bornheim, “how explosions and blowing up places advances a political cause.” He was right of course. There are other ways to draw attention to your cause. Standing naked outside tube stations would hit the media or anonymously posting people a bread pudding, with the warning ‘Give up or you’ll get another’. That, or nocturnally digging a fish pond stocked with goldfish in people’s gardens with the same warning. Better still, attack political figures by sealing up their front door keyholes and letter box. Bornheim agrees. He suggests parking combine harvesters outside people’s front doors.
Lieutenant Priest is warning us that we are to attend a VD lecture at the Medical Rooms on the sea front in Trieste. “You’ve all got to attend. It’s an order to all parties about to enter Austria.” Came the occasion, we were shown into a room of a requisitioned warehouse where chairs were arranged before a projector screen. A medical orderly is putting pamphlets on all the chairs. They warn of the horrors of VD and its related ailments. “Eyes Front,” says Lieutenant Priest as an MO enters. “At Ease,” he said and made a sign to sit. The medical orderly activated the projector and as the MO spoke we were subjected to a series of men’s genitals all in various stages of VD, from a small spot to a great red hanging blob. These were accompanied by cries of ‘Hard luck, mate’ and ‘Stick to wanking’. It took about twenty minutes and we were then driven back to the hotel.
THE NIGHT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
A fter the show, one evening, Signor Nenni and his wife set up a huge box camera which swayed perilously as he placed it on a tripod. It looks like a monster from one of H.G. Wells’s books, a Warlock. In a cracked voice he is instructing his wife in the placing of the floodlights. They are both over sixty and move with caution. “ Poco, poco ,” he says to her. She had curvature of the spine and in the gloom looks like Quasimodo. These are the results of his efforts.
Johnny Bornheim, accordionist and furrier, on stage in Trieste.
A DAY FOR SWIMMING
S ee, that means we’ve got to go near water. We are taken to a beach adjacent the ill-fated Castello Miramar. Toni enlightens me about the legend. It was a duke and a broken love affair that drove him to suicide. Ah broken romance. There should be repair depots, like the A A.
A BROKEN MARRIAGE DEPOT.
THE PHONE RINGS.
OPERATOR:
Broken Marriages Depot.
VOICE:
I wish to report a broken romance at the turn off 6 on the M1.
OPERATOR:
Have you got all the pieces?
VOICE:
Yes, they’re all over the verge.
OPERATOR:
We’ll send a solicitor right away.
We all lay out our towels and after a liberal application of olive oil, we lay back and soak up the sun. Toni is next to me, I hold her hand. I give it a squeeze but it’s so lubricated it pops out. I do it again, it’s a turn-on.
Toni asks if I believe in ghosts.
“No.”
“You think we come back after we die?”
“Well none of my family have. I did have an Aunt Jane Milligan who went to a spiritualist to contact her late husband. When he was contacted, the spiritualist asked did Aunti Milligan want to ask him a question. She said, “Yes, ask him wot ‘e did with the fish knives.””
Toni persists. “Perhaps we come back different.”
“Like what?”
“Like tree or horse.”
“No, I don’t want to come back as a horse.”
It’s frightening. Suppose I come back as a tomcat and have to have that terrible operation? Oh, no. Toni giggles, “Suppose you come back as a woman, what you
The week followed with us going for walks, shopping for trinkets down on the waterfront and visits from Lieutenant J. Lee. He brings Toni flowers. The occasional bomb goes off somewhere in the city and on Thursday an Italian blows himself up and will soon be a Martyr. Soon people are putting flowers on the spot; scrawled on the wall is his epitaph, “Luigi Sapone morl per la patria ”. “It beats me,” says Bornheim, “how explosions and blowing up places advances a political cause.” He was right of course. There are other ways to draw attention to your cause. Standing naked outside tube stations would hit the media or anonymously posting people a bread pudding, with the warning ‘Give up or you’ll get another’. That, or nocturnally digging a fish pond stocked with goldfish in people’s gardens with the same warning. Better still, attack political figures by sealing up their front door keyholes and letter box. Bornheim agrees. He suggests parking combine harvesters outside people’s front doors.
Lieutenant Priest is warning us that we are to attend a VD lecture at the Medical Rooms on the sea front in Trieste. “You’ve all got to attend. It’s an order to all parties about to enter Austria.” Came the occasion, we were shown into a room of a requisitioned warehouse where chairs were arranged before a projector screen. A medical orderly is putting pamphlets on all the chairs. They warn of the horrors of VD and its related ailments. “Eyes Front,” says Lieutenant Priest as an MO enters. “At Ease,” he said and made a sign to sit. The medical orderly activated the projector and as the MO spoke we were subjected to a series of men’s genitals all in various stages of VD, from a small spot to a great red hanging blob. These were accompanied by cries of ‘Hard luck, mate’ and ‘Stick to wanking’. It took about twenty minutes and we were then driven back to the hotel.
THE NIGHT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS
A fter the show, one evening, Signor Nenni and his wife set up a huge box camera which swayed perilously as he placed it on a tripod. It looks like a monster from one of H.G. Wells’s books, a Warlock. In a cracked voice he is instructing his wife in the placing of the floodlights. They are both over sixty and move with caution. “ Poco, poco ,” he says to her. She had curvature of the spine and in the gloom looks like Quasimodo. These are the results of his efforts.
Johnny Bornheim, accordionist and furrier, on stage in Trieste.
A DAY FOR SWIMMING
S ee, that means we’ve got to go near water. We are taken to a beach adjacent the ill-fated Castello Miramar. Toni enlightens me about the legend. It was a duke and a broken love affair that drove him to suicide. Ah broken romance. There should be repair depots, like the A A.
A BROKEN MARRIAGE DEPOT.
THE PHONE RINGS.
OPERATOR:
Broken Marriages Depot.
VOICE:
I wish to report a broken romance at the turn off 6 on the M1.
OPERATOR:
Have you got all the pieces?
VOICE:
Yes, they’re all over the verge.
OPERATOR:
We’ll send a solicitor right away.
We all lay out our towels and after a liberal application of olive oil, we lay back and soak up the sun. Toni is next to me, I hold her hand. I give it a squeeze but it’s so lubricated it pops out. I do it again, it’s a turn-on.
Toni asks if I believe in ghosts.
“No.”
“You think we come back after we die?”
“Well none of my family have. I did have an Aunt Jane Milligan who went to a spiritualist to contact her late husband. When he was contacted, the spiritualist asked did Aunti Milligan want to ask him a question. She said, “Yes, ask him wot ‘e did with the fish knives.””
Toni persists. “Perhaps we come back different.”
“Like what?”
“Like tree or horse.”
“No, I don’t want to come back as a horse.”
It’s frightening. Suppose I come back as a tomcat and have to have that terrible operation? Oh, no. Toni giggles, “Suppose you come back as a woman, what you
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