Read Online Where Have All the Bullets Gone? by Spike Milligan - Free Book Online Page B

He shudders. No, not for him the nigger rhythm music. There is a postscript to this tale.
    Many years after the war I was in a night club. The cabaret is supplied by a ‘Krazy Kaper’ Band. I notice a violinist, wearing a large ginger wig and beard, a football jersey, a kilt with a whitewash brush for a sporran, fishnet stockings and high heel shoes. They play ‘Does chewing gum leave its flavour on the bedpost over night’. It’s Spaldo! I couldn’t resist it, I went over and said, “Changed your mind, eh?”
    So my lotus days in the band continued. We were paid three hundred lire a gig, my trumpet solos working out at a penny a time. Our finances were organized by Welfare Officer Major Bloore. He sometimes writes to me from the Cayman Islands.
     
    Now I am moved from Filing to the Welfare Office, under the eye of Private Eddie Edwards.
     
Pte. E. Edwards Posed with a soft filter, facing Nor’ East and lightly oiled
    I am to draw posters for the current films being shown. My first one is Rita Hayworth. No, I’m not doing it right, says Major Rodes, try again. Rita Hayworth II, no, it’s not right. Rita Hayworth III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, no, I just can’t get Rita Hayworth right for West of Pecos; I can’t even get her right for East, North or South of Pecos.
    “Sir, I didn’t join the army to draw a regiment of Hay-worths. I want out!”
    “You fool, you little khaki fool,” losing a golden opportunity to become the great artist he could make me. The Major stamps off in a kilt-swinging rage.
    “He’s very temperamental,” says Eddie.
    “I think he’s in the change,” I reply. “And his truss must be upside down.”

The Aquarium Club
    T his is to be a new officers’ drinking club. The venue is a farmhouse just outside the town.

     
    My penance is to do more murals. This time sea life. The Major drives me to the site. There are no men on the farm. “Tutti nella Armata.” At the moment they were all planting cabbages in Sussex; among them Mario and Franco who were to stay on to revolutionize our eating habits with their trattorias. Only the mother and the daughter Maria were left (in Italy all daughters not called mothers are Marias). She is a rough peasant beauty, five foot seven inches, tall for an Italian, and very tall for a dwarf. She has large brown expressive legs and eyes, tousled black hair and brown satin skin. (Arrrghhh!) Her mother, pardon me, looked like a bundle of oily rags ready for sorting. She seemed ever fearful of her daughter being screwed, whereas I wasn’t worried at all. They were poor and leasing out a few rooms was salvation to them. She shows us two upstairs rooms. As Maria walked up the stairs, I made a note of her shapely bottom, while the Major made a note of mine. The rooms were being painted light marine blue by defaulters. Poor devils, here they had come to face Hitler, and instead they’re stripping and painting walls, just like Hitler did twenty years ago. “No wonder he went fucking mad,” they said. On the morrow I was to apply my skills; very nice, no filing, and away from the Maddening Thomas Hardy.

A Red Beard and a Beret
    B y coincidence a real Royal Academician has joined our happy band. George Lambourne, one of Augustus John’s many sons, and the image of him. He brings his talents and a batch of Welfare painters to ‘tart up’ our drab interiors.
    I met him when I attended one of his lectures. He was too good to miss. I made a point of taking him to dinner at Aldo’s Cafe. Talk was of painting. So, I’m doing murals. Did I go to art school? He is a bit puzzled by my scatty way of jumping from one subject to another like Queen Elizabeth the First, but I must have made an impression. Bear witness to mention in his diary.

    I remember George pouring me a glass of red wine, and feeling the glow of his personality. A man of depth, character, talent and brains. Who were his favourite painters? He reels off a mixture — Giotto, Rubens, Boudin, Van