Spit And Polish

Carl Muller

Description

See here, first take a little polish on the finger and rub into the leather. Then spit. and rub.' - boasts one recruit of his boot polishing skills. sadly, the only reward this gets him is thirty pairs of shoes to shine. This is only one of the hilarious episodes in Carl Muller's continuation of the von Bloss family saga. Carloboy von Bloss is back, now a robust young man of eighteen, spending four eventful years in the one-ship Royal Ceylon Navy. Carloboy and his fellow recruits get up to the weirdest capers: painting their boots black; posing as Italian ghosts; planning to wink at.

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 14 octobre 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184751093
• Langue: English

Extrait

Carl Muller
Spit and Polish

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Foreword
1. Of Duck Caps and Number Eights
2. History—The Springing Tiger
3. Of Complying and Complaining
4. History—The Kotelawala Saga
5. Of Cowboys and Buffaloes
6. History—The Japanese-INA War Machine
7. Of Ghosties and Shore Brawls
8. History— Chalo Delhi
9. Of Rifle Drill and Sundry Convulsions
10. History—The Ceylon Naval Volunteer Force
11. Of Christenings and Essence of Chicken
12. History—The Ceylon Royal Naval VolunteerReserve
13. Of Royal Guard and Fancy Queens
14. The Overdue Tyke and the End of the CRNVR
15. Of Bashed-in Doors
16. History—the Marshall Plan and Japanese Aggressor
17. Of Queen s Cups and Rowing Boats
18. History—Target Ceylon
19. Of Dust-ups and Signal Watch
20. History—Easter Sunday
21. Of Armchair Voyages and Dust-ups
22. History—Trincomalee
23. Of Toddy Trips and Goat Hunts
24. History—Receding of the Japanese Menace
25. Of Parties and Roast Chicken
26. History—Pacific Operations
27. Of Soaking Mail and Drowning Jeeps
28. History—Midway
29. Of Priests on the Prod and Sentimental Journeys
30. History—Japan s Dream of Empire
31. Of Sundry Eruptions, the Language Dilemma
32. History—Finding a Winning Strategy
33. Of Seatime and Target Tows and Frying Flying Fish
34. Guadal and Iron Bay Sound
35. Of a Wardroom Rear Action and Canteen Carouses
36. The British Military Occupation of Ceylon
37. Of Command Changes and Bara Khana
38. History—End of the Honeymoon
39. Of Darken Ship and Night Strikes
40. History—The Taking of Iwo Jima
41. Of Not Quite Going Home and Fouled Propellers
42.History—Another Easter, Okinawa and the Divine Word
43.Of the Unhinging of Bollocks and Converting the Captain
44. History—The Cocos Islands Mutiny
45. Of Northern Patrols and Schoolgirls in the After Steering
46.History—Disloyal Politics and the Anti-British Mood
47. Of Illegal Boardings and Parading for the Police
48. Operation Downfall
49. Of Another Kind of Flag and a Murderous Cook
50. History—The Testing of Little Boy
51. Of Sandalwood Paste and a Convent Bolt Hole
52. History—Hiroshima and Nagasaki
53. Of an End to a Beginning and a Sailor s Diary
Footnotes
1. Of Duck Caps and Number Eights
2. History—The Springing Tiger
4. History—The Kotelawala Saga
5. Of Cowboys and Buffaloes
6. History—The Japanese-INA War Machine
7. Of Ghosties and Shore Brawls
8. History— Chalo Delhi
13. Of Royal Guard and Fancy Queens
22. History—Trincomalee
24. History—Receding of the Japanese Menace
29. Of Priests on the Prod and Sentimental Journeys
31. Of Sundry Eruptions, the Language Dilemma
33. Of Seatime and Target Tows and Frying Flying Fish
Read More in Penguin
Copyright
PENGUIN BOOKS
Spit and Polish
Carl Muller completed his education from the Royal College in Colombo. He served in both the Royal Ceylon Navy and the Ceylon Army before entering the Colombo Port Commission in 1959. He took up journalism and writing in the early sixties, working for leading newspapers in both Sri Lanka and the Middle East. His published works include Sri Lanka — a Lyric, Father Saman and the Devil, Ranjit Discovers Where Kandy Began, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cemetery and Colombo: A Novel. The Jam Fruit Tree, the first book of his Burgher trilogy, was awarded the Gratiaen Memorial Prize in 1993 for the best work of English literature in Sri Lanka. Its two sequels, Yakada Yaká and Once Upon a Tender Time, were published in 1994 and 1995 respectively. A children s book, entitled The Python of Pura Malai and Other Stories, was published in early 1995. Children of the Lion, a large historical novel, was published in 1997. Most of his works have been published by Penguin.
Carl Muller. lives in Kandy, the hill capital of Sri Lanka, with his wife and four children.
To the officers and men of Sri Lanka s armed forces and especially to the Navy. This piece of bilge is offered to all who have ever walked a deck in a running sea and in venomous monsoon weather.
You need a strong stomach for that . . . and a stronger one for this!
Foreword
This novel is a spin–off from the Penguin trilogy, The Jam Fruit Tree, Yakada Yaká, and Once Upon a Tender Time.
In straddling this particular branch, I do not wish to inconvenience readers with allusions to events or episodes in the previous books. I will try hard to make this a self–contained, self–supporting story. A different ball game, so to say.
I have threaded this story with alternating skeins of history, which are most genuine. Names and places are real, and accounts of combat true. This allows the book to be accepted with some seriousness at least. The Royal Ceylon Navy of the times may have been just a one-ship Navy , but a Navy all the same. And the boys were men—ready to take on the world, even if they had to paint their boots for the occasion!
I make no apologies to those who find caps that fit them. They really shouldn t get their knickers so twisted. It makes for a vile way of walking, whether they have found their sea legs or not!
Kandy 1997
Carl Muller
1
Of Duck Caps and Number Eights and Sick Bay Shenanigans
God, he looks like the bloody Blessed Virgin, said old Van Dort, and sniggered into his arrack.
Carloboy von Bloss grinned. He knew he didn t look so bad. He had looked himself over in the family wardrobe mirror and was pleased at what he saw. His singlet, with blue edged square neck, white shorts, blunt-nosed shoes and dark blue hose. He wore his cap square, decided that it made him look quite medieval, and pushed it back. The gold lettering on the black ribbon was hidden behind his hair. HMCyS Gemunu it said—Her Majesty s Ceylon Ship Gemunu . Ship! Hah!
The flipped-back cap was much better. Not that he would wear it indoors, but it gave him a sense of belonging. Of being different.
It was the eighteenth of November, 1953, and he was exactly eighteen years and twenty-seven days old. He hadn t been home for a long time and his mother was not really overjoyed at his coming. He heard her banging in the kitchen and also heard her tell his sister, The damn prodigal has returned! He told himself he couldn t care less.
His father, Sonnaboy, had slapped him on the back and insisted, Today we will put a drink. Here, have a Three Rose. Smoke, men. Now you re a mail, no?
So, after a lot of hurt and a long separation, father and son sat to drink a solemn arrack each, and Sonnaboy called in the neighbours and everybody trooped in to admire Carloboy in his Navy uniform and ask how he was, and the women simpered and said, Myeee, all this time never came home, no?
Carloboy had a little diary. That night he made the first of many entries of his new life:
Joined the Royal Ceylon Navy as a Signalman. Official number A-5550.
Two days later, he noted:
Drafted to HMCyS Rangalla for initial training.
To those unfamiliar with the geography of Sri Lanka, let it be known that Diyatalawa is in the central hills in the island s tea country. Mountains are its main feature, as well as rolling patna and mist that puts clouds to shame. To the uninitiated, the obvious question would be: How the devil does one get drafted to a ship that s four thousand feet in the mountains? But patience ... as we become, like Carloboy, more seamanlike, and begin to think, act and behave (as Carloboy was constantly exhorted to do) in a seamanlike manner, we will understand. We hope . . .
Rather, let us reverse the tape to that blazing eighteenth of November, with the sun suffering an inflamed liver condition and being most irate. Ninety young men swaggered through the gates of the Ceylon Navy Headquarters, a shore establishment in Colombo. Nautically, this was HMCyS Gemunu, land-based and close enough to the sea that crashed on the shore spiritedly. The ship was crewed with hundreds of duck-capped bulletheads who marched, slouched, ran or simply ambled along, performing their several shipboard tasks.
Some were flushing drains, others spreading manure on beds of doubtful-looking cannas. Some were even painting smooth round rocks. White paint. The rocks would be arranged around the flower beds. Nice touch, a chief petty officer told the duty officer. Others were sweeping dormitories and morose types carried kettles of tea to God knew where.
These were sailors? Carloboy had wondered. He watched the drill . Occasionally they would transfer buckets, mops, spades, rakes or whatever they carried from right hand to left in order to salute a natty specimen who hove into view. These types walked around with the sole intent of collecting salutes. They wore peaked caps pulled down to almost cover their eyes and sported gold-banded epaulettes. They would waggle a hand in response and trot on, only to return later for another hand-wag.
Now and again, a piercing whistle would tatter eardrums and put the galley cat s fur on end. Carloboy told George Vanlangenburg, God, my aunty Anna screams like that. One day she saw a garandiya 1 in the firewood pile and put a yell. Whole neighbourhood came running.
The unholy screech was followed by an amplified voice, quite hollow, demanding that Able Seaman Andare report to the quartermaster s lobby ... at the double! This, Carloboy was told, was the wail of a bosun s pipe. It s really a sort of stubby, electroplated penis with one testicle. The bosun (who should not be confused with the bison although it has long been thought that the rudiments of the buffalo lurk in both species) is an apostrophied boatswain. It is supposed also that only a bosun of whatever stripe be allowed to use this pipe. Give it to a quartermaster and expect the worst. Later, as quartermaster (which is nothing of distinction, we assure) Carloboy tootled on it to deadly effect, making every bosun cower in his watery grave!
A burly fellow with a blue anchor patched to hi