Happy New Year, innit

Mrs Boyo has just fastened name tags to my clothing, as we're off on our annual pilgrimage to Ukraine - the touristic delights of which are carolled here.

Back on 5th January, so have yourselves a lively time over the New Year. I'll be somewhere on Maydan Nezalezhnosti or arm-wrestling Kolya Lektryk for the return of my trousers as usual.

In the meantime, here's some more of the thoughts of Capt Deakin on the rainbow nations of the North-West Frontier:

... could mimic a bassoon at 100 yds by straining slightly for
weeks thereafter. I could not have imagined such horrors those
few months ago as I was summoned into the Govnr's State Rooms
in Peshawar, even though I was not expecting thepleasantest of
conversations.

"I'm innocent, Sir! The native girl was sick; she would have
died anyway," I said by way of greeting, after the G's curt
nod.

"Desist, Capt. Deakin. I have no wish to trawl deeper through
the sump of degeneracy that is your personal contribution to
the White Man's Burden." The G pointed wearily at a large
area of the Punjab, coloured crimson on his campaign map. "The
main chieftains of the area have been appeased by the gift of
many head of elephants, and the urban curfew is now being
observed, despite many days of mutiny by the Seventh Sepoys
and the disembowelment of fifteen Unitarian missionaries by
the indignant populace in Chunki-Pazaar."

"Capital! No real harm done then, eh, Your Excellency... What
about a round of billiards? I'll let yer win, treat you to a
Siamese Sandwich at Madame Wong's Star of Mandalay Rub-and-Tug
Parlour, if yer know what I mean, and we'll forget all about
this ghastly misunderstanding - watcha say?"

My normally successful tactics for dealing with anxious
superior officers failed me in this my one encounter with the
Govnr, who was clearly not a Fifth Lancers' Man.

"Capt. Deakin! Confound you, man! Thanks to your grotesque
behaviour we nearly lost the whole of north-west India to
bloody insurrection, and all you can suggest is table-games
and further molestation of His Majesty's colonial charges!
Have you any idea, you depraved cretin, of how close you have
come to a full court-martial? THAT close!" bellowed the
clearly overwrought G., hacking at the punkah-wallah with
his scimitar by way of illustration of my proximity to
disgrace. "It is only the intercession on your behalf of Col.
Dunn-Chan - Lord alone knows why - that spared you from five
years in the stockade and a transfer to the Gurkha Target-
Practice Platoon, for Heaven's sake!"

Good old Gussie Dunn-Chan, I thought to myself. Not much of a
soldier, but a sound chap who knows when he's been done a
favour. The sale of his appalling spouse to those devil-
worshippers in Chitral for a sack of goat-fat and a set of
Uighur embroidered undergarments, only slightly soiled, was
one of my most successful trades as Commercial Commissioner in
Chini-Bagh two years previously, and Gussie's gratitude has
been as touching as it is useful. I also got him out of some
bother over the Inflatable Sari business in Sindh prior to the
King's Durbar, and he has never let me down since.

"When all is said and done you're still an officer in the
British Army of India, but the Ghorband of Amritsar is
demanding that an example should be made of you, nonetheless,"
continued the G., mollified by my respectful silence. "With
Russian agents crawling all over the place we cannot afford to
be seen to be ignoring his demands, nor can we give in to an
ultimatum from some damn'd native nabob. So I have decided on
a compromise."

With that the Govnr drew a service-revolver from his
desk and handed it to me. "Mortified by the distress and
sanguinary bedlam caused by your incontinent behaviour, you
did what any Lancer would have done," he said, with more
relish than I thought necessary. "Your death will calm the
Ghorband, and impress upon the masses how strict is the
British officers' code of honour. The worst of the damage will
be put right, and we can get on with the job of winning border
tribes to the Empire's side in preparation for the final
reckoning with the Czar and his Cossack marauders. You know it
makes sense, Deakin."

I thought it worth seeking some sort of dignified alternative
that would, nonetheless, not diminish my standing in the
Govnr.-General's eyes. "Can't we shoot one of the men and
dress him up to look like me Sir? My batman, Rose, would
gladly sacrifice himself the greater good, and anyway we
needn't tell. Give me half an hour and I sort it out myself,"
I volunteered.

"A coward, a bully, and a disgrace to our Island Race, as I
always suspected!" exploded the G., which I thought was
rather hard on poor old Rosie. Never the model fighting-man,
it must be said, and prone to excessive perspiration when
being used as a human shield by an officer under heavy
artillery-fire, but an ideal if reluctant beater on tiger-
sticking outings and a ready source of cash in that difficult
last week of the month - after a little physical persuasion
and threats to deport his mulatto family to the molasses-farms
of Guiana.

"Don't worry, Captain, I don't seriously expect you to do the
decent thing and blow your warped brains out, given your
incompetence and the sheer volume of your gin intake, not to
mention the difficulty of finding the target. No, we have a
much more positive use for you mottled neck."

Down the Oxus on a Log

Gorilla Bananas, earnest as ever for closer Welsh-Simian links, has expressed interest in the memoirs of Colonel Peter Deakin, one of Britain's most avid if luckless players of the Great Game.

Thorpe's An History of Inner Asia notes that "if any one man can be held responsible for the successful Soviet conquest of Bokhara, Khiva and the Badakh Shans, then it is Colonel Deakin. His military ineptitude, diplomatic insouciance and Neronic excess left the benighted khanates longing for the relative reason and solicitude of Bolshevist rule" (footnote iii, pp 157-158).

The manuscript has long resided in my Uncle Idris's meatlocker, and the time has come for its biennial skimming, so I'll copy the covering letter and introduction for your perusal.


R. Cooke
Dept of Manuscripts,
India Office,
Whitehall,
London W1
Dr. M. Atkin,
Curator, Turkestan Collection,
British Museum,
Bloomsbury,
London W1C

16th February, 1927

Dear Atkin,
We found this down the back of the "Afghan,
Bokhara, Misc." trunk last week. Not really our sort of stuff,
so I thought you might like first refusal, so to speak. It is
an unnumbered manuscript written on what the Yard tells us is
regurgitated rice, hence the sumptuous texture, but it
contains significant traces of mutton fat and human saliva,
I'm afraid, so you may want to wear gloves and keep it away
from radiators.
There is no mention of any Capt. Deakin in our military
files, and the records of the 5th Baluchi Lancers were
destroyed in a Pathan raid on Quetta after the unfortunate
"iron pig" incident in the Mess involving the Eid-ul-Fitr
pilaf and the Governor of Qandahar's favourite wife - it is
interesting that the survivors I have spoken to do mention a
Subaltern Champion in this connexion too, but are reluctant to
discuss the spontaneous combustion reports.
Deakin's comments on the policies of the Government of
India, not to mention his rampant Germanophilia and priapic
exhibitionism, preclude any possibility of publishing it in
anything but a heavily-edited form in England. Nonetheless, as
I am sure you will agree, the manuscript is not without some
interest in shedding light on the petty khanates of the Pamirs
on the eve of the Bolshevist Revolution, and might perhaps fit
in your "Yellow Collection".
The first few pages are missing and, again according to
the Yard, it seems that someone (the egregious Subt Champion,
perchance?) tried to eat the manuscript - whether out of
hunger or fear of discovery in that noisome oubliette I
frankly shudder to think. The fate of these poor wretches
remains a mystery, although I enclose a clipping - with
translation - from the Bolshevist "Naqatepe haqiqati" district
newsletter obtained by the redoubtable Mrs Robinson on her
perhaps ill-advised Bach Choir tour of Red Army border posts
in Turkestan last year. Note if you will the Naqatepe
commissar for corrective work with juvenile delinquents,
Comrade Dzh. T. Bugariy, and read on.
Yours,


R. Cooke, Archivist.







[Manuscript, in pencil, on rice; incomplete, c 1915. Author
identifies self as Capt. Peter Beauregarde D'Arcy Deakin of
the 5th Baluchi Lancers (disbanded 1919)]


... kept it in her mouth until she stopped breathing. But not
even these recollections bring me much comfort in this reeking
bug-pit, where my every movement provokes more larval gnawing
at my sweetbreads, and my slightest sigh brings down a bucket
of rancid offal on my head from the pitiless heathen guards in
the cell above. The putrid camel innards excite the diverse
vermin further, although Champion - stout fellow - is doing
his best to consign all sources of torment to the oblivion of
his pelican-like maw. The ensuing eructations from his
fundament serve to warm our dungeon on the cold nights,
moreover.
Months have passed and I have all but abandoned hope of
seeing England and Mavis again, while Champion must curse the
day he turned down the Pink Turcomans' invitation to stay on
as their cricket-bashee and install bells in their Inter-
Denominational Mosque and 24-Hour Women's Self-Help Centre. I
don't know what he really thinks as he still hasn't spoken to
me since his hideous ordeal at the hands of the Akhund of
Basiq-Arvil, for which he persists in holding me responsible
on grounds of my purely-tactical conversion to the sect of the
Assassins and my strategic withdrawal to the Akhund's harem
for a week.
The Amir's Mingbashee visits us each Friday with
entreaties that we should embrace their heathen faith in
return for our liberty and our clothes, which sounds fair
enough to me, but Champion has indicated via the guards that
he will press for my expulsion from the regiment if I should
submit. I suppose he's right. As every Englishman will agree,
it is better to be eaten alive, manhood first, by four-inch
insects with serrated mandibles in a cramped cesspit in the
High Pamirs, and then to have your dismembered body dragged
around the local bazaar by jabbering, pointy-headed urchins,
than to lose one's place on the Lancers' Polo Team and
Maidservant Selection Committee, or something like that.
My only hope is that this record of our ill-fated mission
to Turkestan will find its way back to England in time for the
war, which is scheduled to start any day now. The Mingbashee
says he has heard reports that battle has already commenced
between Germany and the French, so it can only be a matter of
time before our brave troops show their Saxon colours and
rally to the Kaiser's cause against the reptilian Gauls, their
decadent poetry and hirsute women. Our intelligence about the
Russians' sale of laminated cooking utensils to the unlettered
Mohammedans of this remote Himalayan outpost will be crucial
in deciding the fate of Europe, Civilisation, Mankind, the
World and indeed of England itself, I believe.
My greatest wish now is that whoever finds these scraps
of paper should seek out Mavis and tell her that throughout my
travails, even when I was forced for tactical reasons to
submit to the shameless caresses of the depraved, large-
breasted denizens of the Akhund's harem, my thoughts were of
her and her alone, apart perhaps from the occasion when they
slathered two large aubergines with mutton fat and ra....
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