Saturday 14 April 2012

Barbarians at the gate

This week sees me utterly flabbergasted. After a year in which the promised supplies of ammo repeatedly failed to make it through to my camp and excuses varying from a wounded CO, bankrupt suppliers and broken down armoured vehicles, I arrived at HQ to find that said equipment had been secretly delivered overnight. 


The operation had been so furtive that no-one within the camp (apart from a Kosovan reservist who had the task of unloading the provisions) was aware that they had arrived. Needless to say joy was unconfined - the regimental cup truly overflowed and two battalions of homeless soldiers, who were temporarily living in a cage on wheels in the Luxury Office Suite (aka Broom-Cupboard-soon-to-be-Disabled Loo), are now rehoused happily on shelves. Several even had time to make it to roll-call (the OPAC  - my online register of personnel - now has some 2,300 names in it - a mere 1,700 to go). No more illegal cage-fights for me!


Meanwhile in the East Indies, more disturbances have occurred. This time the saboteurs (who had previously attempted to execute a few volumes of memoirs by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson) locked me out of my computer. The buggers. 




Needless to say I took my cue from my favourite role model Richard Sharpe, and was 'up and at 'em' in the twinkling of a sabre..... I held down the 'off' button. That'll teach the b*stards. This time however, they left clues as to who they were: I found a bag with their logo which revealed them to be a marauding hoard of Barbarians  - as I had suspected - a primitive race of uncultured non-Greeks as we all know. However, later enquiries revealed to me the truth -  that said Barbarians are in fact a famous team of sportsmen who had visited the camp with the sole purpose of delivering some satirical magazines. Oh well, another line of enquiry closes - I shall have to re-interview anyone who has seen George Galloway in the past two weeks.......


Happily old Colonel Gin-Soaked of the eponymous regiment of Highlanders re-appeared this week. I was frankly worried about his state of health. 




Fortunately, his absence in the past fortnight was not due to any recurrence of his Gout problem or to his having fallen off the library ladders while attempting to reach his treasured copies of Dickens novels. Apparently it had been in protest at his not being able to retrieve a copy of Wisden's from 1949, which had been separated from its fellows and placed in a locked cabinet in the Conference Room. Investigations continue.....