Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [6]
Diary: March 21
Very dark morning, heavy rumblings. Is it Vesuvius? No, it’s Jock. It was my day off. I hitched a ride to Naples and the Garrison Theatre to see Gracie Fields in ‘Sing As We Go’. Having never sung as I’d been, I was keen to see how it was done. It was terrible, so terrible that I thought that at any moment she would sing the bloody awful Warsaw Concerto. She was on to her hundredth ‘Eee bai gum’ when the shit hit the fan. The whole theatre shook, accompanied by labyrinthine rumblings. Vesuvius had blown its top. The audience became a porridge of screams and shouts of “What the fuck was that?” all the while hurtling towards the exit. It coincided with Gracie Fields, followed by spanner-clutching extras, marching towards the screen singing ‘Sing As We Go’. It looked as if the screaming mass were trying to escape from her. I alone was in hysterics. Outside was no laughing matter — the sky was black with ash, and Vesuvius roaring like a giant monster.
Rivulets of lava, like burst veins, were rolling down the seaward side. The streets were full of people walking fast with the shits.
I thumbed a lift. “Torre Del Greco?”
“You must be bleedin’ mad,” said a driver.
I assured him I was.
“That’s where all the bloody lava’s going.”
“Yes,” I said, “lava come back to me.” Not much of a joke in 1985, but at the time I was an amateur soldier, not a professional comic, and it wasn’t a bad joke for an earthquake.
No lifts, so I walk; it starts to rain a mixture of ash and water, bringing with it lumps of pumice the size of marbles. So this is what Dystopia was like. I trudge wearily down the road to Pompeii. But wait! This was the very road trod by Augustus, Nero, Tiberius, even the great Julius Caesar, and I thought ‘Fuck ‘em’ and was well pleased. All the while people are running in and out of their homes like those Swiss weather clocks.
A black American driver pulls up: “Wanna lift?”
I don’t need a lift, I need a lorry and he has one. Yes, he’s going to ‘Torrey Del Greckoe’. He offers me a cigarette, then gum, then chocolate. I wait for money but nothing comes. The fall of ash has turned his hair grey. He looked every bit like Uncle Tom. I stopped short of asking how little Eva was, or how big Eva was now. When we arrived at the Loony Camp it was pitch-black and so was he. “Goodbye,” said his teeth.
The camp was in a state of ‘chassis’. Half the loonies had bolted, and the Ities were looting the camp. Captain Peters has organized the sane, issued them with pickaxe handles, and they were somewhere up the slopes belting the life out of thieving Ities. The guard were alerted and roaming the perimeter with loaded rifles.
“Captain Peters told us to shoot on sight,” they said.
“Shoot what on sight?” I said.
“Oh, he didn’t go into details,” they said.
There was nothing for it but to lie back and enjoy it. What am I waiting for? — there is the jeep unoccupied. I put it in gear and drive off, headlights full on to penetrate the viscous gloom. I stop to purchase two bottles of Lachryma Christi, and on to the gates of Pompeii Veccia, La Scavi! A short walk to the Porta Marina, down the Via Marina, the Via Abbondanza, then square on in the Strada Stabiana and there at the end pulsates Vesuvius! I swig the wine. It’s all heady stuff. I’m in a time warp, this is AD 79. The streets are rippling with fleeing Pompeiians, except, I recall, the plaster cast of the couple screwing. What courage, banging away with red hot cinders bouncing off your bum. What courage, the first case of someone coming and going at the same time. The roar of the mountain is blanketing the countryside. More wine. I make my way to the house of Meander, the wall frescos dancing in the fibrillating light, Fauns, Nymphs, more wine, Leda, Bacchus, more wine, Ariadne, Lily Dunford, Betty Grable, someone