Where have all the bullets gone_ - Spike Milligan [80]
Food; our hermetically sealed food flasks we topped with spaghetti bought locally, bottles of local red plonk. Where to serve the food from? Of course! the nearest room — the lavatory opposite. We set up a serving hatch and a masking curtain. From the local ENSA show we try to get Hy Hazell, a strapping in-favour-at-the-time cabaret singer. To wait on table we had massed Marias. Word got around and officers asked if they could come. Yes. “Make the bastards pay,” said Bill Hall. So we ‘Made the Bastards Pay’.
Puttock wants to know. “Why has it got to be an Aquarium?” What does he think it ought to be? He doesn’t know.
The Bill Hall Quintet in the Voodoo Moon Club
Well, if you like we can get it done up as an ‘I don’t know club’, and he can stand at the bloody door and when people say what’s going on here, he can say “I don’t know.”
I trap my Maria while she is bending down and she is well pleased. Do you still love me Maria? Oh si, si, si, sempre, sempre. Good. Can she and her clutch of Marias act as waitresses on the night? No money, but they’ll get danced, groped and allowed to walk home free of charge. Will I marry her and take her to Inghilterra? Of course, yes, si si. The Great Zoll, the master of magic electricity and twit, “can he help serve the spaghetti from the Karzi?” We need a touch of magic, yes, can he dress up as a sultan for it? Of course, the Spaghetti Sultan, yes, we’ll give him that billing. The scenic artist knocks up a sign to go over the Karzi:
SPAGHETTI NOW BEING SERVED BY THE GREAT ZOLL, 200 LIRE.
I phone the ENSA hotel. Can I speak with Miss Hy Hazell? Un momento. Several un momentos later she speaks. Can she do a cabaret for us? Yes, is there transport? Yes, trams stop at the bottom of the road. Can she bring friends? Yes. How many? Twenty-seven! Sorry, that’s too many. OK, then do the bloody cabaret yourself. Of course she can bring twenty-seven.
“We don’t want to play orl bloody evening,” says Hall, who has a bint coming. Len Singleton, pianist, comes to the rescue. Not to worry, he will pick up a scratch combination. Name? Oh anything, how about ‘Singleton’s Black and Whites’?
Perfect, the entire band turns out to be white. The Karzis do niff a little, can we lay it to rest? OK, can the massed Marias wash it with phenyl? Si, si, if I’ll marry her and take her to England. Si, si, yes yes, and a quick squeeze of them both.
The Duty Officer Lieutenant Higgins is asking questions. “What’s going on?”
I explain that it’s a fine thing we are doing in our spare time to raise the morale of the troops and etc etc etc, and will he go away. Why have we blacked out the windows, the airraids have stopped. We know sir, but you never know. Have we got permission? Yes. Who from? We don’t know yet, but rest assured it will be somebody.
Comes the night, it was a bomb-out success. Finished at 0400! Bornheim, Puttock and I made 10,000 lire each and as many enemies.
At the Voodoo Moon Club, the Riding High Band sit in. 1st Trumpet: Dave Douglas; 2nd Trumpet: Roy Duce; Alto: Billy Wells; Piano: Dennis Evans; Bass: J. Mulgrew (anything for extra money!), and the singer, Norman Lee
A Day Out
Seven of us hired a taxi and went swimming at Bagnoli. The beach was in the ancient Campi Flegrei, one time watering place of the Roman rich. A pumice-coloured beach, a few run-down bathing huts, the doors swung on rusty hinges, the cabins now used by beach whores for ‘quickies’; a dying Italian hires out worn umbrellas. Several fishing craft bob in the morning calm sea. A rip-roaring day with skylarking in and out of the sea. We hire a row boat and soon we are going in all directions; we round the headland of the Isle of Nisidia and turn into a horseshoe bay. We discover caves! Wow, it’s an omni-directional day; totally mindless, we strip off and dive off the jagged lava rocks.
Bang,