Free Puckoon by Spike Milligan Page A

were in collision.
    The car finished on the Ulster side
of the border and the charabanc on ours. As a result the case was being held in
two countries at once. Witnesses were rushed by high-powered car from court to
court to give evidence and they weren't getting any younger. The driver of the
charabanc, a Mr Norrington, a retired English actor, had been thrown from his
driving seat, his body laying athwart the border; now
his legs were being sued by the passengers of the charabanc, and his top half
was claiming damages from the car driver.
    The solicitors predicted that the
case would last three years because of the travel involved .
Murtagh concluded with a flourish of his papers. 'Any more ? '
asked the priest, peering around.
    'No?'
    'Yes!' Mr O'Toole jumped to his feet.
'This boundary affects me, terribly. My pub is all in this side of the border,
all except two square feet in the far corner of the public bar.'
    ' Is that a
hardship ?' asked Father Rudden. ' Is it ? That two
square feet is in Ulster, where the price of drinks is thirty per cent cheaper.
Now, every night, me pub is empty, save for a crowd of bloody skinflints all
huddled in that corner like Scrooges.'
    Father Rudden promised a solution and
closed the meeting.
    With Rafferty's
weight on the cross bar, Milligan pedalled home from the meeting via the Holy
Drinker. They had tried to get into the cheap corner but were crowded
out. But never mind, no matter what price you paid for liquor, it always tasted better .
    'My lord, you're heavy,' Milligan
grumbled.
    ' Don't ferget half of it is you, Milligan.'
    'I'm only complaining about your
half, which after all is the biggest.'
    ' Well , I'm
grateful for the lift, Milligan.'
    'With you holding me by the throat, I
had no option.'
    ' It's just
my way of askin'.'
    A lemon-peel moon rose into the cold
sky. Milligan whistled.
    'Dat's a nice tune.'
    ' It's part
of the Eroica Symphony -1 wrote it.'
    ' You write
the Eroica ?'
    'Yes.'
    ' What about
Beethoven ?' 'Yes, I wrote that as well.' 'You bloody liar.'
    Cheerfully he whistled his next
composition, Grieg's A Minor Concerto by Milligan. Life wasn't too bad. The
trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't
appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in
me life. The very thought of it made him miserable.
    Still, he had known happier times. To
be born in India the son of a Sergeant-Major in the Indian Army, that was a
different start from the other boys.
    Living in India those days was
something. People who had been hungry unemployed farm labourers in Ireland were
suddenly unemployed n.c.o.s in the British Army, with real live servants of
their own. The first house he remembered was 5 Climo Road, Poona. Built after
the Indian mutiny, the walls were whitewashed and the ceiling was a tightly
stretched canvas.
    At night young Dan would watch the
tracks of the mice as they scurried across it. The front of the house was half
trellis and half wall. A corrugated iron canopy stretched out from the roof to
hold back the sun. In the monsoons the water thundered on to the iron sheets
and made it sound like a different world. What wonderful days they were, full
of golden dreaming, where nothing matters except 'now', everything was always
in now, tomorrow was no good until it became now, and as there appeared to be
an endless supply of now, nothing else mattered. The whole family lived
together; Grandmother, bed-ridden Grandad, Aunty Eileen, Uncle Hughie.
    He had developed a craze for the
saxophone and body building.
    He managed to combine the two.
Stripping to the waist, wearing a pair of underpants painted to look like
leopard skin, he stood in front of a mirror, playing Valse Vanity and doing
knees bend.
    He was quick to discover that
pressing certain notes on the saxophone brought various muscles into play. For
instance, bottom E flat showed the right bicep to advantage, middle C
alternating with bottom C brought the