Yes Yes Yes
Conrad is well aware that you smart-bottoms out there will promptly reply "Five letters", clutching your sides at the sheer hilarity of your response, until Conrad uses his Remote Nuclear Detonator. Ah, the laughing's stopped now.
Okay, let us abruptly change mental track and revisit the glorious days of the British Empire*, and most especially India. Art!
One reason the Indians were positively grateful to be British subjects was that Empress Victoria lived on the other side of the globe, and whilst she might come out to have a look at her exotic real estate once or twice, she wasn't going to be sticking her great big imperial nose into it every Wednesday, was she? Also English; ironically a lingua franca thanks to all the languages and dialects across the subcontinent.
Next up, the British army in India. Art!
Unlike back home, it was possible for a British officer to live off his wages in India, rather than having to be independently wealthy. You may already be aware of Sir Claude Eyre Auchinleck, commander of the pre-Alamein Eighth Army? He was an Indian army officer and spent most of his career there, which unfortunately left him utterly in the dark about the qualities of his subordinate officers.
ANYWAY the Brits in India, especially those in uniform, picked up all sorts of stray words in Hindi or Urdu and appropriated them, which they then used to baffle and impress others. I shall here append a few.
"BUNDOOK": a weapon, usually a rifle. From the Hindi 'Banduk' meaning 'Gun'. Art!
"JALDI": "Quickly!" or as the RSM would say (very loudly) "JALDI you idle skiving <insert swears here>". From the Hindi for "Soon"
"CHOTA-PEG": Slang for an alcoholic drink, usually spirits. "Chota" is Hindi for 'small' and 'Peg' is a volume of drink. Art!
"KHAKI": A cotton fabric dyed tan. British troops noticed, early on, that unhappy tribesmen who failed to appreciate being subjects of the Raj blended into the background because they wore khaki-coloured clothing, whereas the bright red British kit looked great on parade, not so much in the Hindu Kush. From the Urdu for "Soil-coloured". Art!
"Defending the rum ration"
"DEKKO": To have a quick look, from the Hindu "Dekho". Analogous to the word "SHUFTI" which is from Arabic and means the same thing.
"PUNKHA-WALLAH": This was the chap who ensured that the fan in the officer's mess kept going, in order to stir the humid air around a little and that as few people as possible keeled over from heatstroke. Art!
The British Raj - finding gainful employment for people!
In fact "Wallah" was extended across all ranks and races, and you'll find uncharitable comments about 'Base-wallahs' from the blokes on the front line.
"CHAR": If you were French this would be a tank. In the UK it referred to a lady who did domestic cleaning, a type of fish and to burn things quite badly. In the Raj it meant one thing - TEA NOBLE TEA. From the Hindi "Chai" meaning TEA NOBLE TEA. Art!
Margaret's Hope: the source of loose-leaf first-flush Darjeeling
Of course you could purchase char from a char-wallah. If they also sold fish and did domestic cleaning then they'd be a char-char-char-wallah, which sounds like a dance and is a good point to stop.
Back To Those Books
You know, that list of books by Commonwealth authors over the reign of HM The Queen STAND UP FOR QUEENIE and here's another tranche -
1992-2001
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992, Canada/Sri Lanka)
The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields (1993, Canada)
Paradise - Abdulrazak Gurnah (1994, Tanzania/England)
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (1995, India/Canada)
Salt - Earl Lovelace (1996, Trinidad and Tobago)
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997, India)
The Blue Bedspread - Raj Kamal Jha (1999, India)
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee (1999, South Africa/Australia)
White Teeth - Zadie Smith (2000, England)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel (2001, Canada)
I think I've read "The English Patient" but I could be wrong because I'm old and gin rots your memories. I have seen the film, so there's that. "The Stone Diaries" sound like heavy going (hah!) and desperately dull with it. Mind you, "White Teeth" sounds interesting in precis. And "Life Of Pi" sounds as if would be a short read - you don't expect a tiger and a young man stranded in a lifeboat together to strike up a friendship, do you? Art!
And Now For "The Sea Of Sand"
Yes. You must all really love love love this fan-fiction because nobody has criticised it, so it will continue to grace these pages.
‘Oh, yes, that’s true,’
agreed the young officer. ‘Not here, nor
at the dig. Professor Templeman says
we’re too far from any breeding source for flies to reach us.’
The Professor was wrong, and badly so. The Doctor knew it, even if proving it would
be harder.
‘I wonder, could we prevail upon you to guide us around
this garrison?’ he asked, all bumbling charm.
Taken aback temporarily, the officer scratched sand out of
his tousled hair and looked around in contemplation.
The tour lasted for fifteen minutes, and gave Sarah a
slight headache in trying to cope with the sun, the light, the dust and the
interminable piles of supplies. She felt
simultaneously flattered and worried by the interest expressed in her by the
soldiers they encountered, being the subject of a few wolf-whistles until
Lieutenant Llewellyn glared at the offenders.
Mersa Martuba, it transpired, had been established in early
January 1941 as a potential Forward Supply Depot, at a small oasis where a
dozen abandoned mud huts stood. Huge
amounts of logistics would have been dropped there to sustain the Western
Desert Force as it over-ran the Italian colony of western Libya. Units of the RASC and the RE had already
begun to salvage abandoned or captured Italian equipment and stockpile it at
Mersa Martuba alongside supplies labouriously hauled up from the Nile Delta. Petrol, oil, diesel, lubricants, water,
ammunition, spare parts, tinned food, signal wire and a thousand other things
were sent to Mersa Martuba.
Logistics, you see. Crucial in any war and especially so in North Africa, where, as the pundits had it, you had the perfect arena for large-scale armoured warfare - and absolutely nothing else.
Conrad: Still Angry, Thanks For Asking
Just because you don't see me frothing with indignant rage with every blog post doesn't mean I've mellowed at all. Quite the reverse, all this unpleasant heat makes me even tetchier than normal. Why, I have to vapourise half a dozen people before breakfast to get my spirits up. Let the outpouring of rancour about Codewords begin!
"SIDEREAL": Good job Conrad knows astronomical terms. ST concerns locating the Sun in relation to other fixed, distant stars. Art!
DON'T get me started on Flat Earthers
"HOOPLA": OH COME ON! Allow me to pick up my immensely thick and heavy Collins Concise and HURL IT AT THE PERSON WHO CAME UP WITH THIS. It's either a game of quoits or a load of un-necessary nonsense, and guess which one Conrad inclines to?
"APLOMB": Grrrrrr were it not for my own considerable aplomb there would be considerably fewer Codeword compilers in the world. It comes from the French "A plomb", meaning along a plumb line, and means to be very self-possessed and confident. Art!
Like this chap
Finally -
We have hit the Ton, so I shall not blather on long at this point. Okay, just as a counterpoint to our usual sardonic if not saturnine tone, here's one to leave you with a smile on your face. Art!
This is Bonnie, who came a long way to the UK, all the way from Crete, where she had been abandoned. Then she escaped from her home, was found at the side of the road and won third place for Rescue Dog at an exhibition, before being returned to her rightful owners. The British; they dote on their dogs.
* For the purposes of today I will very reluctantly admit the American Revolution happened.
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