Slipshod Slapdash

By Ed Morgan

Rory Tremane. A man who has devoted his life to serving the British Empire and putting uppity lions in their place. However, his public persona as the world's greatest circus entertainer hides a far more important and dangerous role played by this unassuming unsung hero. When not thriling throngs of adoring fans under the big top, Rory Tremane risks life and limb in an unending struggle against the evil forces ranged against civilisation and common decency as represented by our beloved monarch. Due to his (until now) unreported efforts, the populatons of huge swathes of the known world could sleep easily in their respective beds, safe in the knowledge that the protective fatherly embrace of the British Empire was there to uphold them come what may.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ed Morgan
• Release date: Dec 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005415563

Book preview

Slipshod Slapdash

Being an account of something very secret

and very important

By

Ed Morgan H.G.V. C.P.C. (Rtd)

Copyright © 2021 by Ed Morgan

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

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Table Of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

It makes some people sick. I find it rather relaxing. The gentle roll from side to side coupled with the firmness of the fore and aft motion. Yes, to me, being something of an old sea dog, the familiar caress of the watery deeps is usually a very comforting sensation. I say usually with good reason, for in this particular instance the sensation was anything but comforting. In fact, in my present dilemma the insistent motion to which I was being subjected was nothing less than a harbinger of my own demise. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I do not scare easily. You will, of course, be familiar with the name of Rory Tremane. You have, no doubt, read of some of my exploits in an earlier tome dedicated to my fascinating life. If you haven’t read it then you are swine and ought to be ashamed of yourself. Unless of course you are foreign, in which case it is highly unlikely that you are capable of feeling shame. For to be able to feel shame you need to possess a sense of right and wrong, and I have yet to meet a foreigner who has had to labour under the burden of a sense of right and wrong. It goes without saying that my present predicament was all the work of foreigners. Yes, I had fallen victim to the perfidious machinations of the dusky devils who inhabit those portions of the Dark Continent which have yet to come under the benevolent administration of the British Empire. How it was that I came to be trussed up like a pig ready to be spit roasted is yet another example of how dangerous it can be to place your trust in people who are intrinsically inferior to oneself.

It can be very disconcerting lying in the bottom of a dugout canoe, unable to move, covered in voracious biting insects, when you know that within a few minutes you and the canoe are about to plunge over a mighty waterfall that the locals have named The Monsters Maw. As I lay there contemplating the unpleasantness that awaited me, I realised that I was wasting precious time in cursing my enemies when I should be devoting all my efforts to try and break free from my restraints. And judging by the increasingly violent motion of the canoe, time was becoming a very scarce commodity. Not only was I bound hand and foot, but I was wedged into the bottom of the canoe so tightly that I could not even turn over onto my back. That was bad enough, but things were made much worse by the fact that I was sharing the canoe with a bucketful of ravenous fire ants, who seemed intent on stripping the living flesh from my bones. What would you do if you found yourself in a situation like that? Come on, I asked you a question, I haven’t got all day. Stop dithering. Good grief, if that’s the way you carry on it’s no wonder you’ve turned out the way you have. By the time it takes you to make up your mind you would have been over that waterfall and smashed to smithereens. Have you ever seen a smithereen? Believe me they are not nice; you definitely don’t want to have anything to do with them. Anyway, that’s enough about you, you selfish pig. Let’s get back to the important stuff, the stuff about me.

I suppose you want to know how I came to be wedged into a dugout canoe in the first place. Even though it’s not really any of your business I don’t suppose it will do any harm to tell you. I was in Africa on a highly sensitive and secret mission. I was there at the behest of non-other than Her Majesty the Queen. Obviously, this fact could never be made public. Even now the repercussions could be catastrophic for the nation if Her Majesty’s involvement in this ghastly affair became common knowledge. So, under no circumstances must you breathe a word of this royal connection to a living soul, not even if they offer you a large leather bag full of gold sovereigns to write about in a book. If you don’t believe me about The Queen being involved, well, I can prove that she was, for I was told that no record of her association with these events would be made. Believe me, I have had a jolly good look all over the place trying to find any sort of reference to The Queen in relation to this business. There are none, which is proof positive that she was in it up to her scrawny royal neck.

As to the mission itself, it may at first appear to the less intellectually gifted, such as yourself, that it was of little consequence when compared with the titanic upheavals that were taking place at the same time. You may recall that at the time in question there was a great deal of unpleasantness concerning the Indian sub-continent, which inevitably involved slaughtering a fair number of the indigenous population, needless to say, it was for their own good. However, more importantly, there was a question of the utmost magnitude that had to be answered. The very survival of the British Empire depended on the answer to this question. The question was this; Are the best billiard balls made from the tusks of Indian elephants or African elephants?

You may think that this is a question that has very little relevance to the overall security of the British Empire. You would be wrong. In fact, you would be so wrong that I suspect that you might be working class, either that or you are one of those chaps (I won’t say men) who design wallpaper. By the way, if you are working class just ask the person who is reading this to you to explain anything you don’t understand. I know that will take some time, but the effort will be worth it. However, for the benefit of the ladies who are reading this I will explain the significance of the quality of billiard balls.

Imagine if you will, the reverential tranquillity of a large, semi darkened room. This room is the preferred gathering place of a certain type of extremely influential person. They are, of course, men. These men control the destinies of not just individual people, but of whole countries. They do not all meet in the same place at the same time, but they do all meet in the same type of place on a regular basis. The billiard room. Throughout the capitol, throughout the land, throughout the empire, such men meet in the reassuringly familiar surroundings of an environment that they have known for all their adult lives. Where such luminaries meet, the conversation will inevitably turn to business, the business of government.

The satisfying clicks of the perfect cannon, the cheerful rumble as a ball tumbles into a welcoming pocket, the merry screech of tearing baize, the demented scream of a club steward as he sees another table ruined. This is the reassuringly familiar background murmur that induces the denizens of such places to confidently discuss momentous matters of state, and finance, in the sure knowledge that their words will go no further than that room. In this cocoon of confidentiality, the finest brains in the Empire can give free range to their deepest thoughts, and between them decide the path down which our great nation must travel, and hopefully make a few bob for themselves at the same time.

Now, in order for these giant intellects to function at the highest level there must be nothing to disturb the equanimity of their delicately balanced minds, no niggling little doubt or distraction that might send ripples of disruption across their thought processes. There are some decisions that require total concentration, questions of global significance, where even a slight misjudgement could have calamitous consequences. Should we extend the hand of friendship to some oriental potentate, or should we cut his head off (I know which I prefer)? Should we set about ruining the economy of some tin pot country like Russia or should we encourage them to pick a fight with one of our European cousins and thus increase our trade in arms? How reliable is the inside information about the three thirty at Chepstow and how much can we safely risk on backing the nag to win? As you can see, this is all clever stuff, and way above a dolt like yourself. Anyway, the point is this, how can you fully concentrate on anything if, at the back of your mind, there is the suspicion that you didn’t make that last shot because your balls are substandard?

Now you may say that it matters not a jot or tittle that you are playing with second class balls, provided that your opponent is playing with them as well, after all it would be the same for both sides. However, suppose it became common knowledge that the leading lights of the British Empire were less than perfectly equipped when it came to the ball department. This would imply that other chaps, who are not Englishmen, were in a superior position to ourselves. This would be intolerable and is completely unacceptable. How could a gentleman go about his business knowing that a horde of unwashed and illiterate foreigners were busily sniggering away behind his back discussing the effectiveness, or otherwise, of his balls? This could be interpreted by those filthy, evil minded European types as a willingness on the part of our great nation to settle for second best. What sort of a message does that convey to those subservient nations who rely on us to govern them with firmness, fairness, and just that hint of judicial cruelty, that they expect and so richly deserve? I’ll tell you what sort of a message it gives them, a damnably dangerous one. Why, it could even encourage some of them to think that they might be better than we are. No, seriously, it could happen. In fact, I once met an Indian chap who thought he was better at cricket than I was. A couple of weeks in a sack full of rats cured him of that particular misconception, had he not been a Maharaja and therefore due the respect that his great wealth demanded, his punishment would have been much more severe.

So, you can see now why it was of vital importance that the question of the billiard balls was answered as soon as possible. That, in a nutshell, was my mission. Of course, the delicacy and importance of this top-secret affair could only be entrusted to a person whose talents were suited to the undoubtedly peculiar circumstances that obtained at that time. Although the Empire was at its zenith there were rumblings of discontent emanating both from the Dark Continent and the Indian sub-continent. Even though to some I may be speaking of events that are no more than distant memories, there are still enough of us left for whom two words, even if they are filtered through a forest of bristly hairs as they travel down the wax encrusted earhole of us old colonial warriors, that still have the power to cause a chap to give an involuntary shiver of apprehension. These words are ‘Zulu’ and ‘Sepoy’. Perhaps now you can see the connection between billiards and the Empire? What do you mean you can’t see a connection? If that is the case, then you must have less imagination than a librarian. Good grief, does it not strike you as odd that the only two places to get decent billiard balls from should be the very places where uprisings and mutinies suddenly become all the rage? It’s a good job you weren’t trusted with the task of sorting out this little conundrum. If it had been left to you, we would have ended up playing billiards with coconuts. Can you imagine how big the pockets of a billiard table would have to be to accommodate your average coconut? There would be a very serious risk that you would get your head stuck down one of them. Actually, most of the chaps I know would be certain to get something or other stuck down one of them. In itself that would not be a problem, but I suspect that some of them would start to enjoy it, then you would have the devil’s own job of getting them out.

Due to the incredibly secret nature of this mission, there could be no direct involvement by any servant of the crown. Thus it was that I was contacted by one Boanerges Slapdash, a scion of Silas Slapdash, founder of the world famous Expanderpants enterprise. As you will be well aware, Expanderpants have been supplying trousers to the crowned heads of Europe for many years. Ever since Silas Slapdash patented his revolutionary floating gusset system for the automatic waist adjustment of gentlemen’s trousers. There are some who say that the term ‘floating gusset’ is something of a misnomer as the gusset does not float but rather inflates or deflates as required. Being neither a tailor nor a designer of airships I am not in a position to comment on the aptness or otherwise of the description. All I can say is that no matter how much you eat, be it fish, beef, legumes or a combination of all three, waistline integrity is maintained and a comfortable gastight fit guaranteed.

It is essential that for the trousers to perform at their best, the initial fitting must be done to exacting standards of accuracy, which involves taking many intimate measurements, the nature of which I will not go into here. Suffice it to say that this process is based on trust, and that trust can lead to a relationship almost akin to friendship, even between a member of a royal household and a mere tailor. It is this relationship, wherein confidences of a more personal nature may pass between monarch and man, which gives rise to the system of unofficial go-betweens that can prove to be so useful in the management of affairs of state. Thus, Boanerges Slapdash had the ear, and the inside leg measurement, of none other than the Queens Consort, Prince Albert. He it was, on the instigation of a higher authority, who discussed the matter during a fitting for a new pair of tartan trews with Boanerges. Why, you may be wondering, would such a highly placed personage discuss such a highly sensitive matter with the hired help? You really are quite slow on the uptake, aren’t you? It’s obvious to anyone who is a member of that strata of society who rub shoulders (nothing else, just shoulders) with the elite, that Boanerges Slapdash would be well known to the people who are in a position to get things done. Amongst the people who can get things done one name is preeminent, that name is…. Do I really need to spell it out for you? Of course I don’t, but I will anyway, the name is Rory Tremane. Yes, it’s me, who else could it be? I really can’t think of anyone else who is as good as me, and if I can’t think of anyone, then you most certainly can’t. Stands to reason, had to be me.

I had been a client of the Slapdash Company for many years. This was not due to the fact that I had an ever-expanding girth, but more to the nature of my profession. Lion Taming can be very detrimental to one’s apparel, especially when dealing with a youthful beast who has yet to learn that arguing with Rory Tremane is both pointless and painful, for the beast that is. Not that the creatures ever get close enough to do any damage with their claws, it’s just that sometimes, when one is training a delinquent feline, other members of the circus fraternity like to engage in a little bit of horseplay. Especially the knife throwers, why they think it is humorous to launch a hail of deadly blades at a chap’s posterior when he is in the middle of a training session I’ll never know. Suffice it to say that a visit to the Expanderpants Emporium was often the outcome of their childish pranks. Mind you, I would sometimes contrive a playful piece of revenge when they were practicing, a small nudge as they were about to throw would often produce hilarious results, not always appreciated by their assistants as they spun round on the revolving disc to which they were strapped. Still, circus life can be dangerous, but luckily there is no shortage of poor people who are willing to risk their pointless lives in the hope of, literally, earning a crust. And as being strapped to a target and spun round takes very little training the loss of the odd assistant now and again never interfered with any of the scheduled performances. The show must go on.

Well, there I was, merrily chatting away to Boanerges as he winched a new pair of Jodhpurs over my manly shanks when the conversation turned to the question of billiard balls. It was obvious to me that this had been in Boanerges’ mind since the very start of our session, it soon became clear why. Apparently, a certain German consort had not been as discreet in the company of certain people as he should have been. He had raised this topic whilst devouring a whole suckling pig during a dinner engagement. This potentially devastating political gaffe occurred at a banquet given by the Royal Society for the Easement of Perpendicular Pressure. The said society having been formed by a likeminded group of philanthropic sewage engineers and gentlemen’s outfitters, all of whom had noticed that an incorrectly attired chap of a certain, critical, girth risked a terrible outcome if measures were not adopted to contain and control the build-up of natural padding which is the inevitable result of spending any amount of time in society. Unfortunately, the Teutonic tosspot had chosen to discuss this matter with non-other than Cecil Slipshod. Cecil Slipshod was the founder of Flexikecks, a rival to Expanderpants; an inferior rival but a rival none the less.

There has been much heated discussion and scientific research devoted to the various merits of these competing products. My own preference, as you already know, is for the Floating Gusset of Expanderpants. The Flexikecks system of Cylindrical Compression, though simpler in theory and less dangerous in operation, is, to my discerning mind far less effective in practice than the Floating Gusset. What must be remembered is that the Floating Gusset gives the wearer a certain amount of control over the distribution of the fatty substances that may be produced in a day’s troughing, which in turn reduces both the lateral and vertical stresses that have so often proved disastrous to the innocent gourmand. Cylindrical Compression, on the other hand, once calibrated and applied, is fixed. There is no opportunity for intervention on the part of the wearer. If the tolerance limits of the system are exceeded the result is devastating. Imagine, if you will, a sausage. Tempting as it is to linger over this vision of loveliness, I must now ask you to imagine that same sausage with the middle third of its beautiful body squeezed down to a fraction of its designed circumference. The inevitable result is a sausage which looks like a dumbbell. Would that not be a sight of the most horrific ghastliness? To see a thing of elegance and refinement transformed into a repulsive parody of its former greatness is nothing less than a tragedy. Well, that is the risk that users of Cylindrical Compression must accept and deal with, a momentary loss of concentration and the result is permanent personal disfigurement and social ostracism. I have even heard of a case where a chap’s stomach burst open when it was squeezed over the top of his badly adjusted Flexikecks.

Cecil Slipshod was no fool, he realised instantly the gravity of the situation. He also knew that whoever solved the problem of the dubious billiard balls could expect to make a fortune out of supplying the Empire with a product that was guaranteed to be perfect. He decided, there and then, that he would do everything in his not inconsiderable power to ensure that Flexikecks became the purveyor of perfect billiard balls, and thus, rulers of the civilised world. Cecil Slipshod was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, in fact, he was not a man to let the grass grow at all, he hated the stuff, I never did find out why, it may have been something to do with the colour as there were rumours of a nasty incident involving some frogs (the reptiles, not the people). He immediately set about organising an expedition to India to ascertain the quality and characteristics of Indian ivory. It is no simple matter to secretly bring together everything that is needed to launch a full-blown scientific expedition, and word soon reached the ever-watchful ears of Boanergese Slapdash about these frantic attempts to steal a march on the opposition.

As the last of subcutaneous substance that formed my waistline was finally ensnared in my new Jodhpurs, Boanergese made me a proposition that was to have a profound effect on both myself and the British Empire. I should point out here that the Slapdash clan were the unfortunate victims of a rather cruel, but nonetheless comical, hereditary defect. It can be summed up with one word, that word is strabismus. I confess I didn’t know the meaning of the word, I had to look it up in a dictionary, which is ironic really as the answer was staring me in the face all the time. Yes, the male members of the Slapdash family were all cross eyed. So that when Boanergese fixed me with his most penetrating stare, after he had made the proposition, I thought he had lapsed into some sort of catatonic stupor. Naturally, I slapped him round the face with one of the two kippers that I habitually carry with me. I know that some people prefer the Haddock for such a task, but the kipper has sharper edges and I find it to be far more effective, it seemed to do the trick. I realised later that he was not in a stupor at all, he was merely gazing at me very intently so as to judge my immediate reaction to his proposal.

Mr. Tremane, do you think that you could possibly go to Africa and rootle round in an elephant’s innards?

(Just to clarify things, it is at this point that the kipper came into play).

Love to I said, Any particular elephant?

No he said Any you take a fancy to really, so long as it is a standard article. Actually, you might then have to go on to India and repeat the process.

Fair enough I said, It’s your money.

And with those momentous words began one of the strangest adventures of my hugely impressive career. The odd thing is that Boanerges never asked me why I hit him with a kipper.

Chapter Two

I don’t know if you have ever had to plan an expedition to Africa. It takes a great deal of skill, a vast amount of effort, a huge amount of experience, a mountain of money, and an unlimited amount of dedication. Do you possess all, or even any, of these things? No, I thought not. So you wouldn’t be much use in this sort of enterprise, would you? I hope you’re not going to start whinging about not being given a chance to prove yourself and all that nonsense. Let’s face it, if you haven’t made anything of yourself by now, you’re hardly likely to blossom at this late stage. You just carry on knitting slippers for dogs, or whatever it is you parasites do to fill your day. Leave the empire building to the likes of me, just don’t get in my way. If, on the other hand, you do possess all, or any, of the aforementioned qualities then I would be glad to make your acquaintance. Provided you don’t want to borrow any money of course. Still, enough chit chat, on with the story.

A wise man once said that if you want a job doing quickly give it to a busy man. I don’t know if this wise man is the same wise man that everybody else quotes when they start a sentence with the words ‘A wise man once said…’ I hope it is the same chap actually, because that means that there is only one half-baked idiot going round spouting arrant nonsense. I would love to get my hands on him, I’d soon let him know what a busy man would say if he had yet another pile of work dumped on him. And it wouldn’t be Oh, thank you very much, put it with the other stuff, I’ll soon get round to it. As luck would have it, there were no busy men around when I began to organise this great endeavour. When I come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who is ever busy. Seems to me that being busy is something best left to the lower orders, after all that’s what they are there for.

So, as usual, it was left to you know who to sort things out. I am not a man to waste time. Time is a precious resource; it is not something to squander on pointless activity. It is much better to get other people to squander their precious time on your behalf while you get on with something important and enjoyable, like eating and sleeping or poking peasants with a stick. Throughout my life I have made it my business to surround myself with people of whom I could make use, after all, what are friends for? I knew just the chap to do the leg work for me, and all the other work if it came to that. Barnaby Binfiller.

I first met Barnaby Binfiller when I was a Lieutenant in the Queen’s own Cloth Cap Fusiliers’ (affectionately known as ‘the Sputes’ because of their garish uniform). He wasn’t a military man but was attached to the regiment as an advisor on scientific matters. He had a good general scientific knowledge but was also an expert on the aerodynamic properties of oddly shaped objects. For instance, if you wanted to know how far an irregularly shaped object (such as, say, a giraffe) would glide if you catapulted it from the top of a cliff, old Barney Binfiller was the chap to go to. He could work that out in a jiffy, and being a true man of science, he would always carry out experiments to verify his calculations. The answer, by the way, is not very far, as it appears that giraffes are not aerodynamic at all, and tend to plummet rather than glide, even if you launch them as you would a clay pigeon and impart a decent amount of spin to them. Incidentally, there are those who claim that the clay pigeon was developed as a direct result of Binfiller’s work with whirling giraffes. The owners of gun shops were much relieved with this development as clay pigeons are much easier to stack on shelves than giraffes. Binfiller was nothing if not thorough in his experiments. The tragedy is that it was this very thoroughness that led to his sad demise, but more of that later. With regard to the giraffes, Barney even devised a counter rotating saddle powered by a small steam engine so that he could sit on the whirling beasts and pilot them through the air. It made no difference, the extra distance gained by controlling the flight of the giraffe was negligible and the cost of the specialised saddles was prohibitive.

Given the secrecy surrounding the nature of my business with Barney I thought it best to broach the subject in the privacy of his own home. That may not have been the best decision that I have ever made. I had sent him a telegram informing him of my intentions and that under no circumstances should he tell anyone of my impending visit. Right at the top of the list of people he did not tell was his butler. This very same butler was under the strictest instructions not to let anyone into his house without an appointment. He put up quite a fight. It was only when I winged him with my trusty old service revolver that he calmed down enough to do as he was told, actually, it may have been blood loss rather than anything else that made him see sense. Under different circumstances I would have fully expected and approved of his devotion to duty, after all, it is not his job to question his master’s instructions. But, as the circumstances were not