Eastward Ho!

I wrote this article in about 1998 for an unusual publication called Barkin’, which was published by a designer called Geoff Simmons. In some respects historical accuracy has been sacrificed for literary effect and in honour of the date on which the events took place.

Travels of an Impressionable Young Lad

April 1st 1968

We emerged from the desert after 1200 miles of bone-jarring washboard dirt tracks, and crossed over from Iran into southern Pakistan. Every surface inside the van was coated in a thick layer of dust, and every nut and bolt holding the body together had worked loose. The fuel gauge had been reading E for the last fifty miles – our jerrycans of spare petrol long gone. There was no petrol station, so we knocked on the gate of the military border post, a proud symbol of Pakistan’s emerging technological excellence in this desolate wasteland. How great was our joy to see a line of three brand new electric petrol pumps! Alas, electric petrol pumps require electricity… But we were nevertheless rewarded with five precious gallons syphoned from a large tank by sucking up the petrol through a plastic tube.

That night we arrived in Quetta and, as we were to do so often throughout the Indian sub-continent, we parked the van in the compound of the Government Rest-house. The manager was deliriously happy to see us, promised us a chicken curry, and immediately set off in demented pursuit of our supper, brandishing a huge meat cleaver and filling the air with blood-curdling imprecations. Shortly after the unfortunate bird had uttered its final squawk, supper was announced. It was a banquet fit for a king – the chicken steeped in an oily blood-red sauce with a volcanic activity all its own, and surrounded by at least ten different vegetables. And when we had eaten enough to feed a regiment, we were invited to inspect the manager’s kitchen, his pride and joy. The walls were lined with every imaginable cooking utensil, cleaned and polished until they shone like new. And there, in the middle of the floor, was the altar of gastronomic excellence: a gas cooker. Alas, gas cookers require gas… A mere detail, he told us; when he wanted to use the oven, he just lit a fire underneath. How could our curry have been less than sublime?