I was born in 1905.

Ruprecht

I was born in 1905, and joined the army on my 7th birthday. I have spent my years in England, militarising the coastguard, aside from the war years when I was posted to India.

It was my commanding officer, General Mayworthy, who discovered the Indian pasttime of knocking little hard balls about with a mallet, rather like a form of crochet. Of course, the officers couldn't be playing in the dirt so I was assigned to an engineering team to bring the game to hip-height. It spread through all the regiments and the game was eventually named "snooker", with the mallets being swapped for pointed sticks that had flat ends. I didn't pick the name of course - Mayworthy named it "snooker" after a tame parrot of his. It used to sit on his head and scream obscenities at servants - men and women all - while everyone had to pretend that the thing wasn't really there. Heaven forbid if you deigned to notice. This parrot was the reason for my unfortunate adventures in the Ganges delta - not the muddy tourist trap of the modern era but in those days a fast-flowing, white-water death-ride filled with anacondas, natives, and crocodiles the size of an ironclad. They were said to eat trees at times when an unlucky monkey, Bengali or other tree-dwelling miscreant attempted escape from their worrying maws. That's all beside the point however. The parrot had flown away from Mayworthy one night when the General, stricken with gin, lashed out at the beast, thinking it a clock - of course we were all to pay for hell and blowed if any of us could catch the thing. Tracking was a different matter however, for we had the excellent services of a native fellow who went by the name of Dinga - Ding-dong we called him, regretfully - who was all of seven feet tall and wide as a barrel. We floated down the Ganges on his chest for ten days and nights until we reached the fierce and tepid jungles of Bengal, thick and glutinous miasma that greeted us I will surely never forget. Ding-dong was taken to obtaining moisture by licking the sweat from our heads with his swab-like tongue. Of course, my own means of refreshing myself was to sup hourly from my malt pouch - called a Ga-watch - which was ill-advised because I soon sank into a stupor and was lost in the swampy wilderness for several months. I lost contact with Ding-dong and my group, but luckily was taken in by friendly tribespeople, who took it upon themselves as a duty to tattoo my back and haunches daily, so that by the time I returned to some degree of clear-headedness, I was painted all about my person with 10,000 years of tribal history. Though living in comfort, I was certainly a prisoner, and I knew that Mayworthy was relying upon me, so I made my escape one night after a ritual celebration when the tribal guards were drunk on Garm-root. I knew they would discover my departure and pursue me, yet they were as sure-footed deer to to the leaden strides of my own unsure feet in the misty undergrowth. I evaded them for three days but was becoming certain of my capture, when I heard a most abominable torrent of foul language from above. It was Snooker! I bid him help me and he led me away from the jungle, to the outskirts of civilisation where the tribe dared not follow. I tied a string to the beast's foot so that he would not fly elsewhere, and spent some months following the path of the Ganges upstream to my barracks. Mayworthy was delighted, and all of this was just in time for the annual cleansing, whereupon the entire subcontinent descends into the Ganges for a bath of sorts, rather like the biblical flood but with less need for spurious narrative devices such as arks.

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Lovemax

Regardless of the whole thing !! it was the topic which stuck me to the deepest of the whole text ! A complete century !

This is oldest IMeR, atleast in quick memory if I can recall ...

CheerS completing a Century.

cfhi

i really hate to say this thing here in one of the most wonderful forum i have ever join .. but.... r u for real????

heh heh gives me entertainment for 10 mins though

tornado989

WOW!!! ~ is all I can say.... cheers for you man : )

katyrafi

Ruprecht

You spin a mighty fine yarn

Paragraphs would enhance the reader's enjoyment immensely however

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Judi

Your story had me tied up in knots!!

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Prof. Lionel Aranha

Why the heading 'I was born in 1905'? What's the catch?

Aussie 5

Hi Ruprecht
What a story - but surely you would have been just a little to young to join the army at seven years of age!!

PeakXV

I can even see Neville Chamberlain giggling in his grave!

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We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

Don't go to India ~ Pre-trip Warnings & Misconceptions?

crvlvr

I'll have whatever Ruprecht is having.

cfhi

and i presume that's not the real origins of snooker , is it ?

Ruprecht

Yes! Colonel Sir Neville Chamberlain claimed he invented it several decades prior but that is not true.

john.sw

Try telling that to the International Billiards & Snooker Federation!

The ISBF has done exhaustive research into the origins of snooker and concludes that the account published in The Field on 19th March 1938 and the April 1939 edition of The Billiard Player is correct.

Shortly after Chamberlain's letter appeared in The Field, Compton Mackenzie wrote an article for The Billiard Player reproducing the claim and leaving it in no doubt that it carried his full support, describing it as "incontrovertible evidence". The article, which appeared in the April 1939 issue of the magazine, received a similar endorsement by the Editor, Harold Lewis, so effectively closing the discussion.

There is a copy of the 1939 article by Compton Mackenzie in The Billiard Player along with a letter from Neville Chamberlain on the wall in the snooker room at the Ootacamund Club.

The game of snooker was invented by Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain in Ooty in 1875.

If "General Mayworthy" existed, he would surely have been on the India List - but he is not.

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Lotus-Flower

in Ur profile is said birth date on 22. sepember 1980!!
?

torryquine

That's one of the funniest things I've read in ages - cheers for that and mind how you go on the zimmer frame.

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