DIXON MISSES HIS
SOLO...
W
JHEN it cume to matters of art, Jim Dixon knew what he liked. The proper decoration for the bed-sitter of a junior history lecturer in a Red-brick university was something on the lines of a chunk from the Bayeux tapestry: A blown-up photograph, with poker-faced men in armour, horses in chain-mail, a King Harold with an arrow in his eye. Some- thing to show serious purpose, dedication to the job, the
sober' tastes of
young
academic.
IAN
CARMICHAEL
plays the
Hila role.
THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1957.
...his eyes are fixed on the beautiful girl with the dog
But Dixon knew what he decided whether or not hi liked. Four feet tall and three appointment was to be made feet wide, a beaming blonde pennonent, Twenty-four years pin-up winked at him arengs the old,
Loom.
und
educated Ak a grammar school, and bewildered in his first job, Dixon chung to security Dixon lay on his bed
85 a drunkard holds on to a winked buck. The church clock glass of valid port. It was
chimed at what he wanted. But of the provincial town
it times. Sunlight struggled was better than nothing. ten
the Industrial sing, througt Dizen slubbed out his cigarette and thought about getting up.
There was rap on the door, and from where he lay, Dixon inanoeuvred a complex arrange- ment of strings, pulleys and
served Acissors, which
as his door-latch. Ini stepped Bill de- Atkinson, a car salesman. diated Lo The pursult of stronger beer and easy sales.
Slowly he surveyed the untidy roon; the beer-bottle which held sigle. frayed tooth- brush; and the unshaven Agure bed, "You're driving on the yourself too hard," he declared.
Din ambled across to the wush-bayin. "I've got a tutorial at eleven and I'm bering up for tight at the Welches," he sald.
Fer me," he told Atkinson, "it's culture, lemonade, ond bed by ten-thirty. And shull wrot a clean shiri, Got one?"
Atkinson grinued. "I'm we; r- ing it."
Alkinson took off the shirl. "You realise Margaret Peel will Lie there."
Adapted by
Philip Oakes
from the film of the novel by
KINGSLEY AMIS
don't
Hand it over," crdered Dixon, I knocked over a table. They "This is important to me. I've said I was Sheraton-spindly got to find out if the old man's little thing with one leg." keeping me on,”
Atkinson frowned. "I see much in that."
"Perhaps not," sald Dixon, "But to start with it had four." Half an hour later Dixon realised that it was going to be one of his bad days.. To begin
Clouds seemed to blat aut the suid
sun. "Can't be helped," Dixen fatalistically.
knew. But it would do. Welch had never been in the army.
cor
If he had, reflected Dixon that evening, he would have cer- lainly driven a tank. Welch was a driver who preferred the rough to the smooth. His won an antique saloon, with on like a enging that clanked drunken tractor, ond which bounced from one side of the road to the other, with the abandon
super-spring mattress,
21
"It's very kind of you to lavite me for the week-end," ventured Dixon.
+
Weich compressed his lips and raced between a large von and a double-decker bus. There was a hideous screeching of brakes, und in his panie Dixon, almost dug his heels through the floor- boards.
the Memorial you've
Cummings
To M'CAITSKELL
about Syria ...
"Just pretend we don't know him, Mr. Morgan Phillips."
Look!
HAVE seen Prime Ministers sport
I umbrellas and pipes and cigars. I have seen them weep, and I have even, but rarely, seen them laugh. I have seen them turn the world upside down. But not until the other day had I seen a Prime Minister turn himself upside down.
Was
I lay stretched on the beach outside turning from British Tel Aviv off-white to Mediterranean red. It
The agony.
sanid the burned my back and sun burned
my front. I longed for shade but grimly I stuck it out.
It is necessary always to "Selisk
drivers," muttered return to Britain with a Welch. "No thought for the golden tan no matter what torture of fried skin and rights of others."
Dixon unlocked his Ics scorched eyeballs has to be "You know, you went to be with, it was Saturday, and not muscles. "And
endured. This proves to careful," Alkinson advised. Friday, or he had imagined.. He Lecture," he said. "As since that last bloke dropped waste for his tutorial. And asked me to give it, goes it mean the stay-at-homes that you her, she's been looking around worse still, he
decided to let me slay have had a good time. was the only you've for another victim."
absentee from the Principal's
Welch trod heavily on the Then down the beach called to discuss Dixon squeezed the last mill- meeting
arrangements for the installation eccelerator, and swung Into
a there aprang metre of
with a lithe- toothpaste trom *
drive. "Stay battered tube and
of the university's first Chancel graveled scrubbed
stay?" he muttered vaguely some tread a bronzed man hairy, bumbling dismally at his teeth.
J-Sir Ilector Gore Urquhari. "I know,
"Util Monday, Dixon. After with bleached golden hair. ogre who stalked though I know," he mumbled. "But this
that, I'm afraid my wife will...." Behind him ran a little man Dixon's dreams.
is my last chance to make a
Dixon clenched his Bets and good impression. On Mrs Welch
fought back the temptation with a mane of silver hair a well. Last time I was there
hurl Welch through the wind-streaming straight out in "I didn't mean as the breeze, and after him guest, sir," he said. "I meant ran another muscleman. as a member of the teaching, staff."
He winced ht the thought. Professur Welch was the head of the university's history de- partment; a
Dixon was on trial at the uni- versity, and I was Welch who
ال
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a
Eric Johns, another junior in the history department-and life member of Dixon's Worst Men-in-the-World Club-broke
the news.
"You're doing the flowers," he announced,
"Flowers?"
"For the
screen.
Welch looked blank.
...
Prime Minister Ben- Gurion of Israel, with his mean," said Dixon desperately; bodyguard, was going for
being kept on, I said "if I'm not
shell have to start looking for a bathe. Job."
Installation," Johns. "You're OC flowers and
buntings."
Johns
nodded
blondly. "You're
w el come,"
A Premier
standing on his head
Martici
A wonderful man.
by WILFRED FIENBURGH,
.. and a wonderful way to see things right way up
city for sheer hard work. I then, as my guide and i asked intelligent questions and walked away down the corridor took notes. I argued and dis- we heerd shattering crash cussed, and gave them a few from the rear. A large and '' hints on how to run the coun- heavy body had hit the floor try. But there was one song. M.P.
bringing with it what sounded like a book-ease, two chairs and. The word had preceded me a trayful of coffee cups. Welch brought the car to a Suddenly he stopped.
that I had actually seen. the That makes it perfect," Ehuddering hatt "Jobl You With quiet dignity he His rivals gave him best, Prime Minister stand on his "I hope," said my guido snarled Dixon.
mean a leaching job?"
lowered his silver hair onto generously they clapped head. So, in the middle of a sadly, "that the injury will not the sand, jerked with his him, and there he stayed. discussion of the social signi- be permanent."
fance of the Kibbutz move- Only once did I refuse to per- legs, and there he was. On On his head.
ment or the economic develop form. I was taken by friends his head. And there ho
ment of the Negev Descrl, to see the beauties of the moun- stayed. On his head,
I do not like standing on someone would say:
tuin scenery along the Lebaneso my head because I feel
and the frontier ran frontier, "I hear you saw our Prime precisely one yard to the left of "See,"
said placid there must be some basic Minister stand on his head,"
a
the road. matron, "the Prime Minis- reason why feet were put
This is 1,750 yards closer ter stands on his head.”
on the ends of our legs. If "It helps him, to we were meant to be the other way round I have no Contact at last, thought Dixce meditate," said another.
we would be very simple. He put his head Russians invented the motor of Dixon In more trouble gratefully.
And then it happened, doubt that All over the golden beach provided with flat tops to on the ground and his feet In car along with everything else, Welch opened the car door,
but if the Pobbedn is the best in the golden sunshine our heads. But the honour the air, and stayed there. Even the tutorial went wrong. "Well," he said briskly, "be sure
they can do they would be well Diffidently they would ask, advised
to go back to the Dixon believed in bringing and let me know as soon as any-people lowered their heads of the British Parliament medieval history to life. His thing's decided."
to the sand-grizzled heads, was at stake,
beginning and invent it again. methods were not those of the. Despair settled.
It was, I know, ratan of. me not to stand on my head on the Lebanese frontier, especially ho would murder Weich Gi
he said. There were nat many things that
warmed
John s'§.
narrow
squi, But
LUCKY
sight the
than usual, mado the world 2
happier place to be in,
work.
•
to
tense frontier than I
I would not.
"How did he do it?"
Russian car, a Pobbeda.
I would explain that it was
care to be. We were driving a
The
that It is well known
"Perhaps you could show us?" Dixon's blonde heads, brown heads, So I stood on my hand. It was the least I could do to university. But they seemed to shoulders. One day, he decided. Legs shot into the air left, and closed my eyes. I was repay their hospitality.
apend the rest of his life in right and centre-thin legs, doing fine when something Down would go the head and when driving a Russian car. I "What I think," he told his geol. At that moment, it seem-fat legs, straight legs, like a small wet file rasped up would go the feel and have regretted it ever since. It class, "is that King Henry and cd a worthwhile project. the boys had a whale of a time,
bandy legs.
across the sunburn on my they would stand around, won- is an achievement which few The evening's activities did
could equal. dering. sacking castles, chasing
tha
They wavered, teetered chest. I onened my eyes
But the time had come to cry nothing 10 change Dixon's
"What a wonderful man is halt. As it is I have como girls, and getting tight. They mind. Professor Welch and his and fell down again. It was and caugh. a worm's-eye had guts all right. The top brass wife believed themselves to be no good. No one could view of the underside of a our Prime Minister," his sup home with a flat place on top weren't in the deep shelters. cultural missionaries to They were fu the thick of the benighted provinces.
the stand on his head like the large Alsatian as he readied porters would say, "to be able of my head.
to stand on his head like that--- scrapping as well as the looting."
the Welches culture Silently, behird Dixon, the madrigals. door opened to admit Professor Welch. Innocently, Dixon he $18.00 rambled on. Of course,"
sald, "that was a bit of a snag 18.00
for the PBI. because or usuni 25.00 they only got their cut when the 8.50 best stuff was gone. But then, 35.00 that's still true today."
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A thin, bespectacled student 7.50 tried to rescue Dixon from his fate. "You mecu, sir, it wasn't 5.00 a war of conquest at all?" 10,00
Dixon grinned' broadly. "Oh, 4.50 yes it was," he declared. "What 1.00'm saying is that it was
Grade A binge as well.".
1
BEGINS TODAY
The story of
the film that
is making London laugh.
Welch
And to Prime Minister of Israel. himself for another lick.
meant
JIM
"So sorry," someone mur- mured, "he loves to lick the salt off people"
"Madam," I said, "I will buy your dog a whole pound of Halt, but please do not let him disturb me, I вт meditating."
Then I fell over.
The
and he no longer young."
"That proves it," his oppon- ents would say. "That's the only Tight see things
way he can wuy up."
Then I would strike back, "Now you try," I would buggest gently,
And I had them standing on their heads
on the Gulf of Akuba and in the sitting-rooms of Halfe, in old Tiberius
оп
Squashed between | a ready waistcoat; a beautiful girl; and Prime Minister of Israel Galileo, and in a cotton mill
a muscular mezzo- a large, slobbering boxer dog. was still on his head. He is near Beershebn. tenor and
In the draughtiest Dixon looked longingly at the a very great man, this I soprano corner of the Welchs' music girl, and the girl looked at
They kicked, they struggled, room. Dixon clutched his song Dixon. He was suddenly aware now acknowledge.
they panted-but they are a 3,00
sheet and pretended to sing. that no one was singing. Pro-
great people. They will have 'a During the next four go
the 12:00
Professor There was a frozen silence,
at anything Knock was an fessor Welch mapped his fingers
"Comc on Merrie England. Impatiently. 4.00 and slowly, Dixon tuned to see authority
along, days I swam in four seas, stuffing out of Nasser, make the the puzzled, furry face of Fro- ("Make it your subject for the Dixon," he said. "Your
solo. the Mediterranean Sea, the desert bloom, or stand on your 1,50
fessor Welch. The class scurried Memorial Lecture," he had told Attack it."-- 1.50 out, and Dixon held his breath. Dixon), and every song was Dixon fell disaster gather the Sea of Galilee. I visited
Red Sea, the Dead Sea, and head, it's all the same to the
Iarnell. 30 "Grade A binge, Dixon?" said homespun, hearty, nad him in its arms. This, he
Only one man refused, my 30 Welch bemusedly. "FBI? You Dixon's private phrase-book thought, is the end. But Dixon communal farms and co- challenge and he was
;phongy-bucolic.
was wrong. It was only the operative farms, copper of high position, great authority, beginning or per
works. and irrigation and tremendous circumference. schemes, army camps, and Immigrant settlements.
90 didn't mean FBI?"
Dixon gruppled desperately Determinedly, he willed him 2.00 for Inspiration. "No, sir," he self into deafness. His mouth
stammered. PBI is a student's opened and closed mechanically.. TOMORROW. abbreviation.”
His eyes followed the wagging Welch looked blank, and of Welch's finger,”
Jim breaks into tho And thon, the door opched. "name" "a" tall,
wrong room · **KOWLOON] stands for Poor Batiling Iritan Into the room
try," he said. It was feeble, he bearded man ~ wegring a' fancy
----{London - Supress Bernies).
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, LTD. Dizon took the plunge. ·· “I
номакона
a person
"No, no," he pooh-poohedi "I am too old." I was impressed by the do- We alipok hands" "and: buda dication of the Ituell and farewell. He closed -- his emoe and overwwed by these simpla ospa- dove carefully behind us
And the soles of my feet aro slightly sunburned,
POCKET CARTOON by OSBERT LANCASTER