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Rashid and Marwen
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Décadence Mandchoue
The memoir of Sir Edmund Trelawney Backhouse, 2nd Bt. (Backhouse /bækˈʌs/, which is appropriate) will be published this week , and a cracking good read it looks, even if it is a load of old cobblers. I wouldn't be so sure though. Reading the review I was reminded of my own time in China; if I published a memoir of life in Guangzhou in the mid-noughties no-one would believe it. I could tell of the divorcée who invited me to move in and offered to sweeten the deal by installing a concubine or two. The girlfriend who came over one night with her 17 year old, uninitiated, eager cousin. The unspeakably depraved practices of Mystic Meg from Hiroshima. T he policewoman who, upon discovering the effects of black resin on the male member, ensured that there was always a ready supply on the bedside table. T he millionaire's daughter who drove me to a nightclu b with one hand on the wheel of the Merc and the other not, at every traffic light her head bobbing down for a quick... As I s
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signed,
extrapolate depilatory victim
I would be shocked to find that your uncles belonged to Suborder Strepsirrhini or Infraorder Tarsiiformes, particularly as I was not hitherto aware that members of these orders were to be found in Ireland.
My comment here wasn't loaded, btw, Rarareen. I just happened to think of them when I listened to the song. One I only remember slightly, the other was killed on D-Day. I wrote this about him:
Remembrance.
My uncle Harry was killed at Sword beach
in 1944. He was nineteen.
It seems he was shot before he could reach
the minimal protection of the screen
of low dunes which was their first objective.
The tide was high and the sea came in green
in the recollection of those who lived.
I'm told that Harry was tall and well-made,
clumsy, liked cricket and he talked a lot.
Though as a stevedore he was often aboard
the freighters in the Pool loading cargo,
it was the first time he'd been abroad.
The first and the last, and he lies there now.