Curly Toes

I forgot to mention on the previous post that the film footage is the only known record of Harriet Harman dressed up as an Alpine Barmaid- whether she did it under Gordon's instruction I do not know, but I'm sure the Ministry of Truth might like to cast further light on this interesting piece of information.

Now I was dribbling on inanely earlier about when I was in France, (or was it Burmah?). and I shall continue a bit with that dribbling. It always seemed to me that the village that we lived in, was like a deserted strand of beach, littered with flotsam from the sea, tht had come to rest there without rhyme or reason, and which together made a bizarre and surreal concoction. There was a man who went past our window four times a day-twice going to the bar, and twice back. We knew it was him by the combination of sounds that echoed down the narrow alley; squeaky bike wheels-he walked his bike with him whever he went, and the metallic thudding as his legs hit the ground. He was an ex soldier of the Franco Algerian war. Both his feet were frozen off by the Algerian rebel forces. He was a wonderful caricature; a handlebar moustache delicately dyed to hide his rapidly greying demeanour and a face that reflected the hardships it had experienced.

Now it could have been a mix up in the translation , but there always seemed something particularly perverse in freezing someone's feet off in a desert. Burning them off with a magnifying glass maybe, but not freezing...

Once we had learnt his story, it became clear why he pushed the bike along with him- it was his walking frame; upon looking closer at his feet, or where his feet used to be, there were steel rockers from whence the sound came. We came to know him as Curly Toes.....

Blue