Madame Galina's Doings Diary

When Sammo Met Ballet

Afghanistan Second Tour. Day One.

I was in the Post Office getting dollars when Nicky Ness, aka Miss, aka Head Of Combined Services Entertainment texted to say I must ring her pronto. Impossible as I had gone completely jelly-brain (pre-tour nerves) at the Bureau De Change window.

“I want a round number of dollars, please”

“From what amount?”

“The nearest one that will make a round number of dollars.”

“Approximately?”

“Can I not have it exactly?”

“Yes, but you need to tell me how many pounds you’ll be giving me to start with.”

The cent dropped. “God, sorry. I need to give you a ball-park figure, don’t I? Say around sixty pounds?”

And we were off. Except we weren’t. When I rang Nicky, she told me that the RAF had changed the flight time and left without us.

“We’re working on Plan B and I should be able to let you know what that is in a couple of hours.”

I went home in a state of limbo. I was supposed to be somewhere else and couldn’t be.

Plan B was a train ride to Oxford next day, where I would be met by Ian Nicholls, managing this tour because taking girls (Miss, Miss 2 aka Mrs. Avlianos or Miss 3) with us would create an ablutional logistical nightmare. Ian and I were to stay at a Travelodge overnight and check in at Brize Norton by six thirty the following morning. All went to plan.

Day Two.

I was straight back in the saddle at Brize Norton recognising some regiments by the insignia and Royal Marines specifically by their glutes. I read The Girls Of Slender Means and Queen Lucia on the flight, and at Kandahar hung out with some of the Marines on their way to what sounded like Lashkezar. Sorry - I don’t do places. I get lost going from Camden to Oxford Street. One of the Marines, a dusky marvel from Manchester, was all smiles at winning the Jut Of The Year Prize.

“But when the f*** did you get to check out my arse?” he asked me. “I’ve been sitting on this table since you came over here.”

“You were lying doing an American Muscle Guild tribute shot by the beverage dispenser in Hanover airport.”

“Jesus…”

“You could stack crates of beer on it.”

“Not where we’re going, it’s a dry camp.”

So glad he said that. I could give them my “I’m a slightly moist camp, now” gag.

And get a laugh, thank you, so enough of the groaning in the wings.

We were met by Hilary Grandison. She’s a dinky, blonde army captain from Fife. We immediately hit it off, sharing as we do an obsession with the Tay Bridge disaster. Not everyone likes the way she tells us what we’re going to do and at what hundred hours we’re going to do it, but I do. It’s reassuringly like my ballet teacher saying, “Artistic licence don’t talk rubbish put Odette’s first posee bang on the first chord, please”, or my singing teacher bellowing, “If yet again you don’t breathe in that rest marked in Ev’ry Valley Shall Be Exalted then either you’ll strangle yourself or I will…”

Hilary drove us to the VIP quarters.

“Oh look”, I say, “Someone’s Polyfilla’d in the mortar hole in that wall over there by the nice tree. It took years longer to fill in the hole in the Bargoed Church wall after my aunt’s brakes failed on the hill above it and she was unable to turn right as she planned because she had told my Nancy Ak what had happened and what she was now about to do to avoid hitting the wall, and Nancy scuppered the plans by grabbing the steering wheel with both hands screaming that they were both going to die.”

Silence in the mini-bus.

I put the heater on in the four man room I’m sharing. It lowed loudly. I couldn’t switch it off.

Day 3.

I didn’t sleep very well at all due to the lowing and woke up with a full-on caffeine hanker. Jogging down the corridor to the ablutions, I noticed that it was a beautiful sunny morning, and that raised my spirits. The shower was hot. Hoorah.

Hilary tipped up at precisely ten hundred hours (so precisely I wondered if she was standing outside waiting to time her first knock) to take us to the boardwalk for coffee and doughnuts from the Canadian Café. With her was another Royal Navy captain called Russ, who is gregarious and chipper. We looked round the shops on the Boardwalk and I haggled for a Pashmina.

In the afternoon we went to the venue, the same one as last time, still called a tent even though it’s a hangar. And there was Ben. Except he introduced himself as Sammo. And he got pissed off when I asked him: “And what do you do in the armed services, please.”

“What do you mean “please?””

And walked away.

Hilary called him back and asked him to hang the CSE flag over a beam, and I heard him muttering something about there being privates standing around, before he manhandled a bloody big ladder onto the stage and nipped up it.

“He’s the P.T.I.” Hilary explained, watching him hoist the flag. “Hence the muscles.”

“He is big, isn’t he?” I agreed. He didn’t rise to me making that comment in a stage whisper probably audible in Skegness. Then he left.

This is from my Afghanistan Diary leading up to the time when Iestyn met Sammo. He went back to his office having put up the flag, and told all his colleagues that he had just met the biggest prick ever.

Poor little me…

But we talked properly before curtain up and I thawed him a little, and then when I got him on the stage and he did one of the most outstanding auditions to play Solor (including random gargouillades like a New York City Ballet girl) we bonded. At curtain down, when the photo was taken, he shook my hand and admitted he’d been wrong about me.

A privelege to know. My mate the Corporal.

“But I was in a bit of a strop because everyone was ordering me around before you got there, and I’m not being funny but I am a Corporal and there were privates doing nothing, and they wanted me to go and get pizza for the sound man. I know I’m in welfare and I’ll go out of my way, but I don’t take the piss and don’t expect people to take the piss out of me.”

Hilary tried to make him model the CSE T-shirt. He wouldn’t.

“Just wanting me to get my top off…”

I tried to persuade him.

“No. I’m not doing it. Tell you what: you won’t come and do my circuits class in the gym tomorrow wearing your tutu, will you? That would be embrassing for you. So, I’m not…Where are you going?”

“To get you a T-Shirt. If I promise to turn up to the gym, then, you’ll put the T-Shirt on?”

“You so won’t”.

But I saw that he almost smiled as I handed him to T-shirt.

“This is a medium, isn’t it?”

Oh, my stars…

“Small.”

“Twat.”

He let me take the warm up in the class the next day - “I can’t believe you turned up. And in full rig”, criticised me when I did a hamstring hang before getting the class’s pulse rate up, jeered when I did trenches tick tock and not alternately, “How can a Ballerina be that uncoordinated?” and pointed out that a four foot nothing Dutch nurse did the boxing exercise more aggressively than I did.

All this from a man who trains para’s. I felt privileged. And Ben exemplifies the attitude I found in Iraq and Afghanistan, of the military going out of their way. He actively seeks to make life better. For his colleagues, it would probably be enough just to have someone that comic around. (I roared when we went out for smoothies and he told me stories of when he was an apprentice at Bristol FC). But he arranges sports tournaments, daft events, has inter-pc caption competitions, and for Christmas Day he organised a Charity Fun Run. I was sad to leave him when we went off to Camp Bastion.

But there I was looked after by 9th Squadron, who allowed me to get ready in their hangar opposite the venue, as there wasn’t enough room for Ronds De Jambes backstage. I dumped my stuff in the afternoon and went off for Scoff. When I came back at the half, the 9th boys had put up a curtain for me to change behind and moved the heating pipe so that it would heat this changing area. When I realised that I had left my mirror in the venue, they moved one of their trucks into the middle of the hangar for me to use the wing mirror on it. I was included in the tea run; and when I started barre, they handed me the TV remote as I “probably needed music for that that you’re doing, rather than the footy. MTV Christmas hits is on. Will that do?”.

Perfect. Because then I could pretend it was Whitney Houston singing I Will Always Love You that had made me cry…

Posted by Madame Galina2 at February 3, 2007 06:28 PM