The bulbs of the new kinds of tulips are very much in demand, too. People who grow them in their homes can practice the ‘golden showers’ and create real masterpieces of floristry. It also became known that Little Julien was a remarkable chef as well. It was him, who thought up the recipe of a famed appetiser julienne,[58] which consisted of the thinly sliced bulbs and stems of his grandmother’s tulips with such additions as mushrooms, onion ringlets, etc. He had examined the nutrition and taste of his culinary experiments on the Brussels drunks who never have any money to snack. History confirms the validity of the courageous experiments: the drunks weren’t the only ones to enjoy the delicacy. However, today not all the restaurant chefs take the risk to strictly follow the ancient recipe.
When Dick was in the British Army, where he served diligently, he always tried to spend his short leaves of absence in Brussels, so that he could stand next to his soul mate, go to the nearby café where he ordered several portions of julienne all at once, and a cake with a chocolate figure of the ‘Manneken Pis’. Nobody could have foreseen back then that a petit model of his own figure would soon be made in chocolate and sold on every Brussels street corner.
A detail from Sergeant Blockhead’s photograph from the time when he was serving in the British Army. Here he is in Brussels, in the café near the Petit Julien where he looks sceptically but with sympathy at the little boy peeing
Grasping the Airspace and Making New Astronomical Discoveries[59]
The well-known company producing the rubber devices received an order from WTO to make air balloons shaped like the ‘Peeing Briton’ that will be launched into the air on the International Toilet Day. On the same day the meetings with the veterans of the Movement will be organised and the ritualistic induction[60] of the new Club members will take place next to the famous monument.
At the same time the British astronomers (incidentally the PB Club members) watched the night sky and discovered a marvellous cosmo-geological phenomenon. They found out that one of the Uranus satellites, Urinia, not long ago discovered by their Belgian colleagues (also incidentally PB Club members), had shown unusually heightened activity of its hot springs on the 11th and the 19th of November. What a symbolic splash of support![61]
The peeing marksman is already in the air, but he will not last as the sniper in the dunes has already taken his aim
Achtung! Achtung! The Air Raid![62]
The designated division of the tourist police of the Jurmala resort has just now sent a teletype to all the mass media marked: ‘Extremely Urgent’ containing yet some more shocking news. When the people on the Riga seaside saw a hang glider in the air, none of the relaxed, resting people paid him any attention in the beginning. But then a sudden warning from the lifeguards’ station in Bulduri shook the beach:
‘Attention! Attention! This is an air raid!’
Of course nobody paid any concern to the loudspeakers’ crackling and the life guards’ calls, or else they did not understand. And only when the alarm started wailing and small droplets of the rain fell on the suntanned bodies, the beach folk started rushing, running, and hastily hiding under their long chairs. Only those who took the risk of raising their heads from the golden sand could see the hang glider making strange twirls in the air. When he lowered the altitude he let a golden-coloured stream out of his personal vessel. The light breeze spread the moisture evenly on all: good and evil, kind and mean, without differentiating between genders or national affiliations.
– Damn it! What is this world coming to?! Fucking idiot! – those who were learning English said.
– Scheisse! – ‘Shit’ — Halt die Fotze! – Verdammte Scheisse! – ‘Holy shit!’– the Germans chanted.
– Pa la Pinga jiho de la puta! – ‘Go to hell, you son of a bitch!’ – in Spanish.
– Puzza! – (stink in Italian).
– Mon tabarnac! Ta mere la pute! – ‘Your mother is a whore!’ the French yelled.
– Ben zonA! – (son of a bitch). Ijot! – the local Jews concurred.
And then with all the power that tape recorders can muster, from the bushes of the nearby dunes the booming Leontiev[63] voice shook the beach:
The fogs of memories shields us; you are like in a dre-ee-am,
like in a dre-ee-am.
My only hope is my hang gli-i-der,
my hang gli-i-der!
– Ša-au-smas! – (Awful!) – mewed the Latvian speakers.
No doubt that was the surface support party of the brave man.
As was established later, the peace disturbing party were providing pointers for other aims of the ‘Brit’, fifty metres away. But at that moment the voice of Valery Leontiev screamed from below and the wings of the hand glider cut the air above with menacing intensity.
– Arprats! – (That is mad! – in Latvian).
The curses sent from the ground in all the different languages just gave more speed to the pilot. And that lasted until one of the frequent visitors of the resort coast decided to accept the challenge. As to be expected, and from the very first attempt, the macho man on the beach hit the raider with his volleyball. The wing of the foreign glider bent, and the pilot fell into the cold waters of the Baltic. In the next moment two motorboats were dispatched – to pick up the man overboard: one from the life guards’ station and another that was drifting in the bay not far from the site of the catastrophe. But the Balts weren’t in luck that day. The familiar sign PB flashed in front of their very eyes. Their motorboat was faster… It reached the man in the water earlier than the Latvian vehicles, snatched him up, and hid in the neutral waters.
This ugly case could have stayed as a sorry, unsolved episode from the life of the resort. But soon Jurmala City Council received a letter from the central headquarters of the ‘Peeing British’ Club with apologies and explanations about the incident.
The letter announced that the administration of the Club regrets that occurrence, and assures that there was no change in the Club’s attitude or behaviour, and none is planned. The letter noted that the pilot was a young member of the Club who had just recently bought the licence to practice independent flight, and that he had no intention to drizzle the people who legally enjoyed the rest and cure of the resort.
He was aiming for a sculpture of a giraffe established in the villa ‘Adler’ situated in the dunes. ‘Adler’ used to belong to the former owners of the Parex bank, Valery and Tatiana Kargin.[64] His attention was attracted by a golden crown that decorated the giraffe’s horns. The crown was a symbol of Parex that they had put on a giraffe when they had to leave their home in the historical centre of Riga.
They took the Parex crown from the giraffe after that case
This shiny thing was the real target of the British pilot. Not unlike a magpie who is susceptible to all kinds of tinsel. As was discovered later he was one of the angered investors of Parex that had eventually gone