Geriaviator:
I love the mongoose story. Keep them coming please.
MPN 11:
You have raised the subject of gully-gully men. In 1976 I was happily ensconced in the left seat of Mrs Windsor's Belfasts when the AOC (who was a fighter boy) decided that he he didn't need us any more so I was suddenly out of a job as a result of the Defence Cuts. A lot of us were suddenly out of work.
A couple of weeks later, I was found in our favourite pub in Bampton village by a very nice Wg Cdr (Ops) at Upavon at 1600 on a Friday afternoon. He "asked" me if I could go out to Colombo (Sri Lanka as it is now) immediately, if not sooner, to be the RAF Liaison Officer for a couple of weeks because the incumbent had gone "long-term sick". I had nothing better to do, so off I went.
Gan had closed but although Sri Lanka was officially a "non-aligned country" arrangements had been made to allow the Queen's Hair Dryer (VC-10) to transit between Bahrain and Singapore every day.
So, getting back to gully-gully men; I and the two Ch Tech Engineers lived in the Pegasus Reef Hotel on the beach near Negombo. Every Thursday night we were entertained in the hotel by the local gully-gully man. He came with the usual baskets of cobras etc but his big trick was the mango bush trick.
He had a carpet bag from which two pieces of cloth (about 3 foot square) appeared. One was laid on the wooden floor. He then dug out some handfulls of soil from the bag and made a cone about 6 inches tall. He then produced a mango bean which was passed round the audience for all to see and inspect.
The bean was duly planted in the top of the cone, some water was poured and the other piece of cloth was placed over the top while said gully-gully man put his hands underneath and a great deal of magical muttering ensued.
After a few moments, he took the top cloth off and there for all to see, was the shoot of a mango plant! This process went on until he had a perfect two foot tall growing mango bush!
Every Thursday the three of us sat in different parts of the room trying to see how he could manage to disguise a mango bush but we never cracked it. Do any of you out there know how it is done?