COOK CUCKOOS AND WilFUL BLOODY MURDER:a S Ken Bishop © 1993

COOK CUCKOOS AND WilFUL BLOODY MURDER:a S Ken Bishop © 1993

Station cooks were a strange breed. Many and varied were the reasons they took on the job as station cooks, but the most common one was booze or to be more explicit, to get away from it.

Some were excellent cooks. Many had been chefs at leading hotels or on ocean liners. About three months was the usual length of stay, then they either got fed up or their skins cracked and they h}tout for the nearest pub.

They never had the best of conditions to cook under. Most stations had no power, only badly worn out stoves on which to practice their culinary expertise. Even so most had a proper bread oven that was filled with wood, heated up till you could hold your arm in until you counted to ten, no longer, then the ashes were raked out and the dough put in. Quite a chore.

Jack was an excellent cook. For the first month, that is. The second month the rot set in and the cooking was indifferent. The third month it was almost uneatable.

Refrigerators were unheard of and keeping food fresh in the summer months was almost impossible. Jack didn't worry about hygiene overmuch either. Well you didn't get dirty cooking so why would you have to wash? There was always an oven cloth to wipe the grease off your hands, or the black off the stove, and sometimes when the cloth fell into the sink then that cleaned it a bit.

He went to a lot of trouble the first month. Made a few sponges and some nice cakes and we had a different pudding every day. On Sunday mornings there was fried bread, fried eggs, and fried chips. Very nice indeed.

The second month Jack got a bit crusty. The standard had fallen a lot and when someone mentioned the fact, Jack overheard it.

Every meal time thereafter he would stalk through the dining room waving a meat cleaver and glaring at everyone. "Any moans about the food? I thought not!"

And off he would go back to his kitchen.

It was an unwritten law that if anyone had a row with the cook"and the cook left, then the argumentative one had to take over the job until a new cook arrived. Sometimes this took quite a while, so anyone that had half a brain was very civil to cooks as it wasn't the most popular job on the station.

Anyhow, the food was getting progressively worse and Jack's moods were getting worse than the cooking.

Jim, the head shepherd, was one who got on okay with Jack and he used to go down to have an early morning cup of tea with him.

One morning we had Irish Stew, the next we had fried left-overs, on Sundays fried eggs. As simple as that. The Irish Stew was anybody's guess; maybe boiled mutton with a few vegetables and potatoes. Quite tasty and filling.

One morning Jim didn't have breakfast when Irish Stew was on the menu. Back at the stables I asked him if he was off-colour seeing as how he wasn't hungry. "It wasn't me off-colour, it was your breakfast. Old Jack lost his oven cloth and he found it in the stew."

I immediately felt a bit more than off-colour myself. That oven cloth did a lot of things oven cloths didn't have to do; like cleaning shoes and wiping up a puddle after a puppy had wandered inside. It swatted flies, wiped perspiration off a sweaty brow and God knows what else that we didn't know about. It was too late to worry about it now, the stew was eaten and that was that.

Soon after that, Jack was in the kitchen singing his heart out. He had a gallon tin of methylated spirits and was having a great old time. I had taken a carcase of mutton to the meat safe and was cutting it down when Jack came out fair reeking of meths.

"How are you old mate?" he yelled. "Come and have a drink."

Thinking he had the tea made I said, "Thanks, I will." I followed him into the kitchen and Jack pushed half a cup of meths into my hand.

"Do you want some water in it?" he asked. "Almond essence makes it more potent and there's plenty of that here."

Hell and Tommy; meths was not my idea of a refreshing drink at all. "No thanks Jack," I said. "I can't take that stuff."

"Wassa matter with you, you fussy bastard. Ain't it good enough for you?" He was beginning to get nasty and I didn't want the job cooking!

"Well it's not that altogether," I replied, "but the stuff makes my throat sore." I thought that sounded like a good excuse.

"Too bloody soft, that's your trouble. Ha, not like us blokes what's been through the mill. I could tell you a few things." His humour was improving. "Here. I'll show you." He grabbed the cup, poured some almond essence in and downed the lot. His stomach must have been made of caste iron. "Not too bad. Not too bad at all. The best drink on the market and the cheapest too." He belched loudly then continued. "The bottle of a thousand laughs and all for 1/6 (15 cents). Too much money, you young bucks. Too flash. No guts at all. Don't know what the world's coming to."

He broke into a rendering of the fine old song 'Be Honest With Me Dear,' but he would certainly never have made a living as an opera singer.

I rolled a smoke but was afraid to light a match in case the room exploded.

Now the place had been over-run with rats and the boss had got Brian to set some poison in all the corners. When we came in for breakfast the next morning there was a massive fellow in the middle of the trap. He was In such a dazed condition that he just stood there looking at us, not able to even walk. Someone suggested putting him in Jack's room but young George caught the big hairy rat in a cloth and, whistling casually, wandered into the cook-house.

For some obscure reason a big caste iron boiler always stood on the hearth by the stove. When Jack's back was turned George dropped the rat in the boiler ad spread the oven cloth over it.

When the gong rang, we all trooped in and found Jack very much the worse for wear. By the look of him, he must have just about cleaned up the meths. We got our porridge and sat in a position to see his reaction when he found the rat.

We didn't have long to wait before he needed his beloved oven-cloth. He picked it up and saw the rat and stood looking at it for quite some time before turning around and looking our way. His startled and frightened expression was too much. We all started to laugh. He dropped the oven-cloth back on the boiler, turned completely around and snarled. "You bastards. You think I can see a rat in there don't you? WELL I BLOODY WELL CAN'T."

Not long after this episode we all shuffled in for lunch one particularly hot day and found the cold meat very much the worse for wear. The safe wasn't altogether fly-proof and our lunch was literally moving around our plates.

Brian the Roustabout looked horrified. "Jesus! There's maggots in my meat." "Well listen to him! Do you think this is the bloody Ritz? Fussy bugger you are."

Jack yelled at the top of his voice. "PUT SOME BLOODY LEA AND PERRINS ON IT! What you think 'wister sauce is for? If you are that bloody fastidious, STARVE!"

When Brian saw Jack coming in with the meat cleaver, he grabbed the bottle and swamped his plate. Jack glared at the rest of us.

I carefully avoided his eyes, and just as carefully avoided looking at my plate. I tried cutting a piece of meat without looking at it. It wasn't easy but I finally managed to get it into my mouth. I tried to ignore the crawlies and managed to swallow without chewing. I didn't want the cook's job and it was obviously up for grabs. One false move and Jack would throw his job in.

Jack's thirst finally got the better of him and he stalked out to sample the meths again. I n two seconds flat all the meat had disappeared off the table and out the window. The half dozen dogs out there weren't all that fussy.

Scotty was a deserter off a ship, a nasty little scallywag who had only been there a few days. He wasn't scared of Jack! Shows how dumb he was. "I've fought blokes in every port in the world," he would snort.

By the look of his face he'd come off second best in most of them.

He raved about the standard of Jack's cooking and he wasn't the least bit complimentary. Jack either didn't hear or was too sozzled to notice so Scotty thought that Jack was frightened of him.

The meal that night was a big improvement and we all thought that Jack was off the meths at last but we soon found out later that Jim had cooked it. He'd told Jack to have a spell.

Scotty still moaned about the food. "In the Navy we'd throw a cook overboard if he couldn't do better than this."

Jim gave him a hard look but said nothing. Scotty was lucky. If Jim hadn't wanted anyone to know that he had cooked tea then he would have sent Scotty more than overboard. Jim was very handy with his fists. He wasn't Head Shepherd for nothing. Some of the shepherds in those days were hard men to handle and the only people they respected were men harder than themselves.

Next morning, Scotty was up bright and early telling all and sundry about his exploits on the high seas. The Merchant Navy had obviously lost the best sailor in the world when Scotty jumped ship. It was a great pity that his expertise as a seaafaring man never matched his land-lubber feats because sad to say Scotty was about the most useless man any of us had met.

When the gong sounded for the fried egg breakfast, we found the porridge even lumpier than usual and Scotty had something to say. Jack gave him a nasty look but said nothing.

The fried eggs were not exactly done to a turn and Scotty loudly informed Jack that the 'sunny side up' was the way he wanted his done.

Jack told him he'd bring them to the table for him. This was strange; Jack never brought a meal over to the table for anyone else. Perhaps Scotty had called his bluff. But then Jack was hardly the type to be bluffed by anybody.

We weren't left long to ponder our doubts.

Jack stalked over to the table carrying his big cast-iron frying pan which he held with the inevitable oven-cloth and when he was directly behind Scotty he raised the pan high, turned it over, and brought it down violently on Scotty's head.

"You loud-mouthed useless misbegotten son of a bitch, here's your eggs in the pan with the sunny side up."

There was no doubt about it, there must have been a lot of eggs in that pan; and a lot of fat too.

Scotty wasn't exactly unconscious, but he was so stunned that he just sat there with the streaky yellow cowl congealing on his head and shoulders.

Jack was going to give him another one for good measure but Jim stopped him.

"That's enough Jack. He's not worth doing time for."

Jack threw his apron off. He was finished!

When Scotty finally came to his full senses he was officially THE COOK. Sad to say, he was no better at cooking than he was at scrub cutting or fencing.

THE END