So you think you know how to party?

In the early 1970s I was a young Royal Marine, a bit of skin, as we were known, young, unknowing, keen, green but learning all the time. Based in Malta for two years with 41 (pronounced Four One) Commando we were brought up on the work hard, play harder ethic. I was married at 18, to the present Mrs Booty, so actually was one of the wiser heads, yeah right. Our playground was the Meditterranean, all the islands and main land masses; our home was Malta, where our wives and the lasses waited for us.
For the single man Malta presented a slight challenge. The population was delightful, the girls, in the main, were gorgeous; however they were of a strange creed, Roman Catholicism was hammered into the very fabric of life. And yet??.
There was, as in any area of dockland, a place known as 'The Gut' or Strait Street, as it was properly named. There, for a few of your British type pounds some of these wenches would part with their dignity in order to part you from your cash, or so I am reliably informed. The street was full of drinking and dining experiences that were akin to eating in the gents loos at Waterloo or Paddington. White tiles, hard floors, basic tables and food to keep a chap drinking. The local wine was Marsovin, beer was Blue Label or Cisk; those who have visited on holiday will no doubt recall those names and may still shudder at the recollection of Marsovin. The hand of the shore patrol and local police was heavy.
I blather, it's the music of the era that brings me to write at length. There was a song, sung to the tune of Torna a Sorrento, which for every young Bootneck of that and many other eras evokes the special relationship we had with the islands and the islanders. Please listen to this version by Fat Lucy and Meat Loaf, then put these words to that famous tune. Notice the upmarket tool used to hold Pavarotti's music in place.

Fat Lucy and Meat Loaf.

Imagine the scene, it is 0230 inside what looks like a gents loo transformed into a speakeasy. Standing by the doorway, with a full moustache, hairy arms and armpits, tattoes that made sailors weep; clad in something short and clingy the hirsute figure of the house madam would call for her 'husband,' to sing for them (the Sailors and Royal Marines). He would emerge from the galley where he had been cooking since 2100, wrapped in an old apron, wearing huge boots and an off centre wig he would open his mouth and the mellow tones of his song would flow on the deaf ears of his customers.

"Step inside big eats Commando?
Steak, egg chips and bacon banjo?
Not for me? but for my dghajsa
Why are you so bloody piso?"

Bacon Banjo - Egg banjo - Bacon Roll etc.
Dghajsa - Pronounced, "Die -so" - A Maltese water taxi, handy for getting back to the carrier when the last liberty boat had departed.
Piso - Tight, unrelentingly tight with one's money.

One night, long ago three of us were reacquainting ourselves with old haunts, we were 20 years old, when we spotted a bunch of Maltese police kicking a puppy around like a football. Plan 'A' was executed. Phil grabbed the pup and ran for a Ghari (Karozzin) a horse drawn taxi, Taff and I kept the police occupied by flattening them then ran for the taxi. We were back in St Andrews, our barracks before long, masters of a new hound. All went well until the pup, which had adopted Phil and slept on his bed, suffered a nightmare, it bit Phil who was sound asleep. To see a naked Bootneck fighting a puppy underneath a mosquito net in the dim light of a Meditterranean dawn is quite a sight.