The Legend of the Egg Banjo

part two

Ok so now you know what an egg banjo I need to explain what on earth the toasted variety is all about, especially with the brown sauce.

It all stems back to my second tour of Northern Ireland when some bright scrote decided, as I was a young Lance jack (Lance corporal rank) with previous experience in the NI that I would be better suited in the Intelligence Cell rather than on patrol. This meant that I had to long hours sat in a box room next to the Operations (or Ops) Room. I hated it, in my eyes I was a trained soldier and should be on the ground, whereas the rest of the Ops crew where generally glad to be in Slipper city in the dry. So I volunteered for the night shift for the following reasons

1. It kept me away from the ORTs (or Ops Rm Tossers) these where the guys who only worked 9 to 5 (well it was more 8 to 7) , sucked up to the hierarchy and played a lot of squash. The night shift was manned but the officers and Senior NCO's from the patrolling units who obviously had nothing better to do.
2. I could wear my old faithful desi boots (Desert Boots) the lynch pin to any decent squaddies civi uniform. There was a rule that at night you were to wear soft soles so not to wake the men who were resting from patrolling, a great idea except the men patrolling generally did it all day and night and often would be a sleep during the day when you were in your perfect right to crash about the place. So who was the rule for then ? Well the only people how actually slept at night were of course the ORTs. The joke about this rule was that it ran out a half hour BEFORE the day shift came on, so I had to go on shift with a pair of boots to stick on for that final 30 mins. Only in the army eh ?!?
3. It freed me up during the day to go on patrol with the teams, although I did get a bollocking for that as it was noted I was managing a night shift and a rural patrol each day and was making the rest look bad.
4. I got to go to the kitchen each night.

Now the kitchen was the best bit for two really good reasons, firstly the girlies from the commcen were always in there for a good flirt and secondly you could make as many Egg Banjos you wanted. So each night I would get the order from the Ops Room night shift, the Guard Room and sanger, pop down, make them up and drop them off to everyone. I discovered very quickly that the fried egg made the bread soggy and hard to carry and it was a lot easier if I toasted the bread first, the brown sauce was personal taste.