THE LAST FLAG: A Rhodesian Farce, the sequel to THE GOVERNOR AND THE DAGGA BOY - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

Lord Soames shot one buffalo and thought he was done. The buffalo disagreed.

The sequel to The Governor and the Dagga Boy. You do not need to have read the first book to enjoy this one. That book had a hunting camp, a horse named Betty and a honey badger. This one has a whole Government House, a runaway chef and the end of an empire. The stakes are higher. The gin is the same.

April 1980. Prince Charles flies into Salisbury for one of the last jobs of the British Empire: to lower the flag over Rhodesia and go home. It should take one afternoon. It does not. The crowds are thin, the bunting is faded, and someone throws a tomato at the royal car.

On the lawn of Government House, a dead buffalo hangs from a jacaranda tree. Nobody knows how it got there. Lord Soames, the last governor of Rhodesia, wants it gone. He also wants another gin. Inside, an uninvited Jamaican chef named Delroy has taken over the kitchen. He came to cook for Bob Marley's band, got lost, and decided the British deserved a proper meal. His cream of mushroom soup is a great success with everyone at the table, and that is the problem. By midnight, the Prince's aide believes he is a fox, the carpets are breathing, and the portrait of Cecil Rhodes has started to look disappointed.

Lord Soames is suffering. His stomach has, in his own words, overthrown his digestive system and declared itself an independent republic. Relief comes from a young gardener's assistant who is very high and, it turns out, very wise. The Prince, who is wearing wool in the tropics and would much rather be home talking to his plants, has not slept in three days and has eaten the soup.

Then it gets worse. Lord Soames does what the British always do and forms a committee. Then another. The Ministry of Definitions is created, but it cannot yet define itself. The Archbishop asks for a private audience with the chandelier and is refused, because chandeliers are classed as non responsive infrastructure. The buffalo is entered in the official registry, turns up in a photograph taken a year before it arrived, and is reclassified as a "distributed phenomenon". Meetings are called to discuss a statement about mountains that the Prince swears he never made. Government House splits into rival versions of itself, and only the paperwork holds it together.

Along the way, the gong that has announced every dinner since 1898 begins to sound as if dinner is only a concept the household is choosing to entertain. Three official reports describe the buffalo, and none of them can be reconciled with the others. Twenty years later the house is a museum, and the guides say that the strange feeling in the garden is just the jacaranda trees. Some visitors are not so sure about that.

At the heart of it all is one simple job: a flag must come down. Will it? Will anyone ever explain the soup? Will anyone agree on what the buffalo is? And what is that dark shape walking beside the Prince at the end?

The Last Flag is a fast, absurd and very funny satire about empire, bureaucracy and the stories people tell to avoid what is standing right in front of them. It is full of running jokes, gin soaked speeches and officials who would rather file a problem than solve it. Behind the jokes sits a sharp question: what happens when nobody can agree on what is real, and the only thing left to trust is a form, filed in triplicate? Twenty-four chapters. One epilogue. No sensible people.

If you like dry British humour, political satire, and stories where the filing system is more dangerous than the villain, this book is for you. Pick up your copy today and find out what the buffalo really wants.

A work of satirical fiction. The events are invented, and the characters are products of the author's imagination.

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