'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎36r] (71/118)

Hugh Pettigrew,whom I had not seen for years, had been on the previous
course to me at the Staff College and had now returned there as an instructor.
We saw a lot of him and Patricia, and also met her twin sister, Diana
Challoner. The Rushtons, too, who had been in Bushire in 1939, were our
next-door neighbours in Quetta, and he was now Secretary to the Resident.
Woods-Ballard, my Political Agent A mid-ranking political representative (equivalent to a Consul) from the diplomatic corps of the Government of India or one of its subordinate provincial governments, in charge of a Political Agency. , lived on the other side and our three
cooks, who were all Goanese, had a mutual assistance pact. I supplied a
bicycle which our cook could not ride but lent to the Woods-Ballard s cook
who could, and the latter did all the marketing. The Woods-Ballards ^d a
lar^e refrigerator, which in those days was a rare commodity, and °n at least
one occasion they came back from playing golf to find their beer had been
displaced to make room for the sweet for our dinner party that evening.
Onrkprv and cutlery were also freely transferable and one would go out to
C d r i^ Ld1uddenly y recogni Z e one-s own china On the whole the arrangement
worked very haopily for all concerned though the episode of the cold bee ,
or rather lack of it, did rankle with Woods-Ballard for a day or two.
Besides my normal duties as Magistrate and District Officer, other
odd jobs cropped up from time to time.
There was a small and very primitive coal mine S - U ®tta “d ^t "as
for s
it bit io go down an! see ^/^P^-nllor^^ire-r
or underground P?; aces drive n into the ground at an angle of Sixty
to the mine was by a narrow shaf t’ “tven 1 s tain vintage . The
degrees, down which one descended surfac e but it seemed
mine was only about a ^^/^^f^f^pported by primitive pit
pr^anrLrortreie had collapsed causing,ight - »e o^the
miners. The lighting was f fo ^^ S c ^ r ^e-owner o! the
as best I could and given a 1 had to find my way un to
necessity for observing proper precautions, I then had to fin y y
hardly walk and why on earth they thougn ^ Anyway I gave them full
know/nor who their prospective tufts'l don’t think
marks for trying and beyond the confiscation
any great punishment was inflicted.
Rainfall in the Quetta-Pishin which
of irrigation was by means ox undergroun ^ snows of winte r. The water
were fed from springs and water xrom either by waterwheel or by hand,
had to be hauled up to the surface in skins, either y
few places where grain crops were grown without
There were, however, a