Reply to Rebecca #16

Jazz, cooking, dancing

Madam

I am disposed to refer to your letter of 28th June, which you employed as a vehicle with which to assail my eardrums with that so-called “musical” duo, Flanders and Swann. No doubt the lyrics are clever, but I feel that their singing and their melodies rather lack something in the aesthetics department. I suppose it’s all a matter of taste. I prefer deep, meaningful lyrics that encapsulate the human condition, such as “Freak out”, “Too hot ta trot” and “Let’s groove tonight”.

Apart from Flanders and Swann your epistle was engaging, delightful, amusing and charming, replete with lovely photographs.

Thank you for commenting on my footwear. My boots¹ are a much sought after fashion accessory. I designed them myself when I founded a social group called the Boot Boys of Barnet. Ah, those were the days: marauding through the quiet, leafy streets of suburbia, hurling insults at anyone who looked at us, knocking old ladies out the way. But that was then, this is now: I’ve changed a lot in the last two weeks.

Jazz. What a shame you don’t remember the name of the band. The pianist especially sounds pretty good. One thing I didn’t mention in my jazz post, which is here if anyone missed it (actually, it’s there even if people did not miss it) is that I once saw Ashton, Gardner and Dyke at Ronnie Scott’s. They did their (one) hit, Resurrection Shuffle:

But whereas the standard version lasts just a few minutes, their jazz club version took twenty, with each instrumentalist taking a solo. I could wax lyrical about that, but perhaps it would be better in a post of its own one of these days, or I will just end up distracting the two of us.

Thanks to the tropical heatwave we have been “enjoying” in our part of the world, the gigantic puddle at our local bus stop has evaporated². The drainage problem has gone away, not because the Council have done anything about it, but because the stuff that needed draining has gone away. I think the Council must have listened to my father-in-law telling me once that if you wait long enough someone else will do it! He was a very chortleworthy fellow in a very dry kind of way.

You sound like a good cook. Elaine is amazing, and I suspect you are like this too: she can take random contents of the fridge and larder, and out of all those odds and ends construct a fabulous meal. 

My mum bought me a chef’s apron and hat once. When I was lodging with a colleague she came into the kitchen on one occasion and I was standing there in my chef’s “uniform”.

“Cor”, she said, “What are you making?”

“Beans on toast”, I replied, which was absolutely true. But it tastes better if you dress the part. I have no idea where my chef’s hat is. It disappeared a long time ago, and I haven’t been able to cook anything since.

As you were in London for a friend’s wedding, why didn’t you bunk off and come and visit me and Elaine? I love buses. I once updated my Facebook with the message, “Life doesn’t get better than this. I’m on the  top deck of a  number 8 bus – bliss!”

I never usually get any response at all to my FB posts, but that time I received a flurry of responses along the lines of “You should try the 58”. Chortle!

Please don’t insult my cats: only I’m allowed to do that. Here’s a picture showing Elaine’s method for keeping them occupied: a bird video on Youtube. The one on the floor is my brother, Willow, and the one on top is one of my girlfriends, Minty. I believe that Mocha at the time was either in the garden looking for something to kill or seeing off our friendly fox, or upstairs lying on some freshly laundered and ironed washing.

Glad to hear you danced all night. I learnt how to dance in my late 20s – not the tango and complicated stuff like that, but the waltz and slow, slow, quick quick slow. Came in dead handy for impressing the girls in discos. Not the waltz, but the second one, due to the fact that I could dance without treading on their feet. It’s a great dance because it’s infinitely adaptable.

But enough of this persiflage. As I write this there’s a band playing in the building, and it’s a bit cacophonous³, so I need to browse around a bookshop and get myself home. By the way, it’s my bath day coming up soon. I have one once a year, rain or shine.

Lots of love

Dr Tel

Should anyone reading this wish to peruse our past correspondence, here are the links:

An epistolary index: Letters to Terry

Terry’s Bovver Boots. Available in all sizes. Special stiletto heels edition made to order. Steel toecaps and studs are extra.

1.

2. Half an hour after writing that sentence I was caught in a deluge so fierce that I thought for a moment I’d accidentally wandered under Niagara Falls. When I arrived at my local bus stop there were the beginning formations of a puddle….

3. They are playing violins, but it could be worse. Sir Thomas Beecham was once approached by a lady who asked for his advice. “I’d like my son to learn to play a musical instrument”, she said. “But I can’t stand the thought of the noise he’ll be making while learning.” He replied, “I thoroughly recommend the bagpipes, madam, because they sound exactly the same when you’ve learnt how to play as they do while you’re learning.” On Elaine’s bath day I shall be serenading her either with my saxophone or with bagpipes. I think she will consider either a very special treat.