Remembrance of Things Past

Tags

Argentinian tango, Carcassone, Carrie, Don Giovanni, Duncan Bannatyne, extra vergine, Glasgow, Leporello, Liguria, Montalbano, Olive, Petruchio, Pino Grigio, Proust, Salva, Souleiado, Suttonford, Tesco

Carrie settled back on the sofa in the snug.  The kids were in bed and her husband, Gyles, was upstairs on the computer.  Bliss!  She was going to watch Montalbano, which she had recorded for such a moment.  It was so helpful for her conversational Italian, though she was picking up a Sicilian accent, she had been told.  All her girlfriends had noticed, though they were speaking in the same way.

It was Tuesday.  She was just about to reach for her Pino Grigio when she had a Proustian moment.  She remembered that she hadn’t seen Salvatore for a couple of weeks.  He used to come to the town markets regularly and had a stall shaded, or sheltered, depending on the weather, by a bright gazebo-type canopy, under which he spread out his wares- olives and suchlike.

Buon giorno!  Carrie would say in her Sicilian accent, re-discovering her Italian roots.  (Her full maiden name had been Carissima Pomodoro, but she had been brought up in Glasgow, where her great-grandfather had opened one of the first ice-cream parlours, long before Duncan Bannatyne had been a glint in his father’s eye.  Ginevra, her mother-in-law, had also been brought up in Glasgow by her parents, the Piccolalivernas.  The Glasgow connection was how Carrie had come to meet her husband, Gyles, but that is another story..)

Yes, Tuesday was Suttonford’s market day, but the stalls tended to deflect business from the regular shops. Frankly, they did not offer anything very enticing that was an obvious bonus to the town, nor did they compensate for the loss of parking spaces on High street.

Vans filled with house clearance detritus or car boot leftovers mingled with vehicles of suspect exhausts and noisy generators that spewed forth olagineous fumes and dealt in butterless baps with slabs of indeterminate material squidged with a squelch of pseudo-ketchup from an array of plastic dispensers.  All of this was profferred to townspeople who largely monitored their own chlorestrol levels and ordered their organic veggie boxes bi-monthly.

Once or twice, Carrie had dared to interrupt a stall-holder who wore fingerless gloves and who was demolishing a pasty whilst talking to the neighbouring vendor.  They’d be discussing grandchildren, golf handicaps or ferry crossings.  Having broken in with a discreet cough, Carrie would point to some ceramic item and enquire:

Excuse me, what is it?

(She was referring to its make, age, composition or provenance and she felt sure that the misunderstanding could not be attributed to her Sicilian accent, since that was restricted to her alternative linguistic mode.)

The stall holder would take a deliberate additional bite and, with her mouth full of pastry, would look her up and down, assessing her status and then pronounce:

What is it?  It’s fifty quid, innit.

Carrie, unsure as to whether this tag was an interrogative or a statement, would immediately slink away, completely ignored by the original addressee.

Off she’d go, past the stall which displayed Mediterranean tat-ie/ 100% polyester tablecloths and napkins in fake Souleiado patterns, whose sunny colours looked entirely out of place in the cold, relatively northern light of Suttonford, but which might have glowed jewel-like in the inner sanctum of Carcassone’s shopping fortress.  She would pass the Spanish ceramic house number plates (so useless in Suttonford, where each house has a name, darling,) and would walk beyond the abandoned trestle tables, where one had to look around for a keeper who had given up hope and had scarpered to Tesco’s for a pack of sandwiches.  No haggle margin, as nobody with which to haggle.

And then there was the effulgent aura coming from the final stall which was like the clichéd candle flame to moths and that was manned- and oh, so manly- by Salvatore, the olive seller. He was not only a babe magnet, but he drew in all the female phagocytes (cells which are capable of absorbing foreign matter) with complexions like sun-dried tomatoes and natures to match, ie/ who would give you the pip, but who giggled like pre-teens, even after half a century, when Salvatore greeted them like long-abandoned exes.

Salvatore’s alluring success owed itself to the fact that he dealt in hope, misplaced meteorological optimism and remembrance of things very far back in the past.  Never mind that he traded in over-salty olives and his stall was probably a Mafia franchise.  (Hey, Carrie had noticed two empty violin cases on the adjacent stall.  Maybe they were for the machine guns.)  For, it was possible that he was being subsidised to create addiction in the way Brits had engendered craving for opium in China, in order to gain trade control.

Carrie could observe his modus operandi- oily flattery, overt grooming, courtship and finally, seduction.  Yet, she was not immune.

First there was the fore-play of the inviting sample, temptingly waved in front of the customer on the end of an olive wood ladle.  Then there was the caring concern shown in the provision of a clean polystyrene cup to contain the poubelles and the sensitive handing over of a paper napkin to wipe the excess oil which dribbled down most matrons’ chins.

Each lucky lady had been selected to taste a particular flavour which was skilfully matched with her character and personality: the reserved and shy could try green olives with mild almonds cheekily protruding, perhaps in a basilica or coriander dressing.

The more fiery characters were tamed by this Petruchio via glistening orbs, coated in chili, or jalapeno-flavoured oils.

Those who considered themselves cosmopolitan- such as the members of Carrie’s Italian group-had plenty of garlic garnish and the acerbic and twisted had citrus zest on black globes.

Salvatore- she had subliminally taken to calling him Salva after the detective- would lick his fingers while maintaining eye contact and then she and others in his fan club would come away laden with little tubs and paper carriers and a determination to lobby the local council for an Argentinian tango class for beginners.  Ciao and prego crept into Suttonford vocabulary, especially when the besotted customers  met up in Costamuchamoulah.

Buon giorno, Carrie!  He raised an expressive eyebrow, in lieu of a question.

She tried to maintain a certain froideur.

Commissario!

Try some with lemon, rosemary and thyme, he suggested.  (100% on the oleometer.)

No, I’ll just have some foccacio, she resisted.  Maybe that was the wrong word?

Extra vergine? he persisted, lubriciously.

A little flutter like a breeze playing lightly over the strings of an Aeolian harp reminded her of her hormones.  I’m not frigid after all, she thought.

By the time he had finished with her, she had a till receipt the length of the list of Leporello’s conquests in Don Giovanni.

She heard a tread on the stair, which brought her back to the present.  Salva was probably basking on a verandah in Liguria- sounds a bit like a ligature, but let’s not go there.  Or, subsidised by Carrie and other victims, he was, in all likelihood, wining and dining some Loren-lookalike on his balcony over the sea, canoodling in Calabria, like Montalbano, only with hair.

Gyles popped his head round the snug door:

I thought you were watching your programme? he said mildly. Do you want some olives with your Pino Grigio?  He placed a tub of Tesco’s best on the nest of tables.

But somehow the little love grenades had lost their charm.

No thanks, love.  I’m just coming up to bed.  I’ll watch it another night.

Gyles went ahead.

Hello, wall!  she said to herself.

Tuesdays were never going to be the same. 

Arrivederci, Salva. Adieu, adieu.

Keep Dancing!

Tags

Artem, Aurora Borealis, Brassica, Brassie, Carrie, Erin Boag, Ginevra, Magda, Ola Jordan, Pasha, Sonia, Strictly Come Dancing

Is that you, girlfriend?  I had just got through to Brassie, via my tablet.

Can’t hear you, Candia.  My voice keeps echoing and it is distracting, complained Brassica.  Wait a minute I’ll phone you.

Better?

Heaps.

English: Sparkler, violent reaction (guy fawkes) Français : Cierge magique pendant la nuit de Guy Fawkes, en Angleterre. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay, Brassie.  Have just heard that you and Cosmo are coming to Clammie’s Guy Fawkes party and that you have made up.

Yes, it was all a misunderstanding.  Sonia got the wrong end of the stick.  Magda was simply helping him to shift boxes from Ginevra’s cellar to the observatory under cover of darkness.  It was so that the twins and I wouldn’t see our Christmas presents.  He’d had them delivered to Ginevra’s as she is always at home and I rarely am chez moi.

But how did you find out the truth?

Oh, Carrie visited Ginevra to amuse her by having a laugh at my expense over the exploding sloe gin.  However, Ginevra didn’t find alcoholic waste entertaining at all.  She said that it had served me right for adulterating perfectly sound booze.

Brassie continued:  Carrie picked up on the word ‘adulterating’ and, given the carer’s recent lexical expansion, asked Magda if she knew what that word meant.  She was hoping to warn her off Cosmo.

She cleared her throat and went on: Magda understood the insinuation –she’d been receiving some helpful idiomatic lessons with Cosmo as a way of him thanking her for carrying all that stuff to the observatory.  Ginevra had given them some linguistic books and a CD that Ola had left behind and she had provided some Dewlaps as a learning incentive.  But, she chaperoned them at all times.

She laughed: Sonia had jumped to the wrong conclusion after seeing them together.  So much for her Sibylline pronouncements!

Yes, she’ll be asking the butcher for some entrails next, to practise her divination.

Well, she sure needs some practice, but not on our business and family life.  Magda was furious at being accused and spat out that she had a boyfriend with an Audi and that Cosmo was a damp squib!

Where had she heard that from?

She overheard Carrie telling Gyles one evening when they had called in to see Ginevra.  They had no idea that she understood metaphor.

Cosmo is obviously a good teacher, I opined. But why was Carrie discussing what you told us in confidence?

Oh, she said it was because she had been so concerned about me.

Hmm. .So, all is forgiven?   

Yes, and I’m not-like- pregnant.

Good.  Well, don’t let Magda hear you using that dreadful filler.  It would be so-like-bad for her English.

Aurora Borealis observed in Norway on 2006-10-28. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Brassie laughed.  No, the only colourful affair Cosmo is having is with Aurora Borealis.  You can see it so far south just now.  That’s why he has been spending so much time out in the observatory.

I wonder what is in all those parcels?  I mused.

Better be something good, said Brassie.  By the way, what are you taking to the party?

Some iced biscuits shaped like comets and stars from Costamuchamoulah, I replied.

I’m taking some Nigella puff candy.  Is your husband coming?

No, he won’t move from the wood burner, especially if ‘It Takes Two’ is on.  Now that Ola Jordan has been eliminated, he has transferred his allegiance to Erin Boag.

Man, thy name is fickle. Oh, the twins like Denise van Outen.  Maybe I should record it.  I must say, I think Pasha is kinda cute, especially as a werewolf.

I like Artem, but I wish he had not disfigured his body with that dreadful tattoo.  His upper torso looks a bit like a leather chesterfield.

Can’t say I noticed the tattoo.  Hey!  I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t we have a Strictly finals party? I’ll host it.  Surely your husband would come to that?

Yes, he’d probably come out for that- but not in that way!  I added quickly.  I could hire him a matador outfit.  I could be the cape.

More like the rampant cow, she countered.

(And that is why we are friends: because we can take a put-down from each other.)

I think I should be a judge.

Keep Dancing!

 

 

Trick or Treat?

Tags

Carrie, Ferdy, Frankenweenie, Ghostbuster, Ginevra, Grandma, hallowe'en, Magda, Mars Bar, Paradise Lost, Tiger-Lily, Trick or Treat, Zombie

It was Hallowe’en and Carrie’s children were hyper-excited.  Tiger-Lily was in

charge of her siblings.  She had dressed as a witch and her brother, Ferdy, was

carrying a plastic trident and sported horns.  Ming had a black plastic cape and

his smile was rather disconcerting as he had managed to retain plastic fangs

from a Christmas cracker in his mouth, in spite of the additional dental

obstruction of a brace.  The whole effect was akin to Frankenweenie.  Bill was

a white-faced zombie with fake blood dripping down his jaw.  Edward’s face

was green and he had a screw sticking out of his neck.  Rollo was a Ghostbuster.

All carried pumpkin lanterns and empty, be-ribboned mini-trugs, for the reception of

donated goodies.

Now be polite, children, and only visit the houses on High Street.  Ring the doorbells

once only and say thank you if anyone gives you fruit.  You mustn’t accept money…

Edward looked disappointed. I’ll wait round the corner in The Peal O’ Bells with the

other mummies.  Stay together and when you’ve finished, knock on the window.

Let’s go to Grandma’s first, said Ferdy. She won’t be scared of us.

Yes, let’s get it over with, said Tiger.

They rang the doorbell and stepped back politely.

Suddenly a white-sheeted figure with two black holes for eyes opened

the door and shouted: Boo!

Little Edward was terrified.  He seized his sister’s hand and dropped his trug.

It’s only Grandma, silly, said Tiger, annoyed at the naughty nonagenarian.

Trick or treat, Grandma?

Ginevra pulled the sheet off and smoothed her hair.

We’re not having that American nonsense here, she lectured.  When your daddy

was small he had to do guising properly.  We’re a traditional family.  So, who’s

going to do the first turn?

Turn? quailed Rollo.

Yes.  A  recitation, dance or song.  You don’t get owt for nowt as they used to

say.

What’s a recitation?  asked Ming.

Come in.  I’ll show you, said Ginevra enthusiastically.  Ola! Have you put the

apples in the basin of water?

But Ola wasn’t there.  She had run off to Bric-a-Brac with Jean-Paul, the

widower from the twinning visit.  Ginevra had forgotten the new carer’s

name.

Sorry.  Magda, then.

They all trooped into the sitting room and Ginevra moved her case of Dewlap

Gin off the sofa, so that they could sit down.

She took a deep, somewhat juniper-scented breath and launched forth:

Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the world and all our woe…

Sing, Heavenly Muse!…

Two hours later Tiger had to shake Edward awake as her grandmother

uttered the final words:

..through Eden took their solitary way.

Ginevra bowed with a huge flourish and pronounced:

Paradise Lost: now that’s poetry!

She then proceeded to help herself to a bag of Mars bars which Magda

had been instructed to purchase for the children.

Now..

Grandma, we’ve got to go.  It’s past Edward’s bed-time, said Tiger-Lily firmly.

Oh, what a pity.  We didn’t get round to ducking for apples, said Ginevra,

disconsolately.

There’s always next year, replied Tiger, scarcely banishing a rather un-

grand-daughterly thought: If the old bag is still around.

Carrie was frantic:  Where have you been all this time?

Blame Grandma, said Tiger.  Give her any opportunity or a platform and you’ll

be there all night.

You should have taken the crucifix and the garlic, like I told you, said Carrie,

bundling them into the 4×4.  She’s always been a  monster.

Even to Daddy? asked an exhausted Ming.

Especially to Daddy.  Never mind.  We’ll have good fun at Clammie

and Tristram’s Guy Fawkes Party.

 

 

 

A Damp Squib?

Tags

Brassica, Brassie, Carrie, Casanova, Cosmo, Magda, Mary Tudor, Philip of Spain, Predictor, Sonia, Spain, Squib (explosive), Tarot

Once we had established that if there was a sprog, amazingly it would be Cosmo’s, we calmed Brassie’s fears that she might have twins again. The nuit de passion must have happened on the evening that she did not attend the choir rehearsal.

Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice, Carrie assured her.

But Cosmo isn’t so much a bolt of lightning as a bolt from the blue, or even a damp squib, protested Brassie.

Too much information, I commented.

Here, Brassie, eat some of this chocolate marshmallow slice for me, said Carrie.  You’ll be eating for two- or three now. Only joking!

Don’t, expostulated Brassie.  I haven’t even bought a ‘Predictor’ kit yet.

Sonia came in at this point and I quipped,

Well, here is a perambulant one entering the premises, even as we speak.

We were just talking about boa constrictors, said Carrie and we nearly choked.

Actually, confessed Brassie, we were just debating whether I was pregnant or not.

Not the ghost of a chance, said Sonia.  I can tell.

How? we all said simultaneously.

Because- brace yourself, Brassica- I have seen Cosmo visiting Magda for the last month, when you thought he was sleeping in the observatory.

But I thought he was a damp squib!

Be that as it may, your symptoms are just a phantom pregnancy- like Mary Tudor’s. It will disappear, and I dare say, so will Cosmo, just like Philip of Spain did.

Brassie was ashen.  But I don’t want him to disappear.  I don’t want him to visit Magda.  What has she got that I don’t?

Oysters from ‘Know Your Plaice’ in North Street.  They’re aphrodisiacs you know.  He simply wouldn’t have been able to resist, said Sonia authoritatively.

So all the time I thought he was looking at the stars…

..he was lying in a moral gutter.  Upsetting, I know, but Sonia will disenchant them. She took out a cigarette and then pocketed it again, having remembered that there was legislation against smoking inside.

How are you going to split them up?  we asked, in admiration.

At Clammie and Tristram’s Fireworks party.  I think we are all going to be invited. I will set up a tent in the garden and do some Tarot readings.  I will serve her the Fool.

I’m sure Clammie will agree, if we tell her about the plan, I agreed. It’s so appropriate. Casanova’s Russian mistress was into divination, so it’s very romantic.  The Lovers and Greater Secrets feature in the Major Arcana, don’t they?

Don’t get carried away, warned Sonia. It’s all about presenting querants with their choices.  I’ll give him something nasty about wands!

Thank you so much, said Brassie.  I won’t need to go to the chemist’s now. But I’m still going to treat myself to those drainpipe jeans.  I’m worth it.

Of course you are, we all soothed her.

 

 

Black Swan Event

Tags

Behemoth, Black Swan event, Brassica, Carrie, Dan Snow, David Cameron, Elle McPherson, FameDaddy, Ferdy, global weirding, hallowe'en, John, La Senza, Leda and swan, Philip Schofield, Richard Dawkins, Roger Federer

Brassica and I were in Costamuchamoulah must-seen café, looking for liquorice spiders for Hallowe’en, when Carrie rushed in.  We made our ghoulish edible purchases and then all sat at a corner table to drink some coffee.

You will never guess what Ferdy told me after school? That awful John in his science class has been stirring things again, Carrie moaned.

Tell me about it, said Brassie, ruefully.

I was just going to, continued Carrie, who privately loathed Brassie’s

use of that expression.

Well, he sidled up to Ferdy and said, Why doesn’t your Mummy get fixed up with ‘FameDaddy’?  Ferdy didn’t know what he was talking about.  I think John’s mum must allow him to watch trashy ITV programmes as I Googled the name and it transpires that some CEO called Dan Richards was on a programme with Phillip Schofield, presenting a soon-to-be-launched-service, offering women who wanted to bear children with quality DNA to avail themselves of their sperm bank of celebrity donors.

Brassie looked interested, but she had already asked to be regaled with the facts, so she bit her tongue.

Yes, said Carrie, John then insulted Ferdy and his brothers-and, by implication, Gyles- by saying that if I had applied to ‘FameDaddy’, I wouldn’t have produced such useless kids and I still had time to produce a decent one.

How rude! What did Ferdy say?

He reminded him that he had beaten him at science and so John’s daddy couldn’t exactly have been Richard Dawkins.

But two wrongs don’t make a right, I interjected.  Neither paid the slightest attention.

And then Ferdy- how can I put this?-punched his lights out.

Brassie clapped her hands and then desisted when she caught my disapproving look.

Was John all right afterwards?  She feigned concern.

Oh, after he came round he said that he saw stars and Ferdy said, ‘Well, you always were on a different planet.’  Then he walked out of the locker room.

What did Mr Milford-Haven do when he discovered the boys had been fighting? I thought I’d try to bring some order to this exchange.

He took Ferdy aside and gave him a commendation and a mini-Mars bar, I believe.

But surely that was immoral? I insisted.

Yes, said Carrie. We don’t encourage sweets at home, so Ferdy brought it to me and I ate it for him.

No, I was becoming exasperated. I meant the violence.

Carrie looked a little discomfited and sipped her coffee which was tepid by now. Ferdy explained it to me.  He said that it was the same as a burglar breaking into your home.  John had invaded our privacy and stuck his nose into our business, so he had used proportionate force to repel him.  David Cameron said that was okay.

Brassie looked wistful.  I must say, Carrie,  that I sometimes wish I had dipped into the gene pool of Dan Snow, or Roger Federer, instead of subjecting the twins to a possible genetic link to Cosmo’s mother.

I’d call that a black swan event, said Carrie comfortingly.

Brassie looked confused.

I mean, there may be a pattern and there may be a rare chance that they will fulfil a prediction, but it is unlikely. 

More likely than you sharing your genes with Dan Snow, I added unkindly, before I could stop myself.

Carrie tried to draw attention away from my inappropriate remark:

Black swan events are linked to global weirding, she continued. You know- sunspots, extreme cyclical weather patterns, with rogue element exceptions.  You can’t predict whether you will get out of a snow-bound Heathrow or not in the Christmas holidays.

I saw Horizon too, I remarked.  She was beginning to sound like the tiresome John of the black eye.  They said that you can’t really make 100% accurate predictions.

So, I might have a chance with Dan..

No, that’s a certainty: you won’t, I interjected firmly.

Well, what about that twenty five pounds that I paid Sonia to look into her crystal ball for me? asked Brassie, shaken in her simple faith.

That’s probably gone down a black hole, or gone up in a puff of smoke, I laughed caustically.

Carrie added, I think you would have been better advised to refer to a satellite, or to that meteorological computer, ‘Behemoth’, that generates 100 trillion predictions a second.

No wonder they get it so wrong all the time then, said Brassie naively.  Yesterday they said it would be dry and I got soaked right down to my ‘La Senza’, standing in the yard, waiting for the twins to come out of their music lessons.

You have to take an umbrella with you at all times, laughed Carrie, then it will never rain!  But, what’s all this obsession with spreading your genes, Brassie?  You aren’t seriously thinking of having another baby?  I thought you had enough on your plate with the twins?

The FameDaddy thing just sounded interesting, she said.

It was a hoax, Brassie, I laughed.

Oh, it’s just that you both have girls and I just got a little broody.  It would be a black swan event if Cosmo and I got together.  The chances would be about a trillion to one. He might as well be on a space station for all the likelihood of a conjunction between us.  He’s taken to sleeping in the observatory in the garden.

I was sobering up.  She seemed genuinely upset. I tried to comfort her.  Have you heard of Leda and the swan?

What are you talking about, Candia?  Carrie flashed me a warning look.

Just that swans can impregnate you when you are not expecting it, I muttered lamely.

The only genes I’m really after are Elle McPherson drainpipes. She tried to throw us off the scent.  These are getting too tight.

Maybe you are already…? we both spoke simultaneously.

Brassie looked horrified.

Who’s the father? we enquired.  Three more lattes, we instructed the waitress.

 

The Phantom Cavalier

Tags

Carrie, Cavalier, Chlamydia, Clammie, Classic FM, Costamuchamullah, ghosts, Harry Potter, Haunted house, Laughing Cavalier, Madam Blavatsky, Pipesof Pan, Sonia, Suttonford

Clammie passed the well-coiffed woman she privately called Madame Blavatsky almost every morning, after she had deposited the children at school. The woman sat outside Costamuchamullah café in High Street in all weathers, because she was one of the last addicts who smoked openly in Suttonford.

Often Clammie would reckon that she was due some me-time, which usually spread itself over most of the week, so, after indulging herself with- say- an alpaca purchase from Pipes of Pan, the Andean boutique, she would pursue her own addiction, namely a caffeine fix.

So it was that one morning, Clammie came to be sitting opposite the mysterious lady who had graciously removed her shopping bag so that a tired yummy mummy could have a spare seat at her aluminium table.

Normally Clammie wouldn’t have been able to tolerate smoke wafting over, but there were no seats vacant indoors and there was a slight breeze, which was blowing the offensive miasma in someone else’s direction.

I’m sorry. I know that I’ve seen you sitting here for a number of years, but I don’t know your name.  I’m Chlamydia, she volunteered, removing her Mocha out of contamination’s reach.

Madame Blavatsky flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette, perilously close to Clammie’s cup and saucer:

Oh, my name’s Sonia and I’ve been living in Suttonford for aeons.

Clammie asked where exactly in the town she lived.

In the haunted house, darling, – the one with the resident Cavalier.  Not laughing, you understand, but rather fleeing from capture in The Battle of Suttonford. He hid in our attic.

A haunted house?  I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, countered Clammie.

Well, you should, stated Sonia firmly.  I’ve experienced many over the years and, like more corporeal members of the opposite sex, you have to talk nicely to them if you are to co-habit peaceably.  For example, I have to ignore the fact that my resident often plays my instrument.  And no, it’s definitely not a pianola.

What! The Cavalier takes liberties with your instrument?  How very-eh-cavalier.

No, darling.  Pianos weren’t invented when he was around.  He prefers to tinkle my harpsichord.  He is considerably quieter and more mannerly than your modern day Jools Holland, for example.

How do you know that he is responsible and not someone next door, listening to Classic FM?  The wattle and daub is thin and there is no cavity to speak of between the walls in High Street.

I see the keys being depressed, said Sonia with utmost conviction.  Look, I’m a clairvoyant.  Can you come round next Wednesday for afternoon tea, and I’ll prove it?  I’d read your leaves now, but I see that you are having a Mocha.

Privately Clammie thought that if Sonoa was a bit of a soothsayer she should have known the answer, but publicly she replied:

Would you be able to tell me if I will ever live in High Street?

That depends on the leaves.  We can look into that later. But perhaps you will hear the harpsichord.  Sonia laughed at Clammie’s widening eyes.  Royalist House.  Three and three quarters High Street. Don’t fail me. Three o’clock.

She blew a smoke ring around Clammie, so that she had to close her eyes to prevent them from stinging from the ectoplasm.  When she opened them, Sonia had disappeared.  There was only a smouldering butt on the table, from which emanated a curling plume .

Like the feather from a Cavalier’s hat, Carrie mused.  I think I’ve been reading too much ‘Harry Potter’.