The Absolute Camel

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'Ern, Ali Baba basket, Berenice of Cilicia, Bosphorus, cakes and ale, Dadaism, Dickinson, dodecagon, Existentialism, fat, Garden of Remembrance, hairy legs, Herod, Iznik, Kristin Scott-Thomas, l'enfer c'est les autres, Metropolitan Archbishop, mince pies, Morecambe and Wise, mulled wine, Osman, ouzo, Play by Beckett, Pointless, Racine, Raymond Chandler, Samuel Beckett, short, Snodland, Snodland and Ash, Suetonius, Surrealism, The Absolute Camel, tribute act, urns, Who Do You Think You Are?, William the Conqueror

Great-Aunt Augusta was studying the newly photocopied programme

published by The Snodland Players, an amateur dramatic ensemble

who took their peripatetic programmes around nursing homes and

inflicted their rudely mechanical performances on captive audiences.

At least it is somewhat more challenging than one of those Primary

School variations on the nativity, combined with excruciatingly jolly

Yuletide ditties, opined the grumpy nonagenarian.

In actual fact, she had just asked to be wheeled out to the

recreation room as she could have sworn that she had smelled

mulled wine.

‘Play’ by Samuel Beckett, she read.  She liked Beckett.  What was

that play she had once seen with her sister?  Waiting for Ouzo?

Henry, I saw the film years ago.  It had that Kristin Scott-Thomas

woman in it.  You know, the one that Jeremy Fisher salivates over.

Jeremy Fisher? 

The one on that car programme.  Top Notch, or something.

Oh, Top Gear.  Clarkson.  Terrible man.

And Henry turned off his hearing aid and settled down to wait for

the hot toddy, given that his interest in hot totty had diminished

over the years, along with his driving skills.

I suppose they don’t need much scenery, Augusta commented to

another female resident.  And it’s only a one-act play, so there won’t

be an interval.

Pity, replied Madge. That’s the bit I  usually enjoy. Do you think there

will still be mince pies?

Oh, I doubt it.  We’re no longer virtuous, so they’ll probably cut back

on cakes and ale.

Matron was trying to be helpful with the logistics.  She scurried

around and came back with a trolley which bore three urns.

The Director picked one up.  Gosh, that’s really heavy.  I can see why

you needed the trolley.  Thanks, but I’m afraid they are too small and

they seem to be full of something rather weighty.

Yes, said Matron.  They are surprisingly heavy, considering that Ethel

was only about six stone and Oscar was about eight and a half…  Maybe

that’s why the rellies didn’t bother to pick them up to take them to The

Garden of Remembrance.  They probably thought that we would scatter

them, but some of the Eastern European staff are a bit superstitious about

that sort of thing, so we just put them on the shelves in Reception.  They

look pretty much like vases and the cleaning staff don’t knock them over

so easily.

Emmm, the Director was thinking rapidly on his feet, a thespian skill

which he tried to transmit to his rather slower colleagues.  Have you

got any of those Ali Baba laundry baskets?  They might do.

I’ll just have the girls wipe them down.  You never know what’s been

in them, Matron said helpfully.

Ta-da! she flourished some a few moments later.

The Director cut his introductory speech.  Some of the audience were

already asleep and it didn’t look as if anyone had a mobile phone on

them.

Augusta was waiting for the half-line about Snodland and Ash.  Apparently,

Beckett had once been in Kent, marrying one of the corners of his love

triangle.  Hence the references.  Ash/ urn…hmmm..

Something in the town had struck him, but when he had been asked

to explain its existential relevance, he had clearly taken the hump and

merely replied enigmatically: The Absolute Camel.

So, the choice of production was clearly topical.

One of the characters suddenly addressed the favoured coterie with

the philosophical question: Why am I dead?

Join the club, muttered Gerald, who was tired of waiting for the mulled

wine. He was also agitated at the thought of missing Pointless, which,

in his opinion was a cheerier form of Surrealism.

Madge interrupted with the following: I thought you said it had an ‘Ern in

it. I thought it was a tribute act to Morecambe and Wise.  But I don’t see

anyone with short, fat, hairy legs.

Augusta patted her knee.  No, darling.  I said ‘urns’.  Honestly, the

uncultivated company that she was obliged to keep nowadays!  L’enfer

was definitely les autres.  Didn’t they know that what they were watching

was Beckett’s response to a five-act play by Racine?  Furthermore, Racine

had swiped the concept from Suetonius’ scribblings about a love triangle

involving Berenice of Cilicia.

And the reason that she was aware of that was that her younger sister

was called Berenice and their mother had had love dodefayeds– nay,

dodecagons with various Oriental types, before she had settled down with

her erstwhile nomadic, but newly-domesticated rug-seller from The

Bosphorus.

Yes, both Berenice and her mother had been the types of blondes that

Raymond Chandler had said would have caused an Archbishop-

Metropolitan, or otherwise- to have kicked a hole in a stained glass

window.

Maybe it was the Herodian tendencies that had caused the members

of her family to be so ruthless in love.

So, life was somewhat surreal.  She granted that.  She’d never really

thought about her father.  She and her sister had the maternal surname:

Snodbury.  She supposed that her pater’s name must have been

something like Sirdar, or Osman.  But that rather sun-tanned antiques

quiz guy’s surname was Dickinson and, according to the telly programme

Who Do You Think You Are? he was of Iznik extraction and came from a

family of carpetbaggers- or was it ‘sellers‘?

At any rate, she was beginning to yawn.  That quiz programme would be

on tonight- the one they all liked with that rather aristocratic chap who

was related to William the Conqueror. (Weren’t we all?)

But she did find the other chap rather amusing.  What was his name?

Ah, yes: Osman.

Wonder if he is any relation? 

If so, that would surely be Dadaism, not Surrealism, or Existentialism.

Dadaism would probably be a very low score under the Philosophy category.

Fill me up, dear!  At last- the mulled wine had arrived.  You can have two

glasses of that.  It’s not as strong as Dewlap Gin for the Discerning

Grandmother.  And, on cold nights like this, it’s the absolute camel!

More Rain…

Tags

Alex Salmond, Coltsfoot, Gene Kelly, George Osborne, GP, Morecambe and Wise, Olympics, Prince Charles, rain, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Singin' in the Rain, tennis, torches, wellies

It’s all about Higher Maintenance, I reminded myself as I pushed aside half of an unsaturated Skyberry Slice.  My friend had once observed that, at a certain age, it was one’s face or one’s bum.  All those Wallis Simpson types have no reserves when the blubber is really needed.  My friend’s father told me this years ago, and, he should have known, having worked on the Burma railway.

Yes, but I thought blubber was for whales.  I have tried to exercise in all this rain, but when I went out for a power walk, a woman tripped me up with one of those Nordic poles and as there is no tread on my Coltsfoot wellies, I nearly broke my neck.  Also, those items of footwear are expensive, so I don’t really want to get them dirty.  I know my couch potato, rain-avoiding existence is giving me a rear shelf like a boy racer’s spoiler, or like the back view of Serena Williams, but I don’t have her self-confidence to flaunt it in a pair of cyclamen knickers, on the High Street.

Rain has stopped my play over the last two months. I’ve had to cancel several open-air events. My portable candelabra would have been extinguished at Cringe Park Opera and my retro-look, Bisto-ed seamed “stockings” would have run at the Big Band Forties Event.  Dripping gazebos!  Will it never stop?

My only consolation is that my neighbours’ trampoline is so slippery that it is an ‘elf and Safety issue and their swimming pool has been commandeered by a family of ducks.  Kebabs and salad are reduced on the supermarket shelves.  Petrol consumption is down and torrential rain washes off the pigeon poo on my car.  The downside is that I will eventually surrender and put the heating back on.  It is okay if you are a pensioner with a heating allowance.  Then you could be a bit more relaxed about wearing out your designer wellies.  You could afford to replace them.

Rain, rain,

go away.

Come again

another day.

The hosepipe bans have been rescinded.  Good, because if any of those sou’estered kids squelch on that trampoline once more, they will get the full force of my water cannon.

Dr Foster went to Gloucester

in a shower of rain.

He stepped in a puddle

right up to his middle

and never was seen again.

It was probably a sinkhole caused by road subsidence, showing the short-sightedness of local councils neglecting the infrastructure and drains. This costs us all more in the knock-on effects of reduced medical services.  It is probably the explanation as to why, for ‘elf & Safety reasons, you won’t get a GP out on home visits if there is a spit of rain forecast and that effectively means that you will never get a home visit. You couldn’t reasonably expect the medical profession to endanger their lives- not even on their current salaries.  So, if you are experiencing resuscitation attempts from near drowning, after being rescued from your rooftop by lycra-clad firemen in kayaks (you wish), don’t expect a GP to make himself available for the signing of your death certificate.  That is, not unless there is a cremmie fee due.  Then you would see them swim, larded up like David Walliams, just to get their waterproof nibs on the dotted line.

Also, don’t expect a traditional burial in a churchyard.  The coffins all floated away in the flash floods and spiralled out to sea, via some estuary or other.  So, it looks like Full Fathom Five we all will lie. Quite poetic really.  Better than Ilkley Moor and its worms.

What can one do in all this rain?

I thought that a musical might be distracting.  But not that one.  I prefer Ernie Wise to Gene Kelly and know how Eric Morecambe must have felt with gutterloads of rainwater gushing over him, like The Horseshoe Falls.

Apparently Gene Kelly had researched and practised his seemingly effortless routine so much that he almost contracted pneumonia from dancing in his permanently waterlogged woollen suit.  GPs take note: not all medical conditions can be put down to viruses.

Probably by the Autumn, I cogitated, we will all have inhaled so many mould spores that the authorities will run out of flu vaccines and the old lady’s friend will do for so many of us that George, or Gideon, or whatever he is called, won’t have to worry so much about where all those heating allowances will be coming from. The medics tell us that you can’t contract pneumonia or flu from a chill, or from getting soaked. But surely, it can’t help.  If everything is down to a virus, they do not have to step out of their over-heated surgeries to see you and then they don’t have to ruin their wellies, or break their budgets on antibiotics.

I see a cloud.  It is the size of a man’s hand. It’s like a camel.

Nay, it’s very like a whale.

Stop arguing you two, I thought Ophelia might have said. It’s very big and it’s all over the weather map of Central Europe for August.

The Weather Girl was now wearing her Coltsfoot galoshes, not to mention a Mae West flotation waistcoat.  It didn’t matter what she was wearing underneath, even if it was two sizes too small.

Prince Charles had presented the Weather and you didn’t see him wearing ill-fitting Gieves & Hawkes.  He might be an old buffer, but he has won sartorial awards. His jackets fit like a glove, if you could forgive the mixed metaphor.  Even Camilla accepts that she is no longer a size ten, even though she was never any kind of weather girl herself.  She had other assets, namely that she had the sense never to rain on Di’s parade, though she might just reign over us.

How on earth are they keeping those torches alight- re-igniting birthday candles?  The rain must find its way through those perforations. The Greeks never had that sort of problem, though they have plenty of unrelated ones now.  Maybe they could capitalise on the success of Mama Mia and do a re-make with Colin Firth in a wet t-shirt performing an updated Singing in the Rain number.  We could donate some H2o in the spirit of EU solidarity.  Maybe they could sequel Shirley Valentine and we could send them Ann Widdecombe as an ageing Shirley, though she would probably have to be told it was Shirley Williams that she was to portray.  Still, she is fairly good at rocking the boat and would enjoy the attention.

Somewhere I had heard that Federer might be toting one of the torches.   The Greeks used to transport the flame au naturel, but I didn’t dare to hope that he would oblige, noblesse or not.  If he did, the whole of Europe would unite, not to say ignite!

I found it hard to imagine Andy trailing a torch through dreich Dunblane, even if Alex Salmond was cheering him on and the Perthshire Pipe band were playing I would walk five hundred miles, with soaking sporrans and waterlogged chanters.  No, Andy, accept it: the entire female population of the United Kingdom, minus your mum and possibly the ever-faithful Kim, carries a torch for Roger.

I felt sad for Theo Paphitis. If he was going to take over Robert Dyas, it was a bad year to sell gas barbecues.

© Candia Dixon Stuart and Candiacomesclean.wordpress.com, 2012