For Richer, For Poorer

Tags

clerihew, farthings, for richer; for poorer, James Matthews, Music, Pippa Middleton

James Matthews,

I wonder if Pippa would still choose

to say,  ‘Come hither!’

if you didn’t have two farthings to rub together.

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Not Here

Tags

British Library, Engelfield, Harley MS, Pippa Middleton

 

( Harley MS 4379 f.3r; British Library)

 

Bad news, folks:

Pippa’s wedding’s

at Engelfield.

Shakin’ That Ass

Tags

Betty Grable, Botafogo, Bruno Tonioli, Claudia Winkelman, Craig Revel Horwood, dance-off, Darcy Bussell, Duchess of Cambridge, Elton John, gigolo, glitter ball, It Takes Two, Len's lens, maracas, Pasha, pickle my walnuts, Pippa Middleton, Pixie Lott, promenade position, rear spoiler, Renault, rigor mortis, Shimmy, sprung floor, Strictly, Tess Daly, twerking, varifocals

And now please welcome witty and glitzy raconteuse, Candia Dixon-Stuart

and her gorgeous gigolo partner, Pasha Kovalev.  Tonight they will be

twerking to…

It was really difficult to negotiate those stairs with the strobe lighting

which flickered from the glitter ball almost inducing an epileptic fit in me.

Without my varifocals I was entirely relying on Pasha’s supporting arm to

deliver me safely to the sprung floor.

Claudia blinked vacantly at me from under her veritable thatch of a fringe.

Her pale lippy gave her a look of rigor mortis– more so than The Human

Ironing Board‘s dazzling smile.

The orchestra struck up our number: I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister

Kate.  I truly wished that a member of our Suttonford sorority could have

stood in my shoes, whether she shared a name with The Duchess of

Cambridge, or not.  Come to think of it, Pippa would not suffer from

such self-doubt. I bet she could shake her rear spoiler to good effect.

Maybe she will be invited on the show, if she is not too busy babysitting…

Watershed, or not, our song referenced some murdered brothel madam

called Kate Townsend- but not many people would have known that.

Oh well, I would just have to try to shake my beading to its Pixie limit.

I adopted my promenade position.

It was all over in a flash.  Pasha had to carry me over to Tess, who

brushed a few sequins from my shoulder.

Put her down, Pasha, she hissed.  You’ll do yourself an injury!

Ohhh, Candia, darling!  All the boys are going wild over sister Katie’s

style.  Unfortunately...here Bruno fell onto the floor, laughing, and

had to grab Len’s arm to hoist himself back into his chair...you are not

called Kate, are you?  Maybe you were adopted.  He pursed his lips in a

pseudo pout which anyone could tell was ironic, nay sarcastic.

Clearly I won’t be invited to one of his all-night parties with Elton John.

Darcy tried to be kind:

Wow, Candia.  You came out here and owned that floor.  Pasha gave

you a really challenging routine and you…Well, if you could develop your

core strength more and fully extend your arms, finishing your lines..She

concluded lamely, reaching for her empathetic ‘five‘.  Basically that

was the equivalent of a negative number from Craig’s arsenal.

We were now under Len’s lens.  I think our lift was legal, but he clearly

was not going to pickle his walnuts.  Instead he reached under the table

and produced his maracas.

You see, it takes some time for the seeds to pass across to the solid wall

of the coconut shell, so you have to anticipate the beat.  He demonstrated

by waving them over his head and saying, Um cha cha; um cha cha!

It was as clear as mud.

You came out and gave it some welly, but it looked as if you were wearing

gumboots while you were at it, he added, a trifle unkindly.  It was one of

his more moody evenings, clearly.

I blushed under the fake tan.  Pasha gripped my arm.  Keep smiling, he

whispered.

To reference the original song, Craig drawled, you didn’t shimmy like a jelly

on a plate, darling.  You did, however, look as if you were in a trance.  I’ve

seen more successful posterior rotation in a Renault advert.  Your left hand

was positively splayed and your performance was nothing less than

flat-footed. Strictly-speaking, Betty Grable you were not.

I wanted to remonstrate that I hadn’t been able to get my orthotic insoles

into the high-heeled shiny slippers, but they would have thought I was just

trying for a sympathy vote, so I desisted and I will never know how I got up

those stairs, trying to shield my bouncing bosoms with my non-splayed hand

from an overhead camera which zoomed in on cleavage.

Claudia was rabbiting on about getting permission to use someone else’s

mobile.

Please, please, I mimed desperately.  I didn’t want to be in the dance-off.

Actually, I didn’t want to be there at all.  I knew my bum looked big in my

outfit.  The massive peacock feather tail didn’t help.  I’d told them peacocks

were unlucky, but they just told me to break a leg.  And I nearly did!

The scores were in.  No ‘seven’ from Len.  A predictable ‘five‘ from Darcy.

Bless.  Bruno stole a sidelong glance at Len and replicated his score.

Craig produced a card I had never seen before.  It said minus two.

He was obviously feeling generous.

Bottom of the leader board.  How embarrassing!  However, my public

may save me.  I may live to fight another day and that glamorous natural

mover who keeps scoring nines and tens may be on her way out.

I thought I was going to faint.  Pasha caught me in his arms.  It was

all worth it!

Dancing for us next week is…

But as my eyes re-focussed, I saw the shadowy outline of The Husband

bearing my morning cuppa.  He didn’t look anything like Pasha, even with

his shirt off.

What’s wrong? he asked solicitously.  You were muttering something about

botafogas.

Hmmm, I replied.  It takes two, babe.  Thanks for the tea.

He plumped up my pillows and I tried to sit up, but something was irritating

me.  I was sitting on a sequin.  Weird!

Ah well., at least when I go into Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe I won’t

be besieged by boa-toting women shrieking, Keep Dancing!

Instead of shaking that ass, I will just keep kicking it.  And if you keep giving

me ‘likes‘ it will be the nearest thing I’ll ever experience to holding that trophy

aloft!

Speech Day

Tags

aigret, Ascot, Auchenshuggle, Charles Saatchi, chavette, Isabella Blow, Old Girl, Philip Treacy, Pippa Middleton, Prizegiving, Rabbie Burns, Shard, Speech Day, The Hatpin, To A Louse, Yarn bombing

Juniper Boothroyd-Smythe’s mother, Gisela, had been trying to find a suitable

hat to wear for the St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl‘s

Prizegiving.

Her daughter was going to receive the 2013 Sirdar Yarn-Bombing Textile Award

and her classmates, Tiger-Lily and Scheherezade, were being awarded

acknowledgement shields and cups for being The Girl Least Likely To and

The Girl Whose Mother’s Timekeeping Has Improved Most Markedly.

Gisela was going to be braving the marquee toute seule, since her formal

separation from Juniper’s father- realised after a much less provocative

gesture than that of Charles Saatchi’s.

Gisela had spotted a hat in Help The Ancient, Suttonford’s designer charity

shop. Some tattooed chavette may have abandoned it post-Ascot.  It

wasn’t exactly Isabella Blow-cum-Philip Treacy, but, for £9.99, it was a very

good deal and could be re-cycled afterwards.  Hat boxes took up too much

room in the wardrobe, she felt.

Drusilla Fotheringay-Syylk had just come out of her closet- not in a gender-

assertion manner.  No, she had literally de-cluttered her bedroom in her

flat in the boarding house, before vacating the premises for the summer

school let.  Lodging with her mother in Bradford-on-Avon usually stretched

both their reserves of patience.

She was glad that she had been disciplined enough to rid herself of that

hat which she had optimistically purchased in anticipation of her mother’s

demise.  It would have fitted the daughter of the deceased’s role very well,

but her mater was obstinately clinging to life and so the millinery moment

had not dawned.  Help The Ancient had been the beneficiary.

Drusilla intended to sport a Pippa Middleton-style fascinator for Speech Day.

She had fastened two aigret feathers together and secured them to a scrunch

of net veil with a vintage brooch.  Burlesque not.

Come the day, Gisela was sitting two rows in front of her daughter’s

housemistress and she was unaware that her headgear was being scrutinised

as closely as Rabbie Burns had inspected the louse on the woman in the pew

in front of him.

Drusilla knew it was the same hat which she had donated, as she could detect

the pinholes in the brim where she had removed the amber-headed hat pin

which she had inherited from her grandmother, who had advised her to stick it

into any male who bothered her in the dark at the cinema. (Drusilla had never

had occasion to employ this strategy and felt that she might have been

arrested if she had done so.)  Even after all these years of teaching in a girls’

school, she was still somewhat in the dark as to what male reprehensible

behaviour might consist of, and she was, frankly, rather disappointed that no

one had ever molested her sufficiently as to render the bodkin’s function as

anything greater than decorative.

In fact, when she saw how fetching the hat could be, she immediately wished,

like many other women who part with items from their bulging wardrobes, that

she could turn back the clock and reverse her actions. She was completely

distracted and paid no attention to the Head’s speech, in common with most of

the assembly, admittedly.

She missed the accolade to all those who have acted as the pacemakers of

the pastoral heartbeat of this remarkable institution. Old Girl, Ffion

Tullibardine-Tompkins’ account of how she had scaled The Shard in aid

of the locally-favoured charity, Anacondas In Adversity! went entirely

unregistered.

She was last on her feet for the rousing school song, scraped enthusiastically

by the Junior Orchestra: Here’s tae Us/ Whae’s Like Us?/ Gey Few..An’ They’re

A’ Deid, to the tune Auchenschuggle.

By Monday, the first day of her holiday, she had re-purchased the hat for

£12.99 from the charity shop.  She couldn’t believe her luck, having spotted

it immediately it had re-appeared in the window.  She’d been on her way to

meet an ex-colleague for coffee, since friends were in rather short supply.

Help The Ancient is, as you all know, dear Readers, right next to

Costamuchamoulah, the must-seen cafe.  Now she only needed the

appropriate occasion to bring the cat, I mean hat out of the box.

Hi, Miss Fotheringay-Syylk.

Drat: it was that awful Juniper girl.  Why hadn’t she gone away like the others?

Of course, Mrs Boothroyd-Smythe had to work, unlike most of Juniper’s

classmates’ mothers.

It looked better on you than on my mum!

(She had been spying through the window.)

But why did Drusilla always feel that the girl was being sarcastic?  Maybe it

was the not-so-fleeting snigger that played about her lips.

Have a nice holiday, Juniper, she smiled.  In fact, she thought, Why don’t you

take a premature gap year, or ten?

And then Drusilla tripped over the pavement art.

Yarn bombing! Grrr!!!

Sorry, Miss Fotheringay-Syylk. I hope you haven’t broken your ankle.  Do you

want me to call an ambulance on my mobile?  Let me carry your hatbox.

The first day of the holidays in Casualty.  She might have known.

Maggie’s Final Journey

Tags

Amanda Thatcher, Bernard Ingham, Bishop of London, David Cameron, duck pate, Falklands, Iron Lady, John Major, Lech Walesa, Margaret Thatcher, Pippa Middleton, pussycay bows, Sam Cam, Simon Weston, St Clement Danes

Sonia and Ginevra had decided to watch Maggie’s funeral together, even

although they had been of opposing political stances.  However, both

agreed fervently on one fact: that she had had what some unsavoury

persons might have termed balls.

They settled into the chintz armchairs, put their feet up on the matching

footstools and prepared to toast the coffin as it came out of St Clement

Danes church.

In my younger days, I would have jolly well gone up there and routed anyone

who had the bad manners to express any opposition on such a day, avowed

Ginevra.  I would have clouted them with my handbag.

And got yourself arrested, sighed Sonia. But I agree that empty vessels make

the most sound and a lot of these malcontents have nothing constructive to

say.

Yes, the Queen wouldn’t stand back in deference to any of them, stated

Ginevra, prematurely sipping her gin and tonic.

Look! There’s Simon Weston!  He lost most of his face to the Falklands cause

and he is not eaten up with bitterness and pointless hatred, is he? remarked

Sonia.

They say it is about class, but she was a grocer’s daughter and she made her

own way, so I applaud her for that.  And she won three elections in a row..

Well, let’s not go into that, advised Sonia, who hadn’t voted Tory on one

of these occasions.

Did you see Prince Philip nod at the remark about bureaucracy never

achieving anything? observed Ginevra.  She thought that the old boy

would definitely be ready for a drink afterwards.

And so it continued.  They were concerned for the horses and for the

middle bearer who was becoming very sweaty and who looked as if he

might not make it.  They applauded Amanda Thatcher’s dignified

behaviour, her nice legs and expressed their disapproval of Pippa

Middleton, in contrast. I think that was the gin’s influence, as she did

not appear to be present.  A pity as she might have picked up some tips

on how to run a good event.

They wiped away tears with Sir Bernard Ingham and George Osborne

and commented on Sam Cam’s pussycat bow, prophesying a return to

the Thatcherite style.

Sonia dared to question the unfair political advantage that David

Cameron might have gained from the reading. I am the way, the truth

and the life was stated forcefully, but he may have been lent a nimbus

of authority.

Okay, ladies, said Magda, Ginevra’s carer, bringing in two television

trays with plates of toast and pate at one o’clock precisely.

What kind of pate is it? queried Ginevra.

Duck, darlings.

Oh no.  Take it away.  Bring us that salmon one instead.  Ginevra

could be bossy and demanding- possibly a little Iron Ladyish herself.

But what wrong with it?  You usually like it, responded Magda, who

could stand up for herself.

The Bishop of London said that he had been advised not to touch it;

it has too many calories, Ginevra elucidated. Anyway, I suddenly

remembered that we had some of the other kind at the back of the

fridge when I saw the Scottish First Minister.  The camera zoomed in on

him when they sang about ‘That Other Country..whose paths would be

peace- eventually.

Okay, I go to find it, Magda said, thinking that she would probably eat

the duck version, calorific content no problem.

She returned with the substitute in a few seconds.

It had better not be Sturgeon pate, laughed Sonia, who was fairly

politically astute.

Magda looked worried.

It’s another fish, explained Ginevra.  Not such a clever lady,

though.

So why did you give this Maggie lady such a lot of attention?  I never

heard of her, asked Magda.

Because she was a dreadnought amongst a fishing fleet, as somebody

quoted today, explained Ginevra.  You had Lech Walesa; we had

Maggie Thatcher, so put that into your salmon pate and smoke it!

No, corrected Sonia: we had John Major.

That reminds me, Ginevra changed the subject whenever she was

exposed as misinformed, there might be some curried eggs in the

fridge as well.

Sonia laughed, but Magda didn’t get the joke.  (She found the eggs,

though.)  Ginevra’s tangential thought processes were often puzzling.

Could these apparent non-sequiturs be an exhibition of confusion?

She would ask the lady at the agency.  Maybe the two old girls were

both -how do you say it?-Ah yes, bonkers!

Meantime, toast and duck pate: quite a nice little lunch.

Pointless

Tags

Alexander Armstrong, beefalo, Boris Johnson, Burns Supper, Dolly the Sheep, lyger, matthew pinsent, Pippa Middleton, Pointless, Sean the Sheep

Pointless.  Not life in general- the quiz programme, dear readers.

No, I’m not admitting to being a viewer.  I was just waiting for The

Six o’ Clock News.  Honest.

You know, I feel really sorry for Alexander Armstrong.  He gets to keep

the music from his comedy programme, but doesn’t do his dad dancing

any more with his wee pal.  And he’s related to Royalty, which makes it all

as embarrassing as Pippa Middleton’s pontifications on Burns Suppers.

(The Bard’s epic opus reduced to Lovely stories.)

Can you imagine Boris- also a Royal, by all accounts- asking what the

least likely answers would be to a given question.  He usually

expresses those himself and doesn’t expect a trophy, either.

Matthew Pinsent was also shown to have blue blood of the deepest

ultramarine on Who Do You Think You Are?  I don’t think you would

catch him asking what a liger was on prime time TV.

For, yes, that was one of the questions dreamt up by that specky guy

who makes up all those surreal sections, such as Crossover Animals.

A hundred ingénues were interviewed as to what they thought a

beefalo was and amazingly, a third of those so pressed came up with

the notion that it was a cross between a bee and a buffalo. Think

about it.  They probably think that Sean the Sheep was the prototype

clone, not Dolly.

The so-called celebrities actually got this beefalo one right.  I’m not telling

you the solution: work it out for yourselves.  Only 0.5% of the

viewing audience recognised any of the contestants, though,

including moi-meme.  So, does that mean I get a really low score and

win the jackpot.  I doubt it.

Who is that specky guy?

The Medium is the Message

Tags

Artem, Beverley Sisters, Headington shark, Medium is Message, Ntingwe Kwazalu, Pasha, Pippa Middleton, Sergei toy, Stig, Tarot, UKIP, Warhol's Orange Car Crash, Yu Luo White tea

Tiger-Lily’s Diary

3^rd January, 2013

Dad has been going ballisitic as he had told Grandma not to have her

cronies round for what she calls Post-Hogmanay Lunchtime Wrinkly Drinkies

until Magda, her carer, returned from Normandy.  Ginevra needs monitoring.

It’s all her fault that Sonia drove back home like a drunken Stig.

Clammie, Sherry’s mum, said that it had taken her in excess of five

minutes to get Sonia a cup of basic English Breakfast in

Costamuchamoulah to calm her nerves.  The girl behind the counter

insisted on running through a list of all the speciality beverages until

Clammie had just snapped and shouted:

Never mind the Yu Luo White Tea from Hunan Province, nor the

Ntingwe Kwazulu from Fantasy Land.  Just get the old lady a mug of

regular navvy’s with two spoonfuls of sugar before she keels over!

The girl gave her a funny look and now Clammie is convinced that

she will be persona non grata for evermore.

(To whom shall she then go, for they have the beans of eternal life?)

Still, Sherry said that she was proud of her mater as she would rather

have a subversive parent than an Establishment Clone.

Candia said that Clammie had kindly waited with Sonia until the nice

young policeman had breathalysed the old dear and checked her

insurance particulars.

She couldn’t remember if her premium was with the glamorous,

pink-sequinned, singing Aussie triplets who look so like Antipodeal

Beverley Sisters, whoever they are.

She then thought that she might have changed over to the meerkat

one, as she thought she would have received a free Sergei toy.  She

liked Russians, especially Artem and Pasha, though she knew they

weren’t in the indemnification business.  She expressed her anger at new EU

directives regarding gender equity and insurance policies.  She was even more

inclined to vote UKIP, she asserted.

But in your case, madam, the policeman told her, it is not so much a

sex issue as an age-related one.  You see, the over-eighties have just

as many accidents as teenagers.

I certainly hope you don’t…

But Clammie had restrained her, especially when the pc had asked

her to consider giving up driving and opting for the Community Bus.

She consented to consult her Tarot Cards on the matter and agreed

that there were some things that she could not foresee.  Like the

brick wall, I suppose!  Then she let Clammie take her cribwards to

await Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

Candia says that Costamuchamoulah are going to keep the car in situ

if they can get planning permission. It should draw the crowds as

much as Pippa Middleton’s random appearances in town. Candia

said that if the people in Headington, Oxford, could receive

government blessing 26 years ago for a shark embedded in a

terraced house’s roof, then what dreaming spires can have, day-

dreaming shires should readily be permitted to retain.

(I like Candia’s turns of phrase!)

So, Untitled 2 may be here to stay.  Crash Art is very Postmodern

and so I am going to file my photos under Warhol and his 1963

silkscreen prints of the Orange Car Crash Fourteen Times.  If I can get

a bit of pastiche, parody and cross-reference going in my Art History project,

I won’t have to be a clairvoyant to see an A* coming my way.

The medium is the message!

Round Robin 2-Strictly Finals

Tags

Argentinian tango, bugle beads, Come Dine with Me, Dancing With the Stars, Fake or Fortune?, Flavia, Katherine Jenkins, Location Location Location, Louis Smith, monocles, Patrick Moore, Pineau, Pippa Middleton, Pizza Express, pleb, pommel horse, Salvatore Ferragamo, Santa Baby, Strictly Come Dancing, Swarovski, Vincent

Marzipan accomplished.  As I said, ‘to be continued’.

 

Well, Victoria, so many of our friends and neighbours have been

minor celebs this year- Tristram on Come Dine With Me; Sonia on

Fake or Fortune; Clammie and Tristram on Location, Location,

Location.  So, we feel very ordinary- almost pleb-like, I was going to

say, but that isn’t PC now.

Brassie’s party is on Saturday and there has been a trail of bugle

beads up the pavement from A La Mode, down to the Norman

bridge.  Everyone is getting glitzed up for the Strictly final.

Tiger and her friend, Sherry, spent some of their Xmas-in-advance

money on a ‘papp’ experience.  This is the latest craze for St Vitus’

girls, apparently.  They organised an agency to roll out a red carpet

for them when they left A La Mode and then a crowd of fake

papparazi flashed away-?- and a rent-a crowd of autograph

hunters besieged them as they were escorted into their stretch limo,

which took them to Pizza Express. (They could only afford the

economy package, not the platinum one.)

The only trouble was that then Pippa Middleton’s security posse

arrived and shunted the girls’ car off the double yellow lines and then

everyone started to snap Pip instead.  Gyles had said the package

was a complete waste of money and the girls just cheekily replied:

Whatever.  So, he is not speaking to Tiger at the moment.  In a way,

it is a blessing.  Tiger said that Pippa actually went into Mini Moghuls,

probably to buy a Swarovski-encrusted mini-onesie for the

forthcoming one- and I don’t mean the baby Jesus.  The ubiquitous

traffic warden was conspicuous by his absence on this occasion.

Have just managed to find a second-hand pommel horse for Rollo on

E-bay.  He adores Louis Smith and so he went and had his hair cut in

that ridiculous way on the last day of term.  Thank goodness it will

have grown a bit before January, or Mr Milford-Haven, his

pastoral mentor, will be having words with him.

Of course, all my family support the Italians- whether it be Flavia or

Vincent.  I have been trying the Argentinian Tango, but it does my

back in.

Cosmo said he would prefer if the programme were to be called

Dancing With the Stars, as its European equivalent.  At the weekend,

he was drooling over Katherine Jenkins singing Santa Baby, which

really upset Brassie.  And to think that it hadn’t been 24 hours since

he was so moved by the death of Patrick Moore. Brassie said that she

felt like returning the crystal-encrusted monocle she had ordered for

him, in memory of his astronomical hero.

I hope Brassie gates the peeing Border, Andy, on Saturday.  I don’t

want to slip on anything wet on the conservatory floor during our

Gangnam number.  It would ruin my new Salvatore Ferragamos!

Well, at least you don’t have to worry about excessive preparation,

do you?  The Charentaise are so laid back about their Bonnes Fetes

that they don’t even bother to remove their plastic, life-size Pere

Noels from their exterior chimneys, from one year to the next.  I

always think that they look like burglars in July or August!

Have a great time and see you in the New Year.

Thanks for the truffles and Pineau!

Gros Bisous!

Carrie & Gyles.

PS What’s French for Keep Dancing!

La Vie Boheme

Tags

Angelina's, beau monde, Bradley Wiggins, Brigitte Bardot, Cafe de Flore, Cocteau, Da Vinci Code, Gorden Kaye, Irma Kurtz, Jeanette Winterson, John Humphrys, La Boheme, La Vie Bohème, Les Deux Magots, madeleine, Mallarme, Manon, Maxim's, Mimi, Muriel Belcher, Musetta, Novello, Oscar Wilde, Perrault, Pippa Middleton, Proust, Rimbaud, Rodolfo, Rose Line, Rousseau, Shakespeare& Co, Something Understood, St Germain des Pres, St Sulpice, The Colony, Verlaine, Woody Allen

(Muriel Belcher by Francis Bacon)

Hi!  It’s Candia again.  I’ve been festively overwrought and last night I fell asleep listening to Irma Kurtz on Radio 4’s ‘Something Understood.’  She had constructed a compilation on La Vie Boheme, mentioning La Rive Gauche, Greenwich Village and The Colony in Soho, owned by Muriel Belcher, where Francis Bacon was paid to bring along interesting guests who were on an ‘odyssey of creativity’.

As a student, I had worn a cape and affected a feathered hat until my dad told me to tie my hair back and remove the offending headgear.

 Then I woke upto someone singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas with a voiceover chiding John Humphrys with a reminder that there were more things on Heaven and Earth than had been permitted in his philosophy. Rather surreal to have the announcement of Bradley Wiggins as Sports Personality of the Year juxtaposed with cosmology and moral philosophy at 8am.

I had a somewhat unusual request yesterday, Dear Reader.  A visitor asked if he could have a guest appearance in my blog.  And who is this budding self-publicist? I hear you wonder aloud.  Eh bien, he was a rather elegant Frenchman that I introduced to Costamuchamoulah’s café society via une promenade round the aspirational, but pas trop authentique Francophile Sunday morning market in our beloved ville.  This event of global significance was ‘appening on the High Street.  (Why do I always think in terms of Gorden Kaye’s Franglais when I am narrating anything of Gallic content?)  Anyhow, it was with un soupcon of Rousseau’s irony that I directed said gentilhomme’s footsteps down the less than sunny side of the street to Suttonford’s burgeoning version of Maxim’s.

We did not recognise anything remotely familiar to this European voyageur in le marche and so I headed him off past the bookshop-alas, not Shakespeare & Co, with a resident Jeanette Winterson, but to the cosmopolitan hub of Suttonford’s Café Society.  On the way across the street my boulevardier remarked approvingly on various expensive vehicles, parked in bays, which screamed mid-life crisis.

He seemed more interested in the clientele, though the owners of Costamuchamoulah have not yet cottoned on to the device employed by Cornuche, the proprietor of Maxim’s, who remarked:

An empty room!  Never!  I always have a beauty sitting in the window, in view from the [pavement]

Here it is more like Novello’s version of the experience: And Her Mother Came Too!

(There are one or two widows, but not necessarily of the ‘merry’ variety.)  Woody Allen was distinctly absent, but there were no Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds,(sic) at least.

Ensconced in a corner, at an unwiped table and on hard chairs- not the sumptuous banquettes which might reveal hidden treasures lost down the cushions- we ordered our upwardly mobile beverages, while he showed me photographs of his international girlfriends on his Blackberry – ( is that Murier, I me demande?)  Monsieur was keen to exhibit pictures of himself in Les Deux Magots. Was this a kind of Parisian, urban, if not urbane, Crocodile Dundee equivalent of showing me that THAT was a café, in the same way as Paul Hogan had demonstrated the superiority of his jungle knife?  Whatever.  I was miffed that he had assumed that I would not have heard of such an establishment, so beloved by les philosophes, let alone having patronised it with my custom.

Les Deux Magots has thankfully nothing to do with maggots.  Un magoh was the slang term for a miser.  I don’t think misers would search out the pitchers of decadent hot chocolate found therein, nor would they pay their prices to see Oscar Wilde, Mallarme, Rimbaud etc.  In Costamuchamoulah, we pay the prices, but don’t see Apollinaire, Verlaine or Hemingway.  Apparently, Pippa Middleton might have breezed through, though I don’t know whether it was to check the sales of her book which is displayed beside the edible ladybirds and so froth.  Pun.  Formidable rear isn’t la meme chose as formidable intellect, in my book at any rate.

But to my tale- pas Perrault, but tant pis!  Ah yes, I remember it well.  The Husband and I slipped on the glacial trottoirs of St Germain- des- Pres, in the days when he went out, seeking the church of St Sulpice with its Rose Line and gnomen, but thankfully with no resident albino monk assassins.  The fountain was frozen and great slabs of sheet ice almost prevented us from venturing to the Café de Flore or Deux Magots, for it was the Advent season, as it is now.  Ah, those were the days and nights of Angelina’s and other beau monde haunts, where we expected to encounter  Mimi, Manon, Musetta and Rodolfo and perhaps, if we were very blessed, Proust himself.  Mimi had wanted to lose her senses and Musetta had forgotten the regulation of their economies and had asked the boys to order champagne.  We were a little less extravagant.

For that is the problem with such cafes of Enlightenment. Before you know it you are emptying your bank balance, merely to see and be seen.

My current companion looked around the room, panning the four corners for a barefoot Brigitte Bardot perhaps, but his eye fell upon a smart blonde woman in her fifties.  Quel surpris!  He confessed that young girls were not for him.  Like Cocteau, he was well aware that:

..to undress one of those women [would be] like an outing that calls for 3 weeks’ advance notice…it [would be] like moving house.

So, it was on my first sip of Mocha that I had the flashback, the Epiphany-and it came without the madeleine.   I will enlighten you further.

A demain..!

Apocalypse Now!

Tags

Apocalypse, Birmingham Crater, Crouching Tiger ; Hidden Dragon, Dan Snow, Derren Brown, Felix Baumgartner, Gregorian Calendar, Guy Fawkes, Highland Spring, paintballing, parkour, Pippa Middleton, Salisbury Plain, Yves Klein

Monday morning and so I sidled into Divas’ Deli and found Carrie there buying the Pippa Middleton book: Celebrate.

Thought this would be ideal for Clammie’s Chrissie prezzy, she beamed.

Was somewhat annoyed as I had been considering it for the very same recipient.  Still, if I buy one and very carefully open the pages, but don’t bend the spine, maybe I can get away with off-loading it on someone else, once I have noted down any useful tips on my Tablet. Didn’t say anything, but hinted that I wouldn’t mind finding it in my stocking, in addition to Dan Snow.

Carrie is over the moon that the awful Juniper is not going to be going to Clammie and Tristram’s Guy Fawkes party.  Her horrible little brother John is also not being invited.  Juniper’s behaviour at Tiger-Lily’s sleepover was reprehensible enough and none of us wants our children to mix with such delinquents.  I hasten to add that it is nothing to do with Juniper’s gender fluidity issues; it is just her utter self-gratification and her brother’s bullying tendencies that have upset us all.

Carrie divulged the reason for this joyous news: apparently Juniper is plastered- not in the sense that she was at the sleepover, however. No, she is in plaster with a broken arm.  She is crazy.  She jumped off the Art block roof.  Clammie’s daughter, Scheherezade, witnessed the whole event, or should I say, happening?  And she is not a girl to make up stories.

Juniper has been obsessed by Felix Baumgartner’s leap from 128,000 feet.  At her School for the Academically-Gifted they believe in a cross-curricular integrated approach to learning and so everything recently has been based on leaps: leaps of faith, Kiekegaard’s Semantic Leap, leap years and the Gregorian Calendar, French urban vocabulary, such as traceur/ traceuse etc.  Yves Klein’s Jumping into the Void was studied in Art History and in PE they learned about the training skills associated with parkour, that weird sport which owes its origins to military obstacle course training. It resembles some of the moves in Crouching Tiger; Hidden Dragon. One has to travel from A-B in as short a distance as possible and without one’s feet touching the ground. (In my childhood this was when a parent grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and marched you off to bed.  But I digress.)

Anyway, Juniper had been unusually attentive in the Art History lesson and afterwards she climbed onto the roof and shouted to some girls who were engaged in some artistic activity round the back of the building to capture her launch moment on their mobiles.  She threw down a scrap of cartridge paper which bore her bowdlerised mission statements, to wit:

You have to realise the impregnation of space by your own sensibility

and

Neither missiles nor rockets nor sputniks will render man- nor woman- the conquistadors of space.

The girls didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, but a couple of them managed to take a digital image of her as she jumped.  Scheherezade said she was shouting:

I’m not falling; I’m rising!

And then? I asked.

And then she went splat on the roof of Clammie’s 4×4, which had been parked there as Clammie had made an appointment to see the art teacher about Scheherezade’s installation.  There was a crater the size of Birmingham on the roof.  Cosmo said it was more like a black hole in his current account to cover his insurance excess and to have the bodywork restored.

Birmingham? I asked, incredulous.

No, there really is a lunar crater called that, she stressed.  Cosmo told me once when he was showing me round his observatory.

Beats etchings, I muttered.

Anyway, she continued, ignoring my sarcasm,  Juniper is now asking everyone to sign her plaster cast and she is going to submit it for her Art History Practical. She’ll probably get an A*.  It’s so annoying. 

So, it’s cost them an arm and a leg, I said, without thinking.

Just an arm, Carrie said, laughing and paying for the book.

And Juniper’s nasty little brother, John, isn’t coming to the party either?

No.  Their mother has also been getting fed up with their behaviour and so she phoned Derren Brown and arranged a personal mini-Apocalypse for them.  It’s a set-up where they are being driven to Salisbury Plain, thinking they are going to paint-balling, and then some tanks emerge and block the road and there is a mock-up of a meteor strike.  By the end of two days they will have been introduced to the concept of altruism as they have to share a bottle of Highland Spring and a bag of Kettle Chips, or starve.

Wow! That’s amazing! I exclaimed. I wonder if any other mothers would be interested in signing up their sproglets?

Apparently Derren Brown has been inundated by requests and can’t personally hypnotise or deal with them all, so he is hiring out Parent Packs of tanks, flame throwers and DIY nstructions.

Well, that should solve the problem of bored teenagers in the school holidays, I remarked, a shade too eagerly, perhaps.

Precisely, said Carrie.  We are sending for our packs tomorrow before they run out.