I don’t know about you, but I look forward to summer every year, particularly as it seems to come around at roughly the same time or what is known as annually.
I prepare by ordering in a case of Pimms and a box of crisps (don’t tell Muriel) and make sure that my requests are being dealt with by my good friend the Head Librarian at the Stirling Library in Exchange Square. As I am such a regular borrower my initials are always to be found pencilled in on the fly-leaf, just in case she has been sent to cover for sickness in an outpost of Empire. This means if a junior has to deal with my request, she knows immediately that Mr Wylie is top of the list for a new publication.
It is of course quite against Council Policy as are most things. The Librarian and I have, however, always been on the best of terms especially as I always admire her ties and help promote her Well of Loneliness Seminars, which are well attended by ladies with a penchant for rough tweeds and motorcycles. I must confess to never having read this book as matters pertaining to water supplies have not held my attention. Although I admit the Loch Katrine water supply for Glasgow is fascinating as are the early efforts of the Paisley Town Council as evidenced in the survival of wooden water pipes held in their Museum.
In addition to these simple preparations I have to make sure that I have secured the spare wireless for the shed in order that I might hear Wimbledon and any cricket, while I tackle the Pimms’ Box. Unfortunately Mrs Travers, our daily woman what does (but not a lot), tends to commandeer it from the moment she gets in the door in her curlers. One hand switches on the Light programme and the other pours a splash of cooking sherry “jist tae perk me up.”
Yesterday, I managed to wrest the wireless from her right in the middle of Bobby Daren’s Dream Lover. This may have sparked a brief war of attrition as I noticed there was no fried egg with breakfast. Quite possibly I should not have added that with her family pedigree Lonnie Donegan’s Fort Worth Jail might have been more appropriate listening. I have said that I will try to make sure she does not miss Mrs Dale’s Dairy, if she doesn’t tell Muriel about our recent losses on the gee-gees or in fact mention that we have had anything whatsoever to do with the turf.
As Robert Burns our national poet said “the best laid schemes……….” If one is not careful, summer slips away in a haze of weddings (is there anything more boring than a wedding?), visits to open gardens, garden parties and a myriad of other activities Muriel considers necessary to patronise for business and pleasure. Personally I think the pleasure side is rather overstated and currently interrupts my survey of our local grave yard for the Hysterical Society of which I am currently Life President, there being no other takers.
All this activity means the Pimms’ box remains unchecked and books unread as one tramples around other people’s soggy gardens admiring ponds, dove cots and pocket handkerchief trees. Muriel loves this summer activity despite having no horticultural interests whatsoever. Nevertheless she prepares for a garden visit as if it were an interview for a Foreign Office career when even one’s behaviour at suppa is monitored for suitability.
Yesterday we had to endure almost 30 minutes of Muriel and Bernice Belvidere who has recently moved from Berkshire discussing the merits of washing the bark of a silver birch tree. This has not translated well as Muriel’s competitive instinct knows no bounds and she persuaded Mrs Travers and Grace (who does the heavy work since the demise of Hilda) to begin to tackle our trees with scrubbing brushes and Vim.
As well as tree washing, this week also required our presence at Lady Pentland-Firth’s Country House Concert which is attended by the great and the good and helps to fund improvements on the estate and charitable interests, as well as bind the gentry together in an act confirming their own worth and good taste – well, sort of. This month was something of a shocker as it was largely supported by a generous gift from Muriel’s cousin, Lulubelle who is from the very Deep South which is not West Wittering, but somewhere in America.
Lulubelle is also our business partner and is determined to modernise our interior design shop, ‘Chez Nous’. We currently have branches in Glasgow and Edinburgh and are looking into the possibility of opening in London or maybe even Largs.
Cousin Lulubelle does not like Classical Music and demonstrates her complete failure to understand how the social pyramid of the United Kingdom is based on pretending to like things that you really do not – like oysters and artichokes. She will say loudly at the end of a movement or even, horror of horrors, between the movements of a concerto, “Land sakes hunny child, are y’all enjoyin’ this or jis pretendin’?” Back in the good ole U.S. of A., Cousin Lulubelle was really the discoverer of Elvis and she has interests in Nashville where they like Country Music. This is about the terrible things that happen in the countryside like having to live there and wear cowboy clothes if you are a gentleman and the kitchen curtains if you are a lady.
The equivalent of this in Britain is probably what is known as folk music. This is also about terrible things that happen. It is not just restricted to the countryside, as terrible things go on in coal mines as well and there is nothing better than a train crash. There is currently a folk revival taking place in Britain, which is very popular and requires a beard and a concertina.
Cousin Lulubelle decided that this was just the sort of thing for the 4th of July and it would take the Country House Concerts into a different league. This was her first mistake as those and such as those, do not want to be taken into a different league. They like what they know or what they think they should know, and that is as much Bach as possible, “So Mathematical you know”, with Handel a little behind, “ I adore his early work don’t you” or “the Halleluiah Chorus attracts the wrong sort, it’s like a football match sometimes.” For a lighter programme it is Mozart and “remember there is only one t.”
You can imagine that last week’s 4th of July concert came us something of a shock, well at least the second half did. One has to remember that many of those who attend have ancestors who not only were executed within the confines of the Tower of London, (a coveted form of death which is the ultimate in class statements along with use of the word lavatory) but also fought for King George III to retain the American colonies. They regard the signing of the Declaration of Independence as a temporary blip and once the colonists have had enough of things like fast food, TV dinners and I Love Lucy they will come running back to Blighty.
While the concert audience coped manfully with the works of Copland and Barber and managed a week smile at Sousa, the interval , however, was a sign of things to come and many of the great and the good began to develop smiles – seemingly the work of morticians as they coped with popcorn , hamburgers and cheesecake. Personally I found it quite amusing to see fries being eaten with gloved hands and the silence seemed never-ending as a traumatised Countess of Carsphairn tried to prize her false teeth from a clamped position around a “sticky rib.”
Matters were not helped after the giant nibbles and sarsaparilla. The bell was rung to signal the return of the audience to Lady P-F’s Music Room with the painted ceiling, featuring British Naval triumphs where they found the platform covered in hay bales and storm lanterns hanging on wires tied at each end to the Grinling Gibbons carvings representing Neptune and Britannia. The Deputy Lord Lieutenant immediately complained to Lady Pentland-Firth about the danger of pulling the carved medallions “orff the wall.”
Lady Pentland-Firth said she did not particularly care as they were dust traps anyway and was supported by Cousin Lulubelle who said the whole room would look much less fussy with a formica finish. The crimson faced D.L.L. said it was “an outrage” and he would be taking things further. To which Lulubelle said she was quite sure he would as she had heard from Molly Maidenhead that he had done exactly that with her in Cap Ferat last summer while his wife was shopping in Nice.
The news about the interval drinks and nibbles not to mention the second half programme had attracted a younger audience who normally would have run a mile from such an evening and think Bach is what dogs do, Handel is the front part of a bike and Brahms and List is what happens to Londoners on a Saturday night in the pub. Nevertheless they were entranced by the Copland, tapped their feet to the Sousa and sang along with the Negro Spirituals oblivious to the look of contempt from the regulars who wondered if revolution might be closer than they thought.
Well in a way it was for the second half featured Cousin Lulubelle and the Handsome Stranger in a set featuring Good Night Irene, This land is your land and Hang down your head Tom Dooley. They were joined by folk ethno-musicologists and others who were strangers to good foot care who improvised with a range of household items. The whole evening was a huge success with the younger people and quite a few of the old guard were seen tapping their feet just a little. Inevitably songs suggesting that land is held in two few hands or promoting marital infidelity were frowned upon and many a furious retired military man left for home to check where he had left the key to the gun cupboard. Mrs T’s take on things was influenced by her sociology course at the twilight class, and I overheard her saying to Bunty Haystake’s gardener that the concert was “an interesting example of working class dynamics in the face of exclusion and oppression,” at least this was her viewpoint from the rear balcony seats saved for the servants and giving a partial view of events. The gardener looked non plussed.
Muriel was not entirely happy with the evening as, despite it being a splendid fundraiser for the Orphan Homes, she felt Cousin Lulubelle was making too many friendly overtures to the Handsome Stranger. According to Mrs Travers, Muriel had spotted the two of them “quite by accident” rehearsing as she was hiding in the bushes in the garden.
In any case Muriel has not really had time to keep me up to date as she has been very busy attending funerals and graduations, lunching with Vice Principals and exploring the possibilities of having Gracious Living as an undergraduate course, particularly as The Royal College of Science and Technology in Glasgow has ambitions to become a University. It is after all in the words of its founder John Anderson “a place of useful learning” and after all as Muriel says “what is more useful than gracious living” and given the explosion of interest in folk music what could be more necessary.
“Jasper I am back”
“In here darling how did the graduation go?”
“ It wasn’t a graduation today Jasper it was Lettice Milne-Rae’s funeral, you know author of ‘Mr Suffer-Long’, the Jacobite romance and like my grandmother she was a member of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Debating Society.”
“Is she dead?”
“Well if she isn’t, I don’t know whose funeral I was at. Terrible sausage rolls – typical Edinburgh.”
“Do you fancy a Pimms?”
“Yes I do I am so warm, but not as warm as Cousin Lulubelle and the Handsome Stranger at the concert.
Did you see her? She lets nothing pass her by. I am going to have to warn him; after all she already has two husbands under her belt.”
“Under concrete you mean. A bit like Lady Pentland-Firth come to think of it.”
“Jasper what are you suggesting? Admiral Lord Pentland Firth’s death was accidental”
“If you say so dear if you say. So, ice and mint?”
TTFN
Jasper Wylie
July 1959
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