Should a priest been seen to drink? Best on the whole, certainly, not to be seen to be drunk. One thinks of poor Canon ‘Bottle’ Topps whose commitment to the sauce was the stuff of legend, before he was needed to be shipped off to the funny-farm friary after mistaking a funeral for a wedding. (‘On this joyous occasion…’ is absolutely not the way to open proceedings when the recently and much mourned departed is but some ten feet in front of one in a perfectly visible coffin.)
Quite why and how dear Bottle’s admiration of a decent sherry before dinner as a seminarian turned into a raging thirst for jarfuls of whisky at all and any times of day or night, one simply does not know; though those who are more familiar than I with Mrs Canon Topps have been seen to tip the occasional nod and wink in that marital direction.
A kindly parish – they are legion – can be a pretty safe place on which to float this particular boat if needs be. ‘Vicar’s a bit poorly today’ will be a discreet local code for ‘The sot’s too pissed to give out the prizes at Speech Day’, or whatever non-liturgical affair he is unable to attend. (A compassionate curate – they are far fewer – willing to step in at a moment’s notice when the Mass itself is at risk of a no-show, is a must-have for the more strictly clerical duties.)
Some parishioners will, indeed, be more empathetic than sympathetic to a drinking priest, happy to have some – as it were – bibendur applied to their own predilection for the booze. That, though, is not an argument one should allow to be fostered; less regarding that particular form of camaraderie than when used as any argument in favour of shepherd being as and at one with his flock.
‘How can a priest understand family life if he has no family himself?’ they foolishly cry. I shall never be a hangman and pray God I shall never be in need of a hanging; yet I must have power and authority to minister to both should either come my way in need of spiritual help and healing. No, the very notion of a man of God having to be also a man of the people is perfect tish and tosh all round, dangerous nonsense indeed.
Taking but this one case – to drink or not to drink – as the question in hand, one simply cannot have the pleasing of everyone. Be a hearty toper and there will be those whose skirts can very nearly be heard the breadth of the county being drawn in, in disgust and dismay both. Be, on the other hand, as dry as a churchyard bone and you’ll lose the majority of folk who don’t much care for any sense that their priest has it in for them for being beerfully cheerful.
Be all that as it may, I am more than content to hold a traditional middle-ground approach to the whole matter. There shall, for example, always be a welcoming bottle of a good malt waiting for anyone who comes calling at the Rectory door, and in the absence of such a guest then the putative host is more than happy to partake of a couple of thick fingers of the stuff himself of a solitary evening.
That, over time, those measuring fingers have grown somewhat fatter is a matter of some record. (H for one has it striped down, which is of consequence as merits no telling.) Has one even grown closer to having to take more the equine route: to begin to consider things by the whole hand not merely the digit per se? That the question may be asked rightly infers that it could be answered in the affirmative. But if so then be so. A man’s a man for all that, one avers.
Teeth-sucking therapists and other interfering busybodies may squeak ‘Fellow’s in denial’ ‘til the stars fall, but I shall not be so falsely accused or perniciously judged. Nothing there but passing fad and fashion as best I can see it, certainly as applying to the clergy.
Of a time the hunting parson was quite the thing; now of course as much inhibited by secular disapprobation as by lawful prohibition. That same fellow, having counted the hounds out and counted them back in again, would later be found merrily pulling on his corn-cob pipe - stuffed with smuggled baccy - and washed down with a mug of hot brandy, itself similarly perfectly lacking any regulatory paperwork from the dread Revenue and/or Customs.
One must be careful not to overstep the bounds of required clerical decorum here, but one also must be excused to some forgiving degree that living, as one now is, by the riverside in a house where once smugglers dwelt and carried on their knavish trade, one is far more at present pro- not anti- the whole Kipling ‘waking at midnight to the sound of passing horses with no desire to enquire further as to illicit purpose’ thing. Indeed one could not help but admire - at a safe distance admittedly – the legend on the t-shirt of the fellow at the bar yester evening: ‘I hate people who take drugs – police and customs officers’. Naughty but nice one will permit oneself to say.
This then the libertarian mood of the moment, it somewhat heavily jarred with the horrid ‘nanny state’ mentality prevailing down at the local slaughter-house, aka a thoroughly modern and deadly dangerous NHS hospital. Having only popped in as per for some routine reassurance from one’s ever-delightful oncologist, one was perhaps off one’s guard when waylaid by a beaming nurse with a clipboard. (On reflection, that should have been the clue: a bedpan, a thermometer or a cabinet stuffed with healing medicines are proper accessories for a nurse, not a manager’s badge of shame.)
‘We’re just doing a little survey Rector, could you spare a moment or two?’ ‘Little survey’ – ha indeed! More pointless ‘customer feedback’ and useless ‘raw data’ to feed the ever-gaping maw of central command and control. One could at once spot this of course, but ‘tis one of the perils of the clerical classes that we are not permitted – as any other are – to be seen to snub any beaming young nurse.
‘We just want to ask people about their drinking habits.’ Foolish parson should have bolted like any mare when affrighted by its own shadow, not dived on in like some over-confident contestant on ‘Mastermind’ – how one misses dear Magnus – invited to expound on his specialist subject.
First question was a blinder, in the sense that one was totally bemused and baffled by it. ‘How many units of alcohol do you drink in a week?’ Well what, precisely, is a ‘unit of alcohol’ one could only in truth respond. A pint, a glass – a bottle even – a ‘say when’, a ‘make that a large one if you would George’ are all perfectly familiar measures for drinks; but no, a ‘unit’ has no meaning in the lexicon of life as lived. A slight dimming of the young chit’s beam at that I fear, as she herself feared she didn’t actually know and had hoped that I would. (Clearly some work then yet to be done on the pre-survey briefing phase of the whole operation.)
From not terribly good to awfully rather poor I fear the session went. That the entire information exchange was just that – a list of preset questions from which there could be no deviation, nor to which could there be anything supplementary added – perfectly ill-fitted the subject to hand. If one is going to open up on such sensitive and revealing matters such as mornings one could not quite recall the night before, or mornings when one has – one hasn’t – reached for more drink, or unexplained personal injuries, or – the killer – regrets for actions taken under the influence; if then all that deep stuff is up for debate, it is only right and proper that one is not utterly restricted and constrained in answering to ‘Never’ or ‘Sometimes’ or ‘Frequently’.
‘Well, there was that time I nicked Papa’s car as a junior and bashed it into the Colonel’s front wall. Caused quite a stink I can tell you.’ Such nostalgic confessing of youthful indiscretions cannot be done any justice this short, sharp way. Reverting to the ‘Mastermind’ analogy: to be started is not then at once to be stopped dead in one’s tracks. Or rather it shouldn’t be, though it was regretfully.
A certain temptation began to grow to be subversive. ‘But does not everyone consume seven bottles of whiskey between sunrise and the setting of the same?’ Or better still, ‘I’ve killed before you know.’ (That last a splendid tip from a delightful visiting Mexican priest many years back: ‘If ever you are stuck with a complete bore at a party, just drop in to the conversation that you have a history of homicide and you’ll at once be set free.’ And who said liberation theology is complete pants eh?) Tempted, but not succumbing.
Less in truth out of consideration for the dignity of the nursing profession, more a creeping unease about the future safeguarding of one’s answers; wafty reassurances that ‘all data will be treated in strict confidence’ cutting not a stem of mustard plant at this point.
My entire stance on this matter is that no sooner is any piece of info or gen entered into a computer, than it at once becomes completely available to the entire wide world of web. Whether by malice, by design or by simple human mishap, once in it will eventually out is my unswervable view. This just in general; regarding the NHS in particular, one knows that it has no more capacity to maintain confidentiality within than a sieve to bail a boat without.
The outcome was as unsatisfactory as the process or the content. ‘You’ve scored 14, Rector. Two more and I would have had to refer you to a specialist physician in the sphere of substance abuse,’ were Nanny Nursey’s concluding remarks. Refer all you like I’ll be making my own choices in the matter was my silent riposte, tempered in part by the, equally unspoken, reflection that one had categorically downplayed some aspects of some of the answers as given. The odd ‘Frequently’ metamorphosing into the ‘Sometimes’, or the ‘Who hasn’t?’ emerging as the ‘What me?’ That sort of thing.
All in all a tricky, awkward and an upsetting occasion sufficient to drive any clergyman to further drink. More gin anyone?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Losing Streak...
..."That'll be 95 pence Rector." Only it wasn't. Having carefully counted out the required coinage for the purchase, it would appear that one had only handed over a mere 80p, being the 15p light of the full amount. Could have been deuced awkward had suspicion arisen as to any attempt to defraud the place. Not, fortunately, with dear Mavis - purveyor of bread, milk and other light groceries to the parish - who has a delightfully old-fashioned regard for and trust in the clergy.
Imagine though the frightful embarrassment had one been in some foreign place - any local town standing for the purpose - unknown and untested. Might not the cry have gone up: 'Oi, Derek. Over here smartish. We've got some scoundrel pretending he's holy and all with even that fake dog-collar malarkey. Trying to slip out a good three shillings short. You hold the door, I'll be phoning Sergeant Hawkins this very minute. You stand still you cove!' (That last to me of course. The sort of sad exchange that does no doubt occur throughout the working day of any a crime-ridden town.)
But though spared any difficult explanation of culpability in failing to make, in effect, two and two a round, wholesome four; though not in that sense any guilt obtaining, wasn't it horrid, at a cognitive if not criminal level, to discover - and not for the first time recently, which is telling - that such a simple arithmetical calculation appeared to have been a non-starter?
Could it be the river air, you ask? Or you might if you had insight into the calm and soothing torpor that riverside life engenders. Slow up and slow down runs the tide, life passing by thence back again. No mind or spirit should or could resist this easeful rhythm, nor does mine indeed. A goodly thing no doubt, restorative and reviving in its way, but yet not entirely fitting for the active parson about the place.
The more contemplative cove – a decent hairy Camoldolese hermit say – could very reasonably aver it more vocational than recreational and not be challenged. But then he does not have parochial accounts to complete before Wednesday next, or the impending emotional meltdown of a neighbouring family double-whammied by severe illness on top of a redundancy all in the same week; or further a mid-Lenten homily to bash out (theme – ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’) with half an eye on the possibility that the Archdeacon might just happen to drop in for Holy Communion Sunday coming.
Been doing a lot of ‘just dropping in’ has Derek of late. Rumours abounding as to why, the most charitable of which being that he’s rather keen, at present, to show to Bish Tom how useful and ‘cost effective’ he is to the diocese in these economically straightened times of ours. (A reasonable personal goal one must admit, not least for someone who can be called – not by me of course – a ‘waste of a good cassock’. Pity though he cannot find a less intrusive way of making the same point.)
Anyway, these are not the sorts of burdens with which our aforementioned hairy and heaven-bound hermit must wrestle. Sharp minds are necessary to pull off - with what success one might - the more variant and vibrant mix of the active life, having far more of an eye on the present godly earth than the eternal paradise. Metaphorically speaking, one could say the difference between crossing a busy road and an open field. Other than the occasional cowpat, there is little in the latter that need detain the gaze downward, freeing mind and spirit to soar as the bird. Try that on the A127 and you’re hamburger pronto.
Keeping then calm and carrying indeed on are never going to be sufficient admonishment for the priest of any parish, howsoever rurally remote and relaxed it might – as ours is – be. Getting a grip and bucking up, along with daily doses of cracking on, are quite more the thing. Hence a certain deep concern that, whatsoever the cause of the current synaptic siesta, not being up to the job of counting to ninety-five in coin of the realm is not a happy sign or portent.
If, though, it had been but that one moment of mental dereliction I should not be so bothered or baffled. One accidental lapse permitted, but there is sadly more – or rather perhaps less.
The inner circle will know me to be fond of the occasional game of cards. (Bish Tom probably has a file on the matter courtesy of Derek’s nosing about, but if he does he also has the decency to keep QT on the matter.) Not so frequent a frequenter of the green baize has one been of latter years. H does not approve – nor why should she? – of a habit that has the more depleted the family holdings than added to its assets over the years, it has to be admitted.
Even H, however, was not displeased when the other month I was able happily to inform her that I had – for old times’ sake really – been gifted a free seat at a stonking great tournament with a cash prize pool of not a dime short of 1 million dollars! Even the most severe cost-benefit analysis could find nothing to disapprove of those racing odds: nothing to pay for and everything to play for. Hot stuff indeed and duly marked down in the diary.
Only it wasn’t. The game was real enough all right – one is ever careful as one must be of online scams – just, sad to report, my recollection of the timing of the thing turned out to be utterly duff. Had it clearly pencilled in for next Sunday night following - with Curate Charlie striped down for Evensong, leaving the way to the table entirely free of any liturgical obstacle. A smart enough move, but based on an entirely false premise – the game was last night not a week hence.
Discovered this through utter accident, logging casually on thence noting to one’s absolute horror that one was three hours late in arriving – not seven days early – one’s opening pile of chips had been blinded to next to zero and not a hope in heaven – or the other place – of making any a decent fist of it. Four or five desultory hands, then busted out with K-10 suited against K-3 off - and a 3 duly turning up on the turn to add final insult to self-inflicted injury.
Now this is no little cheese we have here. It is not the missed opportunity to earn sufficient for a longish sabbatical that rankles, it is the unfathomable lapse of memory and mind that somehow saw one making a mess of even being there on time. Think of the song: ‘I’m getting married in the morning, ding dong etc…’ Wretched piece we’ll admit, quite teeth on edge putting all round, but let it stand as a comparator. Imagine that came the response ‘No, actually you were supposed to have been in Church getting hitched last weekend. You appear to have gotten the dates muddled.’
It’s not going to happen is it? These sorts of errors cannot occur can they? There are some things just so important in life that one could not possibly mistake the very timing of them. Well they can and they have. My losing streak just went critical. Steps will have to be taken, ever so soon as I can recall where I last saw them.
Imagine though the frightful embarrassment had one been in some foreign place - any local town standing for the purpose - unknown and untested. Might not the cry have gone up: 'Oi, Derek. Over here smartish. We've got some scoundrel pretending he's holy and all with even that fake dog-collar malarkey. Trying to slip out a good three shillings short. You hold the door, I'll be phoning Sergeant Hawkins this very minute. You stand still you cove!' (That last to me of course. The sort of sad exchange that does no doubt occur throughout the working day of any a crime-ridden town.)
But though spared any difficult explanation of culpability in failing to make, in effect, two and two a round, wholesome four; though not in that sense any guilt obtaining, wasn't it horrid, at a cognitive if not criminal level, to discover - and not for the first time recently, which is telling - that such a simple arithmetical calculation appeared to have been a non-starter?
Could it be the river air, you ask? Or you might if you had insight into the calm and soothing torpor that riverside life engenders. Slow up and slow down runs the tide, life passing by thence back again. No mind or spirit should or could resist this easeful rhythm, nor does mine indeed. A goodly thing no doubt, restorative and reviving in its way, but yet not entirely fitting for the active parson about the place.
The more contemplative cove – a decent hairy Camoldolese hermit say – could very reasonably aver it more vocational than recreational and not be challenged. But then he does not have parochial accounts to complete before Wednesday next, or the impending emotional meltdown of a neighbouring family double-whammied by severe illness on top of a redundancy all in the same week; or further a mid-Lenten homily to bash out (theme – ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’) with half an eye on the possibility that the Archdeacon might just happen to drop in for Holy Communion Sunday coming.
Been doing a lot of ‘just dropping in’ has Derek of late. Rumours abounding as to why, the most charitable of which being that he’s rather keen, at present, to show to Bish Tom how useful and ‘cost effective’ he is to the diocese in these economically straightened times of ours. (A reasonable personal goal one must admit, not least for someone who can be called – not by me of course – a ‘waste of a good cassock’. Pity though he cannot find a less intrusive way of making the same point.)
Anyway, these are not the sorts of burdens with which our aforementioned hairy and heaven-bound hermit must wrestle. Sharp minds are necessary to pull off - with what success one might - the more variant and vibrant mix of the active life, having far more of an eye on the present godly earth than the eternal paradise. Metaphorically speaking, one could say the difference between crossing a busy road and an open field. Other than the occasional cowpat, there is little in the latter that need detain the gaze downward, freeing mind and spirit to soar as the bird. Try that on the A127 and you’re hamburger pronto.
Keeping then calm and carrying indeed on are never going to be sufficient admonishment for the priest of any parish, howsoever rurally remote and relaxed it might – as ours is – be. Getting a grip and bucking up, along with daily doses of cracking on, are quite more the thing. Hence a certain deep concern that, whatsoever the cause of the current synaptic siesta, not being up to the job of counting to ninety-five in coin of the realm is not a happy sign or portent.
If, though, it had been but that one moment of mental dereliction I should not be so bothered or baffled. One accidental lapse permitted, but there is sadly more – or rather perhaps less.
The inner circle will know me to be fond of the occasional game of cards. (Bish Tom probably has a file on the matter courtesy of Derek’s nosing about, but if he does he also has the decency to keep QT on the matter.) Not so frequent a frequenter of the green baize has one been of latter years. H does not approve – nor why should she? – of a habit that has the more depleted the family holdings than added to its assets over the years, it has to be admitted.
Even H, however, was not displeased when the other month I was able happily to inform her that I had – for old times’ sake really – been gifted a free seat at a stonking great tournament with a cash prize pool of not a dime short of 1 million dollars! Even the most severe cost-benefit analysis could find nothing to disapprove of those racing odds: nothing to pay for and everything to play for. Hot stuff indeed and duly marked down in the diary.
Only it wasn’t. The game was real enough all right – one is ever careful as one must be of online scams – just, sad to report, my recollection of the timing of the thing turned out to be utterly duff. Had it clearly pencilled in for next Sunday night following - with Curate Charlie striped down for Evensong, leaving the way to the table entirely free of any liturgical obstacle. A smart enough move, but based on an entirely false premise – the game was last night not a week hence.
Discovered this through utter accident, logging casually on thence noting to one’s absolute horror that one was three hours late in arriving – not seven days early – one’s opening pile of chips had been blinded to next to zero and not a hope in heaven – or the other place – of making any a decent fist of it. Four or five desultory hands, then busted out with K-10 suited against K-3 off - and a 3 duly turning up on the turn to add final insult to self-inflicted injury.
Now this is no little cheese we have here. It is not the missed opportunity to earn sufficient for a longish sabbatical that rankles, it is the unfathomable lapse of memory and mind that somehow saw one making a mess of even being there on time. Think of the song: ‘I’m getting married in the morning, ding dong etc…’ Wretched piece we’ll admit, quite teeth on edge putting all round, but let it stand as a comparator. Imagine that came the response ‘No, actually you were supposed to have been in Church getting hitched last weekend. You appear to have gotten the dates muddled.’
It’s not going to happen is it? These sorts of errors cannot occur can they? There are some things just so important in life that one could not possibly mistake the very timing of them. Well they can and they have. My losing streak just went critical. Steps will have to be taken, ever so soon as I can recall where I last saw them.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Moving On: Part The Second
"Someone has hacked into my account..." A scary proposition, raising spectres of hard-earned funds being siphoned-off by sneaky coves too lazy and too clever to work for their own living.
Context here, though, is a strong signifier. Were I to say it, 'twould be true; when, however, it is young E the utterer one knows at once, by parental instinct, that this is merely late-teenage code for 'I have foolishly overspent, dearest Papa, and could you lend me a couple o' hundred until pay day, or else I starve and it be on your conscience forever?' ('Lend' being, naturally, a further juvenile code for 'give freely with no expectation of any return at any time, ever'.)
In the old dispensation the matter would have easily been resolved. 'Hie thee to thy room at once child, Mama will summons you when supper is served, and if your footloose ways vis-à-vis personal cashflow means you are effectively self-grounded, with no socialising or spending, until the end of the month, then take it as being but a tough, salutary and necessary lesson in life's funny ways.' Simple Micawber principle of finance, with which we are all so familiar - in theory at least if not quite in practice. (Know ye it not? Then look it up at once, 'ere you and yours are doomed to eternal penury.)
Dispensations being rather new than old, the remedy must shift to another plane altogether. A few fiddles with the - quite old - Internet banking malarkey and the required funds are telegraphed over instanter. (The alternative of a plain 'No' not being a sustainable option. Feet perhaps should be firmly put and kept down, strangely though they never are. It is, after all, a parent thing.)
Why not - you reasonably ask - if an exchange of funds is required the traditional 'hand in the pocket, hand over the cash in readies' as per the perennial norm of these things? Not a goer any longer, sad - in its way - to report. For we are here and E is there, quite beyond the reach of an outstretched fatherly arm, even one heavily baited with cash. How, one has to ask, has it come to this, that a short moment or two ago E was but a literal babe at home and in arms, and yet now she is so grown and grown up to be living in her 'own flat'? (The quotation being yet another signifier that we, of course, are essentially paying for the whole thing.)
Time it is indeed that has done the deed alone and unaided. Blink only - it seems - and you have missed it. Whoosh quite they go: babe, infant, child, adolescent then finally grown and gone all in a trice. Takes some digesting that does: the bare and bereft nest sans fledgling. All as nature intends, one does not wish to cling - well yes of course one does ever so - and thus, bracing oneself, one waves toodle-pip, fond farewell, crying 'take good care and don't forget to text', as the next generation legs it down the road towards independence and freedom.
Does one then lose all purpose in living now that the daily nurturing round is done? Can seem that way at times. Opportunity now there may well be to boogie on down to some hot night-spot safe in the knowledge that one will not be upbraided for sad dad dancing; a chance given but not taken. Mates round for a three-day poker-fest another possibility, with no innocent child to be spared the exposure to such wanton moral turpitude. Can't really see that happening either. Time perhaps to break out the hash-stash, now that the 'do as I say not as you observe me to do' imprecation has lost its imperative? Hardly appeals at all, possibly strange to discover.
Jump on a passing traveller's caravan, the fortuitous life of the raggle-taggle gypsy-o? That I own would be a belter. Would have, though, to be a wi-fied caravan for the next 'I've been hacked' call. Wish only I'd had that excuse with the Palladian parents. Sounds all so plausible don't it? Not to the ever-doting but not yet daft Papa it don't!
Context here, though, is a strong signifier. Were I to say it, 'twould be true; when, however, it is young E the utterer one knows at once, by parental instinct, that this is merely late-teenage code for 'I have foolishly overspent, dearest Papa, and could you lend me a couple o' hundred until pay day, or else I starve and it be on your conscience forever?' ('Lend' being, naturally, a further juvenile code for 'give freely with no expectation of any return at any time, ever'.)
In the old dispensation the matter would have easily been resolved. 'Hie thee to thy room at once child, Mama will summons you when supper is served, and if your footloose ways vis-à-vis personal cashflow means you are effectively self-grounded, with no socialising or spending, until the end of the month, then take it as being but a tough, salutary and necessary lesson in life's funny ways.' Simple Micawber principle of finance, with which we are all so familiar - in theory at least if not quite in practice. (Know ye it not? Then look it up at once, 'ere you and yours are doomed to eternal penury.)
Dispensations being rather new than old, the remedy must shift to another plane altogether. A few fiddles with the - quite old - Internet banking malarkey and the required funds are telegraphed over instanter. (The alternative of a plain 'No' not being a sustainable option. Feet perhaps should be firmly put and kept down, strangely though they never are. It is, after all, a parent thing.)
Why not - you reasonably ask - if an exchange of funds is required the traditional 'hand in the pocket, hand over the cash in readies' as per the perennial norm of these things? Not a goer any longer, sad - in its way - to report. For we are here and E is there, quite beyond the reach of an outstretched fatherly arm, even one heavily baited with cash. How, one has to ask, has it come to this, that a short moment or two ago E was but a literal babe at home and in arms, and yet now she is so grown and grown up to be living in her 'own flat'? (The quotation being yet another signifier that we, of course, are essentially paying for the whole thing.)
Time it is indeed that has done the deed alone and unaided. Blink only - it seems - and you have missed it. Whoosh quite they go: babe, infant, child, adolescent then finally grown and gone all in a trice. Takes some digesting that does: the bare and bereft nest sans fledgling. All as nature intends, one does not wish to cling - well yes of course one does ever so - and thus, bracing oneself, one waves toodle-pip, fond farewell, crying 'take good care and don't forget to text', as the next generation legs it down the road towards independence and freedom.
Does one then lose all purpose in living now that the daily nurturing round is done? Can seem that way at times. Opportunity now there may well be to boogie on down to some hot night-spot safe in the knowledge that one will not be upbraided for sad dad dancing; a chance given but not taken. Mates round for a three-day poker-fest another possibility, with no innocent child to be spared the exposure to such wanton moral turpitude. Can't really see that happening either. Time perhaps to break out the hash-stash, now that the 'do as I say not as you observe me to do' imprecation has lost its imperative? Hardly appeals at all, possibly strange to discover.
Jump on a passing traveller's caravan, the fortuitous life of the raggle-taggle gypsy-o? That I own would be a belter. Would have, though, to be a wi-fied caravan for the next 'I've been hacked' call. Wish only I'd had that excuse with the Palladian parents. Sounds all so plausible don't it? Not to the ever-doting but not yet daft Papa it don't!
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