What a lovely surprise tonight! I came across my student ID card from 1968/69, the one year I attended University. I thought I had lost it a long time ago. I was half-jaked when the photo was taken. In the matriculation room that day, I was sitting next to a beautiful blonde girl from London. We seemed to be the only adults in amongst all the noisy kids in the place, so we got talking and decided to go for a drink and come back later. I took her to the Kenilworth in Rose Street, which I hadn’t been in before, but it was entertaining watching the prossies proposition all the old drunks. Anyway, it turns out she was engaged to a guy, a rugby player, who was already a student at Edinburgh University. After she went off to meet him, I had a few more pints elsewhere before returning for my photo. Never saw her again. Sad.
0 Comments
Alison took this photo one night at the Scuola Grande dei Carmini in Venice. When we bought tickets earlier that day for the performance there of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, we were advised to come half-an-hour before it was due to start so that we would have time to view a renowned Tiepolo ceiling in an adjoining room. Like everyone else who arrived early, we chose our seats, placed our programmes on the seats to “reserve” them and then went up a staircase to see the ceiling. We had come across a few Tiepolo ceilings before then, but this one was truly magnificent. Anyway, when we returned to our seats we found that they had been taken by a middle-aged English couple and our programmes discarded on the floor. The man was tall and white-haired. The woman resembled Hyacinth Bouquet in voice and mannerisms, as well as in appearance. Very politely, we explained the business of the Tiepolo and the programmes. “How ridiculous,” Hyacinth exclaimed when we had finished. “Reserving seats, indeed. Who do you think you are?” “Yes, totally ridiculous,” her husband joined in. But we persisted, and the Bouquets moved to vacant seats further along the row. “I’m going to see what all the fuss is about,” we heard Hyacinth say to her husband moments before the performance began. And off she went. Poor Mr “Totally ridiculous” Bouquet. He spent an uncomfortable hour or so watching the performance on his own. And poor old obnoxious Hyacinth. She stood at the foot of the staircase all that time, prevented by a steward from crossing the floor to join her husband during the whole of the performance. Oh, how we fucking laughed!
|
Archives
January 2022
|