Now I’m not going to mention any names (believe it or not, my blog can be a secret confessional, in case you have any embarrassing tales to impart) so please do not press me for the true identity of the guilty grandfather in question. But don’t get too excited because the confession I received by means of an email today did not relate to a crime as such, unless you consider a misleading omission a lie, and even then a lie isn’t exactly perjury unless uttered under oath – is it? In this instance the “omission” would hardly rate even as a venial sin (according to the Catholic Clergy – “The gravity of a lie [normally a venial – lesser- sin] is measured against the nature of the truth it deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims.”) In other words, read on in the confidence that no real harm was done, but also that the circumstances were rather humorous.
A male friend of ours, living in a country other than England, was asked at short notice if he would oblige by babysitting his young grandson. I might as well just let you read the email:
I picked the little man up at 8 am and decided to take him to Victoria point. Not the part you know, but an area that is just great for little kids and adults alike. I bought a sausage roll and a pasty, plus a little milk drink to see us through till we got back to home here.
After our snack we decided to walk on the beach. Well, the tide was out and I mean out! There were 300 meters of sand in front of us and, as we walked out toward the sea, I noticed – or I thought I saw – the sand move. I wasn’t wrong, for there in front of us was the biggest army of soldier crabs I’d ever seen in my life! It was like watching a Napoleonic army on the move from a higher vantage point.
The vanguard in front were in a slight “V” shape, flanks to the left, flanks to the right, main body of soldiers in the middle and – would you believe? – a rearguard urging all before them on. Incredible!! Sorry but I never thought to take a photo.To be truthful, the little chap wasn’t overly taken with what I found quite fascinating, but he was okay after I pointed out that they were my friends. He found the swings and slides more to his liking, loads more fun than creepy crabs. So we did bond to a greater degree.
Chapter two.
We arrived home safely enough and it was time for his bottle of milk. While he had that I had a cup of tea and I coaxed him into a half-hour lay down next to me on the settee.
Four hours earlier his mother had said to me:
“You might have to change his nappy, he’s due for something later…”
Luckily for me, or so I thought – so far so good. As we lay there on the couch something wafted past my nostrils just as we were both stirring from our little bonding lay down with each other. Did I say “wafting”? Let me clarify. Something shattered my awakening like… you wouldn’t believe! I now know what it was and so do you – need I explain?
I was straight on the phone.
“When are you coming here?” I pleaded.
“Be there in half an hour” she said.
About an hour later…
“All okay?,” she asked.
“Yes”, I answered nonchalantly.
“He smells a bit,” she hinted.
“I think he’s just done something” I said.
“How long ago?”
“Two minutes, if that,” I fibbed.
Anyway to cut a long story short, she knew I was fibbing. I couldn’t bring myself to do it (change the nappy), and I do feel guilty; but, on the other hand, I feared breaking the bond between his nappy and his lovely little bum…
I’m sure the squeamish grandfather will be forgiven. Methinks it is time for the “little man” to be potty-trained.
What could “that” be? What do so many men like to see a woman do? (Don’t worry, all will be revealed in a minute.) You may be surprised to learn that it is nothing obvious, like wearing black stockings and stiletto heels, or lap dancing, or cavorting to music in a provocative manner (pah, they can see that on the big screen up at the gym any time of the week!).
It seems that really, contrary to popular supposition, most men are drawn to the less common sight of a healthy-looking specimen of womanhood dressed unprepossessingly in old work clothes with paint stains and an old frilly apron over the top, her unwashed hair tied up in a skewiff ponytail, her face and arms besmirched with spots of drying mortar, and similar drops on her legs and shoes (not pretty sandals but ugly “crocs” in hot pink); and, perhaps most importantly, she works at a task more usually associated with men – like bricklaying or re-pointing a brick wall. Take yesterday, for example…
No sooner had I mixed the mortar in a bucket – three parts sand to one part Portland cement (thanks to Google, and coincidentally, I was born in Portland, Victoria) – than a car drew up to the pavement where I was working…
“Excuse me,” said the driver in order to get my attention (considering that I was bending down at the time). Two sets of eyes peered at me through the open window but the driver, a man in his thirties, did the talking. “Is there a Tesco, or similar, supermarket around here?”
“There is a Sainbury’s straight along this road for about a mile and on the right,” I directed.
“You’re doing a good job,” he smiled, looking momentarily from me to the wall, which hadn’t been started yet (at this session).
“Not nearly as good as you could do, I don’t doubt,” I laughed. I had noted some spots of powdery mortar, not dissimilar to my own, on his cheery face.
“We’re doing the same as you on a place down the road,” he admitted but he didn’t offer to take over from me.
Ten minutes later they drove past from the other direction and tooted the car horn – fellow artisans… or trowel mates.
It was neither the sunniest nor the warmest of days and yet the whole world seemed to be passing by on my stretch of pavement, and many people I saw twice. It seemed that nearly every time I bent down someone (mostly men) would pass by and say:
“I like to see a woman doing that!”
Folk were so pleasant and cheery that I had occasionally to stop my work and respond to the words of encouragement and wonder. It’s uncanny how many bricklayers are out there. One even offered me an apprenticeship, to which I declined on the basis that he probably couldn’t afford to employ me because I would be “too slow”; he argued that I would get faster but I just laughed and went back to my wall (didn’t have the heart to tell him that my heart wasn’t really in bricklaying).
I was bending down again when I was interrupted by a different comment.
“I’ve done that!” came the voice of a man from Somerset (or so I thought).
He was nice, rather younger than most of the middle-aged bricklayers who had passed by.
“Are you a bricklayer?,” I asked, more for fun than anything else – after all, a bricklayer wouldn’t put it like that.
“No,” he laughed and showed a set of sparkling white teeth, “I work for Rolls Royce.”
“In Somerset?” I showed off my great knowledge.
“Bristol,” he informed and went on, “I re-pointed my wall, just as you’re doing, and as I reached the bottom of the bag of sand I found, in another plastic bag, a sausage of cement!”
“Did you pull out the sand and start again?”
“No, it went in alright and looked alright; the funny thing is that, after five years the sand is still there and the wall is still standing,” said the nice-looking, youngish Bristolian who is down in Dawlish for two weeks.
We continued chatting for quite a while until at last I thought I had better return to the wall before the mortar was dry. And no, I didn’t ask his name – thought he might mistake me for being single (especially as I was doing a man’s job outside) – but it occurred to me that any single ladies out there looking for “Mr Right” might have greater success meeting him by her front wall than on a modern dance floor. Of course the danger is that the dreamboat may be after you for your expertise as a bricklayer, in which case you would have to tell him “There is mortar life.”
The Sunday ride to Cockwood was somewhat deflating. As you may know, it’s incredibly tiring for both the rider (me) and the pumper (Chris the stalwart) when your bike has a tyre with a faulty valve; it is a case of pump, pump, pump, then ride as fast as you can for as long as you can (until your bottom can feel every tiny stone and you begin to worry about the rims of the wheels); then all over again pump, pump, pump – and dash, dash, dash – and walk, walk, walk (up the steep hills) and so on.
It’s amazing what a difference a new inner tyre with new valve (they are integral nowadays) makes; I felt like I was riding on air, which I was at last, after months of making do with a gradually increasing emission of air from my rear tyre. Eurphoric to realise that my usual fitness had not all but deserted me, I rode like an athlete (albeit a ‘ride for fun’ style of athlete) and in next to no time we had ridden to Cockwood Harbour.
To top it off the tide was in and the sun came out to welcome us, and the members of Cockwood Boat Club were out in force (well, there were four of them). One gentleman had made it out on a tender to his fine-looking catamaran and another chap paddled over in his rowing boat to a larger boat, which was moored close to the edge of the harbour wall above which Chris and I had parked our bikes and were walking.
“Is this your boat?”I asked as the man stepped on board.
“No, it’s for sale. I’m just inspecting it,” he replied with a smile (it seems that most boating people are friendly and happy to talk about boats).
“How much is it?”
“One thousand two hundred pounds,” he came back.
At that moment another small rowing boat, bearing two men, came onto the scene;a man with a cap rowed to one of the many sets of steps on the harbour wall and the two got out and sat on the railings at the roadside where they opened a flask.
“I hope you don’t mind that I took photographs of you coming in,” I said, “But you looked so picturesque.”
“No, we don’t mind,” the man in the cap looked at me with a smile of recognition, “you took some photos of me before…”
“That’s right,” I remembered him too (although he appeared quite different in his cap and high green waders), “I still have the photographs – you were picturesque then too”.
“Why don’t you buy a boat yourself?” asked the friend of the man with the cap and he pointed to the boat that was for sale. “That’s a lovely Orkney Long-Liner!”
“An Orkney Long-Liner? I’m not in the market for a big boat. (A rowing boat is more the ticket!) I wonder if the owner would take less than twelve hundred pounds for it,” I pondered.
“One thousand – without the outboard motor,” his eyes twinkled with glee.
“How do you know? (he chuckled) Is it your boat?”
“One thousand two hundred with the engine,” he continued to chuckle.
“I suppose it’s expensive to moor a boat in the harbour?” I queried.
The two friends looked at each other and laughed.
“Twenty-two pounds a year,” they agreed.
“Wow, that’s cheap,” I looked at Chris.
Chris smiled in his quiet negative way and said nothing.
“You can have my boat for one hundred and seventy-five pounds,” Den said (he’s the man in the cap).
“I could afford that! I could go fishing in it,” I turned to Chris who was still smiling negatively.
“Or, you could join the club for ten pounds a year and take out the club tender for a bit of fishing – there are plenty of eels and the mackerel come right in here” suggested Alec (the man without a cap).
“I could sell them to the pubs,” I had it all planned out in two seconds flat.
“But,” said Den, “if you take the tender out you have to bring it back whenever club members need it to take them to their boats…”
As you can tell, readers, this all needs some consideration. For now I’m going to settle for joining the Cockwood Boat Club – the man who inspected the Orkney Long-Liner came along and he just so happens to be the Vice Lord Admiral (or something like that) of the club. The forms will reach me in a few days and my membership will begin in January. I can hardly wait till next year to go fishing in the harbour with Chris (apparently he can be my guest). It is my hope that the other members will be equipped with their own tenders by then (Den could sell someone his) so that I’ll have enough time to catch a few nice flat-fish such as plaice.
Oh, speaking of flat-fish, that reminds me, the tyre stayed up and I’m buoyant about it!
“Do you think he’ll buy the Orkney Long-Liner?”
Age before beauty!
“A lovely day for selling a boat, or two boats!
“It goes like a dream!”
Back on April 18th
And here are the words to Messing About on the River, written by Tony hatch.
When the weather is fine then you know it’s a sign For messing about on the river. If you take my advice there’s nothing so nice As messing about on the river. There are long boats and short boats and all kinds of craft, And cruisers and keel boats and some with no draught. So take off your coat and hop in a boat Go messing about on the river.
There are boats made from kits that reach you in bits For messing about on the river. Or you might want to skull in a glass-fibred hull. Just messing about on the river. There are tillers and rudders and anchors and cleats, And ropes that are sometimes referred to as sheets. With the wind in your face there’s no finer place, Than messing about on the river.
There are skippers and mates and rowing club eights Just messing about on the river. There are pontoons and trots and all sorts of knots For messing about on the river. With inboards and outboards and dinghies you sail. The first thing you learn is the right way to bail. In a one-seat canoe you’re the skipper and crew, Just messing about on the river.
There are bridges and locks and moorings and docks When messing about on the river. There’s a whirlpool and weir that you mustn’t go near When messing about on the river. There are backwater places all hidden from view, And quaint little islands just awaiting for you. So I’ll leave you right now to cast off your bow, Go messing about on the river.
Not “off the cuff” today, more like “off the bicycle-clips”. Thanks Roland.
An elderly man went to see his doctor.
Elderly man: “Doctor I have a pain in my left leg”
Doctor: “Well let me look at it for you and we’ll see what seems to be the trouble, hmm… I think I know what the trouble is, just as I thought – just part of growing old!”
Elderly man: [in a raised voice] “Can’t be doctor! Just can’t be!”
Doctor: “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that is what’s wrong with it, are you questioning my diagnosis?”
Elderly man: “But doctor, there’s nothing wrong with my other leg and it’s exactly the same age!”
My younger brother Henry called me from Australia this morning (two of my lovely brothers live in Brisbane). The conversation went something like this…
“I made a nice egg jaffle for myself a little while ago,” began Henbone (that’s his family nickname).
“Umm… Sounds good. So you still have your jaffle irons?”
“Don’t you?” Hen was surprised.
“No, we just have a sandwich-maker but we never use it because I’m always on a diet…”
“Never mind,” Hen said sympathetically, “but let me tell you what happened. I had made this delicious-looking jaffle – it was all golden brown, crisp and done to perfection, if I do say so myself (Henry lives on his own as present) – and I had made a steaming hot cup of tea to have with it; both the tea and the jaffle were on the dining room table, and I was just about to begin my meal when I noticed that the kitchen tap was dripping. In the few moments it took for me to walk over to the tap and turn it off something most peculiar happened…”
“A cat had come in and started to eat your jaffle?”
“No,” Henry laughed, “that would have been preferable.”
“A dog?”
“No,” he derided, “nothing nearly as nice as a dog or cat.”
“A gecko or a possom?” my mind raced to other creatures. (Surely a nasty snake would not want to snaffle an egg jaffle!)
“Well,” Henry continued (seeing that I couldn’t possibly guess), “you know those flying cockroaches can get extremely big? This one was the biggest cockroach/beetle type of insect I have ever seen – nearly as big as the circumference of my cup – and there it was… It looked as though a bomb had hit the table. Tea everywhere, all over the table and even over my jaffle! As soon as my back was turned the giant cockroach had obviously kamikazed, from a great height, and with great force, straight into my cup of tea.”
“He was dead then?”
“If the impact hadn’t killed him the scalding hot tea would have finished him off, he was floating on the remaining two-thirds of tea in the cup,” my brother confirmed.
“You didn’t feel like giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation?” I alluded to the time that Henry had brought a drowned child back to life.
“Not this time Sally, I threw his big ugly body out onto the garden.”
“And did you eat your jaffle?”
“No, it was sodden and unappetizing, besides, I was put off. But I made another cup of tea – I was still dying for one.”
Here are some photographs of kamikaze-style cockroaches and others – with thanks to the cockroach lovers who took the original photos.
Roland (alias Birdman of Brisbane) keeps a few jokes up his sleeve; luckily, his shirts are well laundered so the gags are always nice and clean, and never too near the knuckle. Over the phone this morning I casually asked if he had any fresh jokes for me and, straight off the cuff, he replied:
“Should married couples be frank and earnest? Or should one be a woman?”
and…
“Do babies really come from storks [not to be confused with stalks]? Or is it just a load of poppycock?”
~~~~~~~~~
Incidentally, I much prefer the English interpretation of the word “poppycock” to the Dutch origin (according to online Merriam-Webster):
For those of you with an avid interest in etymology (and Charlie Chaplin clips) I have pasted an interesting article that I found on Language Blog about the origins of the expression “Off the cuff”.
The other day, someone asked me about the origins of the phrase “off the cuff”. I’ve always assumed that it had something to do with the old practice of writing informal notes on men’s detachable (and disposable) cuffs. And the OED’s entry agrees, glossing it as
off the cuff (as if from notes made on the shirt-cuff) orig. U.S., extempore, on the spur of the moment, unrehearsed
But as far as I know, the practice of wearing detachable (and sometimes disposable) cuffs ended by the time of the first world war or even before, while the OED’s earliest citation for this idiom is from 1938:
1938 New York Panorama (Federal Writers’ Project, N.Y.) vi. 157 Double talk is created by mixing plausible-sounding gibberish into ordinary conversation, the speaker keeping a straight face or dead pan and enumerating casually or off the cuff. 1941Time (Air Exp. Ed.) 4 Aug. 1/1 Talking off the cuff to a group of civilian-defense volunteers he made them a little homily. 1944Penguin New Writing XX. 130 In that scene, shot off the cuff in a shockingly bad light, there leapt out of the screen..something of the real human guts and dignity. 1948 Economist 3 July 17/2 Mr. Truman’s off-the-cuff comment.
So I figured that the OED just hadn’t researched the idiom adequately. But a fairly extensive search through various online archives only antedated the OED’s citation by two years, to 1936:
The Google Ngrams plot shows origin in the 1930s, and adoption between 1945 and 1960:
My searches also informed me that the early uses of the phrase included not only that improvised-movie-making sense, but also the sense of alerting others to a random event, or perhaps enumerating a diverse list of events, presumably from notes jotting on one of those cuffs. Thus in November of 1942, Billboard began a regular column listing random events, under the heading “Off The Cuff”. Here are (what I think are) the first two:
What has been called “disposable culture” or “the throwaway ethic” began in America around the middle of the nineteenth century when a variety of cheap materials became available to industry. Innovations in the machinery of paper production, for example, made paper a practical substitute for cloth. The millions of paper shirt fronts (bosoms, as they were called), as well as the collars and cuffs that adorned nineteenth-century American men, owed their commercial success to this technological advance.
The beauty of these disposable products, as far as paper manufacturers were concerned, was that demand for them seemed endless. In 1872 America produced 150 million disposable shirt collars and cuffs. Men found paper clothing parts convenient because laundry services in those days were unreliable, expensive, and available mainly in large urban centers. America was still predominantly a rural culture, and before the advent of modern washing machines in the twentieth centruy, laundry was an onerous, labor-intensive task undertaken by women once weekly on Blue Tuesday. Single men simpy lacked access to professional or spousal laundry services. They bought replaceable shirt parts in bulk and changed into them whenever the most visible parts of their attire became stained or discolored.
During the 1870s, a peculiar clothing fad swept the country. Disposable cotton-based paper collars were introduced to the upper classes as a way of maintaining a fresh, white collar rather than attempting to clean soiled cloth collars.
Some of the first paper collars in the country were manufactured two miles north of Ballston by Lindley Murray Crane, a paper mill owner and holder of three patents. Henry Mann’s father also manufactured paper collar materials in nearby Factory Village for some years under the partnership of Mann & Laflin.
Medbery and Mann recognized the potential, and rented space at the Blue Mill to establish the Glen Paper Collar Co. In their first year, the partnership produced 9 million collars. Soon they occupied the entire building. In 1871, they built a five-story, 60-foot by 40-foot addition, reportedly constructed in 20 days. They rented the old Waverly Hall for use as a packing station and salesroom.
Shipments of collars increased. At its height in 1875, the factory was producing 21 million paper collars and 5 million paper cuffs annually employing 150 people, becoming one of the world’s biggest producers. […]
But the fad died out in the mid-1870s. In 1876 Medbery moved to Newburg,New York and became a member of the firm James A. Townsend & Co., manufacturers of writing papers.
This leaves us with four possibilities:
Disposable paper cuffs remained in use, at least in certain groups, right up through 1950 or so;
Movie directors, entertainment journalists, and politicians continued to write on their cuffs long after the cuffs ceased to be disposable;
The expression “off the cuff” originated at some point around 1875, but managed to avoid appearing in print until 1936, and did not become common until the late 1940s, when the physical basis of the metaphor was long dead;
The expression was born when the metaphor was already long dead.
My feeling is that (1) is implausible (2) is silly, (3) is unlikely, and (4) is weird.
“Pop” Flannery, of the City News, found fault with one of the stage reporters because he made a pencil note on his cuff. “Not a bit like it,” declared Mr. Flannery, “only a make-believe reporter makes notes on his cuff.”
Master James Murray, who looks after the Evening Journal at the Courts Building, hadn’t heard “Pop” Flannery’s remark. Mr. Murray told the manager of the Astor–just in a friendly sort of way y’understand–that it was too bad one of the stage reporters hadn’t been told to make a note or two on his cuff. “It would have been a realistic little touch, do you see?” pointed out Mr. Murray.
This suggests that in imagination or in reality, certain sorts of people continued to make notes on their cuffs long after the paper-cuffs fad had faded. Still, I rather doubt that this was a common real-world practice in the 1936-1950 period.
Given how popular Chaplin was, this might well explain why the concept and the associated idiom rose to prominence in the ten or fifteen years after the movie was released.
In conclusion, as I’ve learned from the comments, detachable cuffs were used as note pads even when they were not disposable; and the practice of starching the cuffs of (white) shirts apparently made them suitable for note-taking even when the cuffs were not detachable. This helps us to bridge the half-century gap between the end of the disposable-cuff fad and the rise of the “off-the-cuff” idiom. Still, the idiom grew in popularity at a time (the late 1940s) when the actual practice of writing notes on cuffs must have been nearly dead, at best a memory for older members of the American population — or, perhaps more likely, an image from that Charlie Chaplin movie.
“Snort, snort, snort, grunt, grunt, hiss, snort”, three large cygnets, willed on lovingly by their mother, sang in unison from the middle of the Teign River (where it passes the Passage House Inn – at Newton Abbot – where, coincidentally, Chris chose to park by the river in order to read my blog posts to Mum, as he does every Saturday morning when we take Mum shopping.)
Translated from swan language, the final verse to a traditional swan song, followed by a conversation went something like this…
“When will I see de bees a-humming, All round de comb? When will I hear de banjo strumming, Down in my good old home?” the cygnets sang and their mother hissed her praise.
“Oh, Mama,” snorted the smallest cygnet who was also the brightest, “what’s de banjo?”
“Debanjo,” their mama began grunting her explanation between snorts of laughter, “is a stringed instrument for strumming tunes like de one you were just hissing. It so funny, I thought you was going to ask what ‘de comb’ means, not de banjo!”
“Mama, I already know what de comb is. It be the funny looking red bit on de top of de chicken’s head – I wouldn’t want no bees a-humming aroun’ it if I were a chicken,” the little one rolled his eyes amusingly.
“All de world am dark and dreary today, Mama, ain’t it?” the eldest cygnet grunted his rhetorical question and he gave a wink to show that it was a joke – it was a cloudy day.
The mother swan arched her beautiful white neck back with pride and snorted like a drain.
“De pen is mightier than de sword!” hissed the third cygnet, knowing that her mother would not be able to stop snorting (she had an uncontrollable and peculiar snort – three short blasts and two long – that was rather comic and which endeared her to those around her).
“Ma, look over dare,” came a faint hissper from the youngest, “dat lady is taking photo’s of us with her mobile phone.”
“Can’t we ebber get no peace on dis ribber? Listen, dis is what we’ll do…” hisspered Penny and they huddled together, and their four long necks made two big hearts (one a little lopsided).
The mother and cygnets left their huddle and swam in an arrow, mother at the helm, towards me.
“Oh dear,” I thought, “they think I have food for them. Maybe they think my phone is a slice of pink cake or bread.” And, feeling guilty for any accidental deception, I made a run for it.
Back in the car I noted that they continued on their way to the same spot where I had been standing and they stayed there, necks peering over the grassy river bank to stare at me accusingly, for at least a minute or two. At last the penn led her little bevy away from the bank. I thought I heard her hiss and grunt:
“She’ll bring us some bread next time, my dears. Way down upon de Swanee Ribber…”
All my three brothers are handsome and clever but, according to our mum, Robert (her youngest – “Golden hairs”) has an extra string to his bow – “He is the best piano tuner in the world!” she tells everyone. You might assume that our mother is rather biased, however, the other day a phone call from far away (on the continent) seemed to support her opinion; I imagine the conversation went something like this….
– “Herr Robert Porch?”
– “Ya, I mean yes. This is Robert Porch. How may I help you?” (My little brother is very well mannered.)
– “Well, zis is Herr Klavier. I understand zat you are one our select team of tuners in Great Britain?”
– “That’s right, ya. Yes.”
– “Ze best in ze vorld, ya?”
– “It’s not for me to say -”
– “Zat’s alright, I haff it here in black and vhite. Now let me see….”
– “In black and white? It says that? Really?”
– “Ya, ya, I haff in mein hand ze piece of paper. Alzo, it says ‘Robert looks very goot in uniform’; you are a fireman as well – no?”
– “Vould you happen to be holding a letter from my mother?
– “Ya, ya! It’s very goot – your mama’s words really ‘struck a chord’, as we say at our remarkable piano company (real name withheld due to modesty on the part of the said company). She has all her ‘marbles’, zo she says. In my country we haff a lot of respect for ze elderly mit the murmelm – marbles. Anyvay, Hrodebert, tomorrow vould you be able to make it to Falmouth in Cornvall to tune ze marvellous piano on ze sailink ship, ze Sea Cloud 11? I hope you don’t get ze sea-sickness.”
And so it was that Herr Hrodebert Porch of Dawlish went all the way down to Cornwall to tune a grand piano on-board a luxury cruise sailing vessel called the Sea Cloud 11; Frau Fiona accompanied him and they made a nice day of it. No doubt the captain was thrilled, also the pianist and the elite passengers (maximum ninety-four – in number, not age!); not to mention our Mum who knows for a fact that her youngest son is the best piano tuner in the world.
After becoming widely used in Continental Europe it entered England in its Old French form Robert, where an Old English cognate form (Hrēodbēorht, Hrodberht, Hrēodbēorð, Hrœdbœrð, Hrœdberð) had existed before the Norman Conquest
Anyone who knows me well would not be surprised to learn that I’m no wine buff, they might even regard me as almost teetotal (well my maternal grandparents were “Band of Hope”. In truth, when not dieting (which is not very often – I do try to be good), I’m not averse to the odd glass of wine, Pimms, gin and tonic or the first sip of a cold glass of lager on a hot day: and when I’m in France… I drink like the locals – like a fish – because I speak better French after a few glasses of wine (at least I think I do).
On Friday evening our friend and neighbour, Caroline, called around for drinks. Now Caroline is a beautiful, vivacious party-goer and something of a wine connoisseur; I gathered the latter because, earlier in the day, she said that she wanted to repay a kindness from Chris with a bottle of good wine.
“What kind of wine does Chris like?” she inquired.
“Um…” I racked my brains, “I know he likes Chardonnay…”
“Oh, he likes white wine?” Caroline raised her eyebrows.
“Well sometimes but he likes red wine too. Isn’t Chardonnay the nice buttery white wine?” I wondered if there was something wrong with liking white wine.
“No, I think it’s a bit oaky.” (This is where Caroline showed her great knowledge of wine matters.)
“Okay, I must be mistaken. Say, I’ll ask Chris what he likes and let you know when I see you later.”
Four hours later the gorgeous wine expert was seated in our lounge-room and I remembered what Chris had told me…
“Oh, by the way, Chris likes Ricotta wine. Hold on… no that’s not right… that’s -”
“A cheese!” laughed Caroline finishing my sentence.
“Well it sounds like Ricotta. It begins with an “R” and sounds similar to Ricotta.Oh, what is it Chris?” I called out to my husband who was uncorking a bottle of wine in the kitchen.
“Rioja!” he called back, “It’s Spanish!” (That bit of information made all the difference to me.)
Chris entered the lounge with a bottle of red wine (of some particular sort, which was quite nice as it turned out) and three glasses.
“In this regard Sally reminds me of my mother,” Chris turned to Caroline and I knew he was going to tell a funny story. “You see, my father had been a teetotaller all his life so we never had any alcohol in our house – I made up for it in ‘the city’ when I had left home – and Mum never went into a pub until my dad passed away. My mum’s boyfriend wasn’t teetotal – Arthur liked going into pubs – and one day we were all in a pub; the barman looked at my mother and asked for her order. She answered, ‘I’ll have an orange juice and he’ll have a Manikin!’”
“What did she mean?” I asked (just to make sure I was right).
“A Heineken,” Chris said and he and Caroline looked at me surprised.
“Of course, that’s what I thought,” I bluffed.
And I took a sip from my half-glass of the nice wine – I’m still on my diet.
I’ve never owned a Harley Davidson and I’ve never been a biker chick, nevertheless, I have always liked the unmistakable sound of a big masculine Harley pulling up beside me at a gas station or passing by me on the open road; I like the look of them too. If I was ever to purchase a motor bike (not that it’s very likely now) it would have to be a Harley. Of course, Chris knows my feelings on this subject so, when he saw a big beautiful three-wheeler in the car park at Trago Mills (our favourite store in Devon) my husband thought I might like to inspect it.
“There’s a three-wheeler bike with lots of chrome on it over there,” Chris pointed into the distance.
I squinted my eyes and nodded my interest.
“Well, if you like Mum and I can pick up the paint in the car and come back for you in the car park in a few minutes,” Chris continued obligingly (he knows how to make a girl happy).
So they zoomed off in the car and I hastened over to the bike. A good-looking lad wearing a red football kit sat on a rail and looked at the bike.
“Is it your motor bike?” I queried.
The lad smiled, not quite answering, but somehow suggesting to me that I wasn’t far wrong.
“Or maybe it’s your dad’s bike?” That seemed the more likely scenario.
The boy beamed at me but still he said not a word.
“You must feel very proud sitting behind your dad as he drives his bike,” I continued.
The boy smiled a sheepish smile that made me think he was a nice modest lad.
Then a man came along – not the owner (because he didn’t talk to the boy, and he didn’t look like him) – just another interested person. We a had a short chat about chrome and the nice sound a Harley makes compared to other bikes. He walked around the bike as we conversed and, satisfied, smiled a goodbye before slipping through a gap in the trees to find his car.
Suddenly, another, younger, boy wearing a red football kit appeared beside his big brother and a lady across the road spoke to both boys, perhaps urging them to “Come along”.
“What a shame you haven’t brought your phone,” I heard her say.
“I have,” I called out, “I’ll take some photo’s and put them on my blog so the boys can see them.”
I was still smiling to myself a little while after the mother and her children had gone (the boy hadn’t lied) when a man and woman came along. It seemed to me that they came to look and sneer at the big shiny attraction.
“It’s not even a Harley Davidson,” he derided.
“But it has the eagle insignia,” I answered (well he was standing exactly opposite me).
“Anyone can stick an eagle on a machine,” he leered and showed a set of dirty teeth, “but look closer – it’s a Peugeot! It’s a car with a wheel missing, and it’s got a French engine!”
When I was younger I might have been too frightened of the xenophobic gnome with the wicked glinting eyes and nasty teeth to dare answer back, but I’m older now and less fearful of speaking up.
“I’ve got a French engine – a “Vel Satis” – a Renault (I added in case he didn’t know the make of our obscure car)”. I fancy I may have jutted my chin a tiny bit at him.
“The ‘Vel Satis’ were so awful that Renault only made four!” the gnome could hardly contain his laughter.
At that moment Chris drew up silently beside us in the car (anyway, one of the four) favoured by stylish French presidents. Chris tooted the horn.
“Here it is,” I said, “powerful, luxurious – like a limousine…”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” the ignoble man shook his head and a thin but long lock of lank greasy hair fell over one eyebrow.
Actually, he wasn’t that bad – I was getting a tad carried away; but you know what they say… that “there’s many a true word said in jest”!
Needless to say, it was not without some pleasure that I got into our car and Chris, somewhat impatient at having to wait for me, put down his foot and the Vel Satis took off like a rocket.
