Sunday August 1, 2010

Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.........Andy Warhol

How did it Go?

Where I used to work they said you should never ask questions in headlines or titles. The reader should not be kept in suspense. If you had something to say, just say it. So let me answer that question quickly: it was huge, it was a love-in, it was a party. If Ted and Nancy and Roger and Sari (TN&RS for short in future) walked in now or at any time in the future I feel we would just go on from where we left off, as if we had walked out of the room and come back a few moments later. There would be no social throat-clearings, uncomfortable silences, sideways glances. We would fall round each other’s necks, start kissing and stuff, and then rabbit away like talk had just been invented.

But let me start at the beginning of yesterday before I return to TN&RS. We train it with R&D to the ferry terminal from where we will take a boat to Sausolito (sp?) across the Bay. At the terminal we have coffees. There is a pleasantly quaint way in cafes and bars here of getting the drink you ordered. They ask for your name and then write it on the cup when your drink is ready. Morris, our Noe Valley host and legal eagle, had only that morning impressed on me the importance of never giving your correct name or date of birth when filling in a form online. (He was helping me – unsuccessfully as it happens – to register a mobile phone I had bought for $10 at the local dime store [see, I’m picking up the lingo!] ) So at the ferry terminal I tell the waitress my name is Marcel Proust. When the drink is made and I am summoned by that name, I notice a young man – is he majoring at Berkeley on the works of the great French asthmatic? I wonder – show interest turning to puzzlement as he notices a white-haired old figure (me) shuffling away with the coffees.

OK, childish, I know. Unlike good wine, I immature with age.

A half hour later we have crossed the Bay, passing Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance on our port side. There’s a huddle of people on the jetty and soon R&D are waving their arms like mad. As we land I distinguish our welcoming party of TN&RS.

Now here I’m going to get a bit personal. You might think that that is incautious. But actually it isn’t. TN&RS will not be able to read this blog! You see, I have debarred them, something that is quite easy to do online. In fact, I could ban all my thousands of readers from this blog so that only my Beloved (if Biggles COULD READ, that is) and myself would have access to it. That is progress, isn’t it? So now I can say whatever I want.

As it becomes clear who’s who on land, I see that Ted is wearing a tight-fitting red jumpsuit and a broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero, Nancy, who could be Liz Taylor’s prettier sister, is sporting a brown zip-up cardigan and cargo trousers (or pants, as I must call them), Roger is adangle with large crescent-shaped earrings (he has recently been to Turkey, we learn later, and has converted to Islam), and Sari, a platinum blonde vision that could have just walked out of a Hollywood studio, is aglow in a loose fluorescent shift with startling silvery-green highlights.

They spirit us off to a magnificent restaurant overlooking the bay, and Californian Sauvignon with a taste of honey over ripe apricots is soon gurgling happily down our throats. That is followed by a New Zealand version of the same wine that has a hint of sheep and trampled clover about it. But that’s Kiwis for you! Bless them! Anyway by then we are past caring and the party is in full swing. Ted brings out a bottle from his side pocket – “my very own moonshine”, he explains to me with a broad wink – and fills our glasses with a fiery liquid.

I had noticed earlier that Ted was carrying a case the shape of a tennis racquet. This he now brings out from under the table. It is a banjo, a bit dusty and with a few loose strings that he proceeds to tighten. “Ma Allegheny Maam did give me this,” he says as he cradles it in his arms. Soon the Blue Grass is rambling, the Red Rooster is crowing and our feet are a-tappin’ and our bodies shakin’. A group of Japanese tourists attending a wedding party in the next room surround us with cameras. Jane, who usually falls into a narcoleptic coma after a half glass of sherry, is flinging her arms about and yelling that she is doing an old Welsh country dance.

Hours later we stretch out on the grass by a fountain and slowly surface. It is time to return to the mainland and pick up our dull lives.

But for a few hours we have lived somewhere else. Ted and Nancy and Roger and Sari, many thanks! That was a special day.