Bombed out.

 

I’m piddling about while we wait for Oscar to get his treasure hunt organized.  I also have to do something about Arthur. He’s stuck in Bangkok waiting for Simon to show up and make some kind of documentary about the naughty nightlife. Should be fun.
All in good time. Meanwhile here’s something self-indulgent that I wrote about my mum.

I was in my Pattaya apartment when mum died. Can’t remember exactly what I was doing. Getting me leg over most likely.

My daughter Jane phoned. “Dad? Is that you Dad? Gran’s dead.”

Put me off my stroke that did. I packed a bag and grabbed a taxi to Don Muang. Next thing I know I’m at Heathrow still smelling of knock-off Giorgio.

Mum died in a nursing home in Eastbourne. Choked on a boiled sweet and tripped over a Chihuahua. Probably for the best. She’d had arthritis for some time and it wasn’t getting any better. She’d never really been the same since they took Dr. Collis-Browne’s off the market. She liked a few drops in her stout did mum, got the habit off of Gran I think. Buried in Highbury. Just a few of her friends showed up. And a cousin or two I hardly knew. Samantha came with a bunch of flowers but we didn’t talk.

Mum was a good ’un alright. Adolf bombed us out of three houses but I never heard her moanin’. I stood by her grave thinking about the song she loved to sing…

Sometimes when I feel low
and things look blue
I wish a boy I had... say one like you.
Someone within my heart to build a throne
Someone who'd never part, to call my own
If you were the only girl in the world
and I were the only boy
Nothing else would matter in the world today
We could go on loving in the same old way

A garden of Eden just made for two
With nothing to mar our joy
I would say such wonderful things to you
There would be such wonderful things to do
If you were the only girl in the world
and I were the only boy.

Lovely song that. It was written in 1916 by Clifford Grey and Nat D. Ayer for a hit musical from the same year, The Bing Boys Are Here. Mum would have been a starry-eyed teenage girl at the time (this is long before nosh pits). A lot of artists have recorded it over the years, including Perry Como. Here's Violet Lorraine and George Robey singing it in 1916.

Sing along if you feel like it. Don't be shy. I do it all the time.

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