Tales of the Unexpected

A number of things helped to lift my spirits this week: the torrential downpours on Tuesday, for example, which replenished our rain butts and restored our lettuce plants; the boost to Obama’s re-election hopes with the unexpected disposal of Osama Bin Laden. Most of all, though, the news that the ex-Queen Mother, bless her little pick-me-ups, liked steel pan music and Jamaican ska.

Three-minute hero? Or my girl Lallipap?

Can you imagine? The old Queen Mum jerking away in time to the staccato riddims of the Skatalites? ‘Charles, it’s granny… You must come over, dear. I’ve just got this wonderful new record by Roland Alphonso… the Skatalites, you know… No, Don Drummond was the trombonist. Didn’t that ridiculous school of yours teach you anything…? Do pop by, won’t you dear? I’ve got this most terrible urge to dance…’

Such little unexpected things restore your faith that there is magic in the quotidian. I revel in the incongruous: the fact that things and people don’t always fit into convenient cubby-holes. Heavens, I’m even prepared to admit I might be wrong when the French fail to conform to stereotype.

It’s a shame in a way that they got rid of their royalty. There’s a lot to be said against a royal family as titular heads of state, but it’s undeniable that the Windsors are a source of endless fascination and, judging by the way that the French have taken William and Kate to their collective Gallic bosom, surrogate royals for my republican brethren. They sure help to boost our national stock. ‘So Breetish’ is a phrase that suggests both mockery and envy.

I look after a quintessentially Breetish couple whenever they visit their apartment in the nearby chateau that provides just one of my many distracting day-jobs. The phrase ‘look after’ is not patronising, but literal. This elderly couple exist on an intellectual version of Cloud 9, thus rendering them as helpless as upturned tortoises in the event of the unexpected. They spend their time here reading and pottering, and when they go back home they pass on to us all the food that they haven’t and all the books that they have consumed.

The biblical rain that I spoke of was accompanied by a storm of apocalyptic proportions. It blew out the couple’s electricity supply. Edgar phoned me on his mobile during the afternoon to ask what they should do. I suggested that they wait a little while to see whether it would be restored and then to check their trip-switch. I didn’t hear anything more and (dangerously) assumed that everything was once more, to use their phrase, tickety-boo.

That evening, while eating the delicious dinner that I had prepared in my role as househusband, the phone kept ringing. It was Edgar each time – until he was cut off each time in the act of explaining, laboriously, what he had done. I managed to gather enough to realise that they were still preparing for their departure the next morning without the aid of power.

So I drove up to the chateau as soon as I had polished my plate and taken it to the sink. The electronically operated gates seemed to work. I checked the other apartments and found that their lights still worked. This suggested… well, to Edgar and Elizabeth it suggested a crisis. I should phone the electrician straight away, if I wouldn’t mind awfully. I asked to see their fuse box. I pushed in the button, which had clearly tripped, and hey presto! Power was restored. They were both as surprised as children watching a conjuring trick. Elizabeth gave me a hug and thanked me for my prestidigitation. Earlier she had emptied out the immobilised dishwasher and washed up in a bowl of cold water. Her paternal husband looked bemused and a little sheepish. This is a man who once helped to run ICI. Oxford-educated, he has written a mighty tome on the life of Admiral Nelson. He is half way through some epic new biography of the poet Houseman. But practicalities has he none.

I was not surprised. However, when we sat down to chat, I heard about the education of their son, James, a successful doctor. I discovered that he was very much into heavy metal as a ‘yoot’. Nowadays he likes opera and he will go with them to Glyndebourne. But he still listens to heavy metal. Now it would have been truly wonderful to discover at this point that Edgar and Elizabeth were fans of Metallica and Black Sabbath. Alas, they are not. But… but their son taught them to value the music of Elton John.

I drove home that evening with a big smile on my face. I haven’t been a fan of the dumpy Sir Elton for many decades, but I had an endearing image of Edgar and Elizabeth driving back to the U.K. and singing along to ‘Benny and the Jets’ or, heaven forfend (dear boy), ‘Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting’. When next they’re here, in July, I should try them with a little Laurel Aitken. If it worked for the Queen Mum, why not for my ageing aristocratic couple?

‘Skanga, skanga… Ya stick it up, ya stick it up…’