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July 30, 2007
Saw'd Off!!
Go on...you!!
Next door’s builders are still at it. A year on.
Coming back from the library today I met Casta, daughter of the house, the kind of teen who insists there are subtle differences between the Crew, Jack Wills and Musto’s clothing lines. I asked her when we could expect the building work finally to be finished.
“I really can’t say. There’s still, like, a lot to do.”
“You know what would have been good”, I said, “would have been to get all the power-sawing, for one example, out of the way in one fell swoop. What they’ve done on your house is power-saw all day every day for a week maybe, then it goes quietish and we’re all lulled into a false sense of having a lifestyle again where we’re paying to live, and then we get another week of “bbbbbrrrrrrrrooooooonnnngggg!!! Bbbbbrrrrroooonnnngggg!”
“Oh, but that’s because, like, we’re trying to make it that our, like, builders have some, like, variety.”
“?!!”
“They’re, like, from the Eastern Block, and back home they were, like, doctors and accountants and stuff, but have to, like, take labouring jobs over here as that’s all they can get because, right, their English isn’t good enough for them to do, like, what they’re actually trained to do. So, daddy has gone through it with them and, like, timetabled it so they don’t have to do anything for longer, like, than a week or…like…so they don’t get too, like, bored.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“Well, you wouldn’t like it, surely, if you, like, had to do the same thing, like, time after time, like, would you? And you’re, like, a performer anyway.”
“Sorry, I’m school of what John Le Mesurier said to Wendy Richard when she was starting out: “If possible, try and do the same material for seventy-five years wearing the same blue wool suit.”"
After not even seventy-five shows, I was desperate to change the solo I was doing nightly at Club Kabaret from Giselle to Kitri, Swan Queen or at the very least Sugar Plum; but when I said so to my Country and Western singer father, I got a lecture.
“Are they loving it? Then don’t fix what isn’t broken, no matter if you’re bored doing the same thing night after night. If I had a penny for every time I tried to leave The Old Rugged Cross out of my set and the audience heckled till they got it, same with China Doll, Casting My Lasso and Devil Woman (which he always intro’d with the same line about it being a comment on his marriage) then…”
He wouldn’t be living in a fixed caravan in a slummy bit of Norfolk.
“So, how about you ask your father” I said to Casta, “to make the Poles saw till the sawing’s all done?”
Which would sound a little bit country set to a nice bit of Paderewski, I feel.
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