More Preparations

Puffing away in my little flat punching lists into my Amstrad, I continued fine tuning the plans for my trip. At the same time I closed the place down. I drafted a Shorthold tenancy agreement and met up with Geraint and Tina meeting them on the Friday following the Measures Gig at Leicester Square tube station. During the week I arranged for the 11 years worth of Private Eye magazines I had somehow accumulated to be bound into books at a book binding place off the Holloway Road called Collis Bird & Withey. While down there I found a sort of stationery wholesale place and got myself some really nice photo-albums to put the pictures from the trip in. How's that for forward planning? I've still got the albums. They are pristine. I never got round to putting any pictures in them. It's not as easy as posting stuff on this blog.

The weekend came around again pretty quickly and it appears that we all went up to Hampstead for the last night of the open air classical concerts at the Kenwood Bowl. I know there were fireworks. It says so in my filofax. I can't remember but I dare say they accompanied the finale to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. We used to go to these concerts every year and memories of them all run into each other. It wasn't the music you went for but the picnic beforehand, the booze and the smoking. The fireworks were always good too especially after the booze and smoking.

I do have one memory from a Kenwood concert that sticks out from many years before. I can recall standing in the queue for entry tickets with Steve, Debbie, Simon Hackett and Lynne. In those days we were all prodigious Benson & Hedges smokers. Please bear in mind that were out in the open air. The entrance to the concert area was about 200 yards from Kenwood House. When all is said and done we were standing in a line in the middle of a field. I lit up a Benson and a woman turned and said in a cross and snooty way "Do you mind?". It was only Claire Rayner! She was in front of me downwind.

I did mind, by the way. I wouldn't have minded so much if it had been anyone else but what were the chances of happening to be standing right behind Claire Rayner? She came over on TV as being very caring and understanding, do you remember? It seems lighting up a fag when she is immediately downwind reveals a different side to Claire. A side she kept hidden from her millions of viewers. An abrupt, terse not to say rude side that wasn't very nice. I didn't do it on purpose! It is not as if I lit up and thought "I know! I'll blow this smoke at Claire Rayner who happens to be standing in front of me in this queue" is it? It's lucky for her that it was me she had snapped at. I could have been someone else. someone slightly unhinged who could have taken grave offence at being asked whether he minded. Her supercilious sneer might've been on the other side of her face if I had decked her, eh?! What would she have made of that?

As it was, I just said I was sorry. Lucky call, Claire! How could you have known how I might have reacted? I suppose she had a point. It isn't much fun breathing in someone else's cigarette smoke. I recognise this now. Sorry, Claire.