BARRELING ON

Skipping for a moment the bombshell that Bloggiana has just dropped – that for the last five days, she has been shacked up in a bedsit in Gretna with the redoubtable IluvBigKnockers, her new internet friend (or Randolph as he turns out to be) - I Piccalilli find myself sharing instead reminiscences with the Old Girl about Lady Dyke whose sudden demise Bloggiana has just alluded to.

Now you may recall that Lady Ravelston Dyke had one and only one friend and that was Great Uncle Cymbeline. You may recall also that it was she who bestrode Edinburgh’s Newtown like a veritable Boudicca, pounding through the salons of the Scottish great and good (sic), her hold on the reins of Coffee Morning protocol unswerving. Lady Ravelstonia, the very scion of social standards, who would not have been seen dead in the street without arrow straight stocking seams and a pale fixed demeanour worthy of a pioneering shower maintenance officer from Belsen. Lady Dykiana who even at the age of 101 was known to drive round the cobbled Ainslie Place at 60 miles an hour, scattering small dogs and old ladies like so much scree; and whose defence of that treasured thing, the conveniently situated private parking space, was fierce enough to make grown truck-drivers weep.

About the Coffee Morning Queen’s departure, it seems that Bloggiana and I have mixed feelings. I mean, says Bloggiana, now that the old bat has popped it, do you suppose that means we will have to visit Great Uncle Cymbeline even more frequently? This is a daunting prospect and, PG-drenched as we are, it manages to reduce us both to silence for some considerable time.

Luckily our conversation picks up once again when Bloggiana reminds me about that CM we once attended in Morningside when we were children and could not have been expected to know better. In those days, our greatest dream was that Lady Dee would keel over. Her grip on our uncle was such that if he offered us a biscuit, albeit mouldy, and she was around, we would have to hand the biscuit back; and sit each on a bentwood chair, our thumbs tucked under our buttocks, until dusk. And should either of us have been caught in her presence with the glimmer of a smile on our lips, Lady Dyke was as swift to pounce on us as a kestrel to swoop on a mouse.

Great Uncle Cymbeline took us to this particular coffee morning because Lady Dyke took him and we were for a moment in his charge. Guilelessly, we went along in our gingham dresses and Start-Rite shoes. We took our country bumpkin manners and our giggles and found ourselves adrift in a sea of lilac hair dos and distorted vowel sounds. Moments after we arrived, Bloggiana was targeted by a woman in tweed tights and brogues. I say, aren’t we lucky to have the Coffee Morning Queen of the New Town here in person, she remarked. Bloggiana, who had managed to smuggle a bottle of Irn Bru under her dress into the back of Uncle Cymbeline’s Austin Allegro, burped. The lilac toupe atop the tweeded one was seen to tremble and quiver.

A few moments later, Bloggiana and I managed to reunite by the tea-trolley which was bedecked with doilies and a fancy assortment of confections, so we were told. Bloggiana and I found ourselves bewitched by a bowl of miniature fruits. There were small but perfectly formed apples; and plums; and bananas. Being a carbohydrate fiend, I plumped for a banana. Bloggiana dived on the plums. Neither of us had tried marzipan before and we both promptly retched – arcing small but perfectly disfigured banana and plum all over the remainder of the fancy assortment of confections. Lady Dyke was momentarily distracted from her wielding of the samovar. Tea arced all over the Morningside carpet, splashing the tweed tights and causing a ruckus. Someone came and had a word with Lady Dyke and moments later, she had assembled us back in back of the Austin Allegro.

Journeying back to Uncle Cymbeline’s flat in silence, we knew we had a long day ahead of us on the bentwood chairs. But we also knew we had managed to cause the CMQ’s crown to tarnish slightly. And twenty-seven years later, atop the Expensive Cooker, that still gives Bloggiana and me fathomless giggles.