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Gerard Does it Again!




                              Gerard always denies that this is him...

  A violinist with the Britten-Pears Orchestra was selling two year's growth of her hair for three thousand pounds to a doll factory.
  I know: how totally previously unheard of. 
  Except...
  He was sitting with two others at the table in the Cross Keyes one along from Gerard and mine, opposite where the orchestral members were sitting, each beadily making sure to get his or her money's worth from two jugs of Pimms. 
  Indicating the violinist with a jerk of his head, he said to his mates, 'She'll either be under the feeding or starving regime with the hair growing. She'll be going into the doll factory once every three months for the gimp, who has the hard on for all matters hairal, to go over it like a grooming primate. Then they put these soya-mong beans in a petri dish, add honey that's alive - you wouldn't believe how much that costs - and white beer that's exclusively brewed on the premises. They leave this mixture to do its thing, then drain off everything that's other than what the beans will have eaten, digested and shat out - in so far as that process can take place when there are no mouths, stomachs and colons of which to speak - and anoint her hair with it. She won't be able to wash this stuff out until right up to the time when they cut it to go in their freezer vault.'
  'Christ,' Gerard hissed to me. 'He is so that prematurely receding, tweed-wearing minor public school know all, who'll spend his gap year in Ipswich, flunk agricultural college and later ask his parents for a loan to buy a Thai bride. And at her first Thorpeness Fireworks they'll give her a sparkler, tell her it's a thing to write one's name in the air with it, and by the time - him holding her hand - they've half way through Mey-Mey Tirahlahlahchucham-hyphen-Cooper, she'll have set light to their matching Thai Buddhist cotton bead wristbands.' 
  He paraphrased Kipling. 'He writes in the air with a sparkler fastest who writes in the air with a sparkle alone.' 
  Then smirking at me, about to down the rest of his pint, he said. 'And now I've given you yet another hardon with my everything and the erudition, you can get another round in.' 
  It was actually his round, but who could tell him that? 

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