How to get Booked as a Singer

 ...preferably not offending sixteen retired Admirals...

                                                            At a happier occasion...


  I sang "The Holy City" in Aldeburgh Catholic Church at the funeral of Gerard Minden's Great Uncle Jasper.

  Gerard introduced to both me and this blog here...
 
  There had been a muted scandal some years before.
  Gerard explained, ‘Uncle Jasper would say that, being Catholic, we all have our peculiar use for rosaries...' 
  Jasper's mother, for one, told his aunt during the second world war that a cyanide capsule was a vitamin pill. 
  'Anyway, Great Uncle Jasper was telling his specific Rosary while he taught English...hand in trouser pocket fuddling his privates.  At times of high stress (possibly an Emily Dickinson) he’d find he was telling on a visible erection.  “Pulsing, bucking, lolling, dear boy.  I used firmly to warn it to bugger off before I read it some fucking Tennyson”.’
  Gerard’s star-command blue eyes had welled.  ‘Iestyn, he was in a real state when I visited. His third wife has pegged it. He’s living in filth – but real filth – forgets if he’s eaten and has to check crockery for degrees of crustiness; and he’s let a hernia ride, numbing the pain with whiskey and codeine. Had to get the doctor in when, finally, he couldn’t keep it back even with six t-towels knotted. The doc put his stethoscope to his now elephantine bollocks. Definite sounds from within of digestion.’ Gerard pulled me to him.  'God knows what might have stuck its head through, squinted, then made a dash for it during Songs of Praise. True to form, uncle Jasper cadged a spare stethoscope for the edification of visitors.  “Dear boy, have a crouch and listen-in to my stomach acid making its best of Fray Bentos and suede mash. What’s that you say: a sort of part-groaning, part whizzing, part whooshing?  Expect that’s some gorgeous, oozing, bejellied crust…”.' 
  Gerard got serious. 'Iestyn, he’s on his way out. Any time now, really.  You wouldn’t sing at his funeral for me?’

  This is unusual, granted.  But is definitely a How to get Booked as a Singer.

  I sang.  And afterward, in the churchyard, was Paul ‘The Embezzler’ Mills-Thomas.  Paunchy, blotchy, hair like Margaret Rutherford.  I used to crash his Aldeburgh drinks parties pretending to be one of his son’s defunct French exchanges.  Oh, Monsieur Mills-Thomas. It is I, Bertrand. Do you not remember when Madame and Toby do the Constable Country tour but we stayed ourselves ‘ere for the ooh la la, nom d’une pipe and allez-oop?  And you was telling me what a florid little morsel I would be: were they still allez-up: my testes.
  'Lovely singing, Yeltsin  I'm sure I heard one of the real greats sing that.’  Paul crunched around a tiny box step in the gravel. ‘On a seventy-eight. With the mud scraped out of the grooves.  But still with all the proper trumpety tone.  Caruso, possibly.’
  ‘And when did you take up the post of classical music critic on the Daily Mail,’ Gerard asked.
  ‘Gerard.  That poem you read out: new one on me.’
  ‘Hardly surprised, seeing as its first word isn’t if and it doesn’t contain the line “Someone had blundered”.’
  Paul turned to me. ‘By the way, Yeltsin, have you ever thought of trying out for the cruise ships?  There was something quite like you on our last cruise. Gave me a CD he’d made.  He was removed from the cruise.  Seen on CCTV coming out of a male passenger’s cabin during the chaplain’s lunch. I’ve still got the CD.  Perhaps you could make use of it for research?’
  Gerard, pointing, said, ‘Perhaps you could have done some research of your own, Paul, and bought a fake Garrick Club tie that was at least a bit like?’
  ‘Talking of old school ties…old ties.  I never believed there was anything serious re Jasper and the accusations. And, anyway, at Radley in my day - ’
  ‘Yes, we know, Paul: your generation all made light of being bummed.  Saw it as being on a par with “No harm done getting the clip round the ear hole from the local bobby”; or “Going up chimneys or down mines was just what we did”; “TB was such a jolly wheeze”.’
  Paul made an about turn and walked to his SAAB with his shoulders hanging back like a bat’s wings.  With his keys in the driver’s door he turned to shout, ‘And by the by, Yeltsin.  Your hat lent specially for H.M.S. Pinafore. You’ve caused quite an Aldeburgh to-do writing to thank the wrong admiral.’

  #howtogetbookedasasinger #funeral #funerals #ideasforafuneralservice #dailymail