Phone call from Berlin, around two months ago:
My mum: yes, and so
Me: yes, and then if we
Mum’s phone: buh bah dah da bump..
Me: is that your ringtone? Why do you have ‘Bad to the Bone’?
Mum: what?
Me: George Thorogood and the Destroyers
Mum: who?
Me: bad to the bone. Buh bah dah da bump. Bad to the bone. Buh bah dah da bump. B-b-b-b-bad. Bad to the bone.
Mum: oh well it was the only one I can hear.
I shared a restaurant nook tonight with three dinosaurs in suits, entertaining a young lady. The young lady was “three weeks pregnant” to the oldest dinosaur and hardly said a word. (“We’re not telling anybody yet.”) He sat with his arm linked loosely round her chair, establishing claim, while parsing the charms of various female executives as lazily as though picking his teeth. Gosh, I disliked him. Several times his voice rose on the repeated phrase “these ridiculous wind farms.” He talked about firms being “ripe for the picking” and a “young” female CEO of “42 or 43” who inexplicably had become suicidal when her high-riding company suddenly collapsed. The three of them leaned back to dismiss, one by one, the possible “real” reasons for her despair: Great parents, both healthy. She’s got a sister, they get on. She’s in a plum position, the world is her oyster. She’s charismatic and, frankly, gorgeous. The little wife sat with her hands folded under her chin during this recital and her baby, I guess, nestled under her ribs getting used to the uninterrupted sound of its father’s voice as he laid out the state of things for the education of the room at large. Oysters and plums. Niggles & Pimms.
