How Long?

I have been very remiss in not keeping up this blog.  I would like to say that I have been busy, and I have, but not with anything more taxing than a silly young girl's crush on my wonderful amore, Lord Parshul Dent-Uhre.  Yes my dears, since last we met I have fallen hook line and sinker (for so many years I thought that word was "stinker") for the pater familia of our little village and he has reciprocated!!!  Be still my wildly over-excited heart.  So where to begin?

Each year in January there is a post Christmas pick you up party hosted by the village, for the village, in the Memorial Hall.  Our resident accordion player, Joy Sake or "Joynts Ache" as Mildred calls her, prepares a proper barn dance which was candle lit until the great fire of 1993 when someone switched the electric candles for real ones and nearly sent us all on a one way trip to our maker.  Every girl has to find a boy if she is able and this year Parshul asked ME!!!!  Gosh how Mildred sulked.  She had just recovered from her broken ankle and thought that she was the one in need of TLC.  After a couple of months of "Can you..." "Sorry to bother you..." "That one..." plus washing and dressing her every day I felt that I was the girl most in need of some attention.  And so it came to pass.

Parshul invited me to pre-dance drinks at the house that he shares with his sister, Lady Dorothy.  I could tell that no matter what he thought of me, in her eyes I was most certainly not up to snuff and she made it abundantly clear that she was tolerating rather than welcoming me into her house.  If her gimlet eye could have spoken it would have made clear that in her view I was about as welcome as a ferret in a rabbit hole.  However, nothing was going to dampen my evening - not even the heavy rain that slowly pooled and puddled on the lane to the Memorial Hall - when I had the most sought after man as my partner.  I gazed up at his oh so handsome face and sighed so loud that he asked if I was well.  Of course I was not at all well, I had a very severe case of "Cupiditis", who wouldn't with six foot plus of distinguished manhood being so solicitous about my every need.  Was I warm enough?  Did I need a shawl - "Dotty" (how I smirked when he called her that)  would lend me one of hers.  Dotty's shawls are probably only cashmere and from the rarest goats each fed by hand and bathed daily in fresh spring water from the prettiest Scottish glens.  As he settled me into the passenger seat of his, oh girls you won't believe this, a classic drophead Bentley.  No, I have no idea what a drophead is either, but the seats are leather, the engine purrs and it is so luxurious.  I felt like a Queen.

Entering the Memorial Hall on the arm of my handsome "date", as the Americans say.  I beamed my way across the hall until we reached the top table!!!  Me, sitting in the most important seats!  I still cannot quite believe it.  The top table has food served by the sixth form girls from the private school in the village.  In return, Parshul and "Dotty" allow the school the use of a four acre field as a sports arena free of charge.  The sight of not yet cellulite affected teenagers charging round the running track has brought many an older male resident close to expiration - and causes we ladies to reflect on how we once were.  But I digress.

The first dance started, a reel.  Parshul gallantly invited me to dance and I of course thanked him and said that I'd be delighted.  I'm not sure if this is Joy playing, but the music sounded like this:  www.orangecat.talktalk.net/q3e1f6xa83hd9/LiveEnglishReel.mp3

Parshul set off leading me like the expert dancer that I just knew that he would be.  Unfortunately for us most of the assembled throng were learning or re-learning how to dance the dance.  Charging towards us, hair flying, stubby legs pounding away in her brown leather brogues, came my friend and house mate  Mildred!  She simply didn't see us until it was too late.  She caught poor Parshul square amidships and as he fell forward his head caught mine and the two of us collapsed to the floor only to be trampled on by two other couples who were close behind her.  The poor seventeen year old son of our knitting secretary Mrs Perleun who had been kidnapped by Mildred as he loitered outside drawing on an illicit cigarette with his friends, was hauled in her wake and like a cruise liner ploughing through a rowing boat they had gone without noticing the damage that they had inflicted on us.

Sitting on a canvas bottomed chair at the side of the Hall I held the bag of ice firmly to my poor bruised head and looked up into the warm eyes of my very own Lord.  "Sorry" he said.  His own temple sporting a rather nasty purple bruise.  "Let me make it up to you.  How about we slip away  and get a bite.  I know just the place".  How could I refuse?  Would you?  I don't think so.

The last words that I remember hearing from the Hall were Lady Dorothy's.  "How long will you be gone Parshul?  How long?"