Feb 10, 2007
I don’t seem to have any stories about Judy. Perhaps by the time Malcolm had got serious about her, I had gone off to the Pacific to unwind.
Nor does Malcolm, at the time I shared a flat with him, lend himself to coherent stories, for he was never in one place long enough to generate a connected series of events.
Typical was a time I returned home from a taxing day among the Christchurch Tech. kids to find the flat permeated by the eye-watering stench of burnt fat, and to hear, as I came up the stairs, the gramophone at full blast with the tenor Kenneth McKellar or someone rendering an aria from Judas Maccabeus, “Sound and Alarm !” It seemed curiously appropriate.
I squinted my way through the lounge to find Malcolm standing on a chair in the kitchen with a scrubbing brush and half a bucket of soapy water, vigorously scrubbing down the yellow stain of condensed burnt fat vapour off the ceiling, singing along the meanwhile with McKellar, “Your silver trumpets sound, your trumpets sound, your trumpets sound. !”
And call the brave and only brave,
And call the brave and only brave,
And only bra-ave around !”
“Sound an ALARM !!!!”
Yes indeed.
It turned out that it was his day to make the dinner.. He had put the roast in the oven, no doubt accompanied with parsnips and half potatoes, and had turned the oven on “high”, when it occurred to him that there was something he needed to do at the Students’ Association. I don’t know why he didn’t take the ancient Cadillac, that skulked under the carport he had made for it from second hand linoleum. Perhaps its intake manifold was away being modified to receive a nice Ford carburettor. Who knows? Anyway he took his bike, if you could call it that, ( it had no lights or brakes, and the remains of its front mudguard only served to direct a stream of muddy water over the rider’s nether regions when the road was wet) , and set off on the 4 or 5 kilometre trip into town. When he got there, he got distracted by something or someone. Anyway he felt it needed his urgent attention, and by the time he got back to the flat, it was choked with acrid smoke, and the roast was just a little glowing ember in the middle of the roasting dish. When he opened the oven door to look at it, he was greeted by a sheet of flame. So he shut the oven again, opened the windows, put on the gramophone, and started the clean-up.
“Who listeth, follow
To the fields again.
Justice with courage
Justice with courage,
Is a thou-ousand men.”
I think we bought pies for dinner that night.