Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Okay, take a deep breath and smile...

When Himself and I were in London on our honeymoon, we were at Heathrow and our flight was delayed. By an hour.
Oh, and then by two.
Oh, and finally more than three...
And it was a jumbo jet, but making a puddle jump to another airport, so virtually everyone on it, or rather, wanting to be on it, was making a connecting flight, mostly to distant lands, Africa, Singapore, Chile.
And nobody would tell us ANYTHING.
At one point, a middle-aged British man, with a face so bland and blank he might have been autistic, and a voice so mild and even pleasant he might have been a monastic turned to his traveling companion, and all but cooed, with all the ferocity that his upbringing would apparently allow him,
"I am F#*&ing incandescent...."
It cracked us up at the time, and we use the memory whenever one of us is out of sorts but constrained from suitably expressing the sheer, operatic, apoplectic, white hot, fury of our anger.
We smile sweetly and murmur, I am incandescent
Well, I am incandescent.

(Just venting, scroll past, nothing to see here, move along, nothing to see....)
(And forgive me, I can't vent at home, because Himself will become upset and I don't need to be poisoning HIS relationship with anyone else, and he holds grudges much longer than I, and much more virulently if on my behalf, rather than on his own...)


Okay, I am a lousy organist, and a lousy musician, and have lousy hearing, and a lousy sense of rhythm, and keep a lousy tempo, and have a lousy memory, and am a lousy reader.
Fine. Stipulated.
But I can d*** well accompany.
I can follow.
I can support.
I can compensate.
I can breath with a soloist.
I can enhance.
I can even, on occasion, rescue the wandering, incontinent, self-indulgent, uncontrolled or uncertain singer.
NONE OF WHICH WAS NECESSARY TODAY.
There was no sound delay involved, the wedding soloist, I at the console, and the pipes were all in almost intimate proximity to each other.
The singer positively gushed, his thanks were so effusive.
So imagine my delight on leaving the church to have the celebrant opine, gee, it sounded like the two of you were fighting up there, you weren't together AT ALL.
I am incandescent... you can probably see the glow from wherever you are.

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