50

I managed to extricate myself from the boozy proceedings at a reasonable hour last night and so I was not there to see the young future husband lying in the gutter with his whole life before him and, in closer proximity, his dinner.

And since I wrote that before I got there, it may well have ended differently.

FIFTY! My fiftieth day of continuous posting. I am reminded of another boozy night, my fiftieth birthday bash, which took place about eighteen months ago. The photos were coming out looking all wrong, all cold and harsh, until I turned off the flash. With the longer shutter speed everything's looking a bit out of focus now, which is kind of the way I remember it anyway, and the colours are all rich and fruity, except I don't recall my pal Mullins having a purple head on the night.



For anybody interested in the characters in my personal sitcom here at Campbell-blogspot, that's mr j and Hayley Campbell at extreme right, Chalky White in the red shirt and I'm at the back acting like I just scored a goal by getting to the night's end without anybody falling out. I can't see my pal Best in among this colourful flurry. Perhaps he succeeded in 'extricating himself from the boozy proceedings at a reasonable hour', but a memorable moment in the evening was the halting of all eating and drinking so that we could listen to his singing of Meet me in the Alley MacGarry, complete with new verses written by him specially for the occasion, with me leading the chorus. This, you probably forget, was the song that the three tenors were supposed to be singing in our photo hoax in Bacchus #20, which is to be rendered as an 1890s type of waltz. Minty Moore and White, who wrote it (and were the other two tenors in this ridiculous display), had a different conception of the 3/4 time, so when I sing it (as I still do occasionally in the shower) I have to omit and add syllables here and there.


(click to enlarge if you want to read it. If you want to sing it, I'm afraid you'll have to improvise)

If you're new here and don't know who Alec Macgarry is, look here, where a wonderful fellow named Guido Weisshahn has catalogued all my books and the chapters in them, showing where everything has ever appeared. I have never thanked him enough, perhaps from a fear that acknowledging having looked at his impeccably detailed pages might in itself be an act of egotism. If I ever make it to Dresden I will Take Guido and his family out for a slap-up dinner.

And you can buy here, at Top Shelf where the Alec books are still in print.

And finally, a picture of me and the wife of my bosom from the same night. I seem to have lost my glasses, which I daresay is why everything was out of focus.