Side I
[Theme: violin, piano, bodhran, mandolin.]
Narrator: English as tuppence, changing yet changeless as canal water, nestling in green nowhere, armoured and effete, bold flag-bearer, lotus-fed Miss Havishambling opsimath and eremite, feudal still, reactionary Rawlinson End. The story so far...
The body of Doris Hazard's pekinese, unwittingly asphixiated beneath her husband's bottom during a wine and middle-aged spread do at the great house, after the ritual fortnight in the Rawlinson fridge, has been given over to Old s______, the wrinkled retainer, for indecent burial under Sir Henry's giant marrow. This monstrous jade zebra veg is the master's puffed pride, and by his stern instruction, the greedy gourd is daily drip-fed with a powerful laxative. Thus,
Sir Henry: "Should some rascal half-inch the blessed thing and eat it, it'll give 'em the liquorice for weeks!"
Narrator: Now think on't, dot dot dot dot dot ...
[Theme fades out]
Narrator: Great Aunt Florrie, toast crumbs specking the fine hairs gracing her upper lip, teacup half-empty lukewarm in her lap, dozed in a cozy Chippendale settle. An elfin tissue curdled her mind with muted chimaera: through dancing dark, neon-bright saraband eels; gauzes of filmy Fellini; glimpses further than the rocket fathoms, rhythmic, fading and in unending procession.
It was chill, but a beautiful morning. During the night, soft snow mattressed the vast acreage of Rawlinson, yet defiant, hoyden heralds thrust emerald from the woodlands and window boxes of nearby Concreton. Outside, icicles crystalline and lovely pendant from his nose, Old s______, the wrinkled retainer, scrunched up the gravel whistling a dirty song; and Florrie, gentle corset prisoner of the flesh, started, and was alert as a skinless eye, when the old man, his russet-burned country face smiling in wreaths, pushed open the back door.
s______: "Prohworrh! Mornin' ma'm", he wheezed. "I filled in the grave nice."
Narrator: Florrie nodded, and indicated the sink:
Florrie: "Perhaps you'd... care to wash your hands?"
s______: "Arr, no thank'ee ma'm, I already did that up against a tree afore I came in 'ere."
Narrator: Florrie took a careful, purse-lipped sip of now-cold tea.
Florrie: "Very well", she said, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a lavender-scented hankie, "now I'd like you to set up the card table, and put down some sawdust in the smoking room. Lord Tarquin Portly and the Lady Phillipa of Staines are popping over this evening."
Narrator: The wrinkled retainer hung up his greasy fez on a peg, and with joints crackling like the s_______ up of plastic egg-cartons, hacked, and
s______: "Oo, arr, thrickett..."
Narrator: ..ed his way out into the hall.
A pale sun poked impudent marmalade fingers through the grizzle-latticed glass, and sent the shadows scurrying, like convent girls menaced by a tramp. Alone again, Florrie focussed on the copper-gleaming coal scuttle, fogged, wool-gathered, and in seconds surrendered to Erewhon. Peacefully, on tiptoe through grey spheres, where shade has substance, whispers walk, and mire reigns...
Song: Aunt Florrie's Waltz
(Vivian: piano, sarrusophone, talking drum; Julian Smedley: violin & mandolin; Steve Winwood: piano & celeste; Pete Moss: accordian.)
(Florrie)
Wistful and lovely are walls with wisteria
Clematis clambers on time-pocked walls white
Stranger than larkspur or lupin, hydrangea
Hydra-head mother-in-law's tongue, tied, fancy flight
Narrator: [Theme: Interlewd]
(Vivian: recorders, talking-drum, percussion & euphonium; Jim Cuomo: recorder; Julian Smedley: guitar; Steve Winwood: celeste; Pete Moss: cello.)
Tendril-fragrant honeysuckle sucked and honey-babed, close to the ancient limestone walls of Rawlinson; and Florrie, awake, bayonetted her turkey head from its privy orifice. It was a lovely morning: gorgeous beyond imagining were brassy h___s of winter-depression-fierce daffodils, blaring yellow-white reveille, and croci, gingering the lawns in tessellate Performing-Right-Society. No need for wellies, Florrie, shawl about her sparrow shoulders, took the interminable beige thing she was knitting into the garden.
Earth, having sipped its cold manna, merely "pssst... pssst..." and crisped beneath pom-toed fastidious feet. Worms and wigglies slumbered deep, and stirred not a bit, as didn't dead Mr. c__berpatch who, like all Rawlinsons or favoured servants, was buried upright in the Victory Garden.
Sir Henry: "No sense in wasting s___e", said Henry, "bags of calcium and goodness in the b_____s. You should've seen my sprouts when Baron Tostoff, the ruined Pole, kicked it."
Narrator: About Florrie, in stone postures various, were two hundred and seven gnomes.
Song: Wheelbarrow
(Vivian: vocal, banjolele, baconium, sarrusophone & percussion; Jim Cuomo: flageolet; Julian Smedley: fiddle; Steve Winwood: banjolin; vocal chorus: the Exishanshalliste Songsters.)
(Florrie)
Sitting in a sunken garden...
Pinking in a sinking sun
Thinking of a summer long ago:
When one was twenty-one.
Naming all the flowers so friendly...
Shouting at the shrubs so thick
Lo, behold, Lobelia...
One bite and the Bishop was sick,
(Chorus: )
How nice to be in England...
Now that England's here,
I stand upright in my wheelbarrow,
And pretend I'm Boadicea.
Hi Ho
Hi Ho
(Florrie)
Shy goldfish shady in the green weed,
By gad'flies giddy in the haze...
Here I sit; I knit knit knit,
With the garden gnomes, I say:
(Chorus)
Narrator: She noted that the gnomes were a length more obviously masculine than hitherto, and now knew why Gerald had squandered so much pocket-money on Plasticene. Poor boy spent too long observing the sun through a telescope: his squint was permanent.
Florrie: (Interior monologue: ) "Dear me - daydreaming; and the Staines coming tonight!"
Narrator: Almost noon, and she had yet to go the launderette in Concreton to thaw out chickens in the spin-drier...
Sir Henry: "Filth hounds of Hades!"
Narrator: Sir Henry Rawlinson surfaced from the blackness, hot and fidgety, fuss, [FX: fart] bother and itch. Conscious mind coming up too fast with the bends, through pack-ice thrubbing seas, boom-sounders, blow-holes, harsh croak Blind Pews tip-tap-tocking for escape from his pressing skull. With a gaseous grunt, he rolled away from the needle-cruel light acupuncturing his pickled-onion eyes, and with key-bending will slit-peered at the cold trench Florrie had left on her side of the bed. Tongue, like yesterday's fried cod: mind over batter?
Sir Henry: "Tongue sandwiches? Yeeurgh! Eat what? But it's been in somebody else's mouth!"
Nurse: "You'll eat it and like it!"
Sir Henry: "But why can't I have..."
Nurse: "Because I say so!"
Narrator: Black spot: the Blind Pews were now thrashing with their canes.
Sir Henry: "God's turban and tutu; do I need a dare of the hog?"
Narrator: He reached for the bell rope, yanked savagely to summon the housekeeper, and discovered himself, nightie round his waist, turned tortoise on the rug.
Paralysis lasted... scarce a blink, but with impotent rage, he bellied his unwilling hulk to the wardrobe. Cold comfort, as his palsied hand found the shotgun; good stock...
Sir Henry: "Roll over..." - one action, commando stuff - "c___ over!"
Narrator: Safety off! Both barrels through the ceiling.
[FX: the same]
Narrator: Stunned shock, and then Henry's eruptive bellow:
Sir Henry: "Mrs. E.!"
(Beat)
Narrator: The plaster had not settled before the housekeeper stood, lurcher-backed, at-your-servile-sir, in the room.
Mrs. E.: (Astonishingly nasal: ) "Yiths?", she said.
Sir Henry: (Furious: ) "I don't know what I want, but I want it now!"
Mrs. E.: "Fried or fried, dear?"
Sir Henry: "Now!"
Mrs. E.: "Fried?"
Sir Henry: "Fired!"
Mrs. E.: "With or without dear?"
Sir Henry: "Within! Get out!"
Mrs. E.: "Fried without... mmm..." (Brightly: ) "Off dear."
Narrator: Apron flapping like a floral tongue, Mrs. E. descended.
Song: Socks
(Vivian: vocal, bass harmonica, jew's harp, banjolele, percussion and sarrusophone; Jim Cuomo: bass sax; Pete Moss: fiddle & accordian; Julian Smedley: fiddle.)
(Mrs. E. over intro, in the style of the "pepperpot" ladies in Monty Python: )
Dunno 'ow I got out of bed this mornin: I 'ad it all down one side. Ooh, put me foot down - Gawd! it was like pluggin into the mains, it shot right up an' I came over all giddy. I thought: Ooh no, I'm goin, and it started swimmin, me life, before me, ooh smell the lilies, I 'ad such a good cry, it was lovely: I just wanted to lay back there, course I can't really... recline, he's put me on tablets... it's a constant fight to relax: Sunday last, I was heatin a drop of lemon, just bent down to pull up me surgical stockins when - Ooh it slipped out again... busy? Well, didn't 'ave time to straighten up! Course I can't sleep, not since Mr. E. passed over: it's like 'avin yer leg off - you think it's still there, in the bed, I mean, it was thirty-three years last Tuesday: I'd just got used to 'is snorin, and mornin's, 'e'd make me a, a herbal infusion, I used to love doin' for 'im... Ooh:
Darnin' socks, darnin' socks for your man,
Darn darn..., oh darn, oh, big toe's through again
[c___up: doh, no, oh never mind, I'll start again... no, no really I will...]
Darnin' socks, darnin' socks for your man,
Darn darn darn, big toe's through again
Darnin' socks, darnin' socks, darn darn darn
Darn there goes the door-knocker, I bet it's Mrs. Brown
"Hello dear, come inside, 'ave a cup'o'tea"
"Hope I'm not intrudin', you know me!"
"Give you time to boil it: may I use your toilet?
"Lookin' round, can I 'elp? Anything at all?"
(Recit.)
Oooh, matter of fact, come to think,
I gotta lot of socks to darn & never mind the stinky stink,
Me 'usband 'e's out farmin', farm farm farm
Says 'e: "a bit o' muck never do folks any 'arm."
Out in 'is gum-boots, plough plough plough,
Muggins 'ere 'as gotta feed 'is big, fat sow,
'E tried it on this mornin', the saucy so-and-so,
Get yer breakfast down you, and out you go.
Just one little bit..
[c___up: oh, s___, I've gone again, never mind, no, no, keep going, yeah...]
Just one bit'o'comfort 'fore I lie inside me box:
If the Lord wears trousers, the prophets never mentioned socks,
And if an angel asks me for a little 'ole to fill,
Well dear, darn darn darn darn
Darn, I'll go to 'Ell.
Narrator: On Sensible Common, Hubert Rawlinson, in his mid-forties and still unusual, with his adventurous young nephew, Ralph, are playing cricket. During a break, Hubert, his friend Reg Smeeton and the rest of the team enjoy a chilled glass of Parafino in the shade of the pavilion; but Ralph has determined he will rid the club of moles.
Hubert polished his trident with the sleeve of the white pullover carelessly wrapped around his waist.
Hubert: "You could see everything from the top of that bus", he said sadly. "We were in Regent Street, and I was looking right into Brainwashing House. I could see 'em all running around inside, catching diseases and giggling. My father lent across to me and said: "You'll be in there if you don't stop playing with yourself." He died of chrysanthemum poisoning. They had to kill all his plants... You know, he was the real author of A Pictorial History of Gargling. A very great work."
Narrator: Mr. Smeeton froze like a red setter. His conversation of the you speak, I wait; you pause, I pounce variety, lent exaggerated ear.
Hubert: "They strapped a bloom to his back, and it came up all blotchy. That's why he drank. It was Brasso, mostly..."
Narrator: Hubert struck an odd heroic pose. Smeeton twitched and stared up. Hubert, although himself Karloff-soft-spoken, liked to hear other people shouting. This he considered not only healthful, but just might, if taken to its illogical conclusion, do away with telephones. Thus, it was not only for speed, stature and far-seeing that habitually he went on stilts: for also, he affected an ear-trumpet, with the consequence that confidants stood on boxes or tip-toe or jumped up and up to converse with him - Hubert all times straining, craning, cupping his good ear, feigning non comprende, and muttering:
Hubert: "Pardon? ... C..Come again? Do speak upwards,"
Narrator: and etcetera, at the same time shaking uncontrollably giggling, as his hapless companion empurpled and shrieked. Reg Smeeton said:
Smeeton: (Brightly informative: ) "Did you know there is no proper name for the back of the knees?"
Narrator: Hubert gestured, with his trident:
Hubert: "Look: there's Ralph,"
Narrator: he said, with rare insight. With practised effort, Mr. Smeeton behaved outwardly as he knew he must, and screwed his eyes hong kong to the distant figure, microscopic and lifelike, shimmering on the pitch.
Hubert: "He boiled roly-poly puddings in old socks..."
Narrator: ..said Hubert dreamily.
Hubert was unusual. In his adolescence, during the summer, in a northerly direction parallel to the Earthly axis, he would throw himself naked onto the lawn, and with that loathsome bluey Roman clock face tattooed about his private parts, think about Jean Harlow very hard, and from the shadow cast, tell the time with remarkable accuracy.
Hubert: "Look! No hands, Aunty!"
Narrator: ..he would screech.
In the winter, he tried with birthday candles stuck in the end: was hours slow, and Henry told him to put a sock on the sun-dial bit. And so, he contented himself by waiting sentry in the hall, and inviting visitors to stand on his feet. He would then give their weight, in a
Hubert: "dreadful... mono... tone"
Narrator: and present them with cigarette cards depicting early flying machines, or steam-engines.
P.C. Gibbon, the long arm of the law, arrested him a few times, but now conceded he was harmless:
[FX: pheep pheep on police whistle]
Gibbon: "De poor man got he head screwed on wrong."
Narrator: Hubert insisted he was quite normal:
Song: The Rub
(Vivian: vocal, banjolele, cornets, trombone & percussion; Jim Cuomo: bass & soprano sax; Pete Moss: cello & accordian; Julian Smedley: fiddle; Steve Winwood: pipe-organ.)
(Hubert)
I'm confusing, 'cause I'm unusual: I imitate the Walrus in the tub
Sometimes I swallow live goldfish, I follow my own bent, and there's the Rub.
In uniquely... circus stances I execute exotic dances.
With three balloons, I swoon and snake it, it's no Bo-Peep-Show: I prance naked.
Bless me I confess, I've grown watercress in my ears - drum: rub-a-dub,
I slim with sandpaper, shave my legs with paint-scrapers, smooth but raspberry red and there's the Rub.
[Mechanical organ obbligato]
Sporting different-coloured socks is thought unorthodox,
Though I know which leg is where or which,
This c___-a-doodle paradox c___s a snook at all the schmocks,
I wink but they interpret: nervous twitch.
My ridiculed bizarrerie is only awkward armoury,
A squawking banshee yells "Beelzebub"
'Mid the Kalahari faceless, I'm a freak oasis, an outlandish oddity
A cack-hand commodity, a crackpot, lack-top:
Rub-me-up-the-wrong-way Hubert: there's the Rub.
Narrator: Alone on the pitch in his creamy flannels, Ralph lay atop the molehill [FX: leather on willow, polite ripple of clapping] like a poultice on a green boil, trembling to the wild scrabbling of the blind beast beneath his stomach.
Ralph: "By Circe's rubber bra", he fretted, "if these things bite, one will be singing soprano!"
Narrator: The wind in the willows ruffled the shepherd's-harp-gold hair of a long-long-slumbering child within.
The wind in the willows, the will in the windows, the wails of the widows in furry dark soft, overground, underground, tiddly-pom; comfy and cosy tucked in for the night -
LLSCW: (Distraught: ) "Mummy! My Teddy's stopped breathing!"
Mummy: [FX: click] "It's all right dear!"
Narrator: A great heaving halted this train of thought at the level crossing of rude, heart-stopping panic. With violent shakes and horrid snufflings, the brute beast surfaced. Edgar Allen Pot-pourri of eldritch foul imaginings: snout, flailing claws and bristle. Reason fled shrieking from Ralph's thrilling mouth. Aghast, dry-throated, he drank in that that his mind could not comprehend: the thing was grinning with savage glee: soiled and shabby about its shuddering torso [FX: elf/pixie music] was a white coat, and on its head, higgledy-piggledy were nine cricket caps, and in its paw it brandished... a stump. Spasm, abyss: nightmare and swoon: beckoning void, unsilence and danger...
Dan dan, dan, daan... Dan dan dan dan... Dan, dan daan.. Dan dan.. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
[FX: blow to the head]
Dan dan, da-dan dan dan..
Narrator: Back at Rawlinson End, the table was still cluttered for breakfast - and when Sir Henry broke a fast, you cursed double glazing.
Sir Henry: "Awkward beasts, winkles," he grunted, stabbing at his plate, "my brother Hubert uses 'em for earplugs."
Narrator: Old s______ looked up from the ironing board, upon which he was plucking the navel fluff and porcupine quills from his master's gargantuan trousers.
Sir Henry: "Turns my belly to see him of a morning, fiddling about in his lugholes with a pin. Don't know why he bothers: never hears anything I say."
Narrator: This was true: Henry's rhinoceros tyrrany had only the most peripheral and incidental effect on Hubert's life.
There was a terrific crash, and a brick smashed through the window. About the brick was wrapped a note which read, simply:
The Note: (Cork, Eire, or thereabouts: ) "Hello now! I'm yer new neighbour."
Narrator: Henry was plainly delighted:
Sir Henry: "He seems a decent enough egg! At least he didn't have the impertinence to present himself at the front door."
Narrator: He swatted and stamped on a rather beautiful blue b___erfly.
The room darkened, as a hang glider passed across the sun.
Sir Henry: "Seems a novel enough way to commit suicide", observed Henry. "Pass me m' pistol, and I'll see if I can't bring the blighter down into the lake."
Narrator: With a weapon in his charge, the master of Rawlinson End was apt to be very... sporting and unpredictable, and the wrinkled retainer took cover behind a leather armchair, peeping through his fingers and clutching a rosary.
Sir Henry: "What're you doing, cowering down there?"
Narrator: s______ tugged furiously at a long-vanished forelock:
s______: "Ee..errr... it be out of respect, sirrr."
Sir Henry: "Well you're supposed to love me, you vile jelly, take that!"
[FX: ivory on cranium]
Narrator: Mercifully, Henry hit him with the soft end of the pistol. s______ sprawled on the parquet flooring, and Henry strode back to the window and took aim at the hang glider, now several hundred yards past the lime trees and fast diminishing.
In sunshine, with the air full of wasps, and himself full of pink gins and a half-bottle of Entre-Deux-Legs, it was an impossible shot, and in a fit of bleary-eyed pique, Henry emptied the gun into the tyres of a custard-yellow van parked in the drive.
Like the shock of fondling a raw sausage blindfold at a gay party, the significance of the van was clear. In florid scriptiform on the side was painted Nice and Tidy - Just Relax, and Let Us Do It; and to the right corner, a crude drawing of the masks of Tragedy and Comedy, labelled Before and After.
The gentleman owners of this vehicle lodged in the village and did contract house cleaning, but they purported to be resting theatrical artistes. Both were given to striped blazers, orange pancake, obvious wigs, matching handkerchiefs, depilated legs and musical comedy; which end-of-the-pier pointlessness they visited on the drinking fraternity of the Fool and Bladder with unceasing enthusiasm - until, that is, old Seth One-Tooth put a stop to 'em, claiming:
Seth: (Lancs.: ) (Slurp) "I'm goin' as daft as an mahogany frying pan."
Narrator: Aunt Florrie's credenda "all musicians are nice people" prompted her to place at their disposal the vast dusty music room where great brown spiders traced quiet geometric star chambers on the chandeliers and crouched. Neither Nice, nor Tidy, could [camp as Butlins] "Adam and Eve it"; and both confessed themselves "terribly touched". But Henry's reaction to their presence now was primarily of apoplectic astonishment: after all, you don't expect decent people to take you up on an invitation - it's downright rudery!
Sir Henry: "Well I'll see 'em off the premises m'self. The hounds are all f__ged out from yesterday's Jehovah's Witnesses, and we don't want blood all over the lawns again."
Narrator: There were cachinnate theatrical chortles from across the hall.
Sir Henry: (Trans-apoplectic: ) "Great Thing! Those simpering nancy-boys are in the house! Get up you stinking blancmange, go.. lock the piano, pesi pesi, chop chop, ah, those lickspittle wretches!"
Narrator: But it was too late: a hint of cologne, p___ographic discord and...
Song: Nice and Tidy
(Vivian: vocals & ukulele; Steve Winwood: piano.)
[Note for the incorrigibly pedantic: the stereo suggests that Nice (to the left) is playing piano, while Tidy (to the right) is playing banjo. Subsequent events suggest just the opposite.]
(Piano: jolly intro mit p___ographic discord)
(Duet: Tidy and Nice)
Nnnice! and Tidy!... (Tidy and Nice): that's the way that we leave your hise,
Upstairs, downstairs wherever we do, we guarrantee it will be tickety- (boo!),
You put your feet up or go off to the shops,
Just point us at the buckets and mops,
Washing up (or wiping down), we are the tops,
We're Nice (and Tidy), we're Nice.
And Tidy [both: ] may we vocalise?
I'm Teddy Tidy... (and I'm Nigel Nice),
Cleanliness is clearly an obsession we share,
[Both: ] You too will think we're both a right couple of pairs,
We'll hoover the mats (or neuter your cats),
To you, dear housewife, we waise our hats,
[Both: ] We leave your home so clinical, your friends will say that's
Nice ( - and Tidy ) - that's Nice.
Narrator: This unasked-for jollity in the middle of an English afternoon left Sir Henry shivering with a red passion: his eyebrows like limp bats and his face a crumpled tissue upon which a lobster might well have wiped its bottom.
Sir Henry: "All crime", he declared, "is due to incorrect breathing." (Deep breath)
Narrator: Grim faced, cold as fishwife's fingers, he s_____ed from the wall the sickle-sharp boar tusks he used for defacing Readers' Digest, and in moments crossed the hall, and flung open the doors of the music room. Startled, Nigel Nice, straw boater askew, banjolele folderol, mince-mince-minced across the room.
Nice: "Sir Henry! Nice to see you! To see y..."
Narrator: Henry's glare throttled his hypocrisy at birth.
Sir Henry: (Grim: ) "Do you know what a palmist once said to me? She said "Will you let go!" Gentlemen, I am a bulldog and you will know my bite is worse."
Narrator: Teddy Tidy held the piano stool before him; Nigel Nice, attempting to look invalid, put on his glasses and blinked.
Sir Henry: "Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? Limp-hand squids... prepare for wax!"
Narrator: Stamping in frenzy, Henry bellowed the war-cry of the Zulu:
Sir Henry: Uuu-sooo-thooo!
Narrator: Suddenly, a half-thawed chicken caught him in the back of the neck.
[FX: the same.]
[Theme: intermission for clarinet and lips - Pigs' 'Ere Purse]
(Vivian: threeps, ululele, baconium, truncheon & percussion; Juliam Smedley: guitar; Jim Cuomo: bass sax & clarinet.)
Narrator: Overleaf: Ralph has his upper lip pierced, so he can see where he is going whilst whistling.

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