Namaste you wonderful, desirable and aspiring individual! This bijou blog is here to help you achieve your best ever ‘you’. Here, I offer my help and assistance in reshaping your shape and doctoring your decor internally and externally, to bring your lifestyle into line with your aspirations.

Names

When you think about it your name is more than just the specific noise that someone makes to attract your attention. It is also the most intimate aspect of your public self. The core of your essence summed up in a single word. It stands to reason that your name should be the summation of your aspirations – it should express to the world the way in which you wish to be seen.
This means that the first step to the new, glorious, bountiferous and amazing YOU has to be setting that goal and reorienting your whole being towards it by making that name change.
You must, of course, meditate deeply and dwell on the matter in the consensual sanctity of your own unclouded consciousness, but here are some suggestions to show how this works:

Pianoforte – this, you might think, is a name for one for whom music is central to their lives, but on the contrary it is a name for one who strives for balance and harmony, who seeks to show how the dark and light of life’s path can be combined into an upright, a grand – or at least baby-grand – lifestyle.

Avocado – once upon a time this beautiful green shade was the height of fashion for bathroom suites and as such the name is a wonderful reminder of the importance of history – and good plumbing – in our lives. Avocado is someone who wants to show they have strong connections with their roots and is seeking to live an ever greener lifestyle.

Serendipity – the perfect name for one who wants to let go of trying to organise their life, keep a good job, maintain relationships and have a tidy house. Instead they will allow blind faith in good fortune to determine their life, and let the world know that they have abandoned such old-fashioned notions as personal responsibility. Serendipity is a child of the universe and floating free on the breeze of random happenstance.

Prosecco – no, not a name for a wine lover, but for someone who seeks to bring cheer, laughter and bubbles to all around them. After all, who does not love Prosecco? Just to have your name on their guest list will bring a smile to someone’s face.

Lucida – and no, you may not take this one as it is all my own, chosen to express my fluid and fluent ability to communicate the essentials of improving your lifestyle and decorated with a charming letter ‘a’ to show that I am an A lister in my art.

So once you have made your new name choice, how do you tell the world that you have made this momentous step?
The best way is of course to have a reveal party and invite all your family and friends.
Picture the scene, you are all gathered around a pinata shaped to resemble you, and all your favourite people beat that old you with sticks until it bursts open and frees a rain of multicoloured cards each with your new name inscribed in a flourish of expensive calligraphy!
Could there be a more magical moment?
And once you have your new, motivational, name, you are ready to take on the challenge of changing your lifestyle to become the you that you always wanted to be!

Namaste!
Lucida the Lateral Lifestyle Coach

The first white frost awoke 
To beauty, flowers dead and iced with lace 
As overnight the days of autumn 
Died. And winter took their place

The first white frost bedaubed
The trees with silver shining bright
And round our feet the sucking mud 
Grew crisp, and turned from dark to light

The first white frost awoke
To beauty, nature as we walked
And all about our heads our voices
Misted as we talked

The first white frost, a harbinger
Of winter’s freezing bite
Made us lift our heads to to glory
And our hearts to feel delight

©jane jago 

“So, run this past me again, Drew – you want me to join a unit that does not exist to help babysit a group of the Vanguard’s freaks and failures? I am sure you have held back the bad news until last.”
Drew felt himself wince at the cutting tone. Prudence Armitage was not one to mince her words – it was more usual for her words to mince those she spoke with.
“Purdie, Purdie…”
“Don’t you ‘Purdie’ me, Andrew Gilroy! I have just got back from a reconnaissance mission and my mood is foul.”
He loved the way her slightly upper-class accent lingered over the last word, making it sound almost onomatopoeic. But then he adored almost everything about her and had as long as he knew her. Seeing her sitting in her mahogany and glass office, her back straight and her head slightly tilted up so the chisel sharpness of her profile was accentuated, he was irresistibly reminded of their first meeting in Rome. Then she had coal-black hair framing those amazing grey-blue eyes and a gloriously athletic body. She still had the body, but now her choppily short hair was steel, as if it had finally come to match every other aspect of her. For maybe the thousandth time he wondered why he had never asked her to marry him. Now it was twenty years and a hundred encounters too late.
Sighing slightly, Drew turned away from the piercing iron gaze which made him begin to feel uncomfortable like being under the twin barrels of a shotgun. He picked up something, anything, from her desk and looked at it without seeing.
“Silver medal. European Junior Gymnastics Championships. I was 13 years old and trying not to be seen as an overachiever. Even at Roedean that could lose you street cred. Coming second was my social salvation.”
He put the framed medal down quickly and pulled his attention back to the matter in hand. With Prudence, honesty and straight delivery were always the best policy.
“The thing is Purdie, we really are in a bit of a jam. The whole notion of apprentices and preparation for initiation, filtering out the unsuitable as we go is being made redundant by the present crisis. There has been nothing like it in centuries. Sanctorum was not designed to be a – mainstream operation unit. It was set up to be what its name suggests – an asylum for those we couldn’t risk in the open.”
“More like a semi-secure unit for the crazies who can’t adjust to being able to see demons.”
“That is an exaggeration. It has just managed those with adjustment issues. But the numbers recently…” he broke off. Then working to keep the slight trace of his near desperation from his voice, said: “It is getting very bad. You will have heard they opened a new training facility on the Perthshire Estate – already there is talk of a third being needed. And Sanctorum…”
“Sanctorum is being overrun by maladjusted post-millennials who think they are at Hogwarts?”
“Not quite.”
“But close enough?”
Drew just looked at her. He knew she was being deliberately difficult, but as always he had no idea why. The neat grey outfit gave away nothing of her personality. She wore it like armour. 
Sometimes he wondered how she felt when most of her peers – those she had been in training with and who had become her friends – and others much younger than herself, were now in the upper echelons of the Vanguard’s ranks and she was still a lowly commander. It was not that Purdie had ever lacked ability, but as Gita Sharma had read out of from Purdie’s psychological profile at the selection board for this post, she was not suited to take on the responsibility of an independent command. She was, Gita had observed, simply the best lieutenant – fiercely loyal, well able to give orders and run field-missions, so long as the ultimate authority was not herself. 
If Purdie was consciously aware of that aspect of her nature and the degree to which it defined her prospects, he had no idea. But she had never shown any sign of resentment even at the promotions of others who had once served under her – or any particular desire to seek a place higher than the one she had held now. Secretly, he suspected she had no wish to leave active service and trade her weapons for a desk and computer terminal.
“Really Drew, you know I have all the maternal instincts of a seahorse. Is a baby-sitting job the best use of my abilities? We are being overrun – what happened in Penrith is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. We need every capable initiate in the field twenty-four seven. It is not the time for me to be sitting on my bum in a glorified…”
“Sanctorum is a fully operational unit within the Vanguard.” Drew spoke more sharply than he had intended “It has had the highest proportion of mission losses of any active unit in the Vanguard over the last year. They get sent in where anyone more…”
“You mean they are seen as disposable cannon-fodder? Or is their commander a useless wanker?”
“No. I mean it has stood where others would have run. Its CO is a highly competent woman, Janice Roslaird. She has been doing an incredible job with people that no one else can handle. Sanctorum is…”
Purdie lifted a hand to silence him.
“It’s alright Drew, you don’t need to give me the full heart-wringing oration – I have already heard the sound-byte.”
Gods, the woman could be so damn cold! Drew felt his anger rising, then saw the slightly mocking look in Purdie’s expression and bit back his intended retort.
“It’s an assignment, not a volunteer position,” he heard himself say tightly. “I didn’t come here to persuade you – only to inform you. A courtesy between old friends.”
She looked away then, for once perhaps shamed. He could only hope.
“Who put me up for this?” she asked, still avoiding his eyes.
“It’s not like we have many options. Roslaird needs a rottweiler – but she gets you instead.”
“She asked for support?”
“Of course not. She may even resent you – I am sure you would love that.”
Purdie shook her head briefly, but whether in denial or resignation, he could not tell. Then she got up and moved around the desk to stand with him. For the first time he noticed the gouges on her neck and the patch of naked scalp where a row of stitches ran into her hair. Close up he could see etched into her face the marks of exhaustion together with contained physical pain and…
“We lost Nish in the Penrith thing,” she said, as though reporting the loss of a cricket match rather than of her most trusted Sergeant for the last five years. Possibly, rumour had it, something more. “He was torn apart by demons – literally. Bits and pieces. Nothing left.”
Andrew swallowed, unsure now.
I’m s-sorry. I was not informed.”
“It’s alright, you are in good company. His twin sister can never be told and his parents will have no body to bury and be left to wonder forever why he didn’t come home.” She sounded almost offhand, but the storm-sky eyes were unfocused. “Still, you know what they say – the war must go on.”
“Purdie, I…” 
She moved her body slightly in easy evasion so his comforting hand reached only into air and he withdrew it quickly.
“So. Who? Who do I have to blame for this? Tell me.”
“I can’t tell you that. You know I can’t.”
“Karl? Christa? Josh?”
Drew shook his head. His silence determined and final. Purdie closed her eyes in resignation, head slightly bowed.
“When?”
“Tomorrow – unless you need medical attention? No? You are sure? Then you’ll get the orders tomorrow to report to Karl at HQ. He’s to brief you formally, after which you will be removed from our active files and transferred to Sanctorum.”
She nodded once, then managed to recapture a brief waspishness which Drew felt was almost entirely for his benefit.
“Does it have to be Karl? He is such an adolescent with attitude, and his cynicism…”
“…matches yours?”
It was always hard to know with Purdie, but it was just possible that the warmth in the smile she gave him then was more than just acknowledgement of his attempt at humour. Whilst he was still trying to decide if that was so, she reached over the desk and swept her grey jacket from the back of her chair.
“Take me for a drink, Drew, and I might even forgive you.”
Following her from the office, he wondered if Karl and Gita really knew what they were doing in pushing for Purdie to be given this assignment and wondered again if he had been wise to let himself be persuaded into supporting the notion…

E.M. Swift-Hook

A man with a very strange accent phoned me today. He seemed to be under the misapprehension that he could sell me an outdoor bath. That wasn’t what he called it, but what else is a fecking great tub of hot bubbling water in the garden…

It would, he assured me, be just the thing for family parties. And simply super for romantic evenings with my significant other. He was so enchanted by the picture he was painting that I put the phone out in the garden and went back to watching some halfwit trying to cook a hugely complicated chocolate sculpture – of which more another time. 

For now let us examine the idea that my life might be completed by the addition of a ‘hot tub’. There are so many holes in that hypothesis that I’m not even sure where to start. Let’s just jump in at the deep end shall we? 

*Laughs immoderately at her own joke and lights a ciggy*

Number one: romantic with my ‘hubby’ as the geezer on the phone referred to the late Mr Granny. The late rather points out the little

difficulty here.  Besides which, even if he was still favouring me with his presence and the occasional uprising of his wrinkled willy, what woman in their right mind wants to share a tub of hot water with a person who is going to fart in the water to make his own bubbles…

NB. My current significant other is a Jack Russell terrier whose water aversion is only equalled by how hard he bites anyone trying to introduce his rotund little person to anything wet.

Number two: family parties in a bubble bath? The thought of the bodies of most of my family without significant amounts of fabric coverage is sufficient to frighten the stoutest of heart. And those who aren’t already wrinkled and wobbly are young and randy.

Think about young and randy for a moment and consider what such persons might find to do in a tub full of hot bubbling water.

Precisely.

And then ask yourself how long young and randy’s bodily excretions might possibly live in warm water.

I rest my case.

I’m now off to rescue my phone from the flower bed…

Our king summoned us on his great crusade to bring right to the northern world, and to avenge his brother foully slain by the treasonous Slavs. We followed him with glad hearts and high courage, willing to endure the vicissitudes of war to serve our beloved homeland. But we found little glory and much pain. By the time we had crossed the harsh steppes of Slavia, and reached the border of Wolfland, many of us had died, many of us had run away, and most of those left were sorely afraid. There was worse to come…

Just before sunset on the day that changed many lives forever, we arrived in a broad, cold, flat-bottomed valley after running the gauntlet of the most frightening weather I have ever known: an ice storm of unprecedented ferocity in which sharpened spikes of frozen water as long as a man’s finger rained from the sky, piercing unprotected skin like vicious arrows. My companions and I were among the last arrivals as we were carrying several of those who had been injured by the cruel ice. We were cold and wet, but glad to get out of the screaming wind with its cargo of flying death. King Steven rode among us on his great horse, Deathbringer, lifting our spirits us with his very presence and promising victory would be ours on the very next day. I cheered and clapped along with my comrades, but a still, small voice inside my head insisted that our great king was lying, and that nothing lay before us except more pain and misery.

I was helping to tend the wounded, and my friends were occupied in a fruitless search for firewood, when the valley was filled with the strains of unearthly music. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere, it chilled and heated the blood, it uplifted the spirit and cast down the soul, it was beauty and ugliness, it was kindness and cruelty. I fell to my knees on the ground. A hand shook my shoulder. ‘Look up there.’

I forced my eyes upwards and I beheld her, silhouetted against a blood-red sunset. It was the Winter Queen in all her glory, mounted on her coal-black stallion, and with the Diadem of a Thousand Stars winking on her brow. As I watched, her horse rose on his hind legs and stayed there with the lady’s hair streaming behind her in the wind, and dyed crimson by the setting sun. Then I heard her voice, as cold and precise as the shards of ice that pierced our skin that afternoon. It went straight to my heart and lodged there like a dart.

‘Here is blasphemy dressed in the clothes of piety. Here is the brother of an oathbreaker bringing an army to do war on the innocent and the brave. Know that this will not be tolerated. Your forefathers in Valhalla spit upon your names. Men of Scandi, return to your homes and consider your sins, lest the wrath of the Gods fall on your heads. You have until sunrise tomorrow.’

And then the stallion rose into the air once more before disappearing as mysteriously as he arrived. The rocky promontory stood empty, and the song of the Gods slowly faded to nothing.

Our king fell back in his saddle with a face the colour of ashes. Then he rallied. ‘Trickery’ he cried in a great voice with spittle flying from his lips. ‘Trickery and witchcraft. I promise half my kingdom to the man who brings me the head of that foul sorceress.’

Some ran for the cliffside clutching weapons and ropes, but I, and many others, had heard what we had heard, and our hearts felt like shards of ice in our breasts.

It was a long night, a very long night, during which the discomfort of our bodies mirrored the disquiet of our souls. We were in a bad way, with little food, no firewood, and tents so sodden they froze as we tried to erect them. Even among the rawest recruits, it was noticed that the king and his Ox Guard did not share in the discomforts of the army. Savoury smells emanated from the tight circle of the royal encampment, a great fire burned to warm the royal heart, and the sound of drinking songs split the solemn night air. The mood in the camp grew more and more restive as the night wore on, and when the lords who had come here to support the king went to the circle of his guards to beg firing and sustenance for their men they were driven away with harsh words and sharp pikes. Nobody knew what the morrow would bring, and many of us endured a night of terror.

I sat alone on the frozen tundra with the words of the lady alternately burning and freezing in my breast. I wanted to run away, but I could not. I had to wait for morning in the hope of seeing the Winter Queen once more – even if it cost me my life.

From The Barefoot Runners by  Jane Jago

This is a story that hit me right between the eyes.

I always remember the first time I saw Mumsie crying. She was standing there with tears flowing from her eyes and holding a knife in her hand. At the time I was, mayhap, still a mere young teen but aware enough in the ways of the world to know that a weeping parent must mean an extreme of emotion and a knife gripped in one hand could only mean one thing. She was going to murder Daddy.

I ran into the room shrieking in my piping soprano voice (I was a late developer), begging her to put down the knife. She glared at me through red-rimmed eyes and stabbed the point into the chopping board.

“Oh for fuck’s sake Moons, I’m just chopping the sodding onions. Go and do something useful. Or do something – anything! Here!” and she grabbed a book from the shelf beside her and hurled it at me. The corner of the book hit me between the eyes causing a bruise that lasted several days and after I had redeemed it and found a solitary corner of the lounge, I read it.

My review of ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

This is a book written by a Frenchman who clearly should have been born English as it is the most translated book in the French language. Had he been born English it would have needed less translating.

The story is very sweet and cloying.

An airman crashes in the desert and for some unbeknownst reason meets a small boy who is suffering from delusions of grandeur. Instead of telling the clearly deranged infant to leave him alone, our hero befriends him and has to listen to a load of unbelievable tales about life on other planets.

There is a fox in it too.

I never understood the point of it.

Nil stars.

Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

You can find more of IVy’s profound thoughts in How To Start Writing A Book courtesy of E.M. Swift-Hook and Jane Jago.

This was not a pregnant pause. The sense of expectation was something altogether more profound and powerful. For most watching, it was like the moment when a giant firework screams upwards into the midnight sky at New Year, drawing every eye and inspiring the mind to speculate upon what exciting and marvellous spectacle of explosive beauty could follow in the moments to come.

There was a preternatural hush. The unsound of every breath held in anticipation, and for a few scant seconds, time was suspended into tableau. From forth movement, activity and life there was birthed a stillness which transformed the instant to a photograph captured by the camera of every eye present. Something wonderful was about to happen, a culmination and catharsis which was both long expected and yet in the moment surprising.

Standing alone in the middle of this captivated audience I felt only clammy nausea. The cold, sickening churning of dread in my stomach, seemed to drop like lead as if I was in a high-speed lift going down fast. This was akin to standing before the darkened radar screen of an air traffic control room and watching two points of light merge into one, flaring more brilliant, the second before it blinked out forever.

But, like everyone else there, I only had eyes for Roxanne.

She looked ethereal in profile, like an antique watercolour. Her hair the living copper shades that Titian craved, her face damask, skin with the softened radiance of fine porcelain or bone china. I could not see her eyes, they were not fixed on me, but I knew they would be as compelling as the sea, the colour of the Mediterranean, neither blue nor green but some special tone that ascended beyond those both and was all her own.

She wore white, a symbol of purity, innocence – and sacrifice. For a moment, when the red fell against it in a liquid splash of violent colour, I felt as if a blade had slid into my own throat and I couldn’t breathe from the pain.

Then she spoke and time returned.

Roxanne was smiling. People sighed, words broke the mirror of silence and there was even clapping as she lifted her hand to show the ring and cup the ruby pendant her fiance had just slipped around her neck,  so she could see it better. In seconds she was surrounded by a thicket of family – mostly female – and friends – exclusively female.

The sea of well-wishers, oblivious to my presence, washed around me like an incoming tide and my isolation deepened. It took me a while to realise that I was still breathing, that the world was still turning and that the painful constriction in my throat and the cold knot in my stomach were invisible to everyone.  I became aware that for someone in that moment, the centre of the universe was not Roxanne. Someone was watching me.

I did not need to shift my vision very far. He was close, very close, to where Roxanne was holding her impromptu court. Her fiance. His lips were addressing words to her fawning father whose broad back was towards me, but his chilling blue gaze rested on me.

They held no trace of triumph, no gloating superiority – in fact, no real emotion at all. All they contained was the cold dispassion of menace – a statement not a threat. This was not a battle lost, a campaign defeated. This was the end of the war. I had lost everything and had no hope. Life itself was without meaning. I was nothing now and despair settled into me, it’s vulture’s beak ripping the soul-flesh from my heart. Then, abruptly, the ice blue eyes shifted away from me and, dismissed, I turned, left the room and walked out of my own life.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Prunella teaches you how to cook like a toff!

Yes. I know. Unlikely. However, sometimes one needs to make the effort. Men can be very simple beings, treat them kindly and they will do what you require. Hence…

To succeed you really do need to move your mind away from salmon en croute with baby vegetables. And why is this, so I hear you cry? Remove your nose from whatever luridly illustrated cookery book you are currently espousing and consider the creature to whom you are wed.
If, like the Hon. Rodney and most of his chums, your husband is the product of nanny, minor public school, and the armed forces, he has much less refined appetites than he would like to admit to. Chateauneuf-du-Pape is wasted on him: give him own-label red from one of the German supermarkets in a big glass, or a pint of old stumpblaster, and he’s a happy man. Similarly with food. Do not waste your time and effort on some delicate, complicated, small thing on a pretty plate. He. Will. Not. Appreciate. It.
No. The way to his heart is beef stew. With dumplings. Followed by jam roly-poly.
Now you’re stumped aren’t you? Your cordon bleu classes didn’t prepare you for that one.
Very well. In the spirit of female solidarity. I shall divulge.
The stew.
In a very large saucepan place the following. Diced beef (skirt for preference, or rump). Chopped onion. Diced carrot. Three or four potatoes cut small these will cook down and thicken the gravy. Cover with stock (cube stuff is perfectly fine). Do not be tempted to add herbs, spices or seasoning. This thing needs to be bland. Place on the range and bring to a simmer. Cook very gently for at least two hours. After which add more potatoes, peeled and chunked. Add more stock to cover potatoes. Cook gently for as long as it takes to cook potatoes until they are good and soggy.
In the meantime prepare dumplings and roly-poly.
You need 2lb self-raising flour, 1lb shredded suet (from a box, do not be bothering to shred your own). Add two beaten eggs and enough water to make a softish dough. Halve the dough.
Make half into balls about testicle size.
Roll the other half into a rectangle about a nine by six inches. It should be quite thick. Spread thinly with strawberry jam and roll up. Liberally butter a bit of tin foil large enough to enclose and seal your jam roll. Dump the roll on the foil and seal carefully.
When the potatoes in the stew are satisfactorily soggy, bring the pot up to a gentle boil and lob in your dumplings. Lid on and they will be done in about half an hour.
And now to boil the roly-poly. Here is where grandmother’s fish kettle comes in very handy shove about three inches of water in that blasted thing and when it comes to a rolling boil throw in the foil-wrapped delicacy. Do not let the water come off the boil and don’t let it boil dry. Otherwise it can be safely left to its own devices.
Call your spouse to the table and dish him up a large bowl of stew. Once he is outside that carefully get the roly-poly out of the boiling water and unroll it from its foil coffin. Serve a thick slice accompanied by a jug of custard. From a can if you like, although the most brownie points can be accumulated by making very thick custard (no, not the eggy sort, the yellow cornflour sort) and allowing a skin to form.

Normally one would offer an alternative menu, but in this case there is none. All that remains to be done at this point is to either confess to the dent in the Range Rover, or mention the bracelet you have seen in a certain jewellery emporium.
Either way I have provided you with the tools to ensure your ‘lord and master’ is but putty in your hands.

I stand in the supermart aisle
The trolly beside me half-full
A fractious and petulant child
Keeps giving my one hand a pull
Whilst I try to decide what to buy
And the emphasis there is on ‘try’

The choice set before me is vast
With strawberry, apple and peach
Avacado, or fresh lemongrass
And blueberry just out of reach
Cocoa or vanilla or plum
The choice is just making me glum.

What? Rosemary mixed in with quince?
Or would I like kiwi and pear?
I’m sure that would make a good drink
But which is best for my hair?
Would it be too much to ask, to
Have a little less food in shampoo?

E.M. Swift-Hook

When Francesca met Richard they were predisposed by fate to like each other – even though neither of them knew it at the time. They were both blandly handsome, both successful, both good-humoured if a little humourless, and both laboured under the disadvantage of unimaginative parents who bestowed on their offspring the sort of names more sensibly found in burlesque than high finance.
Richard (Rich to his very few friends) Dripping was an investment banker. He was a whizz kid and a high flyer, if rather more risk-averse than his peers, who was tipped for an early seat on the board of the private bank for whom he worked. Francesca (no diminutives please, the name is Francesca) Phaart was a tax accountant whose forensically detail-orientated carefulness had already earned her a junior partnership and made her not a few enemies.
Quite who thought it might be funny to introduce them to each other is rather lost in the mists of time, although the best guess is an undeniably louche specimen rejoicing in the cognomen Francis Ffotheringham, who was rather in the habit of collecting people with odd names. In the end, of course, it matters not who did the deed because some puckish deity somewhere had decreed that they should not only meet but that they should also fall in love.

For a couple of months Francesca and Rich met every weekend, discovering mutual tastes, mutual interests, and mutual dislikes enough to persuade them that they were well on the way to becoming a serious item. With this in mind, Francesca took Richard to her family home in the Cotswolds, where her parents were favourably impressed by the rather stolid young man on whom their daughter’s fancy had lighted. Their only private caveat was his name. As Papa Phaart remarked to his lady wife in the privacy of their wide, white bed:
“Seems a reasonable sort of a chap, but I’m pretty sure he won’t make the top of the tree with a damned silly name like Dripping.”
His wife nodded wisely and passed him a digestive biscuit.
Two weeks later, Richard and Francesca were on an aeroplane heading for the glass and steel tower in New York which Mr Dripping, the second Mrs Dripping, and Richard’s young half siblings called home. By and large, the visit was a success, with the New York Drippings united in approval of Francesca’s bland blonde handsomeness and her placid uncomplaining nature. The entire family accompanied the young couple to the airport and waved them off with smiling fondness. However, once they were through the departures gate the whole American contingent burst into raucous laughter.
“Phaart. Francesca Phaart.” Papa Dripping was holding his sides and the young Drippings were actually rolling around on the floor of the concourse.
“It’s a very good job,” the second Mrs Dripping opined genially, “that Richard inherited his mother’s sense of humour”.
“The lady doesn’t have a sense of humour,” Dripping senior expostulated.
“Precisely.”
But none of this hilarity was apparent to either Richard or Francesca who sailed serenely towards the next phase of their relationship without a care in the world.
In due course, a reputable jeweller was visited and a diamond of suitable size was purchased. The young couple hosted a dinner party at a fashionable restaurant to celebrate their engagement, and Francesca moved into Richard’s home in leafy Richmond.
Certainly, Francesca was well aware that her name caused a great deal of ribaldry among those she mentally dismissed as the uneducated, but she could see no humour in it herself and nor could she quite understand why certain of her acquaintance seemed to think Richard’s surname a source of ill-bred sniggers.
She might have carried on in blissful ignorance, had she not been placed in a position where she could not avoid overhearing a conversation between two female interns at her place of work. She was in one of the stalls in the female restroom, in fact she was about to emerge, when the sound of two sets of clicking heels stopped her in her tracks.
“…madam Phaart,” the voice was loaded with spite, “and I suppose she thinks that becoming Mrs Dripping will make her less of a household joke”.
“You should watch your mouth,” the other voice was quieter and more refined. “You don’t know who might overhear you.”
“I don’t care. Can’t she even see it?”
See what? Francesca wondered. But she was disturbed enough to mention it to Richard over dinner that night. He shook his head bemusedly.
“I don’t know, dear. Does it worry you?”
Francesca shook her fair head.
“Not really. I suspect it was just more vulgarity.”
And that might have been the end of that had not the bank chairman called Richard into his inner sanctum. They were closeted together for the best part of an hour before the older man wrung Richard’s hand.
“You will think about it then, Richard?”
“I’ll do better than that sir. I will get onto it immediately.”
That night he spoke seriously to Francesca.
“It has been put to me that a seat on the board of the bank is being kept warm for me.”
She looked at his heavily handsome face and felt a glow of pride.
“However, there is a stipulation. It is felt that the name Dripping is unsuitable to elevation to the board.”
“Oh. So what will you do?”
“Choose another. With your assistance, my dear.”
“I don’t think it much matters what. Other than Phaart.”
He smiled his complete understanding.
“I am quite drawn to Smith.”
And so it was that, after a bit of legal sleight of hand, Francesca and Richard became Mr and Mrs Smith and enjoyed many years of happy, if unexciting, marriage.

©️ Jane Jago