Curiouser and curiouser

So, I was in the Great Wen for a 60th birthday party, it being the (academic) year for such things. I have spent six months avoiding them as much as possible, but this one sneaked through my defences. A number of other survivors from Bradford in the 1970s - including this blog's Luxembourg correspondent - obviously had nothing else to do either and it was bona to vada their dolly old eeks for the first time in many years or, in some cases, decades. I wouldn't normally write a blog post about a private function, but the aforementioned visitor from the Grand Duchy positively insisted that I should, and he does represent a rather high proportion of the blog's readership. In addition there was a fine example of the synchronicity that fuels so much of my writing. So, apologies to everyone else for the self indulgence; I promise to return very shortly to being self indulgent in the usual way.

So, first things first, I can confirm that all Eurocrats present remained awake throughout, maintaining a steady stream of pithy, albeit unsolicited, advice to the DJ from the shadows at the edge of the dance floor. It was a 'surprise party', and there was some debate as to exactly how surprised the birthday boy was. In the end the consensus was that if he had known about it then he'd never have worn that shirt. What was no surprise was that large quantities of drink were taken, leading one former student colleague of mine to corner me for what seemed like several hours while he explained that his life had been ruined by his parents' failure to christen him Roy. So far so normal.

What raised the evening above the run of the mill was the decision of the wife of the man in whose honour the party was thrown, to dress as Alice in Wonderland and dance on the stage to 'Living Next Door to Alice', a song recently featured on this very blog, or, to be more precise, to the Gompie version, in which the crowd - represented in this case by the partygoers - periodically take up the refrain to enquire loudly, brusquely and in the demotic as to Alice's bona fides.

Who indeed?

There is a perfectly rational explanation for all of this, but I have trespassed on your patience for too long and will not therefore bore you any more by elucidating further.

By the way, there's a rumour that there will be wargaming this week, so watch this space.