THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, JUNE 20, 1955.
SLOW MOVEMENT
THE CONCERT GRAND
THAT CAME HOME...
ONCE owned 11 cat Every night for upwards old beast beneath throbbed" which, being sent away of a year the firemen used and
jangled, the men
to live on a farm,, re- to gather round it. dull thumped and roared, the turned to my home in cares of a bright brass- night was made hideous and London a year later by foot, polishing day over, to sing lovely. travelling miles to do so, it fell upon me to play. And
I grew to know that piano crossing the Thames and so, over and over again, we confronting "streets
and went through the wartime well. I knew its cigarette traffic to which it was ritual of Roll Out the Barrel burns, its faulty upper C, wholly unaccustomed: for it and Roll Me Over, spiced the rings left from long-dry such elves of glasses, and every jangled had been strictly a garden with cat, and knew none of these things.
Such an essay ir polarisa. by WILLIAM
was un
tion was wonder: but not unusual. There American dog for instance which returned over 3,000 miles to its old hume, taking six months for the journey. Animals perform such mys teries quite frequently, but do grand pianos? Do concert grand pianos?
-all
!
At one point during the war I was stationed in suburban house in North London where there had left,
alone of furniture, one of these im mense musical instru- ments. It was pale brown in colour,
i
taste-
fully veneered in walnut of
was
little
SANSOM
whirr of its entire lovable
Antique
Drawing by SHOWELL
of piano, venerable, weather- got it there.
Of
Did
It
Happen?
What do you think? FACT or FICTION? Find the answer to-
morrow...
At the back, looming in the shadowina long grand pisna.
Miss Vickers' Hostel Is For Tories Only
By MARY HEWAT
London.. I love fishing-fly fishing for ∙ISS JOAN VICKERS."trout. And I used to ride a newly elected Tory lot. But it's too expensive MP for Plymouth- now."
M
Devonport, is undoubtedly
the only member ever to Joan Vickers had her 48th enter the House of Com- birthday this month, but a she has a girl-slim figure, mons equipped with
Japanese hara-kiri knife, dresses sleekly,
hand-embroidered sarongs,
and a hostel for fellow out- of-town Tories.
A Siamese cat
that
The Knife and the sarongs system for it was the kind presence when finally he had been a private garage had been clamped over the curious ivory
She gives you a feeling of newly transformed into a junk- teeth, palaeozoic old tripod are legacies from her work antique yard. This was not a senseless to everything but its in the East, helping to re- the inner springiness of a
Siamese cat-a cat ed. that sounds like all
patriate war prisoners → Time passed, the war was over, all the place where you would blind three-legged direction. expect to find such an enter seaside boarding houses and ‹
WUS
The next day I went back they are not for Parliamen could suddenly pounce. And residential all wood-floored bars. Yet it and one day I happened by prise: this
The hostel, her she says with some pride: chance to meet an old member street. But there it was a and inquired where it had come tary use. played, and my fingers
efiorescence of
in the station who had sad sudden
Albion Street, "I do some of the housework uld from South-East London, from home played it to the bone of its
sale among news. It concerned the man things for
the the same area. I bought it, and Bayswater, is a legacy from here. and I do all of it in my old yellowed ivory. I knew who had won that piano. He bosky, declining houses, and it came to live with me. her father - acd MPs flat at Devonport."
crossed the road to look. it on cheerful evenings, I
(Tories only) are welcome. knew it on empty afternoons when: some old, evocative tune saddened the air with memories of the gone golden days, the days of peace.
was
10 accident
had joined the regular Brigade, and had been killed on duty, There had been with the machine: I was the more distressing to hear that
the occasion had been
one at
and a life had been lost for a
men and
f
I wondered.
It
It brought with its smell, a musty smell of, old- peculiar world wood, the fumy scent of all its another century, and
3
That feminine quality of hers... has been recognised as far away as Yorkshire. A couple of days
ago
Friends of friends
Miss Vickers received a "I used to have foreign pareel from an admirer in the At the back, looming in other presence, and it took up
Tin Shop Once of false alarm someone had shadow, there lay, or stood are good third of the main room; students here," says Miss Doncaster
one was seldom able to forget Vickers, "people whose British Railways. It contained fooled with the street fire-post, waited a long grand piano. it, quict against the wall like a joke. Such alarms put into was in walnut, It had cigarette
stains the ringed operation"
heavy QUTES. assembled at dan gases, a dead C in the upper machines equip gerous split-second speeds; their register.. there was little doubt misuse is not only irresponsible, about it....I went home and among, it is criminally offensive,
wondered and wrestled, men, but for such # matter as this mönster piano,
great curled beast. Meanwhile, families I knew, or friends a pair of lace-edged yellow silk of the shop that had sold it be of friends. Now Edith Pitt bloomers and a request
came a garage again: it seemed is with me
At last the day, came when the station was disbanded. It,
the cus tom to divide mess ment
WILLIAM SANSOM ownɛ to only one recreation: watching. How keenly he watches Méditerranean and English--- particularly London-fe ho has proved in such novels 25 The Face of Innocenca (1951) and the short stories recently collected under the title Lord Love Us.
Born at Barrow. 43 years ago, Sansom was educated at Uppingham School and awarded both travel scholarship and a bursary by the Society of Authors after the war. He married actress Ruth Grundy last year..
the
It
all the
the
tum of the great monster so Birmingham) sadly homeless.
been raised simply for the re Edgbaston,
as though the green shutters as (member for with a theatrical curtain, had
a
and Ray
Mawby
is
Venetian gloom
coming
up
(the newly-
of rained
elected trade unionist for "I member Totnes). want one or two more help me keep the house go-
ing."
to
to
spend
a
day
with you at the
House of Com- mons.
What does Miss Vickers hope to do as
MP? She slid gracefully away from the question.
my
"I will nurse can- stituents,
course.
the
of Since
erection
I've had 90 people in inter- view
sessions wanting help of one kind or an- other."
In plain print the directions A romantic place North" and "South-East” London convey nothing of the distance
and "
coincidence lots had to be
The months of my own life involved in this strange and drawn. I rather again passed. I was living then awful odyssey. It is only when It stay d with me to the the eighties. and though sophistication RS These wanted it; a worm of senti- in a part of Hampstead in a
When the mal drain brass wheel Foolish Things-it is not ment had started. However, brsement garden flat, deciduous one thinks of all the miles of bitter end of my time in that
Parts of the streets between the long lorry house.
burst, and sewage from the set beneath each of unprepossessing to see the I drew a blank. But the out- and overgrown.
whole house floated up to my in them and all three stout legs, its very gorilla figure of a six-foot come was popular, the win walls and ceilings were always lumbering roads with
footboards, shorting all falling, the garden was a nest of bouses
elec- weight made it difficult to fireman in full equipment per was particularly well thistles, tall grass creeper, and people in the houses, the lamp ricity 50 that I lived in
overgrown trees, move and its very size whispering of "a lip-stick's liked. I remember only a
was a posts, the bridges, the shops, the Venetian gloom
and darkc churches. The
water, It took up a great deal of any traces" and "how the ghost slight taste of sour grapes, romantic place, fast becoming factories, the
While I made arrangements An owl chose for its thinking how much room it surreal.
ATE- normally proportioned room, of you things."
parks, the schools, the nightly pitch neighbouring
a would have taken up at television aerial, music It would have taken four
houses and everything else it about all the other furniture.
was too huge to find easily an- Five or six men usually home; and I did not envy its from all around through is only when one thinks of this men to shift it properly, it
other home. It was yet with me was that kind of piano. It sat on the monstrous piano, new owner the job of trans- screen of leaves--the voice of a vast labyrinth of brick and when, during that same sewery knife, and a
grime, and even then multiples others was huge, heavy and a god- many
clustered porting it all the way over, ger, flute and cells practice. by all the radiating directions time, as I put the final line to vicious-look-
particularly the and
a novel harsh that could have been taken so
that had taken
two ing
Indo- send to the Mess in which round, and
so, until the to South-East London where
writing, T curving nole of somebody that
breathed a great years that there is evolved alarm sounded, the game he lived, nor its cumbersome earning the cornet from unseen feuning map, the map that holds breath saw through the French beside it on a blessed relief and in the same eşian dagger it stood.
windows opposite,
more than eight million people
the garden wall fall the in its huge and giddying iniri windows
table, Cats prowled the tall grasses, cacy it is only when such
down, as if similarly relieved were the only unfeminine Government permission for her birds squabbled incessantly in million fold grimed Eoneycomb is of a great burden.
things to be seen about mother to live in England. And the overgrowth, field mice up envisaged that the appalling
there was one man, with five blue-bottle
Finally. I grub chance peared,
gave the piano Miss Vickers. of the piano returning
chlidren, who had found a new wriggled in under the front
And have not, so far, o that one shop around my one away.
job, but couldn't take it until in their hundreds when night small corner and not a real shop seen it since. fell and the dustbins cooled: at that can be truly and fear- WORLD COPYRIGHT RESERVED
he got his only good suit out of the pawnshop.
DODWELL & CO., LTD.
Wine & Spirit Department
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came
2
door
awaiting them was a consortium fully imagined.
of the largest spiders I have ever seen, I detest spiders, But in that fat they were every where; and such. was the grow- ing mystery of the place that I found myself feeding the grub to these spiders simply to see the great-legged black horrors leap from their webbed holes, entranced by my own disgust.
Hammer-headed
Being a piano having · legs, and tawny like a big-haunched beast, there was an uneasy temptation to imagine it taking to the roads itself by right.
DID IT REALLY HAPPEN?
YES
NO
✪ Put your tick in the space abers and keep this panel by you until tomorrow ... when the answer will be given-with
another story in this serier by mea
CHARLES MORGAN
The Japan- suicide ese
The
Prob
jems Tanged from women deserted
by
their husbands
the French
MISS JOAN VICKERS, M.P.
to
"I will nurse my constituents, of course."
wite of An English..
sallor -
who
wanted.
The living-room was full of flowers, carved Indone. sian heads, china statuettes, She pulled hand-embroider-
H
Miss Vickers has rented "what they call in Devon a tenement ed sarongs from a drawer Bal-what used to be the ser "this
big house, vants' quarters of one is Javanese" ---
for 30s. a week in Devonport. draped a blue silver
one "My drawing room is the old around her "This comes kitchen, but I have wallpaper from Negri Sembilan. Isn't to disguise it, and the kitchen is the old scullery." She plans to it lovely?"
spend most of her time there when Parliament is not in
She pulled open another One afternoon, when I was blindly sniffing its huge way,
drawer, brought out a petit- wandering out from this idyll, lumbering along in the shadow Did Saturday's story-My First point fire-bench cover. "I I noticed in a nearby street of dark walls, rounding corers Secret Agent, by Eric Ambler-like to do embroidery. This
was a minute round the suddenly into the lamplight, really happen? The answer is comer from me--that what had hammer-headed, its long lip. NO,
rit
lis a fish and horse design,
THESE SWINGSTERS WAIL WITH
A STREAMLINED
A
SLANGUAGE
By MICHAEL
RUDDY
with ago, the band- "play
Beverly Hills. Swingsters like Benny Good– Howeyer, American hepeats flowing movement; "go," play for the rythm with a powerful THE language of swing a few years ago, and smear, have discarded this term
schmaltz" or beat, and "rock it," meaning go is rapidly replacing leader said, it was rock it' and "shmaltzando" and currently to town, or the old get hot." the language of music, ride. This year when he wants it's "make it a gasser," meaning especially that derived from his band really to ride, really "make it come out wonderful," the Italian, on the scores of to swing out, he uses the word popular music."
'wall.'
calls
session.
New scheme
And she has a new scheme in mind for her constituents." A sort of Universal Aunts, to do all the odd jobs so often needed in a Navy port
"I would rent wedding dresses, all sorts of things. But I don't know yet whether it can be done... I will have to try to get office space and staff.",
But Miss Vickers is a practical woman. "I will do it as a pay- ing concern. If someone wants 55, worth of flowers sent, I will charge threepence or sixpence, I don't belleva for the service. in doing things for nothing."
Cost more Miss Vickers still talked with
One of his favourite terms of praise is "blow." As in "that "You gas me" from a hepeat guy blows a mean plano, inter- is a terrific compliment, only proted "that guy plays the piano I presume it stems from the equalled by "You crease me." wonderfully." He
excitement saxophonista "bonkers."
about the clection Ray Anthony told me the bebop habit of using opposite terminology. When I tell my above after I had listened to boys to matice it wall, I don't ing to cut notes short, It's now Remember "staccato"? Mean.
campaign. I didn't attack the Thus he's a honk bower". Socialists," she said, "I tried to a private playing by Ray want them to give with sob bite it off or what 1; off" or means "he's a superb, saxo-show that the Tory way was and some of his orchestra music, I wouctiim to heat it rip it off when Ray and his phonist,” of "Siuefoot" from "Daddy up." Long Legs"."
Acclaimed as the leading band leader on the poll of dise
A FEW CHORDS
bond are in rhythm.
"Free wheeling" has replaced. the classical tutti"-all play. together.
DEDICATED GROUP
I judged from all that that thờ
better. Of course I talked about I told the nationalisation. housewives that their washday would cost more if the Socialists got in and nationalised water."
She campaigned in a grey coat and skirt by day, in a grey sult with black velvet collar in evening. She wore that grey suit, and the cerise and black bat she had on when the poll was declared, for her first ap pearance in Parliament,
jockeys across the United States He Wustrated what he witant Ray
In classical terms, ad lib slang or lingo of modern music Anthony "explains that by playing a few chords from
changes a good deal. many streamlined expressions "Something's Gotta Give," he told a musiclan to interpret a have taken the place of the song and dance pertamed by passage in his own way. It is "Musicians talk music a lot Standard Ita
Italian
They are musical direc- Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, still used, although for some among themselves.
years it was "ride solo," "go generally a dedicated group, and "See what I mean? That's to town," "take off" or "go out when someone uses a term which wailing Wailing Get it?" I got of this world," Or tersely sounds more expressive than the
I was with him. I dig him. "jam" Hence jam sessions ones we now use, we pick it up," think it's lucky"
genuine jazz men, Ray Anthony said. "Orte
tions,
When he was scoring music for the dances played for Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron and two hundred
among
"When the beboppers changed college
The
Now that the Tory is in, what
youngsters, Ray rewrote musical from "hot" to real cool it's not although ad lib, is in vogue these phrases come into the does she want to do? Miss
terms in swing slang
again,
speech of everyday after be what I mean... When I say 'play. cool,' I mean what the Italians While directing rehearsals of coming a habit among musicians. Vickers was nonce
It's like going back to simply that we Under
Add _when they wrote in his band, Anthony had a few pet "This is the era of swing, and stand better and quicker. Terms "planissimo-softly und with expressions. One of them is ve seem to be leaving the horn school," she said. You have to ilke fortissimo and glissando · restraint "
"fonkie which his musicians blowing period, endeavouring to wait and see. How can I tell? are old"bat, paze, cut of date,
know means "play the rhythm produce interpretive music. I've never been there. It's a and even the new phrases: "The world over, musicians with a deep blues quality. Or which may sometimes sound big club. I don't want every- change from year to year he recognise "con expressione" as walk in," meaning care into the like the sounds of everyday life, one thinking I want to run the
meaning play with feeling, groove slowly and gently, with a so the terms will change.
World