Read Online Untold Stories by Alan Bennett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Alan Bennett
Ads: Link
let on, and as Dad didnât say much either I took it to have been Mamâs idea, confirmed when the experiment turned out to be short-lived; the sports coat and brown trousers soon demoted to the status of gardening clothes, and we were back on the regime of âmy suitâ and âmy other suitâ.
Dadâs brief excursion into leisurewear wasnât an isolated occurrencebut part of a process (Mam would have liked it to have been a programme) called âbranching outâ. The aim of âbranching outâ was to be more like other people, or like what Mam imagined other people to be, an idea she derived in the first instance from womenâs magazines and latterly from television. The world of coffee mornings, flower arrangement, fork lunches and having people round for drinks was never one my parents had been part of. Now that Mam was well again and Dad could drive, Mamâs modest social ambitions, long dormant, started to revive and she began to entertain the possibility of âbeing a bit more like other folksâ. The possibility was all it was, though, and much to Dadâs relief, all that it remained.
âItâs your Dad,â Mam would complain. âHe wonât mix. Iâd like to, only he wonât.â
And there was no sense in explaining to her that these occasions she read about in Homes and Gardens were not all that they were cracked up to be, or if it came to the point sheâd be nonplussed in company. Other people did it, why couldnât we?
Drink would have helped but both my parents were teetotallers, though more from taste than conviction. Indeed alcohol had, for Mam at least, a certain romance, partly again to be put down to the cocktail parties she had read about in womenâs magazines. She had never been to, still less given, a cocktail party, which explains why she could never get the pronunciation of the actual word right, invariably laying the stress on the final syllable, cock tail . What a cock tail was I am sure she had no idea. Russell Harty used to tell how when he was at Oxford he had invited Vivien Leigh round for drinks and she had asked for pink gin. Only having the plain stuff Russell sent a friend out to the nearest off-licence for a bottle of the pink variety. Mam would not have understood there was a joke here, and had she ever got round to giving a cocktail party she would probably have tried to buy a bottle of cocktails.
The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
They did, however, gather that sherry was a generally acceptable drink, so once they were settled down in the village they invested in a bottle, as a first move in the âbranching outâ campaign.
âYour Dad and me are going to start to mix,â Mam wrote. âWeâve got some sherry in and weâve got some peanuts too.â
Never having tasted the mysterious beverage, though, they lacked any notion of when it was appropriate and treated it as a round-the-clock facility. Thus the vicar, calling with the Free Will offering envelope, was startled to be offered a sweet sherry at 10 oâclock in the morning. They, of course, stuck to tea; or, when they were trying to fit in, Ribena.
âWell,â said Mam resignedly, âit doesnât do for us. Our Kathleen used to put it in the trifle and it always rifted up on me.â
On another occasion when they had actually been asked out to drinks and gone in great trepidation Mam rang up in some excitement.
âYour Dad and me have found an alcoholic drink that we really like. Itâs called bitter lemon.â
Nor was it merely the drink at cocktail parties my mother found mysterious, but the food that was on offer there too â cocktail snacks, bits of cheese and pineapple,
Dadâs brief excursion into leisurewear wasnât an isolated occurrencebut part of a process (Mam would have liked it to have been a programme) called âbranching outâ. The aim of âbranching outâ was to be more like other people, or like what Mam imagined other people to be, an idea she derived in the first instance from womenâs magazines and latterly from television. The world of coffee mornings, flower arrangement, fork lunches and having people round for drinks was never one my parents had been part of. Now that Mam was well again and Dad could drive, Mamâs modest social ambitions, long dormant, started to revive and she began to entertain the possibility of âbeing a bit more like other folksâ. The possibility was all it was, though, and much to Dadâs relief, all that it remained.
âItâs your Dad,â Mam would complain. âHe wonât mix. Iâd like to, only he wonât.â
And there was no sense in explaining to her that these occasions she read about in Homes and Gardens were not all that they were cracked up to be, or if it came to the point sheâd be nonplussed in company. Other people did it, why couldnât we?
Drink would have helped but both my parents were teetotallers, though more from taste than conviction. Indeed alcohol had, for Mam at least, a certain romance, partly again to be put down to the cocktail parties she had read about in womenâs magazines. She had never been to, still less given, a cocktail party, which explains why she could never get the pronunciation of the actual word right, invariably laying the stress on the final syllable, cock tail . What a cock tail was I am sure she had no idea. Russell Harty used to tell how when he was at Oxford he had invited Vivien Leigh round for drinks and she had asked for pink gin. Only having the plain stuff Russell sent a friend out to the nearest off-licence for a bottle of the pink variety. Mam would not have understood there was a joke here, and had she ever got round to giving a cocktail party she would probably have tried to buy a bottle of cocktails.
The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
They did, however, gather that sherry was a generally acceptable drink, so once they were settled down in the village they invested in a bottle, as a first move in the âbranching outâ campaign.
âYour Dad and me are going to start to mix,â Mam wrote. âWeâve got some sherry in and weâve got some peanuts too.â
Never having tasted the mysterious beverage, though, they lacked any notion of when it was appropriate and treated it as a round-the-clock facility. Thus the vicar, calling with the Free Will offering envelope, was startled to be offered a sweet sherry at 10 oâclock in the morning. They, of course, stuck to tea; or, when they were trying to fit in, Ribena.
âWell,â said Mam resignedly, âit doesnât do for us. Our Kathleen used to put it in the trifle and it always rifted up on me.â
On another occasion when they had actually been asked out to drinks and gone in great trepidation Mam rang up in some excitement.
âYour Dad and me have found an alcoholic drink that we really like. Itâs called bitter lemon.â
Nor was it merely the drink at cocktail parties my mother found mysterious, but the food that was on offer there too â cocktail snacks, bits of cheese and pineapple,
Similar Books
