Now That’s What I Call A Good Friday, Lunch With Kim & Micky In Noddyland, 14 April 2017

The night before, Janie and I had a super dinner with Toni Friend at Il Baretto.

Prior to dinner, Janie had picked up huge quantities of Lebanese food from Karam (formerly Crackers) and stored it in the Clanricarde Gardens flat fridge, while I played a losing game of real tennis at Lord’s en route to Il Baretto.

After dinner on Thursday, we stayed at the flat, then took ourselves and all that grub to the house early Friday…

…”are there four of us or forty of us for lunch?” I asked, as we lugged bag upon bag into and then out of Dumbo…

…before we headed off for an early game of modern tennis at Boston Manor Park.

Kim and Micky came over around 14:00.

Along with the wonderful Lebanese nibbles, Janie also served up some superb organic smoked salmon from Helga’s local Ummera smokehouse – thank you Helga.

It was too cold to sit outside, but we could admire the wonderful Noddyland bird life from the warm comfort of indoors.  Micky had never seen one of our woodpeckers before:

Wine flowed throughout the afternoon. I was being fairly abstemious, as it happens, as was (to a lesser extent) Janie.

Just around the point that everyone was feeling replete, Daisy then served up kebabs (for three of us) and falafels for Kim.

Then fruits and chocolates, just in case anyone still had some room.

Soon after we’d eaten, Kim, full of advice, as always, asked me if I knew what the phrase “fair weather friend” meant.

I explained that I had written a lyric about the Fair Weather Friend many years ago – click here for a link to the lyric – and indeed had been working up a performance of it on the baritone ukulele lately.

Janie chimed in that she really likes my Fair Weather Friend song. So I played and sang the song.

“We can do better than that,” announced Kim, dragging Janie off to the surgery room for about five minutes, after which they returned with their own lyric ready to “sing” and instructed Micky to video the result.

Here is their result…or I should say, here WAS their result…

Frankly, it is not bad for five minutes’ work by a somewhat tired and emotional duet. But one of the performance artistes has subsequently requested that the video be removed from the public domain. Very close friends might ask for sight of the material…at their own peril.

By way of comparison, I laid down a one-take, unplugged cut of my Fair Weather Friend song – click the play icon on the MP3 below…

…and originally asked the court of public opinion to decide between the two songs in a mini Ogblog/on-line Eurovision-style contest.

Whether the self-censoring contestant decided to withdraw their entry for reasons of modesty/manners, or simply decided to award themselves “nul points” in the contest will remain an unanswered question until the end of all time.

Still, it was a fun afternoon – what better way to start the holiday long weekend than with friends?

The next day, Kim and Micky outdid us in the bird life department by somehow attracting a grey heron into their garden…

…but now it seems that Kim and Micky no longer have any fish in their pond. I suppose you can’t have everything.