On the Tuesday, Janie and I went to Viv’s place in Golders Green for the evening. I think it was a sort-of seasonal party, mostly of the foodie variety.
Thursday 19 December – Z/Yen Christmas Bash At Le Muscadet
Sur lie aging…aren’t we all?
Thursday evening was the Z/Yen Christmas do – a relatively small scale affair that year, at Le Muscadet in Paddington Street, a restaurant now long gone. I recall Michael and I had used that place a few times for “corporate entertaining” in those early days of Z/Yen, so we thought it would be a sensible venue for our small but sweet team to gather.
I’m pretty sure that the group comprised Kevin & Kate Parker, Teresa Bestard Perello, Mike & Marianna Smith, Michael & Elisabeth, Me and Janie. Perhaps one or two other associates. 10 or 12 of us at the most.
It was a very good meal – it always was at le Muscadet. I recall one earlier occasion when Michael and I took some visiting Australian former colleagues/prospective clients there and they waxed lyrical about the place.
Not sure what, if anything, we did in terms of a seasonal song that 1996 Christmas – I cannot find anything in my dated files for it. It might have been one of Michael’s efforts, but I have a feeling we didn’t do one that year as we were simply a table in an open restaurant and didn’t have the guts to sing in that circumstance. I think we resolved to try and book a private area in future, when possible.
Saturday 21 December, Kim & Micky’s Place
An early in the season visit to Kim & Micky’s that year – I’m guessing they went away for Christmas itself. There will have been excellent food and wine. Probably quite a few people – perhaps even as many as the Z/Yen team do.
Michael and I had been commissioned to do a bit of work for Bloomberg. Janie and I decided to enjoy a weekend in New York ahead of my assignment. Janie flew out with me on the Friday, returning to London on the Sunday redeye. I then joined up with Michael and we worked in New York for several days.
Janie and I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria, scoring a manageable price at that time – especially as expenses was picking up five of my seven nights.
We chose to eat at Smith & Wollensky’s (see headline picture) the first night, having read a rave review about it in one of Janie’s travel mags. What that review didn’t teach us was the extent to which a high-end steakhouse in NYC was a “jacket & tie more or less assumed” place, which I discovered only after we arrived in smart casuals.
One local asked Janie if we were Irish as he was leaving, perhaps based on Janie’s physiognomy but perhaps also our casual look. One friendly but drunk gentleman, while walking past us as he departed, stopped and asked me if I realised how expensive the restaurant was. I told him I did. Thing was, back then, an expensive New York restaurant seemed quite modest in price by London standards.
Museum Of Modern Art (MoMA)
Janie and I did some culture-vulturing on the Saturday, spending quite some time at MoMA, partly looking at the excellent general galleries but also taking in some special exhibitions, e.g. a Jasper Johns retrospective.
We went on to a Nan Goldin exhibition at The Whitney, which had been much heralded on both sides of the pond:
By mid-late afternoon, we really were both wilting, so we returned to the hotel for siesta, before venturing out again, this time for dinner at the 2nd Avenue Deli:
Actually we eschewed the popular “salt beef on rye” style of deli food depicted for a more traditional Jewish deli meal, harder to come by in London, including a truly excellent cholent, which Janie, now a self-appointed aficionado of such dishes, claims to be the best she has ever tasted. I believe it was accompanied by (or perhaps we separately ordered) a kishke or helzel, which, obviously, will have helped the fatty-gooiness of the occasion make an especially strong impression. We also tried p’tcha (calves foot jelly), which is one of those mistakes people tend to only make once.
Still, it was a very special evening and I am pretty sure we slept off our endeavours/over-indulgence at length that night.
The next day we took it easy, simply strolling and finding a suitable-looking mid-town eatery for a traditional New York Sunday brunch, before I helped Janie get a cab to the airport for her “red-eye” journey home that evening.
New York cabs were still a hit-and-miss affair, probity-wise, back then. The authorities had fixed the price of a fare from Manhattan to JFK, so I gave Janie the appropriate fare plus a generous tip, explaining to her that she could and should simply exhaust her supply of dollar money on that journey. The cabbie tried to enforce some monstrous sum showing on his meter, which was the very thing the authorities had sought to prevent with the flat fare rule. Janie simply explained what had been explained to her and the initially angry cabbie relented. Janie has not sought a rapid return to New York City since.
I have a feeling I met up with Michael at the Harvard Club that evening. I recall having some superb sashimi with him there – for some reason (perhaps brainiacs tend to like sashimi) the place had employed a top sashimi chef at that time, which didn’t go with the decor but did go down very nicely indeed.
Then for several days it was mostly work.
I recall one midweek evening being entertained for dinner at John Aubert’s elevated apartment on the New Jersey side of the Hudson Bay with a glorious view of Manhattan.
One midweek evening comprised an early evening cocktail party at the Harvard Club, organised by Michael for his wider circle of friends and acquaintances, followed by dinner with a closer-knit small group. Very New York.
On my last night, the Thursday, Bloomberg arranged a dinner for us and several of the seniors involved in our project at a seriously up-market, kosher restaurant in mid-town. Several of the attendees had such dietary needs. It was, to date (25 years on), the one and only meal I have ever had that might be described as both haute cuisine and glatt kosher.
Not a pickle in sight
Michael stayed on Friday for an audience with Michael Bloomberg himself, while I took the wimps (daytime) flight back to London, arriving late evening to find that Janie had, in my absence, changed all of the carpets in Sandall Close. Let’s tread carefully around that one.
Yet, for more than two decades, I spent an inordinate amount of time on Michael Mainelli’s sailing barge, Lady Daphne. Most of that time was spent on the River Thames, sailing back and forth from London Bridge City Pier, via a Tower Bridge lifting or two…
A typical Z/Yen boat trip
…to the Dome or sometimes as far as the Thames Barrier, “edutaining” clients and prospects. Occasionally we’d use the boat as a static venue for a business workshop or a dinner.
Our business, Z/Yen, even had the old tub corporately branded at the topsail level, as evidenced here:
Back in 1996, the boat was a bit of a novelty in the Mainelli and Z/Yen world. I cannot remember exactly the date Michael bought Lady Daphne, but I do remember Michael dragging me from our office to St Katherine’s Dock, where he wanted me to act as his “legal advisor” on the purchase contract.
But I don’t know anything about maritime law and am really not qualified to review a procurement contract for a substantial asset…
…I said. But Michael demurred…
I know that. But the vendor has been messing around for weeks. I figure if I turn up with my “advisor” we can insist on closing the deal. Just look at the document for a few minutes, spot a couple of spelling mistakes or grammatical errors – there are bound to be some – then state that we can sign as long as those small changes are made in manuscript…
A few weeks later, I found myself on the high seas (OK, The Solent) with Michael & Elisabeth, along with some of their close friends, boaty friends and close boaty friends.
We weren’t there for racing purposes – we were there in one of the more “corporate sail around” slots. It probably looked a bit like the following image from 1990:
In truth I remember little about the day, other than my general feeling of unease whenever I find myself on a boat.
I vaguely recall a decent lunch in a suitable hostelry in Cowes.
I recall the skipper – at that time Adrian I’m pretty sure – asking me if I wanted to take the helm for a while; an honour which, for everyone’s sake, I chose to decline.
I never did take the helm, but just occasionally I did need to “lead” on a Z/Yen boat trip in Michael’s absence. Naturally, I deferred to the skipper on all important matters, but I did the general introductions and safety announcements, while asserting that everything I know about boats could be written on the back of a postage stamp.
Below is the image from the back of that 2p stamp, which I always had with me when aboard the boat. If anyone asked me a question after my announcements, I’d show them the stamp and refer them to someone more knowledgeable.
The notes are a little faded and tarnished now, but I can still read the notes and expand on them accordingly:
90 foot barge out of Rochester 1923;
Known as “Lucky Lady Daphne” due to a few narrow escapes;
Daphne mostly schlepped Portland Stone;
In the unlikely event that you hear seven short blasts of the horn followed by a long blast, that’s an emergency;
Life jackets are stored fore and aft – the crew will be handing them out – if you are below deck, the exits are in the places I indicate fore and aft;
Take your jacket up, don it when above and await the skipper’s instructions. The safest place is almost always to stay on the boat;
Even without a full blown emergency there are hazards – glass can be a hazard so hand your used glasses in, ropes are generally doing something so be careful not to hold onto one as it might get pulled through a pully along with your hand, stairways and decks can become slippery…
Then I’d explain where we are going, the rough timescales of the voyage and the edutainment game we were going to play.
Not bad for a land-lubber.
Actually my scariest boat moments have been overseas, e.g.
…not the 1996 “high seas” Solent adventure aboard Lady Daphne described in this post.
Postscript
Elisabeth has been in touch to remind me that she was there at that strange purchase meeting and that she can confirm the exact…and I mean EXACT…time and date of the purchase:
…signed at 16.10 hrs on 10 May 1996…
That means that Michael and Elisabeth bought Lady Daphne a week after Michael’s stag do…
I wrote this parody poem for Michael Mainelli’s stag night, which was held on Rupert Stubbs’s barge in Chiswick.
A rare example of a piece I wrote and performed myself; given the cosy audience and their state at the time of the recitation, unsurprisingly it went down rather well.
HARRENDOUS
One of the most godawful lays made about the city MCMXCVI
(A poem not entirely dissimilar to Horatius by Lord Macaulay)
VERSE 1
Liz Lizbetchen, she of Chiswick
By the sauerkraut she swore
That the great house of Franken
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the sauerkraut she swore it,
And named a wedding day,
And bade her messengers set sail,
Letters, faxes, calls and e-mail,
To summon her array.
VERSE 2
Letters, faxes calls and e-mail
She let them know real fast,
In hamlet, town and cottage
And little places you’d drive past.
Shame on the false Etreusscan
Who lingers at the stalls,
When Lizbetchen of Chiswick
Has Michael by the balls.
VERSE 3
Now from the dock St Katherine’s
Could young Mainelli spy
The line of blazing bridesmaids
Across the midnight sky.
The buddies of Mainelli,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some faxes came
With tidings of dismay.
VERSE 4
To London and to Franken
Have spread the Reusscan bands
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote
Unrenovated stands.
Bayswater down to Bishopsgate
Hath wasted in a dash;
Our Liz has stormed through Selfridges
And spent shitloads of cash.
VERSE 5
They held a council standing
Before the River Thames;
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
To stop him buying gems.
Out spake the Verschoyle roundly:
“That Liz must great go down;
Mainelli’s sense is truly lost,
We might as well rave on down.”
VERSE 6
Then out spake brave Harrendous,
The one from Michael’s firm:
“To every man upon this earth
Wedlock cometh like a germ.
And how can a man wed better
Than pissed as a bloody fart
Cos he’ll still be window shopping
For a fresh bit of jam tart.
VERSE 7
So start the rave Sir Rupie,
With all the speed ye may;
I with two more to help me,
Will get on down, way hay.
The legal limit of a thousand
May well be drunk by three.
Now who will stand on either hand
And get well pissed with me?
VERSE 8
Then out spake Lucas Clementus;
A boating man proud was he:
“Yo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And get well pissed with thee.”
Then out spoke Ricardus Sealyus,
Of filming man fame was he:
“I will abide on thy left side,
And get well pissed with thee.”
VERSE 9
Then out spake Marcus Schlossmanus,
A photographer proud and tall:
“Don’t mind if I do have a quick jar or two,
Until I’m senseless and I fall.”
Then out spake Julius Mountainous,
A friend from firms gone by:
“I’ll knock them back, build up a stack,
I can drink this damned barge dry.”
VERSE 10
Then out spake Rupius Stubbsius,
A Saatchi man by trade:
“Just hold it a tick with your big swinging dicks,
This is my party I’m afraid.
For stags at stag nights quarrel
Spared either girl or dame,
No maids, no duff, no bits of fluff,
Not even one that’s on the game.
VERSE 11
Imbibers oh imbibers!
It’s Michael we must drown,
A bachelor but a few days left,
So just shut up and party on down.”
So he spake and speaking sheathed
(tho “why sheathed” in this company? doesn’t it make you think??)
And with his wineglass in his hand
Plunged headlong in the drink.
VERSE 12
Years later, you’ll not remember
Much about that night gone by;
But you’ll recall the week of migraine
And that month of sustained red eye.
With weeping and with laughter
You’ll tell the stories right,
How well Mainelli held his drink,
On Michael’s wild stag night.
I recall that Janie, Steve Taylor and I performed the piece. Janie got some outlandish wigs for us to wear. Try not to think about it too much. Fortunately for the world, no-one took photographs that evening.
Steve at Paris House the year before, 1994, without wig.
However, DeepAI has had a go at revisioning the event and come up with the following:
Robo-Steve, Janie-Bot & Avatar-Ian
WHEN WILL I SEE YOU AT Z/YEN? (To the Tune of “When Will I See You Again?”)
PROPS REQUIRED/DESIRED: Wigs (sorted), mobile phones, pieces of paper (minutes, memos), left overs on plates
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will we share precious minutes? Will we have debate for ever? Will we still be macho (macho) and work the whole night through?
VERSE 2
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will our team eat together? Are we at work or just friends? Is this supper chicken or is it scrag end? (is this scrag end?)
MIDDLE EIGHT
When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will I see you at Z/Yen? When will I see you at Z/Yen? Haaaaaaa, oooooohhh, Precious motors.
VERSE THREE
When will I hear you at Z/Yen? When will we share precious mobiles? Are we in touch or alone? CAN YOU ****-**** HEAR ME?? Chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh PHONE???
When will I chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh? (When will you stop asking so many ****-**** questions?) When will I beeeeeeeeeep?
[ENDS]
Here are the Three Degrees singing When Will I See You Again:
This time, I went up to Keele by car, meeting Mike Smith & David Foreman for dinner. I stayed at the Post House, just the one night, then on to Manchester on business on the Friday, staying again at the then reasonably rated Britannia Hotel, subsequently not so well rated.
Janie joined me by train as she was doing a weekend foot physical therapy course at one of the Universities.
I don’t think I saw Ashley in Manchester on that occasion – I’m not sure he was yet there or if he was I wasn’t aware of it. On some of Janie’s subsequent visits I was able to spend some time with him.
I think I just read and worked a bit while Janie did her course.
On Sunday I drove us back to London.
Very early Monday I went to Waterloo to take the Eurostar to Brussels with Michael Mainelli & Kevin Parker. I think Janie might even have driven me to the station.
Two days in Brussels and I had my brick (mobile phone) swiped on the Eurostar home.
Ashley wasn’t in the Sneyd Arms in 1995, but thanks to him for this photo
I was rushing around the country like a mad thing for work back then. I had arranged a work road trip that required me to be in Cardiff on the Friday and then in Manchester for a couple of days from the Monday.
As it happened, Janie and I had been invited to a party in Knutsford on the Saturday evening; a couple named Ros & Con whom we had met in Sri Lanka a few months earlier. That Sri Lanka tour was the last time Janie and I did a group tour. We weren’t wild about too many of the fellow travellers, but we did get on with Ros & Con.
Con in pink talking to Ros. Me talking to someone else in pink. Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka.
We also wanted to meet up with Mike Smith & Marianna at Keele – following my January visit, Mike and I had started doing some work together and I thought Janie would get on well with those two…which she did.
So, unusually, we arranged for Janie to travel up and down by train, while I drove around and across the country.
I remember it dawning on me that driving from Cardiff to The Potteries on a Friday afternoon/evening was not one of my better ideas – it took hours. Janie got the 16:00 train from Euston and was cosy in the hotel I’d booked in Burslem, The George, long before I got there.
We had arranged to have lunch with Mike & Marianna in The Sneyd Arms. Mike had wanted us to enjoy their hospitality at the house, but I didn’t want thus to impose on what would be a fleeting visit. Also, I had a crazy craving to see the Sneyd Arms again, for old times’ sake.
I had got to know The Sneyd Arms well during my time at Keele – especially during the 1982/83 academic year during which time I went out with Liza, daughter of the landlord, Geoff O’Connor.
Word had reached me that Geoff had retired before our visit in 1995, so I wasn’t expecting to see him in there…
…but I was wrong. There was Geoff, back visiting the place, sitting in the snug having lunch with his old bunch of muckers. It was like a trip down memory lane seeing that group in there.
Geoff greeted me warmly and gave me news of the family; not only Liza but also his good lady and the sons, Liam and Shaun.
It was also a great opportunity to get to know Mike and Marianna a bit better, so it all felt like a very natural progression in life.
Janie remembers this day very fondly, not only for the warm and friendly lunch in the Sneyd Arms with Mike & Marianna but also the Knutsford party later.
An Evening Garden Party In Knutsford
Ros and Con were quite high falutin’ people in the Knutsford community. Con had been the top banana in a large power company or something of that ilk.
Con in a Nuwara Eliya tea factory. “One day all this could be biofuel”.
Anyway, Ros & Con’s house was a lovely place with a lovely garden. Janie is convinced that we have photos from the event, but I certainly don’t have negatives, so they might have been sent to us after the event and reside in a pile of prints, possibly in the attic awaiting sorting. If I do uncover pictures from the event, I’ll add them.
It was a very pleasant evening. Most of the other guests were quite a lot older than us and I sensed that they found our peculiar southern vowels and youthful expressions entertaining.
I had booked in to the Britannia Hotel in Manchester – one night in Janie’s case, a couple of nights in mine. This is another hotel that was probably past its grander days by 1995 but was perfectly acceptable and very convenient for my/our needs back then. It was good enough that we booked it again more than once, as Janie did some weekend courses in Manchester in the mid to late 1990s. I think it started to get more tired and we tired of it after a while. The contemporary reviews (he says writing in February 2021) are pretty bad, but not quite as bad as those of The George in Burslem.
But this June 1995 piece is primarily about a very special, enjoyable and memorable day, with Mike & Marianna at Keele in the afternoon and with Ros & Con in Knutsford in the evening. It was well worth the travels.
Actually that was the second of the weekends, when Michael Mainelli & Elisabeth (then still Reuss) came over to Janie’s place in Sandall Close for a feast of wild boar. Almost certainly not the handsme fellow depicted.
The week before, we went to Paul James’s place in Enfield for a party, possibly a housewarming as he was living in Wallington the previous time we went to his place.
With profound apologies to lovers of 1970s & 1980s popular music who clicked this page under false pretences; I just couldn’t resist the headline. But I am talking about the day I went to Keele and met Dr Eddie Slade while seeing Professor Mike Smith for the first time. Later, I had dinner and stayed over with Mike Smith and Marianna, at Mike’s house in Church Plantation.
It happened like this. My business partner, Michael Mainelli, had worked with Mike when Michael first came to The British Isles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Coincidentally, mostly while I was at Keele.
Michael and Mike had kept in touch. Mike Smith went on to become, in 1990, Professor of Health Informatics at Keele in the departments of Computer Science and Medicine. He concurrently held the position of Director of Information at North Staffordshire Health Authority.
Our business, The Z/Yen Group, was starting to thrive. I was looking after the civil society side of the practice and was starting to itch for bright resource, around the time that Mike was starting to look for opportunities to mix some fresh commercial activity in with his academic work.
Michael suggested that Mike and I meet. Knowing that Keele was my alma mater, Michael suspected that an excuse to stop off at Keele the next time I was heading north would be an attractive proposition for me.
So, between client appointments near Euston on the Tuesday morning and client appointments in Manchester on the Wednesday morning…
…Mike Smith said he would be delighted to see me on the Tuesday afternoon & evening, insisting that I should stay with him and Marianna at Church Plantation.
I think that first house might actually have been The Smiths’ house!
Mike also asked if there was anyone still at Keele that I would especially like to see, as he had time that afternoon to wander down memory lane with me.
I suggested Eddie Slade. I had seen most of the people who had taught me and were still active at Keele on earlier visits, but had not seen Eddie since my Education & Welfare sabbatical year, some 10 years earlier, when Eddie was Senior Tutor.
I recall that Mike didn’t rate our chances of getting in to see Eddie, commenting that he didn’t think he’d ever had an audience with the Director of Studies (as he was now titled).
But when I arrived at Keele, Mike told me that, to his surprise, Eddie had remembered me and said that he would like to have a meeting with both of us.
It was great swapping stories with Eddie from the distant past…9 to 10 years earlier. We’d not seen eye-to-eye over everything, but on the whole had got on very well and had worked together to resolve some “little difficulties”. Some of those tales might yet emerge in my write ups; some might best remain unwritten.
We also discussed how the Students’ Union had changed in those 10 years. I was delighted to learn that the Real Ale Bar was one of the union’s great commercial successes, as that had been one of our 1984/85 innovations.
I then asked what turned out to be a daft question about the television rooms. In our day, there had been three television rooms and the addition of a fourth TV channel (Channel 4) had caused some consternation. I asked Eddie how they regulate the television rooms now that there are multiple channels…
…Eddie laughed and explained to me that any student who wanted to watch television in the 1990s had their own TV. The former TV rooms had long since been repurposed.
With thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 2016 picture of the Students’ Union
After saying goodbye to Eddie, we had time for me to have a look around the Students’ Union, so I could see for myself the fate of the former TV rooms and far more besides.
This was also interesting for Mike, who confessed that he had never been in the Students’ Union building before, so it was my turn to give him a guided tour for the most part. It hadn’t changed all that much.
In 1995, there were still quite a few staff in the SU from my era. For sure Pat Borsky was there to be seen in the Print Room, for example; I think Barbara also.
Disappointingly, though, nobody said…
…”cards please”…
…as we entered the Union, although I did have my dog-eared life membership card with me, just in case.
Wally…where were you? Thanks to Mark Ellicott for this 1985 picture
Anyway, after having a good look around the union, we retreated to Church Plantation where I met Marianna for the first time, we three ate a hearty meal, enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation and the rest, as they say, is history. Mike and I worked together and became friends for 25 years, until his sudden death so sadly intervened.
I don’t mean “my first flame” in the romance sense. Good heavens no. I was over 20 when Africa was released as a single, in my third year at Keele.
No, no, no, I mean my first internet flame.
I started using the internet in the second half of 1994, while setting up Z/Yen, primarily because I/we expected it eventually to be useful for business.
But there wasn’t much going on commercially on the net in those days, so, to get into the swing of using the net, I used it quite extensively for my personal interests. Not least, at that time, subscribing to some Usenet groups that I thought would help me with my development of comedy lyrics, including one where people simply discussed the lyrics of songs.
One correspondent on that lyrics group stated that Africa by Toto was their favourite lyric of all time. That posting made me recall the spring of 1983 and the way that my flatmate, Alan “The Great Yorkshire Pudding” Gorman and I would mimic the line
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti,
which at the time we thought might be the most pretentious lyrical line ever, not least because it barely rhymes with “solitary company” and also barely scans the beat of the song. You sort of need to rush through that line like a broadside balladeer or a calypso singer with too much to say and not enough beats in which to say it.
I made these points about Africa by Toto on that Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours, as was the dial-up method in those days.
When I returned to the group, I had been comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover. Their beef was only partly a disagreement with my feelings about the lyric, which was understandable. It was primarily a character assassination suggesting that I was not qualified to discuss that lyric, on the basis that I had failed correctly to transcribe the line in question.
That line actually reads, “as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a lepress above the Serengeti”,
explained the angry song-lover.
In those days, there was no Google or YouTube or Wikipedia or on-line repository of lyrics to turn to. But I couldn’t even work out what a “lepress” might be. Nor why anything other than “Olympus” might make sense as the simile in question. I even spent a few minutes looking through the dictionary to see if there was a word which had slipped my mind, the feminine form of which might be lepress and make sense in context. The only word I could think of that might take the feminine form “lepress” was “leper”, which didn’t make sense to me in context.
I made these points on the Usenet group and then went about my business for the next 12 or perhaps even 24 hours.
When I returned to the group, I had been even more comprehensively flamed by the Africa-lover.
You know ******* well that a lepress is a female leopard. Don’t be so ******* insulting.
The flamer had also acquired one or two supporters who joined in the flaming, mostly on the grounds that they like the song, a view which I find fair and with which I have some sympathy. I also sort-of like the song; it’s just that one line that has always grated on me and was the source of our 1983 mirth.
But also, by now, I had acquired quite a few supporters, some of whom were supporting the logic of my specific argument about the lyric, while others were simply arguing that I was entitled to my opinion and that the purpose of the group was, after all, to debate lyrics.
I also received a private message with a plea from one of the group’s moderators, who told me that she felt that I had been unfairly flamed but asked me to post a conciliatory message to try to calm the group down. She was asking me to do this, she said, because she sensed that I was the more likely of the combatants to acquiesce to her request.
I thought about the moderator’s conciliation request, while also consulting my English and American dictionaries, to try to work out what a female leopard might actually be called. “A leopardess”, since you asked. I also listened to Africa by Toto again, just to see if I could detect anything other than “Olympus” in that line.
So I did post a conciliatory note.
I apologised to the original poster for my not liking the Africa lyric as much as they did. I apologised to any females or lepers who had been offended by my attempt to define the mystery word “lepress”. I asserted that the female leopard is a leopardess in both English and American usage. I suggested a compromise lyric, with neither Olympus nor lepress, which might just make sense and satisfy everyone’s sensibilities:
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a left breast above the Serengeti.
I dialed-in to that group a couple more times over the next day or so to watch the flaming discussion peter out. Then I unsubscribed from that group.
Anyway, here is Africa by Toto with the lyrics shown in all their glory and accuracy on the screen.
