December Adventures
A musical Prelude. In about 1969 I went to see "Beyond the Fringe" at the May Fair Theatre in London. The curtain rose to a stage with 4 bar stools and a piano. Dudley Moore came on and sat at the piano. He began to play something which gradually evolved into 'God save the Queen'. This caused some confusion with the British members of the audience: do we stand or not? Being in the Mayfair a good proportion of the crowd were American one of whom, sitting right behind us - from his accent (and attitude) likely from Texas - guffawed loudly about "the Limeys are all confused haw, haw". For the second half, the same opening, but Dud's tune evolved into the Bar Strangled Spanner. The Wacko Kid behind us was far from amused and jumped up, while all the Poms sat and laughed. The relevance of this will come later. On a theatrical note I find that just about every literary cliche in English comes from Hamlet, apart from those in the Scottish Play by the s...