The Virgin of Rooty Hill

The Lounge Lizard

Description

Who is "The Lounge Lizard"? And who is "A Courtier"?

"The Lounge Lizard" is a former Sydney investigative journalist, and "A Courtier" is a well-known Australian artist.

It is not through modesty that the author and illustrator are hiding behind their chosen pseudonyms. Both are Members of a Sydney Club that traditionally prefers to stay out of the public spotlight. As loyal club-members, they have decided to abide by that tradition.

This volume is one of many published by The Svengali Press (recently DH Lawrence's 99 Days in Australia). The Svengali Press helps authors publish books that the old world of publishing cannot or will not bring to the public's attention. We stand ready to help any author, no matter what they write, to take advantage of the new, exciting world of combined print and digital publishing.

Sujets

• Essays
• Humor
• Form

Informations

• Publié par: The Svengali Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780648096368
• Langue: English

Extrait

CONTENTS
Introduction
The Virgin of Rooty Hill
The Case of the Cloakroom Trousers
The Bakeoff and the Celebrity Chef
“Feline Amenities”
The Chairman’s Sheets
My Lunch with His Excellency
Memories of Gorgo
The Office Overcoat
Have You Heard the Latest KGB Joke?
Things Not to Do in a Club
Guess Who’s Doing the Washing-up?
The Story of “Another Lady”
The Best Parrot Joke Ever
TRIBUTE
IN THE SPIRIT of anonymity that pervades this work, I will not divulge the name of the person whose contribution to my career I wish to acknowledge in this "dedication" (a far-too pretentious word for what follows – "Tribute" is probably a more-appropriate term). But he will know to whom I am referring. He was not only my editor, but my mentor and protector for almost 20 years. Were it not for his enduring loyalty – which nevertheless survived some trials and tribulations – I would not be where I am today, able to publish this "slim volume". In fact, I should now be helping him to run one of Australia's principal Media organisations, a task which should have been the culmination of his life in journalism, and which was almost his birthright. It is a tragedy for our profession, and for that great company – now in terminal decline due to incompetent management and a self- indulgent workforce – that he is obliged to sit helplessly on the sideline, knowing that he could have done better, and might have saved it from its now condign fate – oblivion. Sic transit gloria (thus passes what might have been).
The Lounge Lizard
INTRODUCTION
The Lounge Lizard
IT WAS ONCE not considered good form to reveal what was said “in club”.
Yet in today’s world, clubs are changing, and traditional ways are having to bend to the new winds that are blowing through a different clubland.
It is in this new, more open climate that the following stories are being retold.
They are taken from what was once a weekly blog sent to a Friday lunch group at my Sydney club (which I have called, for the sake of gentlemanly anonymity, the Loungers Club).
Although in these examples (a selection of 12 tales from a list of over 100 such stories) the first-person pronoun is, perforce, sometimes used, the identity of the “I” is hidden behind the author’s chosen nom-de-plume “Lounge Lizard”.
That he is a former Sydney journalist will be obvious from some of, but not all, the stories.
They are illustrated by his friend and fellow-Lounger who wishes to be known, in this context, as “A Courtier”.

“ A Courtier ” (left); “ The Lounge Lizard ” (right)
THE VIRGIN OF ROOTY HILL

AT OUR Friday lunch yesty mention was made of gewürztraminer, the dry white wine of the Alsace region, grown along the banks of the Rhine. (We had as one of our Club wines a gewürztraminer from the Hunter.)
A discussion ensued on gewürztraminer, one knowledgeable Member explaining that it meant a “spicy” traminer. Another then added that Penfolds used to cultivate the traminer grape at their historic Minchinbury vineyard at Rooty Hill, outside of Parramatta, using it to make their renowned Minchinbury champagne.
Which gives me the excuse today – which I would not otherwise have had – of telling the story of The Virgin of Rooty Hill. (Technically, this is what we journalists call a “peg”, on which to hang our story.)
But it is a true tale (would I lie to you?), related to my wife’s sister, when she was teaching English to migrants in outer Sydney.
It happened that one of her pupils was a young woman of Italian extraction, recently arrived in Australia with her immigrant family (we are speaking of the 1970s). The family lived at Rooty Hill, in Sydney’s west.
She was about 16 years old, and somewhat buxom for her age, yet quite pretty, in that southern Italian sort of way.
Her main interest in life, above all others, was music. She went to concerts and recitals whenever she could, and had a collection of records of which she was very proud.
She was especially keen on recordings featuring the great Italian tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. In fact, truth to be told, she had a bit of a schoolgirl a crush on him.
Then, one day, she learned that Pavarotti was coming to Australia, and would sing at the Sydney Opera House. Her hero was coming to Sydney!
She saved up, queued up, and finally managed to acquire a ticket to one of his performances. She was over the moon.
On the day, she travelled in from Rooty Hill by train. As she watched and listened from the cheapest seat in the house, she almost swooned with ecstasy as that glorious voice, then still in its prime, filled the auditorium.
Afterwards, she went round to the stage door and joined a bevy of his fans, waiting for the great man to appear. Which he did. He greatly enjoyed female adulation, for he was a vain man, typically Italian, and so spent some minutes signing autographs, bestowing pinches and chaste kisses, and generally making a welter of it.
When he came to our lass from Rooty Hill, however, his eyes lit up. He took in that she, too, was Italian, and clearly one of his most adoring fans. He noted her fresh face, welcoming smile, ample bosom, and innocent demeanour.
“Would you like to have dinner with me,” he asked her, in his strong Italian accent. “I am going to a ristorante that I am assured is excellent, and would be honoured if you could join me.”
To say that the nubile young signorita was elated by the invitation would be the understatement of the decade, if not the century. She accepted with alacrity, pausing only to ring her parents and explain that she might be home late.
Somehow Pav sloughed off his various minders and companions, and the two repaired to a discreet little tratt in Surry Hills. Of course, they conversed in Italian, but, to cut a long story short, they each enjoyed the other’s company, until the time came to leave.
“Would you like to come back with me to my hotel, for coffee and a liqueur?” asked Pav, as nonchalantly as he could. “Why, yes,” said the innocent young thing, “just for a little while.”
And so the two found themselves in the late-night coffee- bar of one of Sydney’s top hotels. Their tête-à-tête continued. Then Pav popped the vital question.
“Would you care to come up to my suite?”
Suddenly the young signorita apprehended the approaching peril. Pav was a great and lovely man, a generous and attentive host, but there were other important things to consider.
She declined.
He pressed his invitation.
She resisted.
Finally, in a last-ditch effort to shake free of him, she said, plaintively: “Signor Pavarotti, you must understand, I am still a virgin.”
The great man rose to his feet. “My dear,” he said in the most fatherly tone he could muster, “I completely understand. You must save yourself for your future husband. I will arrange for a taxi to take you home immediately.”
And so he did, pecking her rosy cheek as he commanded the driver to take his $100 note and convey the young lady safely home to Rooty Hill…where, a year or so later, she met a young man, fell in love, was married, and lived happily thereafter.
And Luciano Pavarotti’s reputation as a man of honour remained intact.
THE CASE OF THE CLOAKROOM TROUSERS

THE HISTORY of these stories goes back before 2004, which was the year in which they became a weekly phenomenon.
They developed out of an occasional article that I used to contribute to the club newsletter (some of you might remember them – they were often illustrated by Paul Delprat).
This, in turn, was touched off by something I observed one day in the club in the late 1990s – more than a decade ago.
On that particular Friday I had repaired to the men’s washroom on the ground floor.
Where I was taken aback to find, hanging on a hook in the adjacent cloakroom, a pair of trousers.
My training had been in investigative journalism, so my curiosity was aroused.
What concatenation of circumstances had led to them being left there?
What was the story behind them?
There was, I observed, nothing ostensibly defective about the trousers that might indicate why they had been abandoned in the men’s cloakroom, alone and palely loitering, as Keats had said in an earlier troubled-gentleman situation.
My investigative instincts sprang into action.
First, I examined the trousers for clues (as, I imagined, my hero Sherlock Holmes would have done).
The first thing to be deduced was that they were part of an ensemble, the lower half of a gentleman’s business suit, I surmised (that was pretty elementary), and thus not left there temporarily by, say, a workman, while he attended to some minor repair in the club (for workmen do not normally wear business suits, even to the Loungers Club).
Holmes, I knew, had counselled against drawing conclusions from insufficient evidence. “The temptation to form premature theories on insufficient evidence is the bane of our profession,” he told Watson in The Valley of Fear .
But, unless I found someone wandering around the club clad in the other half of the outfit – the “smoking gun” as the Americans would say – I felt that some speculation was warranted, in what I provisionally called The Case of the Clo