‘Frankie and Di’

‘Frankie and Di’ by Ms Paige Turner
I saw two people this past week who brightened up my mid-winter days no end. The first was Frankie Valli last night at the O2 stadium. Actually, I had seen Frankie twice before. The story goes like this. Mister Justin Case, Miss Trial and Master Mind and I are all Four Seasons’ aficionados, having seen ‘The Jersey Boys’ about 13 times. When Mister Justin Case and I were transversing the USA in those trains which have beds three quarters your length even if you are short like Mister Justin Case and me, we were stopping in Denver for the day. ‘Lo and behold,’ Mister Justin Case said. ‘Frankie Valli is appearing. Shall we go?’ So we did. After climbing lots of Colorado mountains.
We then saw Frankie at the Royal Albert Hall the following year and I was able to run down to the stage like those irritating people and I shook hands with him. I mouthed the words, ‘I saw you in Denver last year’. But Mister Justin Case said that his ear phones and 8000 people would have prevented him hearing this. I think he’s chocolate: Frankie that is.
I also saw Di. After 53 years. We went to primary school together and she always came top of the class. Di kept me on my toes. I never beat her but she was such a gentle winner. You couldn’t help but not mind the fact that she was always came first. She had lost her soft Scottish ten year old brogue but not her gentleness. I met Di with my lovely chum Pat who was in the same primary class. It was over our John Lewis salad that Di confessed that once she had come 13th. This memory slipped to the front of my mind as she said this. However, I couldn’t gain any satisfaction from this default. Educationists in the sixties used to think you had to be pulled down a peg or two. Walking with her on Oxford Street Underground to the tune of ‘While Shepherds Watched’ took me back to all those lovely primary nativities when I was always, indeed, a shepherd. Like singing with Frankie Valli I was walking on Cloud 9. That was chocolate too.
Still a couple of places on the Creative Ink Evening Workshop entitled ‘The Visitor’ this Wednesday 5th December at 8.00 pm in Amersham. £18. Email me. Catherine supplies copious chocolate …