Hats off to Mr Grigg
The computer screen swirls as I take you back in time to June 2002. The village square is packed for a massive street party. There is standing room only in the pub, where the bar is three punters deep.
I am sitting on a high stool next to a woman from the wrong end of the village. We are both a little worse for wear, weary after high tea, high jinks and line dancing in the street to the theme from The High Chaparral (or was it Telstar?)
Out in the square, the disco is building into a frenzy. We've had Hi-Ho Silver Lining, Oops Upside Your Head, the Macarena and Mambo Number Five ('a little bit of Rita's all I need'). And then the Tom Jones version of You Can Leave Your Hat On echoes across the ley lines, hits the grassy slopes of Bluebell Hill, ricochets off the church tower and sends a fleet-of-foot messenger scurrying into the pub.
'You'll never guess what. There's only a couple of blokes out there doing The Full Monty.'
The lady vicar slams her whisky chaser onto the billiard table.
'This I've got to see,' she says, elbowing her way out of the pub, trampling over several elderly passers-by in her bid to get to the front.
'Don't look, Ethel,' yells Mr Bancroft to a bemused Mrs Bancroft.
But it's too late. She's already been mooned.
At the bar, I look at my companion and ask her if she's going to come out with me and see what all the fuss is about. And then we suddenly realise our husbands are nowhere to be seen.
You can guess the rest. The lady vicar is in the mosh pit yelling off, off, off as two middle aged men with moustaches, who look like the Super Mario brothers' older siblings and portly enough to know better, strip off to whoops and hollers and wolf whistles.
Tom Jones comes to a climax and the sychronised pair are each wearing a pair of socks and a plastic bowler hat emblazoned with a Union Jack.
I put my hands over the eyes of Mr Grigg's impressionable young daughter.
You can leave your hat on indeed. I wish they had.
That's about it.
Love Maddie x
He's a one, your Mr Grigg!
ReplyDeleteI remember that awful song - so awful that it was a great hit and is now (thank you very much) a song worm in my head.