“Yolly good,” Cressroads’ Arms cheers Henry Tapper’s good fortune
HAVE HENRY, WILL TRAVEL/cont. from 01/04/09
You’re not forgotten, HRH,
Henry Tapper, as you are best remembered at the Arms, where Blogsbody is able to announce: “Yolly good, and a daddy to boot.”
Your pet name for your Filipino fiancée Yoland, who worked a 13-hour-day as a Manila investment analyst earning the equivalent of £50-a-week.
Until you go to work securing visas and air tickets for herself and her hole-in-the-heart daughter requiring surgery.
As you begin to explain: “Yolly’s sister Linda, who I met when she worked behind the bar of Alresford’s Swan Hotel, sent my email address home to her family in Manila.
“As you’ve heard, Linda is unwell, and deciding me to invite Yolly to the UK to afford her some support as well as the opportunity for me to meet her sister in person.
“Importing love is expensive and there are no guarantees.
“But, by a one in a million chance, I fell in love with Yolly – like me a widower - and her sharp, astute four-year-old daughter.”
In your words, Henry: “Never having been a daddy, I’ve decided to marry Yolly and adopt Charlotte.”
“Here’s to the three of ‘em … Henry, Yolly and Sweet Charlotte,” glasses are raised to congratulate you on your personal good fortune, end to your lonely days and makings of family life.
Happens that Blogsbody’s third father-in-law - Ray Dillon, a Co-op number cruncher who ran off with his secretary to work for the Kalamazoo Company in Jo’burg – our age, Henry - is remarried for the fourth time, after taking unto himself his second Filipino bride and some 30 years their difference.
“Chronologically!”
As you hasten to distinguish a difference between age and a Charlie Chaplainesque biological performance.
Keep taking the testosterone jabs.
Or as one Iowa barmaid exclaimed, after hearing the age of my youngest offspring: “You ol’ stud muffin, you.”
Let’s hear again from you soon,
Blogsbody
p.s. Off busking for a freebie Americano with cold milk. As in singing in the rain on Broad Street with a Caracoli gamp of gamps. Times are hard, Henry, for those of us who neglected to put by for their dotage.
