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| Themed Holidays - for loonies? |
I was in Edinburgh this morning – I had a
hospital appointment, so had to be on the 09:26 from our local station. Left my
car at my mother’s house (private superstition – just in case the hospital
keeps me in overnight – you know how it is…) and walked through a light
snowstorm to the station. Blooming freezing, I can tell you.
When I got to Edinburgh it was still very
cold, but the sun was shining, and Princes Street was looking as good as it can
these days – very attractive, if you like mobile phone shops. Saw the famous tram
– not so shiny-new now, but still exciting – I must go on it sometime soon –
maybe out to the airport and back.
I had just a little time to kill, and as I
walked along Rose Street I passed the rear of British Home Stores, and was very
surprised to be reminded they have a restaurant – well, a “caff”, really. I
haven’t been in, nor thought about, a BHS restaurant for maybe 25 years – in a
moment of nostalgic perversity, I went in and ordered a cup of coffee – perverse
only in the sense that I recall that BHS used to serve the worst coffee I ever
tasted. I read my book for a little while in there – it was warm, the place was
almost empty, and it was entertaining to watch the staff not quite managing to
put up a big Christmas tree. Lots of shouted instructions and things falling. The
coffee was undrinkable; it is reassuring in these days of uncertainty and
slipping standards to know that some traditions, at least, are kept safe for
us.
The hospital visit was trivial in the end –
they took me early, as soon as I arrived, a quick X-Ray and I was out again. On
the way back up to the station, my No. 29 bus was stuck in traffic, and a sign
in a shop window in Stockbridge caught my eye. It was obviously a travel
agency, but I couldn’t quite make out this sign. Eventually the bus reached the
window, and I confirmed that the sign did, in fact, say “Painting and Pilates
Holidays in Italy”, which I had previously discounted as meaningless – or at
least unlikely. Painting and Pilates?
Very strange – I can think of a whole pile of things I would like to do in
Italy – especially on a cold Scottish morning – but wouldn’t have thought of
pilates. Hmmm.
“Wandering Around Gawping at Tourist Sites
in Paris”? That would work.
“Getting Drunk and Falling Over in Spain”?
Not for me, certainly, but there appears to be a big demand for it.
I recall that, years ago, a widowed friend
of my first wife went on a very expensive Cookery Holiday in Provence. A party
of comfortably-off British women of a certain age all went on a conducted bus tour
of Provence, watched local chefs in action and had a go themselves. Like the
old school domestic science cookery lessons, they had to pay extra for the
ingredients, and I understand that the holiday turned out to be more about the
tastes and opinions of the English gauleiterin
who organised and led the tour than it was about food in Provence. It was, in
short, an exercise in rather shrill discipline and control, conducted in a
foreign country at considerable cost to the attendees. Maybe we could have
predicted this – I don’t know.
In truth, some of my own holidays over the
years have been less than perfect – it might have helped if we had been given
more clues up front – “Playing Boardgames in a Rain-Sodden Tent in Brittany for 2 Weeks” –
“Trying to Get a Replacement Alternator for a Very Old Ford Cortina in the Jura
Mountains” – these and a few others would have been useful, but it isn’t really like that
in the world of holidays.
What this subject really reminded me about was James Last Holidays [what?]. Ages ago, a friend of mine at
work, and his wife, were passionate about the James Last Orchestra,
and used to spend a lot of money going to see them whenever they came to
Edinburgh. If you are unfamiliar with the JLO then you have my congratulations
– well done. I understand that James (real name Hansi) is still alive and going
strong, aged 85. In his field, he was almost uniquely successful – for many
years he ran a big touring orchestra, with all the top instrumental and vocal
soloists he could get his hands on, added rows and rows of very attractive girl
violinists dressed in low-cut lace blouses, and charged an absolute fortune for
tickets. Old Hansi had completely cornered the market in exquisite bad taste –
everything they played was faultless, arranged and engineered to perfection, and
it stank to heaven. If you liked over-the-top big-band versions of Presley
hits, or excerpts from Mozart’s horn concerto with bass guitar and castanets, or
grindingly sickly romantic ballads, the JLO was for you. It was, absolutely, a
product of its age; a number of really top-quality dance-bands came out of
Germany in the 1950s and 1960s – Bert Kaempfert’s was another – and what they
specialised in was superbly engineered LP recordings of covers of other people’s
hit songs – particularly on the German Polydor label. Elderly audiophiles who
had a little money to spend (i.e. who owned a “stereogram” – remember those? –
they were the ones you could hear from next door) bought their LPs by the
lorry-load. Hansi made a great many people happy – especially his bank manager
and the West German economy – so good luck to him.
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| Yeah - right... |
Anyway – back to my story. My work
colleague talked me into paying some obscene amount for two tickets, and my
wife and I joined him and his wife at a JLO concert at the Playhouse.
Unspeakable. Couldn’t be faulted in any way except that it made me feel
physically unwell. Somehow we got mugged into going to two further concerts on
subsequent tours – each dearer than the previous one, and all the old ladies in
the audience used to call out to the singers, who blew kisses and so on, while
Herr Last posed and minced and almost conducted, and played to the ancient
gallery like a true old showbiz ham. We couldn’t turn down the offer of tickets
because – well, because we didn’t want to offend anyone. How much evil in the
world is carried on because someone didn’t want to cause offence? After two
further helpings I eventually found some unbeatable reason not to attend the
next one, and then we were, mercifully, off the roller.
The audiences at these shows were something
to behold – all dressed to the nines, and all loving it, blue rinses and all.
The relevance to my story about holidays is that you could actually go on a
James Last holiday – if you were a registered fan. The programmes were full of
adverts. You could go on a cruise from Bremen (Last’s birthplace), and there
would be music playing all day, every day (guess whose?), and there would be
dances at night featuring JLO tribute bands who had once received a pay-cheque
from Hansi himself, and during the days there would be walking tours of Bremen,
to visit sites associated with Hansi’s childhood etc, where you could buy
signed souvenirs, and there would even be some gigantic organised swapmeets, where
you could buy and sell your rare JLO albums and memorabilia. After all these years, I still cannot
think of a better working definition of Hades.
Of course, Father Time catches up with all
of us in the end, but the thought of what those James Last Holidays might
have been like still chills me to the marrow. For me, the man is best revered
for his starring role in a famous musician’s joke:
Q –
What is the difference between the James Last Orchestra and a buffalo?
A – A
buffalo has the horns at the front and the arse at the back.
