Where IS Mortee? She started this party and then wandered off. Check under the tables. Maybe she's in with the landlord. Don't check in there. Give the poor old guy some privacy. Hope she don't kill him with passion.

Someone hand me a guitar. It must be time for music. I'm minded of an old story I read recently of a shipmate on a square rigger in the last days of sail. On the first evening in the foc'sle he pulled a fiddle out of his seachest. The rest of the watch looked on with approval. Then the old geezer started to saw away at it without any knowledge of tuning or playing, just screeching and squawking the bow across the strings. They begged him not to play but he just smiled and kept on. They had too much respect for personal property to throw thaat fiddle overboard so faced with a long sea voyage and that awful noise one of the watch snuck in and waxed the strings. When he next pulled out the instrument he found it wouldn't play. They told him the humidity was doing it and he'd be all right when they got to Australia in three months time.

Where's that guitar?