RESCUE PARTY

Perfect timing and perfect types.

I hadnt foreseen this as part of the package but of course a certain section of my mother's friends would eventually get round to inviting themselves up to the house under the guise of comforting the hapless orphan.

Normally I would stutter down the phone and assure them i was perfectly OK, terribly good of them, most touched, and go back to my solitary Camparis and Karelia and Ellington of the loudest.

Amused by their assumption that I was alone - therefore with nothing and no-one to disturb - I gave my best imitation of someone chafing lonely in the silence and left them to come when they wanted.

Then I rallied the troops and alerted them to the arrival of several yester-year bores and urged them to feral-up and look as ASBO-tic as their demure exteriors would allow.

I would, in any case, be introducing them as having jumped parole and hiding out in San Luca until their fake papers had dried.