Last night I was listening to the radio and the presenter posed the question, “Have you ever been in a situation where a completely inappropriate song has come on and completely caused mayhem”. As I was driving, I couldn’t text in, so instead I thought, “One for the Misssives, non?”
It’s my Gran, Jessie’s, eightieth birthday and the family has gathered for a dinner in a big hotel. We’ve booked a private room as we’re a bit of a noisy bunch, and have brought our own CD player and music to provide ambiance. A few CDs are chucked in there and one must have been some kind of “Love Songs” type compilation. We've, no doubt, chosen a few CDs that will be a gentle mix that Gran will enjoy; a bit of Johnny Mathis, some Minnie Ripperton and a splash of Take That for the young uns. You know the type of CDs; Marks and Spencer sell them for Mother’s Day. Mum-wise; you can’t go wrong.
Dinner is finished and it is time for the speeches, the presentation of gifts, and the making of Gran cry with emotion, which no eightieth birthday would be complete without. My Uncle gets up to say a few words.... just as Jane Birkin starts to tell Serge Gainsbourg she loves him in the background. Yes, yes she loves him. Oh yes, she does.
Help! Help! There’s a rogue track on the “Woman in Love” CD as-advertised-on-TV, and to be fair, you can’t get them with the Trades Description Act. Jane Birkin is definitely in love, oui, oui, she’s in love alright, and not in an airy fairy "Hey! Hey! My boyfriend's back" kind of way. If legend is to be believed Serge was in the sound booth right there beside her, manufacturing some ambiance of his own, the dirty French beast.
Uncle sits down after a short round of applause. He’s lucky, he gets away with having the more innocuous part of the song as his backing track- perhaps Serge is still in the main studio smoking a Gauloises at this point and has yet to come up with the genius idea of running into Jane’s vocals booth and tampering with her underwear. "Vocals booth" is not a euphemism, by the way. You filthy beasts. French or otherwise.
Very quickly gifts are being offered up to my gran and she is starting to reply to the best wishes when Jane Birkin gets a little bit carried away about how much she loves Serge. Serge is now adjusting the vocals in a way that no modern music software can equal.
A five way glance, that says on the faces of each of us that we are about to lose it, ricochets between me, my brother, then onto my sister and then finally rests on the two brothers-in-law who are already in stitches at the far end of the table.
“Well, I am so lucky to have such a lovely family,” trills Gran
“Ooooh, uuggghhh, oui, oui je t'aime, oui je t'aime..uuggghh (pant pant)”
“And look at all these lovely gifts,” she beams.
“Oui! Oui! Je t'aime! Ugh, Ugh ! Oui!”
“This has been a wonderful day”
“(Intense heavy breathing, intense heavy breathing)Ugh! (Intense heavy breathing)”
“Thank you all so much”
By this time everyone in the room has cottoned onto the fact that Jane is in danger of upstaging the guest of honour. Except Gran.
Should we change the CD? Do you think someone should pull the plug?
Non! Moi non plus!
(For your entertainment, now listen to Serge and Jane sing "Je t'aime, moi non plus" and imagine a eighty year old woman trying to thank her family in the last minute of the song over the top).
Meanwhile over on Spontaneous Production,
I'm revewing, M Night Shamalayan's The Happening.
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12 comments:
I bet your granny had heard it all before. Ugly chain-smoking Frenchmen have been making English girls sigh since the end of the Napoleonic war.
As when Billie Connolly sang about the F word and old ladies..
"They've not only said it,
they've done it as well"
The problem is with us young 'uns, we're all under the misapprehension that old people's innocence and virginity grows back after they turn 70. Your Gran probably knew exactly what was going on in the back ground and was enjoying watching you all squirm.
Gorilla and Jaggy: I am under no illusion that my gran is/was a real woman. The point is that in a 80th birthday celebrations where an old woman is giving a speech to thank her family, it is highly inappropriate to have an English Rose francophile getting it on in the background! And actually part of the fun of it was, that, no, I don't think she noticed a thing.
It could have been worse. Gran could have casually turned round and claimed Serge as a former lover - like Julie Walters in Dinnerladies.
Duck: I would have LOVED that!
Picture the scene.
Myself (driving).
The Demon (front passenger).
The Demon's Mum.
The Demon's Aunt.
The Demon's Gran.
All in the back.
We're driving to Aberfeldy.
iPod on random.
All is good in the world.
Then 'Fuck Her Gently' by Tenacious D, rears its ugly head.
"That's a nice wee tune" says hard-of-hearing Granny.
Meanwhile, tears of laughter are flowing down my cheeks. Needless to say I was in the doghouse all weekend in the caravan. No sex for me.
Oh Inchy: That's just PRECIOUS!
He actually looks a bit like Chris Rea.
I can hardly bear to write this ...
There we were, the wife and I, driving home from what had been an emotional and demanding weekend away. We were in the period after my affair, trying to decide whether we had a relationship to save, if only for the children.
The mood was remarkably relaxed. The radio was playing and she was singing along, appearing happier than she had for weeks.
Then came The Sequence:
"Jolene" by Dolly Parton
"Cry Me A River" by Justin Timberlake
"Out of Reach" by Gabrielle
To say the atmosphere in the car became icy would be like saying that it would be tricky to walk to the moon. Fortunately I was driving so I couldn't be kicked out of the car; however, I was kicked out of the house as soon as we got there!
Big Rab:Some (otherwise hideous) men just have that amazing ability to pull- Serge was one. Rea, I can't vouch for.
Ro: I had a similar (but no way as serious) thing with a boyfriend who I has caught out spending the night with another girl. He was trying to tell me that he had only done it the once, which I knew was a lie, when Bryan Adams' "Run to you" came on. I can never hear that song without thinking about it. And to be honest, I kind of hate Bryan Adams because of it too.
I'm horrified that Inchy thinks Serge is ugly. He may not have been classically good-looking, but I think he was incredibly sexy. I'd happily have sung rauncy songs with him.
Clearly the person who compiled that CD didn't understand French very well. I've never really considered the song to be a love song really as the the title suggests: "I love you. Me neither". There's no love in there. It's all about casual fucking!
Slutty: I don't think anyone can dispute Gainsbourg's appeal to women. Romantic success with some of the most incredible looking women in the world: Birkin, Bardot, Deneuve. Unbelievable for a man whose face looks like an empty old leather handbag. But his record speaks for itself.
Just goes to show, charisma is everything.
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