Going Legit with my Bottom F sharps

Chasing opera dreams again means going legit. Queeny O’Shaugnessy in her Blackpool B and B would have something to say. I stayed with her for the Showzam Festival.

‘And I shan’t kid you, kid,’ Queeny said, booking me in over the phone. ‘It is a greasy spoon with rooms. Don’t expect any of your ensuite this or sachets of chocolate that or distressed drawers the other. I’ll have Pledged, Swiffered and Toilet Ducked right round your bend — but no chocolate on the pillow. Though turning in I guarantee you’ll still be full up from the egg and sausage barm I dished you up that morning, if not the previous. Mellow Birds cupped bottomless. If I find you can ply draft excluders fastidious, I’ll jug you a kipper.

‘My mother, God find a refuge from her, ran a bed and half board up nearer Stanley Park than she warranted. In those days her gaff were certainly called ‘legit’. You’d never have been let in. It were for actors, classical musicians — no variety turns. John Mills’s favoured antimacassar framed. Kathleen Ferrier dog scraper. No need of chemicals down plugholes to ensure that, caught short, once and once only you’d pass water in your sink — clouds of greenish/mauvish witness blowing right down South Pier.

‘Then my mother took that late December booking. He told her he was touring as bass soloist in Messiah. With publicity photos and polished black shoes.

‘Really, now?

‘So why caught out with those cheap white tights being dyed in that bucket of Darjeeling? The beetroot finger marks above the bath from applying fake lippy? The hawking of spit into the boot blacking to pose as mascara? Bass refrain of not quite “The Trumpet Shall Sound’ more like “When it’s Blowy at Your Entrance, Aim Away from Privet’s Prick”?

My mother’s second best back were well and truly violated by that pantomime fairy.’