Hungarian Teeth

Have you ever sat open-mouthed, as an expensive English grinding-down-dentist starts to drill? Malcolm has. (Speeding on his bike at ten years old, he’d fallen off, broken his front teeth.) To put him to sleep, a BLACK rubber cup was placed over his nose. Breathing in the gas, ‘a thick dozy feeling swamped over him.’ And ‘Help, Help,’ he cried. But no sound came as ‘he felt himself sliding down a giant’s throat.’

   This is why he has not been to an English dentist for over twenty-two years. But now his future is ‘Sweet Lucy, with her baby blonde hair, her delicious perky breasts’. Yet all is not well. Lucy keeps telling him not to smile - that his ragged teeth are a deal breaker. What can he do but try an inexpensive all-in-dentist trip to Hungary? 

A Jazzy Evening In Old New York

‘Jazz –Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, the great Louis A – Oh God. Fifty-Second Street in 1950’. 

Tonight me, Laura, who began life on West 87th Street, who as a kid could only listen to Jazz on the radio in secret after mom stopped listening to her soaps or dad to the News.  Well, tonight I am going to see and hear the special, the wonderful Sarah Vaughan! Oh, what a great evening that will be. 

I’ll tell all the guys at university how I was taken to the famous Music Box on 52nd Street by Jimmy, my  roommate’s dad, a dad who dares to be different. And sitting in clouds of cigarette smoke, drinking lots of scotch I’ll hear satin-dressed Sarah Vaughan sing. ‘Her dark voice low’ and from her guts ‘she pulls out the sounds.’ Tonight, her music, her life’s pain and passion, will be shown to me. An experience I’ll never forget!