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he’s straight, is a passable pianist. (Actually, Trippy is a very good pianist, but only passably straight most of the time. He’s not called Trippy because he falls over his bootlaces.)
    Martin was there first, partly because he was keen – ‘Jolly decent of you to let me jam with you’ – and partly because the rest of us had arrived in Dod’s van, which is never reliable at the best of times and certainly not in the City at rush hour.
    I introduced Werewolf to Martin – he already knew Dod and Trippy – and we managed to set up Dod’s drum kit and tune up before the pub started to fill. Well, I say tune up. Trippy opened the lid of the upright piano, estimated that there were at least 70 keys there and then headed for the bar. Werewolf took Tiger Tim’s banjo out of its case, murmured, ‘A man after me own thirst,’ and followed him.
    â€˜It’ll end in tears,’ I said to Dod.
    â€˜Yer probably right,’ he said. Then he tightened the last butterfly nut on his high hat and went to join them.
    â€˜Er … can I get you a pint in?’ Martin asked nervously.
    â€˜Might as well,’ I said resignedly. ‘Make it two.’
    â€˜Two? Each?’
    â€˜It gets very crowded in here.’
    Â 
    By the time Salome appeared, there were so many red-striped shirts so close together that I thought my vertical hold needed adjusting. The place had filled so much that the next champagne cork would probably constitute assault and battery.
    You get the picture already. The jeunesse-dorée -ever-so-slightly-blue (as Werewolf once described them) were there on mass. The young City slickers had taken off their double-breasted suit jackets and were flashing the shirts they’d bought at Next before it went downmarket, which they probably got their mums to wash. I wondered if it was true that they bought suits with an extra jacket so they could leave it over the backs of their chairs in front of their screens when they went to lunch. Not that many of them ever ate lunch. Just think, they might miss a couple of million between Mars bars.
    We’d done a W C Handy selection, and I was quite pleased with my solo on ‘Hesitation Blues’, though I fluffed some of the fast high ones on ‘Atlanta Blues’ trying to do a Satchmo. Well, I get carried away. Then we’d done ‘Tiger Rag’, partly because Martin wanted to show off, and I’ve always thought it was a bone player’s piece anyway, and then ‘And the Angels Sing’, which was a bit of a private joke between me and Werewolf involving distant memories of three Aer Lingus hostesses (and, yes, I know all the jokes) in the days way back when there was safe sex, or what we thought was.
    Then I saw Salome’s legs coming downstairs and we slid into ‘Happy Birthday’, which could be my theme tune I seem to play it so often.
    Salome was wearing a blue jersey dress I hadn’t seen before, a red leather belt about a foot wide with a buckle no bigger than a portcullis, long red evening gloves up to the elbows and really dangerous red high heels. It was enough to impress an atheist.
    There was a general increase in the hubbub at her arrival. She seemed to be known by most of the crowd, and a fresh volley of champagne corks went off at the bar. I was
beginning to know how Rommel felt at El Alamein.
    It seemed a good time for the band to take five – which Werewolf deliberately misconstrued as meaning pints of stout – and mingle with the throng.
    Salome was surrounded by people pushing presents at her and saying ‘Darling’ or ‘‘Ello, darlin’,’ depending on which side of the river they lived. I blew her a kiss when our eyes met, and she smiled back, but even at a distance, I could tell she was going through the motions rather than letting her hair down.
    Werewolf and I made our way to the bar by different circular routes –