“But on a Tuesday. The Real Skenfrith Male Voice Choir hasnevermet on a Tuesday, and it never will.”
I cast my eyes over at Rhys Jones Bowen. “Help me out here?”
He looked a little surprised that I’d asked him. Probably because although I’d been working on myself very hard for the past several years, I was still in a lot of ways the same bellend he’d always known I was. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You’re primary festival organiser.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “This seems like it’s way more your area than mine.”
So Rhys squared up to the Real Skenfrith Male Voice Choir. “Well, isn’t this a pretty pickle?”
Bill Thomas folded his arms. “It’s your uncle’s fault. He should have taken his defeat with good grace.”
“Good grace?” called out Uncle Alan from inside the stall. “How much good grace can a man have when he’s locked in a portaloo?”
“You know as well as I do,” replied Bill Thomas, “that this portaloo has been a long time coming.”
Rhys Jones Bowen shook his head. “Gentlemen,” he said in tones of abject disappointment. “Is this any way for self-respecting choristers to behave? Why, in my view, you’re bringing shame on the whole institution of the Welsh male voice choir, and that, you will know, is not a thing I would say lightly.”
Uncle Alan’s reply, when it came, was more than a bit huffy. “I don’t see whatI’vedone wrong.”
“Oooh, Uncle Alan.” It turned out that Rhys had a better not-angry-just-disappointed voice than I did. “We all know that you’ve been needling Bill Thomas for years. Is it any wonder he went off the deep end?”
Bill Thomas didn’t quite sayhah, but he did look ill-advisedly triumphant.
“And as foryou.” Rhys Jones Bowen fixed him with a cold stare. “Chaining other choristers in toilets. Why, I’ve never seen thelike in all my days. Let them all out at once, and we’ll talk about this like reasonable people.”
Somewhat chastened, the Real Skenfrith Male Voice Choir grudgingly unchained the Original Skenfrith Male Voice Choir from their lavatorial prisons. When they were done, Uncle Alan and Bill Thomas stood next to each other, and Rhys Jones Bowen addressed them with such fierce disapproval I found myself slightly wilting.
“Will you two look at yourselves,” he declared. “I ask you”—here he stared at Uncle Alan—“what would Auntie Mabel say?”
Uncle Alan looked down. “Mabel doesn’t understand choir politics.”
“You may say that, Alan Bowen,” said Bill Thomas, “but your wife has a better head on her shoulders than you’ll ever have.”
“And I suppose”—Rhys Jones Bowen turned the same disappointed glare onto Bill Thomas—“that your Beryl would be extremely proud of the way you’ve conducted yourself today?”
The spectres of their spouses had brought the duelling choirmasters down slightly to earth, but not so far down they’d get their feet muddy. “I’m not having his lot go on first,” said Uncle Alan. “It’s demeaning.”
“And the same goes for me,” said Bill Thomas. “Only, you know, the other way around. And I’m not going on the little stage if he’s on the big one.”
“Nor me him,” added Uncle Alan. “But once again, with us being in the opposite positions.”
I closed my eyes for two seconds and hoped that I wasn’t missing something. “Okay, so you’re refusing to be on different stages?”
Bill Thomas and Uncle Alan both nodded. “Yes.”
“And you’re also refusing to be on the same stage if the other group goes before you.”
“That’s right,” they both confirmed.
“You’re being very difficult,” Rhys Jones Bowen told them.
“Okay,” I tried, “so if you won’t go on different stages or the same stage at different times, what if we put you on the same stage at once?”
“That wouldn’t work,” protested Bill Thomas.
“No,” agreed Uncle Alan. “We’re doing completely different set lists.”
If I was lucky, this would be typical CRAPP bullshit. I knew how to deal with typical CRAPP bullshit. “And what are those set lists, exactly?”
