Jan said, “Have you shown Caroline the photos of the wedding.?”
It was a big day at Palmer Mansions and the four of us were having dinner.
So Michael showed Caroline the photos on his BlackBerry.
His friend Tobias got married in a village in northeastern France and Tob’s school buddies all went over from London. It’s quite unusual for 15 young men to be close friends ten years after leaving school.
Michael shows his little sister the photos one by one, explaining who people are, telling her how the bride’s Mum, the deputy mayor, married Tob and Laurene in a registry office above the little school.
And I was just sipping champagne and watching Caroline’s face as she looked intently at the photos and made comments. She knows all the big boys, who would always walk her home from pubs and parties late at night because they thought she was still eleven
Earlier we were talking about the riots and Caroline said, “I was watching it and thinking: There’s a Ph.D in there with my name on it.”
In the afternoon I was playing Aretha’s Greatest Hits and then we had birthday cake and I was reading out The Guardian’s birthdays for August 17th :
“Belinda Carlisle, I used to like Belinda, saw her once in the re-formed Go-Gos, Thierry Henry, V.S. Naipaul, Kirk Stevens, a Canadian snooker player I once interviewed, Sean Penn and Nelson Piquet all share my birthday. And Robert de Niro”
“Robert de Niro? You’re winding me up!” said Caroline.
“It’s here in black and white! They’ve dropped William Gallas because he plays for Spurs. I’m sure he was on this list two years ago.”
At 7pm, after Michael arrived, I ripped open all my presents. Seeing a pair of red swim shorts, I catapulted to my feet and put them on over my petrol-coloured trousers..
“This is when I get my new super-duper camera,” said Caroline as she jumped up and went out and came back with a massive Panasonic Lumix G2 and took some pics of her father posing stupidly with red swimshorts over his trousers.
“These will be on the internet tomorrow!” said Michael, giggling.
Later still, when Jan was driving Michael home, Caroline showed me tons of her photos and took some of me standing next to a framed cartoon of Dr John, which had illustrated one of my Time Out album reviews long before she was born.
When I interviewed Dr John at the Marriott Hotel, Swiss Cottage, decades after reviewing Sun, Moon & Herbs, I took the cartoon out of its frame and rolled it up and took it with me and asked him to autograph it.
“Could you sign Mac Rebennack on the side there?”
He obligingly autographed my cartoon.
Then he said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever signed my real name. I always sign Dr John or Dr John Creaux.”