One thing after another

The Baritone exited stage left, in his courtly fashion, on Thursday morning, ensconced himself in Gordon’s taxi and vanished out of our lives for the time being. We then found ourselves faced with a social problem of unknown dimensions. The previous evening a cheerful American voice on the phone had announced ‘Hi, it’s Jeff’. Jeff being the Professor’s father’s brother’s second wife’s estranged son, thus a man in a vestigial relationship with us, of a kind spawned by the modern world of today. The estrangement, as far as we knew, related to the lady in question having left her first husband when the aforesaid Jeff was three – whatever she was like then, viewed in her latter years she struck one the kind of person who made you realise that whatever its faults, the women’s movement had been a Good Thing.  At the time when her second husband died, the Professor had met the lady exactly three times, since his Mama wasn’t keen on her, so there wasn’t much of a relationship there either. However, she was much given to complaining and seemed to take a general view that if she was bored and unhappy it was the business of the most proximate male to sort things out for her (i.e., for want of anyone better, the Professor, who she didn’t even like), so when she died some months ago, we were sufficiently lacking in finer feelings to be rather relieved. But estranged or not, when someone dies, their offspring end up doing the mopping up, and so Jeff had come over to get his mother decently buried, then had come over again to sort out matters concerned with the estate. We couldn’t get to the funeral because the Professor was ill, so it seemed only decent to invite Jeff up when he came over for the second time, accompanied, as it turned out, by his family, wife and two children of unknown age and gender. What we hadn’t particularly expected was that this general invitation would be taken up immediately on the heels of a domestic Marathon. However, at least it meant there were flowers in all the rooms, so after a quick sort-out-and-turn-round, we stood by with more resolution than enthusiasm. Suffice it to say that the very distant relations turned out to be absolutely charming. The estrangement between Jeff and his mother might have been caused by just about anything, but as it turned out, she must have disapproved of him for many of the same reasons she disapproved of us: Mrs Jeff worked (they had in fact met as colleagues), none of them were racist or sexist, or prone to apocalyptic religiosity, and the boy had put in time with the Peace Corps, all of which must have enraged her. We enjoyed their company, they enjoyed ours, and even though the very last thing I wanted this week was yet more entertaining, it was fun, and I hope that for them, it was a pleasant change from grubbing about in a suffocatingly respectable suburban town on the fringes of Glasgow. But nice though they were, we are rejoicing in having the house to ourselves once more.