Now let ME tell you a story!!!!

My mom and I are pretty tight.
It has been the two of us against the world for a long time. Therefore we tend to share the same sense of humour and the same sense of absurdity. This can be a good thing, but it can also cause much tragedy.

Quite a few years ago now, tenish I am thinking, The King's Singers came to town. Being that we knew them from our life in Scotland, we thought it would be nice to go and see them. They were playing at the Orpheum Theatre, a beautiful concert hall in downtown Vancouver. Also home of the Vancouver Symphony and therefore filled with a heady breeze of class and pretentiousness.

Now we both actually DO enjoy choral music and they are an amazing group with stunning voices. We did enjoy their eclectic selection of new and old, medieval and baroque that they presented with such beauty. You really should hear them.

And their concert was lovely. Before each piece they would give us a little background on the music and the arrangement, we also found this very interesting, that is until they came to one song. One song that seemed to have the unfortunate name 'Lydia' or it was about a 'Lydia' anyway.

Well that was it. There was a crackle of energy between our twisted brains as we both thought the same thing and hummed the same thing in our heads at the exact same time.......


"Lydia, Oh Lydia,
Have you seen Lydia?
Lydia the tAhtooed lady!"

(if you don't know this little ditty, check out 'The Fisher King,' they sing it there, I believe)

Now we both knew that they were NOT going to be singing THAT Lydia, but the thought that they might struck us stupidly funny.

We could not look at each other.
We dared not. Because we both knew we were thinking it. And we both knew that we would take one look at each other and burst into hysterical laughter.

You do not burst into laughter at the King's Singers. You may politely chuckle at a clever English witisicm, but you do not guffaw or snigger like some demented prepubescent.

We really wanted to snigger like some demented prepubesents. We reeeeeeelly wanted to.

I could feel my mother's shoulders shaking with barely constrained hysterics. I was breaking out in a sweat. I think I wimpered.

We were starting to get 'looks' from the crowd around us. The season ticket matrons were NOT impressed.

Finally, my mom broke first. She let out this strangled 'Muhaharrrgghackcoughcough' and leaped out of her chair and fled out of the theatre, leaving me bent double and snorting into my coat.

Real mature.

We really should not be allowed out in public venues.