![]() ![]() As the wine flowed Humphrey, who had lived all his life in Oxford and knew all the skeletons in all the cupboards of the city, regaled us with increasingly scandalous stories of town and gown in his wonderfully clear, enthusiastic - and carrying - voice. ![]() The patron had boxed off each table with partitions, which gave the impression - but not the auditory fact - of privacy. Our friendship was cemented a few weeks later when we had dinner at a new restaurant in Summertown, north Oxford. Circumnavigated by the largest tuba I have ever seen, he played Doris, the goddess of wind, with more over-ripe raspberries than a hundred-acre fruit farm. What appeared was Humphrey Carpenter, resplendent in an outrageous frock and an even more outrageous wig and make-up. ![]() "Oh good," enthused a north Oxford lady, straight out of Barbara Pym, who was sitting behind me, "our Bishop's son is going to play for us." Reluctantly dragged to a concert at my children's primary school, I now braced myself for what must surely be the nadir of the evening, some pale ascetic youth performing a pious hymn with rather too studied precision. ![]()
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