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This is a photo free page - and I regret I missed getting a video of our host for this evening.  Ho hum, words will have to suffice...

So I decide that Ali and I will catch some midweek melodies - Jazz specifically - to cheer us up in this mid-winter chilly patch.

A look on the net provided the perfect event - The Sausophonics are playing at the Hollywood Hotel nearby, commencing at 7.30pm.  I call Ali and we arrange to meet up.

A short cab ride later (since we have no idea where the place is), we arrive in a back street of high rise buildings with a run down old two storey pub on one corner - Hotel Hollywood.

Its nearly 8.00pm, but we cannot hear any saxophones, pianos or drums... Is this the right place?

When I walk in to check (with Ali standing outside ready to run for help if I don't return) I find and elderly lady at the bar half way through a bottle of wine and a gnarled middle aged barman stroking his white beard and swatting imaginary flies.

I ask if there's any truth to the rumour that this bar should be swinging to an upbeat band - they look at each other and then Doris (real name) tells me there is no band, "Its a long story".

Well, we have time so Ali and I take up seats at the bar with Doris to hear her out...

We sip the wine with her - which is like paint stripper - and learn that they have been stopped from providing live music by the police on account of their lack of a license (despite the fact, as Doris points out, that the bands were not paid but rather 'just practicing' which is perfectly legal...) 

The story unfolds - apparently the local developers on both sides want to get her and her husband out so they can build on the site up to the allowable 7 stories the area is cleared for (the air above us is worth a fortune).  Doris and hubby have held out for some half a dozen years and have even gained a 'listed' status on the ceilings in the pub.

You can't help feeling sorry for their predicament,

Doris apologises for the lack of music again but then decides she is going to make it up to us by giving us a few bars herself - she closes the doors and draws the curtains and appears a few moments later with a guitar case.

"I used to be in Show business dears" she chirps and, what ensues is indelibly inked on our minds:

Doris sits in front of us, and recites a selection of incredibly clever poems that "I wrote dears - about love".  

We grimace however. Not because the wine which she has freely topped up for us is so disgusting, but because Doris has put the poems to music and is strumming the guitar with an occasional Les-Dawson- like bum note.

Doris also lays on the comedy with timed facial expressions which you cannot prevent yourself sniggering at - especially when she describes "The Spider, and The Fly".  For this you have to look down at the floor as you slowly say "The Spider", then pause a second, look up at the audience with wide mad eyes and curl "and The Fly" out with a wicked grin.

Doris was entertaining all right - and more so because her little impromptu performance was clearly not impromptu at all - she interspersed the songs with wistful wishes for "World Peace", "No Drugs", and "This is for the Cambodia, I wrote it when Lady Di died" - all in a Dame Edna voice and with a comic hairdo which looked increasingly like a wig as the evening wore on.   

To make matters worse... her husband starts bottling up and washing metal ashtrays as she sings her poems - cantankerous old git!  As this occurs I avoid looking at Ali as I am sure one or both of us will crack up and offend.

All in all a great evening - no Jazz, no nice drink, no food but laughs? Oh yes, plenty.

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