( A Love Story) I managed to get out of bed the other Sunday morning and attend a concert in the Salon Azul at the casino. A concert of German and Austrian romantic composers, Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler. The concert started on time but, as was expected, lots of people thought it would be fun to turn up late. It was also free which sometimes means it will attract the bored and the curious. The organisers had put out loads of old wooden chairs to park people on but had somehow managed to squash them, the chairs, and hence, the people, next to one another so that the arms were overlapping and were designed so that even the most svelte of us had difficulty squeezing our arses into the seats. There were some heavy velveteen curtains to keep sounds and latecomers out but this didn't stop an assortment of old folk stumbling in, looking perplexed at the audience, the pianist and the soprano and then being guided into those bastard chairs. One by one they came in including the blind and the infirm, various sticks marking the floor, 'toc, toc, toc', with people trying to be polite, giving up their seats while the soprano quavered. A huge woman pushed her way along the row in front of me to a vacant chair and crammed her bulk into the seat, pushing it back and blocking my friend Annie's view. I uncharacteristically kicked the chair as hard as I could, as a show of protest and noticed another woman further along our row do the same to another late arrival. People started muttering expletives and there was an atmosphere of consternation. All the time I was looking out for Mr van de Ven who had decided, despite his staunch northern European time keeping, to be late just to wind up the locals. I had a feeling of delicious anticipation knowing I would see my beloved enter the salon at any moment but it was mixed with suspense knowing he might appear dressed as Tommy Cooper, get tangled up in the curtain and make a scene. He arrived, caught my eye, made my heart leap but then had to grapple his way, passing a fair number of older, formidable women who had conveniently forgotten their dreadful entrances and good manners and were now mumbling complaints, kicking his shins and scraping those awful chairs on the wooden floor drawing lots of unwanted attention. He sat next to me but dropped his sunglasses and we watched as they went whizzing across the floor which made heads turn, stare down and look up at one another as if to ask 'what are we looking at now?' I stared at him, and he at me, as the soprano warbled 'ich hab' in deinum Auge'. I once looked into your eyes. Or better still, I only have eyes for you.