С Новим Годом!

Happy New Year from us all at Картошка 167!
Take control of your lives in 2010. Fight oppression and illegitimate authority wherever you see it. Try and cause as little suffering as possible. Be free... and don't forget to listen to Bossa Nova music!
Love from Joao, Mrs Kartoshka and Mattinho...

Cowboys # 1

The Western genre evolved in the mid-nineteenth century via the emerging penny dreadfuls and later dime novels. Such books were mass produced at a low cost, and drew their inspiration from events that were current on the western frontier of the USA, a wild and romantic contrast to the industrialised noth east where the vast majority of Americans lived.
By 1900, the new medium of pulp magazines also helped to increase the readership.
Popularity grew with the publication of classics such as Owen Wister's The Virginian (1902) and Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage (1912). When the popularity of pulp magazines exploded in the 1920s, western fiction was a staple.
Contemporary with these developments was the growth of the movie industry and the resultant emergence of global media. Western stories provided popular material for movies from the earliest days of the cinema industry. Indeed 1903's The Great Train Robbery was the first narrative movie .By the 1950's 30 percent of all Hollywood films involved a Western scenario , and in the USA Between 1952 and 1970 no less than 11 Western TV series were on the air in any single year.
The cowboy was the ultimate hero-a modern knight errant-the white male hero in arms, he faced adversity alone in a harsh world- the symbols were easy to read and the moral battles that lay at the heart of the stories were clearly laid out- there was seldom any ambiguity.
The figure of the cowboy became stylistically idealised to fit in with contemporary fashions and the rough clothing of a nineteenth century cattle herder gave way to narrow jeans, short jacket, flamboyant neckscarf and neat,rakish stetson above a well tended quiff.

Dealing with the most virile aspects of the masculine image, it was inevitable that the American cowboy should appear as a sex symbol as well as being an idealised and resolute father figure conferring on his followers the approved way to think, work, and fight.
The cowboy remains a potent symobol, artist Richard Prince , for example, identifies the cowboy as being a role model and a sex symbol who embodies adventure, spirit and freedom.


So here begins an occasional series in which we will bring you : Cowboys.


Our first Cowboy is Justus D. Barnes (1862-1946) in his uncredited role as Bandit Who Fires at Camera in Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Bossacucanova- Revisited Classics...

Not for the purists, perhaps, but here's one for your new year's parties...

This LP is from 1999- so by Kartoshka standards it is virtually brand new!
Bossacucanova are:
Márcio Menescal – bass
Marcelinho da Lua/DJ Dalua- turntables
Alexandre Moreira- keyboards

The trio were studio technicians working with bossa artists such as Carlos Lyra, Wanda Sá and Roberto Menescal (Márcio Menescal's father).

We loved those songs, but we were also listening to funk, hip hop and acid jazz , says Márcio.

Features: Carlos Lyra, Wanda Sá, Roberto Menescal, Astrud Gilberto, Silvio Cezar, Claudia Telles, Os Cariocas, Cris Delanno

Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/326536317/Bossacucanova-_revisited_classics.rar

Winter...

Well, here in the northern half of the planet we are now in the grips of winter...when everything is grey and bleak just remember- after 23rd December summer is on it's way!


In the picture are: Sylva Koscina, João Gilberto, Tom Jobim & Mylene Demongeot

Sweden 1958...

The 1958 tournament saw the arrival of Pele, and also a significant development in the birth of the modern game...
In the early 1950’s the Hungarians under Cebes had made tactical advances, subtly changing the traditional W-M formation thus allowing a more fluid approach to play. Hungarian coaches such as Bela Guttman and Dori Kurschner influenced the development of this system in Brazil. This gave rise to a new formation. During one of his spells as the Brazilian national coach Flavio Costa published an article in the newspaper O Cruzeiro introducing the "diagonal system". Modern football, according to Costa, "has lost its improvisation", and he made it his motto that a team should "defend well so that they can attack even better."
In the diagonal, the central square of the W-M became a rhombus, with one of the wing-halves slightly deeper than the other, and one of the inside-forwards slightly advanced, Costa thus began the evolution to 4-2-4, the first ‘numbered’ system. The defensive half-back eventually became a second centre-back, and the advanced inside-forward a second striker.
Six men defended, six, or even seven would attack.Now in 1958 Brazil, under Vicente Feola played 4-2-4: Four defenders, two midfield runners and four forwards. This first appearance of a 'back four' meant that defence became more robust and cohesive, with defenders also having an attacking role.
There was more fluidity , with emphasis being on short passing and thrusting runs.
Players had to cover more ground. The game became faster and Comfort on the ball and greater technical skills were required in all positions.

The First round game between Brazil and England saw the first goalless game in World Cup finals history.

England went out in first round but were represented in the final in the person of Sweden’s manager George Raynor, a Yorkshireman with a curious managerial career that took him from Iraq to Doncaster Rovers via Juventus and two world cup campaigns with Sweden.
Just Fontaine of France set a record that is unlikely to be beaten, scoring 13 goals in the tournament.
Pele, of course, arrived- the 17 year old got a deflected winner in the 66th minute of the quarter final with Wales, and then banged in a hat trick in the semi final against France. He netted twice in the final.

Waldyr Pereira, aka Didi was the player of the tournament and Garrincha’s mesmerising dribbling was on show- allegedly he didn’t realize that the game against Sweden was the final, thinking that it was some sort of round robin format.

Vicente Feola -4-2-4

Career Opportunities 2...

For those seeking more empowerment...

Ithamara Koorax sings Luiz Bonfá...

We have mentioned before the importance of guitarist and composer Luiz Bonfá (1922 - 2001) in the evolution of the Bossa Nova genre.
In 1996 he was in the studio with carioca Ithamara Koorax recording a selection of his works.

It's an honor and a privilege to work with such a great artist as Ithamara, one of the best singers in the world-Luiz Bonfá.

Some impressive talents on show here:

Torcuato Mariano -acoustic guitar, keyboards (also arranger)
Deodato - piano,keyboards (also arranger)
Larry Coryell -electric guitar
Sidinho Moreira- percussion
Jamil Joanes -electric bass
Marcos Suzano -percussion
Ithamara Koorax -vocals
Shigeharu Sasago -acoustic guitar
Luiz Bonfá -acoustic guitar (also arranger)
Nelson Ângelo -acoustic guitar
Carlos Bala -drums
Arnaldo DeSouteiro -percussion
Ron Carter- acoustic bass
Sadao Watanabe -alto sax
Ivan Conti -drums
Paulo Malaguti -keyboards
Arnaldo DeSouteiro -arranger/producer

Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/321573608/Ithamara_Koorax-_Luis_Bonfa.rar

Career Opportunities...

I don't for one minute imagine that this book was produced for anything other than titillation purposes.
However, $500 a week? Might be worth a look,
and what about Tempest Storm? sounds interesting...

Born in 1928, Annie Blanche Banks went to Hollywood as a 20 year old, working as a chorus girl and cocktail waitress. She moved into Burlesque, tempted by a $60 a week wage, and adopted the name Tempest Storm in 1950. She went on to star in a number of Burlesque movies, working with legends such as Russ Meyer and Irving Klaw. She allegedly insured her breasts for one million dollars. A tour of the Burlesque venues of San Francisco between September'57 and Spring '58 landed her $100,000. Storm officially retired in 1995 at the age of 67, but has done occasional stage performances since, notably a show in 1999 at San Francisco's O'Farrell Theatre to mark the club's 30th anniversary, on which the mayor of San Francisco declared "Tempest Storm Day" in her honour.
So maybe, with the opportunity of making big money and with a degree of job security it was a viable career move after all, and Strippers School Book may have proved to have been $2.98 well spent ?

Style...

In the annals of cinema it would be harder to find a more stylish film than Luis Bunuel's 1967 masterwork Belle de Jour.
Catherine Denueve, of course, looks marvelous throughout, but here I will concern myself with another equally irresistible carachter, Marcel, played by Pierre Clémenti (1942 – 1999).
Marcel is a hoodlum.
His hair swept forward almost down to his interrogating eyes, he has something of a look of Scott Walker. His crowning glory is his mouthful of metal teeth (knocked out at one blow... he explains with his customary dismissive braggadocio).
With his long leather trenchcoat and his swordstick , there is a somnambulistic strangeness about his swagger, this lithe dark predator whose pained features might have been drawn by Cocteau.
The devil is in the detail-his menacing lowslung belt,his vagabond boots and garish ties- the suit he wears with loose disdain.
But what I admire most about him is his passion, and his death, gunned down in the street by a cop, is flawless.
For all his otherworldliness Marcel has a hole in his sock,just as you or I might have. Towards the end of the film we see Severine whiling away the time, penitently sitting with the husband that Marcel has crippled. She works at an embroidery.In a happier world she would be darning that sock.

Caetano Veloso - Muito (Dentro Da Estrela Azulada)

Just in case you missed it?
Link :http://rapidshare.com/files/319158313/Caetano_Veloso_Muito__Dentro_Da_Estrela_Azulada_.rar

Françoise Hardy...

Another non Bossa Nova post, a lovely record...
Paris, 1968, heady days indeed...


Generally speaking, the LP’s of Françoise Hardy were untitled. Her name would appear on the sleeve, no number or anything else. So she has released at least ten LP’s called simply Françoise Hardy.
For the sake of convenience this 1968 release is known as Comment te dire adieu?. It is largely comprised of cover versions and adaptations, and contains songs by Jack Gold, Phil Ochs, Leonard Cohen, Georges Brassens, Serge Gainsbourg and Antonio Carlos Jobim as well as interpretations of a poem by Loius Aragon and Ricky Nelson’s Lonesome Town. M. Gainsbourg was also responsible for the very clever French adaptation of Goland & Gold’s It Hurts to Say Goodbye (Comment te dire adieu?).
Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/290879618/Fran__oise_Hardy_Comment_Te_Dire_Adieu.rar

Switzerland 1954...

1954 was all about goals, the unexpected defeat of Hungary (they had recorded 23 wins and four draws during the preceding four years) and the emergence of Germany as a world power in Football.
In 26 matches 140 goals were scored (an average of over five per game). The quarter-final between Switzerland and Austria produced 12 goals - the Swiss led 3-0 inside 19 minutes, conceded five during a ten-minute spell before half-time and ended up losing 7-5.


Puskas vs Korea

Korea Republic contributed in no small manner to the goalfest. Their journey to Switzerland was arduous and for their pains they lost 9-0 to Hungary and 7-0 to Turkey.

In their first quest for World Cup glory Scotland, featuring Willie Ormond and Tommy Docherty, went down 1-0 to Austria before getting 7 off Uruguay.

The tournament gave us both The Battle of Berne (an ill tempered encounter between Hungary and Brazil in which the fighting continued into the tunnel and dressing rooms) and later The Miracle of Berne.
In the final West Germany came back from 2 down to beat Hungary. There was further drama as Puskas had a late goal inexplicably ruled out (or disallowed for offside, depending where your sympathies lie).

Advice to girls...

Moderation!

Pelé disse Love, love, love...Caetano Veloso

On October 1, 1977 Pelé played the last of his 1,363 professional games.
It was an exhibition match between the Cosmos and Santos that was sold out six weeks in advance and broadcast in 38 nations.
Pelé played the first half in the green of Cosmos (scoring a goal from a free kick), the second in the white of Santos.
before the game he Addressed the 75,000 fans, ending by asking them to shout Love! Love! Love!


The occasion inspired Caetano Veloso to write the song Love,Love,Love for his 1978 LP Muito (Dentro Da Estrela Azulada).

Link :http://rapidshare.com/files/319158313/Caetano_Veloso_Muito__Dentro_Da_Estrela_Azulada_.rar

Glasses...

Role model: Howard Vernon

Joao Kartoshka has been wearing glasses since the age of 16. At first he didn’t like it. Regardless of the large numbers of people that he saw on the street everyday wearing glasses, and of all the people in the movies, on TV, it just didn’t feel right.

Role Model: Joop van Daele

He loves his glasses now. They are like a prop. For example, if you want to feign reflectiveness, you just pop them off and place the sidearm in your mouth like the stem of a pipe.
I remember at the age of four some white coated person coming to our school to test our eyes- we had to line up and sit on a wooden chair in the middle of the hall. The chart was hung on a board, not on the wall itself, but on this free standing board well away from the wall. I remember being conscious of the fact that my eyelashes were brushing the palm of the lady’s hand as she covered my eye.
Apparently I couldn’t see a thing out of my left eye. Nothing. They were astonished, and sometime shortly afterwards Ma Kartoshka had to march me up the incredibly steep hill to the hospital where they shone all sorts of little torches into my eye in a darkened room that smelled of stainless steel.
The eye was perfect.
For quite some time Ma Kartoshka went on about this unnecessary journey to the hospital- which she described as traipsing. I had enjoyed it; it reminded me of the pre school utopia, being out in the streets when other people were either at work or in school.
I don’t remember, but apparently I confessed that my left eye blindness was caused by boredom. Reading the set of letters twice? No thank you…
A similar situation arose when I was fifteen. This time the procedure was more clinical, more efficient, and apparently my eyesight was now genuinely defective. The person conducting the test couldn’t believe that I didn’t wear glasses already. I read the letter confirming this on the way home. I showed it to Pa Kartoshka.
You don’t want glasses, do you?
Erm...No
That was the end of that- I survived another year or so in the claustrophobic grey blur of myopia before finally yielding.

Baden Powell- Samba Bencao

Ok- we've had Pierre Barouh's version so here is the maestro's original.
Bencao means blessings, and the term Saravah, which means good luck originates in Candomblé (a religion which was taken to Brazil by African slaves).

Link: http://rapidshare.com/files/316849948/Baden_Powell_-_Samba_De_Bencao.mp3

Un homme et une femme...

There are any number of reasons for grabbing this LP, the soundtrack of Claude Lelouch's 1966 classic Un homme et une femme (composed on the whole by Francis Lai). For a start, in the title track it contains what for me is the epitome of 1960's romantic music. It is the anthem of Kartoshka167! Secondly we have Samba Saravah- actor Pierre Barouh was an admirer of Bossa Nova and a personal friend of Baden Powell- here he sings his own version of Baden and Vinicius de Moraes' Samba da Bencao .

Pierre Barouh & Baden Powell - Samba Saravah

Here is the link to the LP: http://rapidshare.com/files/315701137/Francis_Lai_-_A_Man_And_A_Woman_Soundtrack_Un_Homme_Et_Une_Femme__1966_.rar

Erotographomania

Mrs. Kartoshka and I are often apart. How do we keep in touch? The e-mail, sms messaging, telephone...
In years gone by, of course, we would have relied on letters.
I was reading a lecture by the Australian songwriter Nick Cave the other day. This is what he has to say about love letters:
I sat down with a friend of mine, who for the sake of his anonymity I will refer to as J.
J. and I admitted to each other that we both suffered from psychological disorder that the medical profession call erotographomania. Erotographomania is the obsessive desire to write love letters. My friend shared that he had written and sent, over the last five years, more than seven thousand love letters to his wife. My friend looked exhausted and his shame was almost palpable. I suffer from the same disease but happily have yet to reach such an advanced stage as my poor friend J. We discussed the power of the love letter and found that it was, not surprisingly, very similar to the love song. Both served as extended meditations on ones beloved. Both served to shorten the distance between the writer and the recipient. Both held within them a permanence and power that the spoken word did not. Both were erotic exercises, in themselves. Both had the potential to reinvent, through words, like Pygmalion with his self-created lover of stone, one's beloved. Alas, the most endearing form of correspondence, the love letter, like the love song has suffered at the hands of the cold speed of technology, at the carelessness and soullessness of our age.

Maybe I should send Mrs Kartoshka more letters?
Maybe I should send for this guide?

Antonio Carlos Jobim - The Composer Of Desafinado, Plays (1963)

Sometimes the title says it all…

A lush sounding LP, 12 Bossa Nova classics from the maestro.

A Garota De Ipanema
Amor Em Paz
Agua De Beber
Vivo Sonhando
O Morro Não Tem Vez
Insensatez
Corcovado
Samba De Uma Nota So
Meditacáo
So Danco Samba
Chega De Saudade
Desafinado

Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/309871438/Antonio_Carlos_Jobim.rar

Brazil 1950...

Everywhere has its irremediable national catastrophe, something like a Hiroshima. Our catastrophe, our Hiroshima, was the defeat by Uruguay in 1950. Nelson Rodrigues.

In 1950 there was no World Cup Final.
The championship was decided on a round robin basis, so the winners could have been crowned before the hosts Brazil met Uruguay at Estádio do Maracanã on 16 July. As it was Brazil needed just one point to secure the Jules Rimet Trophy as it was now known.
Their defeat at the hands of neighbours Uruguay in what became known as the Final Fatídica left a scar on the national psyche, and ironically in a country with a rich football heritage and an unparalleled 5 World Cup successes, it is this defeat which is remembered as their most significant game, even giving a new word to the vocabulary, Maracanazo.
The newspapers proclaiming a Brazil victory had been printed, songs had been written and medals had been struck. Brazil were 1/10 on favourites to win and stood to collect mammoth bonuses of around £10,000 if they lifted the trophy. Jules Rimet had prepared a speech in Portuguese for when he inevitably presented the trophy to Augusto da Costa.

Having had to seek him out unaided by his stunned hosts, M. Rimet presents Varela with the trophy in the midst of 200,000 silent Brazilians.

England came out of World Cup isolation and were promptly humiliated by the USA .Ill prepared probably in the belief that English football was football, and that a combination of muscular , direct football and dribbling and crossing to a big centre forward would be enough to affirm their primacy in the game they invented- but this was a world of which they knew nothing, and the fifties were to be a succession of wake up calls which they were very slow to heed.
India missed out on all this- refusing to go because FIFA would not allow the team to play barefoot.

Sonny Rollins - Alfie (1966)

Let's take a break from Bossa Nova...

Here is the soundtrack album for Alfie , a 1966 British film directed by Lewis Gilbert, starring Michael Caine. It is an adaptation by Bill Naughton of his own novel and play of the same name
Michael Caine is one of Joao Kartoshka’s all time favourite actors, but Alfie is one of his least favourite characters- the smug mysoginism and psychopathy galls – even in those days? Was it really endearingly laddish, or clever? He’s a bully and a coward who deserves much worse than he gets.
He cries only for himself…
What’s it all about, eh?
Caine’s undoubted genius, of course.
The soundtrack is a cracking piece of jazz from another undoubted genius- US tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins who by the age of 36 was a figure shrouded in mystique.

• Sonny Rollins, Robert Ashton – tenor saxophone
• J.J. Johnson – trombone (tracks 1 & 2)
• Jimmy Cleveland – trombone (tracks 3-6)
• Phil Woods – alto saxophone
• Danny Bank – baritone saxophone
• Roger Kellaway – piano
• Kenny Burrell – guitar
• Walter Booker – bass
• Frankie Dunlop – drums
• Oliver Nelson – arranger, conductor
Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 26, 1966

Here's the link:http://rapidshare.com/files/296483424/Sonny_Rollins-Alfie.rar

A Garota de Ipanema ...

Helô 1967

...the paradigm of the young Carioca: a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone — it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow.- Vinicius de Moraes

Ask people to name one Bossa Nova song and the chances are that it will be A Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema), composed in 1962 by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.
First recorded by Pery Ribeiro (1962) the song was made internationally famous by Astrud Gilberto, João Gilberto and Stan Getz ( featured on the Getz/Gilberto LP of 1964, Garota won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1965). It has since been covered by a vast number of artists.
Despite the fact that the song, originally titled Menina que Passa (The Girl Who Passes By) was composed for a musical comedy titled Dirigível , the composers happily played along with the popular myth that it was inspired by Moraes and Jobim watching local girl Helô Pinto walk past the Veloso bar in Ipanema. They later went so far as to agree that they had actually written the song about Helô.
Consequently Helô Pinheiro (as she now is) is The Girl From Ipanema. This worked in her favour in 2001 when the families of Moraes and Jobim sued her over her use of the name for her business venture, a chain of boutiques in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro . She won the case.

Born in 1943, Helô appeared in Brazilian Playboy in 1987 and once again in 2003, showing that at age 60 she still had what it took to turn the heads of any budding composers who might be sitting at Veloso’s bar…

Here is Helô's website:http://www.garotadeipanema.com.br/historia_e_fotos_garota_de_ipanema.htm

Here is Pery Ribeiro's original version of the song: http://rapidshare.com/files/311248511/Pery_Ribeiro_-_Garota_De_Ipanema.rar

I know the feeling...

Bossa Nova...

I was thinking the other day- what does Bossa Nova actually mean to people these days? What image does it conjure up in their minds? We already know that Mattinho dismisses it as cruise ship music- and I found out from a quick survey of people around the neighbourhood of Kartoshka Towers that most people think it's something to do with ballroom dancing, or Latin music played on a combo organ.
I've put together this compilation as a quick sampler for those who might not have had the opportunity to listen to Bossa Nova and who might as a consequence dismiss it as kitsch, easy listening, lounge or elevator music.
Most of the songs here are well known and may be available elsewhere on this blog.
It's not an exhaustive or definitive compilation, just 40 minutes of good listening featuring some of the main figures in the Bossa Nova genre.

I hope that aficionados will indulge me over the choice of records and also over this necessarily brief potted history:
Bossa Nova evolved in Brazil in the latter part of the 1950’s, and Bim-Bom (1956) by João Gilberto is considered to be the first Bossa Nova song. Gilberto- along with Jobim , Luiz Bonfa and the poet lyricist Vinícius de Moraes created many standards of the genre.
Being more complex and less percussive than the Samba from which it derives- Bossa Nova also had a more refined and upmarket image.
In Brazil itself Bossa Nova was made popular by Elizete Cardoso's interpretation of Chega de Saudade by Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes on her LP Canção do Amor Demais. Joao Gilberto also scored a hit with this number. The 1959 film Orfeu Negro brought the style wider exposure, and American Jazz musicians began collaborating with Brazilian artistes , creating a Bossa Nova boom in the States.
This in turn led to Brazilian artists migrating to the USA, where Bossa Nova was crucial in the development of the cool jazz style.
Brazilian composers (most notably Jobim) continued to produce lushly orchestrated works awash with strings whilst still employing the rhythmic staples and intimate understated styles of Bossa Nova.
This is not a perfect synopsis and not all key figures are mentioned- but it’s a place to start if you are not familiar with the story of this seductive and engaging musical style.
Further information here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bossa_nova
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1556524943/ref=s9_sima_gw_s0_p14_t1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=03G1428MCSW1BRST41H3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128533&pf_rd_i=468294 http://loronix.blogspot.com/

Heres the Link:http://rapidshare.com/files/309871435/Kartoshka_Comp.rar

Bim Bom- Joao Gilberto
Chega De Saudade- Elizete Cardoso
Manha De Carnaval- Luiz Bonfa /Maria Toledo
Samba De Orfeu- Maria Toledo
The Girl From Ipanema- Joao Gilberto/ Stan Getz/ Astrud Gilberto
Samba De Uma Nota So- Sylvia Teles
Agua De Beber- Antonio Carlos Jobim
Wave- Antonio Carlos Jobim
Mas Que Nada- Sergio Mendes
Aguas De Marco- Elis Regina/ Antonio Carlos Jobim
Coracao Vagabundo- Gal Costa /Caetano Veloso
Carta o Tom- Vinicius e Toquinho

Guitar...

As you can see from the photograph above, a man who can play the guitar is invariably very popular.

Unsurprisingly, then, as a young boy, I longed for a guitar. With Xmas approaching I cut out the page below from a magazine ( it was called something like Guitar Planet).

Pa Kartoshka was always very contemptuous of musicians. All his records were compilations of movie music. Orchestras seemed ok to him, but he was wary of individual artisites. He thought that playing the guitar was 'kinky'.

I summoned up all my courage and showed the picture to Pa.

'Can you get me one of these for Xmas?'

He looked at the photograph seriously.

'I'll see what I can do...' he said.

I wasn't expecting miracles. Money was tight.

On Xmas day he nodded gloomily towards the hall.

'Your present is out there...'

His morose voice followed me as I eagerly raced out to the hall.

'I don't know why the hell you wanted it though, seems a strange choice to me...'
Sure enough, there it was, hanging in the hall.

A black tuxedo, complete with a pleat fronted shirt and velvet bow tie.

Just one of those misunderstandings that passes between fathers and sons.

'It's not exactly like the one you showed me' he called after me, 'but it was the best that I could do...'

I didn't have the heart to tell him.