A Watery Visit, A Fan and Europe’s Loveliest Registry Office «

A Watery Visit, A Fan and Europe’s Loveliest Registry Office

Thursday 11th August 2016

Europe’s Loveliest Registry office was in the Mirabelle Palace, Salzburg. Brides were milling about the palace grounds accompanied by men in short sleeved shirts – their chauffeurs, perhaps? Second marriages, if you ask me, or late ones. Some had got fully formed pre-children. In the lobby of Europe’s loveliest registry office it emerged that brides were marrying their chauffeurs, who had by now acquired jackets. One bridal block was held in a holding pen in the lobby while another was being finished in the actual chamber. It was only possible to dash in and get a glimpse of the great room between brides. The queuing system recalled the crematorium and I texted Anthony Mottram of Prague to that effect. ‘But less joyous,’ he returned.

The next day and final day in Salzburg was the watery visit. But before that Harry Rollo asked for the fan to be turned on in the lobby of his parents’ hotel while he waited for them to descend. It was that hot. But the receptionist claimed she was cold. So with searing sensitivity, Harry turned the fan away from her and towards himself. Oh catastrophe! The hotel leaflets, those useless leaflets that nobody wants but are always there, were caught and flung all over. The entire area was alive with curling, furious leaflets. Poor Harry, instead of a moment’s peace and cool, had to scrabble frantically to catch them.

Which brings one to The Sound of Music. ‘How can you catch a moonbeam like Maria?’ The Sound of Music tour was to be have been a highlight of our Salzburg visit, after Harry’s performance. But somehow, rather as in the performance, nobody was able to leave on The Sound of Music tour bus. Rufus and Reggie can recite the entire Sound of Music from start to finish. Harry and Mercury Mr Kitten were lodging at the scene of ‘Mother, I have sinned,’ (spark plugs). But nobody boarded that bus. This was only partly because Reggie called it ‘rather smelly’ – or said it took four hours.

But there was A Sound of Music element at last, as you shall see.

The watery visit was to Hellbron. ‘A good starter Archbishop’s palace,’ Harry declared standing before it. It was a little rustic. They’d tried very hard to excite the inside but it wasn’t the best. There was a painted hall that was too complete in the way that mediocre things are. Quite nice. It turned out we’d all been secretly graphing an incredibly hot but clearly impossible young man who was amongst the paying visitors. The Archbishop in question was Italian and 18th century, perhaps 17th. Maybe he found Salzburg in need of pipping up. We took a tour of the garden with a great mass of members of the public. The guide stood near something he was fiddling with as he talked. Then he fiddled more decisively and we were all squirted with water. But it was the Archbishop’s doing. Those sitting at his wine table found themselves unexpectedly watered up the arse. Strolling in a grotto or trying to leave one, jets of water (copied from the human male piss stream of a six-year-old in force and dimensions) assaulted from the floor. All frantically amusing. More so for us, without the Archbishop there. We squealed and shrieked. Astonishing how even in middle age getting squirted is just as exciting and alarming and thrillingly horrifying as it ever was when a small kiddie. By lunch we were dry.

Then it was down a long avenue, and round a corner. The actual pavilion in which they sang, ‘I am sixteen going on seventeen.’ Except that it had been moved there from where it had been in The Sound of Music. And where it was was in a dark corner of the garden by a wall under a tree. And it was locked. And it looked like something off a film set. It was locked because otherwise people would go in and whirl around the benches inside going, ‘I am sixteen….’ then fall off and have accidents. I was snogged by Rufus Pitman before the Pavilion in tribute. We were sixteen going on seventeen.

So the whole experience of Hellbron was delinquent.

We determined to walk back to Salzburg down the longest, straightest road you ever saw. On which was the villa of a hugely important art dealer – we’d been informed privately by Harry’s mother of its location, you see. No 65. The villa was en fete. Staff were in evidence and guests. Massed ranks of cars. What a fool though – the art dealer. To think that some of the most important people alive were standing outside his villa, having been paying tourists at Hellbron. And he didn’t know.