P Dukas - Children's Party Magician
I would like to echo the opening comments on this thread. I do a lot of work in the posher parts of North London and am always taken aback by the haughtiness of the residents.
Take the other week. I'd already told a client in Hampstead that because of a double booking, I'd have to pull out but that I'd send my apprentice to his son's party instead. Okay, the apprentice didn't stick to his brief and the mop and bucket trick went pear-shaped but it didn't take long to clear things up after I went round.
You'd think that would be it, but then he went on and on about how the throwing the scores on the fire trick had backfired (so to speak) and now his precocious son, Tarquin, had lost most of his compositions; thus threatening his scholarship prospects for the Royal College of Music.
I tried to reason with him, saying that, if it made things better, I'd recommend Tarquin to Madame Clitheroe, Professor of the Pianoforte at Archway. When I said that lots of Madame Clitheroe's pupils get engagements at various drinking establishments along the Holloway Road he wasn't in the least impressed.
Mind you, those in Muswell Hill are the worst. I think that they've all got chips on their shoulders because they're "not quite Highgate". But that doesn't stop them looking down on everybody - topographically, of course. No wonder they call
them the chattering classes - it's
so bloody cold up there that their teeth are at it all the time. They do all sorts of things to keep warm, which probably explains the high local birth rate - still it bodes well for the longer-term prospects for my line of work.
