At length, we had nearly come to the end of our bookclub meeting (and a very jolly gathering it was – so good to see everyone again after a four month gap!). My brother-in-law Geoff, who is not one of our bookworms returned home and joined us in the lounge room for a cup of coffee.

“Oh Sally, I met an old boyfriend of yours and he mentioned you and Mary – he knew Mary too,” Geoff said looking across to where I was sitting on the arm of the sofa, next to my sister.

“”Who was that then?” I asked.

“Do you know I can’t remember his name? But I think he was something to do with the Teign Valley Stompers.”

“I never went out with anyone in the Teign Valley Stompers,” I protested, “Mark Whitlock’s brother was in the Teign Valley Stompers but I never went out with either Mark or his brother!” I looked at Mary for support.

“No, Sally didn’t go out with either of them,” said Mary, “and neither did I!”

“Who are the Teign Valley Stompers?” asked Reuben, our handsome bookclub leader.

“A traditional jazz band,” answered Geoff.

“They won ‘Opportunity Knocks’ years ago,” added Mary with surprise but then she nodded her head as if to acknowledge that Reuben was originally from Plymouth, and he’s a bit younger than us.

“So I wonder who it could have been? Don’t you even remember his Christian name?” I fixed Geoff with my gaze.

“No, but he lives up Hazeldene Road.” (Geoff is a part-time taxi driver, therefore he remembers addresses more readily than names.”

“That rings a bell,” I said. (In Geoff’s case it would have been a door bell!) “Hold your horses, I think Chris Hutchence lives up there. Now I did go out with Chris for six months when I was just eighteen and he was thirty. Is he bald?”

“He doesn’t have much hair… and it’s white!” Geoff, who doesn’t have white hair, added gleefully.

“And does he have a moustache?” I looked at the bookworms and gestured a big moustache. “He used to have a big moustache and long curly hair although last time I saw him he was going bald.”

“Yes, he has a moustache,” confirmed my brother-in-law.

“And is he rather short?” I asked.

“Yes,” Geoff nodded.

“Oh, I don’t like short men,” said Jo, our newest bookworm.

“He was a ‘Medallion man’ too,” I continued – for Jo’s interest – and she pulled a face.

“Nothing was his scene,” I began and for a few moments I got lost in a reverie, thinking about Chris Hutchence. “Every time I suggested we do anything like play a game, go dancing, hiking… anything, he would always answer, ‘It’s just not my scene’.”

The expressions on the faces of the bookworms urged me on.

“Well, one day I wrote him a letter – it was in the days when people still used pen and paper – and I I wrote, ‘Dear Chris, I’m sorry but you’re just not my scene.”

Everyone laughed and Geoff said:

“He is pretty short. I expect it is him.”

“He used to wear built up shoes,” I looked at Jo before turning to Mary and adding, “of course, I was taller in those days.”

“But you were only about five-feet six,” Mary raised her eye-brows.

“Yes, I know,” I laughed, “but when I had my platform shoes on I was about six feet tall!”

And that’s the long and the short of it! (Incidentally, the book we were discussing was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, whose writing often included the transitional expressions, “At length” and “In short”.)