A Tale of Two Socks

Inspired by JoJo's laundry story (hey, here's an idea - Brian could do the laundry if he's so scared of getting your panties in his pants...) I have a tale to tell involving socks, tight trousers and some very deep breaths.

Several years ago I was taking part in a production of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. I was singing one of the Three Spirits who lead the hero Tamino on his road to enlightenment. My friend Julie (long-term readers will remember her with her Bengal cats) was one of the other spirits, and our Tamino was an old friend of hers. Just before we were due to lead him on to the stage and sing to him, Julie called the other two of us over to where they were in the wings. She invited us to grope his groin. She had persuaded him to stuff it with a pair of her socks! We laughed as loudly as you can backstage with a show going on.

Then came our entry, and we led him onstage attached to ribbons. He was facing upstage, we were facing the audience. We sang the first section of our trio, then minds racing ahead to the next line, simultaneously realised what the next line was we were to deliver in harmony: "A manly part you have to play!" We breathed in more deeply and more desperately than we had ever done before and fought back the giggles successfully, even though Tamino was laughing silently. We didn't actually corpse, but when we got offstage, we fell about and laughed uncontrollably for several minutes.