The blue parrot...

For a while there I was Humphrey Bogart, these days I’m Sydney Greenstreet.

Not that was anything wrong with Mr Greenstreet, he was a perfectly fine actor and elegant in his own rotund sartorial way. In truth though, for a while back in my late teens I was almost Humphrey Bogart. Of course I wasn’t an actor, nor was I a middle-aged philandering American; but I had the hat and a trench coat and eventually I learned to like smoking cigarettes.

Yes, it was Humprey Bogart that persuaded me to start smoking – that and the sudden departure of the (then) love of my life.

“Play it once Sam, for old times’ sake, play ‘As Time Goes By’.”

I could take it, and with that I lit my fist cigarette and didn’t look back for over twenty-five years.

For a while I played at being the hard-drinking, smoking, cynical Rick Blaine type; and then slowly, as life poured oil on my already troubled waters, I became one. It’s funny how things creep up on us.

I’m not quite sure when my metamorphosis into Signor Ferrari began though although I do remember one murder party in my twenties where I went dressed in fez and white dinner jacket, calling myself El Grosso Fez and speaking with a quite ridiculous Eyygyyptian accent.

Even so, I’m sure that I had the Bogart in me into my early forties - almost another song there, not quite, but almost.

Anyway I’d settle for being Sydney Greenstreet, swatting at flies, spending the rest of my days in that other bar in Casablanca, The Blue Parrot… and wait… and wait… and wait.