Today being Boxing Day I have decided not to write about Christmas. I have been saved by an obituary in today’s NY Times. The obituary reveals that on December 16, Carlos Lyra died.

Nobody in my family would associate this man with my Rosemary. I did immediately.

In my 52 years of marriage to Rosemary we had lots of fun in our bedroom. She was not overly vocal but in the parlance of that other century she was a good lay. She did everything in her life with good taste and elegance. She was an elegant lay.

In those 52 years she only twice in my memory went overboard and did no keep her thoughts inside that beautiful head with blond hair. She told me emphatically that she was attracted to two men. Both were musicians. One was jazz saxophonist Bud Shank. She insisted we go and see him when he played in Mexico. We did.

The second man was Brazilian guitarist and songwriter Carlos Lyra. I had a Mexican pressing of one of his records as he had lived in exile (he was a left wing man who had been a member of the Brazilian Communist Party) in Mexico City in the 60s.

Rosemary was always asking me to play the record. We both loved it although my fave tune of Lyra’s is Maria Ninguém. 

Carlos Lyra and Paul Winter - Maria Ninguém

Living in Vancouver I feel lucky in having a now 25 year subscription to a daily delivered NYTimes. The Times is less Anglocentric than other publications. Another example, is the fact that the NY Times ran an obituary for one of my favourite French photographers Elliott Erwitt who died on November 29.

Elliott Erwitt

While Bud Shank (in my opinion) exuded extreme manliness, Lyra was much more subdued. Rosemary liked both.

I wonder why she liked and loved me as resemble neither of them.