STRINGER

Like a cross between a Toby Jug and one of those contented fat men from a Flemish Renaissance painting, Stringer was the very definition of an eccentric. A teller of (possibly) tall tales, a connoisseur and expert practitioner of classical music, especially the cello, and finally a compulsive imbiber of that most gloopy and yellow of liqueurs, Advocaat, the remants of which would often be found congealed around his mouth in crusty patches.

He was both sublime and grotesque in equal measure; an unhygienic wretch and lofty snob all at once, the man was paradoxically hilarious and infuriating. There was nothing anyone could offer him on the subject of Bach, Mozart, Wagner or Strauss that wouldn't be negated with a dismissive regal wave of the hand. He knew all and we knew nothing. When he played Bach's cello suites on his cello, he would have you convinced he was Pablo Casals re-incarnated, his chubby fingers sliding up and down the fingerboard with impressive dexterity.

With a laugh seemingly borrowed from Amadeus, you could hear from his impressive top notes the very real potential for him to be a modern day living castrato without any need to sever the spermatic cords or crush the testes. Was it affectation or genuine? Impossible to tell, but either way, it had become his signature vocal motif.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

It still haunts me to this day. No wonder Salieri was driven mad by it (at least in Shaffer's original play).

Actually, I'm being somewhat unfair. It was a charming laugh, if a little relentless, like being aurally assaulted by a mocking hyena.

Often, on early mornings, Stringer would accompany my postman friend, 'Gorodish', on his daily delivery route on the same street where he lived. Walking on the opposite side of the street to my friend, he would have his hands behind his back as if he was Captain Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty and my friend was Lieutenant Fletcher Christian. It must have been a bizarre sight for the residents of that street to see these two men conducting a conversation, the entire length of the street from opposite sides of the pavements. Perhaps they might have worried my friend was under duress by Stringer when, in reality, it was a perfectly amicable exchange between the two men.

Regaling my friend with insider gossip from his experiences of the classical music world and explaining what a leitmotif was, Stringer may have perhaps inadvertently added a chapter or two of knowledge to my friend's increasing interest in classical music and opera, helping to hone his critical faculties when it came to selecting a recording of a great work such as Beethoven's 5th Symphony. It was, in many ways, a learning thrust upon my friend by a man with a grandiose desire to be recognised as Stroud's leading authority on music.

After all, Stringer was a man of considerable ego.

Those privileged enough to be invited into Captain Stringer's house, would find on the ground floor his elderly mother (a dressmaker for Covent Garden's Royal Opera House) chain smoking and despairing at the state of her son's arrested development to anyone who would listen. The two of them bickered and squabbled in a way that was reminiscent of the way Steptoe and Son would quarrel, except in a far more upper middle class way, both arguing over memories from the past, the details of which neither appeared to recall accurately.

His mother's lifelong smoking habit meant that she had a vocal register several octaves lower than her "castrato" son.

Both Stringer and his mother commanded their divided territories of the house like that of a ship, him on the top deck, her down below.

If the mother could persuade you away from Stringer's world upstairs she would do so, as often a tug of war played out between them, using guests as hostages. If you stayed too long to chat to his mother, Stringer would admonish you for betraying him.

"She's mad I'm afraid," he would insist as he poured himself another pint glass of Advocaat with one hand, whilst conducting Mozart's Jupiter Symphony in another.

There was a touch of the Whatever Happened To Baby Jane about the house, but never to the point where any of us genuinely feared for our lives. If David was Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) in this scenario then his mother was most certainly Blanche (Joan Crawford), though neither had enough malice between them to do any sustained damage to one another.

Beneath all the screaming and hysterics, there was a genuine love and affection between them both.

Just never when the guests were there to bear witness to it.

Upstairs in his study room/man cave, Stringer would sit, smug like Smaug upon his hoard of gold, which was, in this instance classical and opera box sets that he had invested in over many years. Once Stringer had selected a specific recording for his collection, there was no argument as to it being definitive.

It was simply fact.

Us classical music novices (still drunk on the 'mother's milk' of The Penguin Guide to Classical Music) had much to learn from Stringer, who corrected our unwavering support for certain Rosette recordings. His emphasis was on the sound quality of performances and you could be sure he always selected the most opulent. If you happened to mention a noted historical mono performance, he would look at you with dismay as if you'd instantly failed his class. He found it utterly perverse that in the age of the compact disc someone would choose to listen to a scratchy recording.

"It's masochism!"

One time, I decided to negotiate a trade with him for an unplayed and seemingly untouched copy of Bellini's bel-canto opera Norma with Maria Callas (in mono!) for a Decca stereo recording I had with Joan Sutherland in the title role. Middle East peace negotiators have had easier afternoons than the one I did, trying to persuade the man to swap a recording he had clearly never played for one he would most probably spend days conducting his invisible orchestra with. Surveying me with his suspicious, twinkling eyes, he finally agreed to the terms.

It would be the last ever trade I would attempt with the man.

On another occasion, I dropped by after school only to find a wild looking, partially blind man thrashing a white stick in the air shouting, "The bastards! That's 90!" (in reference to the size of the orchestra) whilst the final scene from Act 3 of Wagner's Die Walkure was blaring out on Stringer's hi-fi as he conducted his crazed friend, laughing manically at the same time. It turned out the walking stick wielding man was a local Gypsy composer of Romany origin.

For others, perhaps, with more delicate sensibilities the sight of these two grown men acting with such visceral life force as the German Opera was being blasted out would be too much to withstand, like being an extra in a deleted scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

I found it to be both terrifying and hilarious.

And now dear reader I think it is only fitting that I leave my remembrance of Stringer here, for the ending of the man's tale is too sad to tell, I'm afraid. It would be the narrative equivalent of going from the joyful, life-affirming final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony to Mozart's Requiem without so much as an interval inbetween.

Personally, I like to think of the man back in his full pomp conducting opera and symphonic recordings in his room with his guests enthralled by his unique and characterful madness.

As for the tall tales, who's to ever know what was true and what wasn't.

One time, however, he told me how he'd shared a hospital room with Geshe Kelsang Gyatso while they both convalesced, from what I'm not quite sure. Even to this day I struggle to imagine a scenario whereby this venerated Buddhist rinpoche would be sharing oxygen with Stringer. A man whose entire life had been dedicated to meditating in silence in order to achieve perfect enlightenment, suddenly finding his divine serenity broken by the sound of ...

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"