40. A Girl Called Dusty by Dusty Springfield (1964)



Was her name really Dusty?

Hang on I’ll check…

Marvellous what you can do with telephones nowadays. You could never check the name of a female vocalist on my mother’s old ivory-inlaid handset. Although it did make a useful paperweight for the Sunday edition of the Daily Mail so it had its uses.

No. Her real name was Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O’Brien.

Well, that hardly rolls off the tongue. You can appreciate the desire for a change. I suppose today she could simply have utilised her initials. Micbo sounds like a popular entertainer of the current era. Why did she select Dusty as a sobriquet I wonder? I, of all people, would have known if she was an especially dusty individual because I would have been the one to clean up the eponymous dust, but I can assure you that she was an extremely well-groomed young lady.

Did you know she was…

Was what?

You know… did you know she was…

Half Irish? Well, I suspected, but do you know in those days it really didn’t matter anymore. My mother would have been upset but then that’s my mother for you. A very intolerant woman. She once hit a farmhand over the head with a milk bottle just because he wished her a happy St Patrick's day.  Why was she called Dusty, do we know? Are you able to research that on your portable telephone?

Well…. Apparently as a girl, she used to play football in the street with the boys so she came home dusty.

That makes sense.

Of course, her being a Tomboy isn’t surprising since it was later revealed that she was…

What?

You know…

Good at sport? Yes, I suppose she probably was. She was certainly a very boisterous individual. Fond of a “food fight” if I recall. I can tell you that as a gentleman, a professional cleaner, and a lover of fine cuisine that there are few things I object to more than the hurling of foodstuffs for the purpose of amusement1. But I don’t hold that against her. She was a lovely girl although prone to moments of melancholy.

And she was also…

What?

She was… nevermind. Let’s move on.

Let's do.

1. Springfield was genuinely a half-Irish, former tomboy who loved a good food fight. The other thing is true as well.

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