I have a gift for sniffing out a piano, and I do wherever I go. The Semiramis Hotel's restaurant is a garden cafe, where potted palms loom over a running stream and a series of white-glazed, wrought iron tables with marble tops. There is a bowl of dates on each table, but I'm far too interested in the Steinway in a nearby veranda.

After taking a seat and improvising a sequence of melancholy chords, I play a highly embellished variation on one of Irving Berlin's more recent successes. This seems to have caught the attention of three fiddlers in red coats. We're only missing Old King Cole. Knowing him, he's probably still running musically amok through the bistros of Paris.

These fiddlers are quite good. I doubt they've ever heard the song, but they know music, and they join in like true professionals. I sing...

I have an ear for music
And I have an eye for a maid
I link a pretty girlie
With each pretty tune that's played
They go together like sunny weather
Goes with the month of May
I've studied girls and music
So I'm qualified to say:

A pretty girl is like a melody
That haunts you night and day

Just like the strain of a haunting refrain
She'll start upon a marathon
And run around your brain

You can't escape, she's in your memory
By morning, night and noon

She will leave you and then come back again
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune...