Two Chaps Talking

Mon Vieux,

Hey ho old love, how on earth're you doing in Blighty? My spies tell me that the weather continues to be clement and Her Maj's subjects continue to discuss it. How I envy you sometimes, like today for instance: ninety-two and humid, entirely unfit for human consumption. Still we soldier on, when the muse is with us we are but slaves to her whim.

To get a bit of reaction to my latest efforts on the page I have lately done a few live readings, in coffee bars and the like. It's a lot of fun, I get to see where and if people laugh at my puerile sense of humour. There are some interesting moments when my hilarious jokes fall on deaf ears, and others where simply pronouncing a word properly (ie my version of BBC RP) causes enormous amusement. Illuminating.

Literary pursuits aside the lady of the house and I have as usual been spending our weekends out in the Hamptons. Recently some fool made a documentary about the place. The director is allegedly famous for real-life documentaries, she made one on out-of-work miners in Pittsburgh, whatever they are and wherever that is. Anyway for her Hamptons expose rather than showing the fishermen, potato farmers and other natives she showed a succession of visiting twenty-and-thirty-something's looking for husbands and new bikinis. Entirely to be expected of course but it caused enormous consternation. Hamptonites everywhere denounced the woman and the television network that commissioned her. What on earth did they expect I wonder?

Found a rather handsome old book recently, - The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock (1st Edition from 1930), it cost three dollars and I've just discovered it's worth around five hundred. When I finally get around to properly furnishing our spare room as a study it will take pride of place.

So enough about me, what of you dear boy? I re-read your tale of breakfast. Have you got any further with bringing it to wider audience? And your weekly column, I'd love to see more of it. Is it per chance on the internet somewhere? I thought of you recently as I perused The Weekly web-site, it's in keeping with The Chap as you are no doubt intimately aware.

Are you still sleeping in the footsteps of Sir Winston? Your tale of his crapper lives with me still, I had no idea the tale of a toilet could be so moving. I long for the day when my writing allows me to take the tour of England that I crave. On a related subj. is the daily grind living up to its early promise? You are a chap to rise rapidly or move on, any developments?

I thought about my last sojourn in the City and realised that you and I barely touched a drop of sauce in the erstwhile peep-show quarter of London's West End. We did have a splendid dinner and a lunch but of Soho's drinking establishments we saw scant few. Something to be addressed during my next visit. Indeed I'm at the point now when I feel I know nothing whatsoever about night life in the town I used to call my own. Age and geography no doubt, but no less disturbing for all that.

Sartorial dilemmas are never far from my mind of course. In this heat if one isn't in the tender embrace of air conditioning one must remain near-naked. If I can't dress properly then I won't get dressed at all. No wonder brave men surround themselves with naked young boys in Morocco, it's too hot to wear anything anyway. As I write I am clad in a lunghi, those Indian chaps know thing or two about hot weather management I can tell you.

So old thing, that's the news from our side. We think of you often and will be bothering you before the year is out, Insh'allah.

Yours in the tropics,

S.