Two Chaps Talking

My Dear Old Thing,

There are certain things that a chap has an unalienable right to; random peeks of racy lingerie in summer, seeing our boys spend ninety minutes dismissing the Argies every four years, and of course sitting in the drivers seat of this year's finest from Newport Pagnell.

Cocoon yourself for a moment in soft Connolly hide, burnished walnut and thick Axminster. Raise your hands to the controls, grip the gearstick (matron) and thrust it forcefully into third, rip the wheel to the right and then the left, swerving past SPECTRE and leaving mayhem in your wake.

Check your insouciant expression in the rear view mirror and look around for a racy young bint in a red sportscar to race down the mountain, ending in a three hundred yard spin, coming to rest exactly five inches from the kerb, perfectly parallel.

Can you think of a better way to spend Saturday afternoon? And as if that wasn't enough I was also going to see the new models from Coventry and perhaps one or two from Crewe. So overseas interlopers held the paperwork on all of 'em, they were still made where they should be and by who they should be. Little did I know.

Sporting correct driving raiment M and I wandered over to the venue for this orgy of motorised consumerism. All right so I knew they were also going to be showing motor cars from other places, but a chap doesn't worry about passing burger bars en route to Le Gav now does he?

The profusion of goatee beards should have tipped me off, as should the milk shake drinking, coach party travelling, baseball hat wearing, mid-western squawking, generally obese hordes that were headed in the same direction. But you know, all that would've been all right. I could've risen above the masses, I could've lowered myself into the front of my Aston and closed the door on the lot of 'em. I could have, had I not seen something so terrible, so un-Godly, so utterly obscene that I was shaken to my very core.

They have, you see ...

They have... no I can't say it.

Oh God,

Here goes - They've changed the only Jag designed before the bloody Americans took over!

The only one, the last true Jaguar. The one that's been conveying crooks and ambassadors around the world for over thirty years. They've moved things around, they've raised some things and lowered others. They've made one of the finest cars in the world look like a New York Taxi Cab.

I took these points up with the resident apologist.

'Oh but there's more luggage space,' replied she.
'This is not a bus, the boot is for a picnic hamper or a body,' I pointed out.
'Oh but there's better fuel efficiency.'
'If you've paid half-a-small-rural-house for your car who cares how many miles to the gallon it does?'
'Oh but there's more headroom in the back.'
'A gentleman rides in the back of his own car only when unconscious after a good lunch, or perhaps when steaming the windows, parked, and not entirely alone - neither case requires more headroom.'
(I had her on the ropes by now)
'Oh but there's a new lightweight aluminum (sic) construction.'
'A lightweight aluminium construction? Ye Gods! How on earth is a chap to drive his car through the front of his errant bookies if his car's light in weight?'

I could go on, but now as then it hurts too much. And so passes an era. How long before we see mini cab firms from New Jersey to Slough offering XJ's with furry seat covers and vanilla scented mirror trees.

After a shock like that I was in mood to appreciate anything from Newport Pagnell. I drank myself into oblivion and slept in the back of my proper car, vowing never to desert it.

I can say no more at this time.

Bring me sunshine,

S

Posted by S at 03:21 PM | Permalink

Dear Boy,

I have, of late, been much exercised by the thought of ladies' underthings.

No, wait. Allow me to explain myself.

When a chap first has dealings of a carnal nature with a gel, undergarments are, without fail, of the finest - dark gossamer traceries, impossibly complex engineering, crisp, new and matching. As the relationship develops, an evening is reached when the chap knows that he is smitten. During the inevitable pillow talk he appraises his partner of the fact and at that very instant, the lingerie disappears. Suddenly, without warning, the enflaming trappings of passion are replaced by dreary, quotidian, functional underwear. The kind of stuff that may once have been black, white, coy pink, or any one of a palette of gay pastels but is now invariably boiled down to a homogenous pinkish blue/grey with slight fraying at the side seam.

"Ou, to paraphrase Francois Villon, sont les thongs d'antan"?

It will gladden your heart to know that I have formulated a range of hypotheses on this matter, some seemingly logical, others, frankly terrifying. Vis.

1) The transubstantiation theorem

It is a widely held belief that the underwear concerned is actually changed, in a physical sense, in the drawer. Others believe that the transubstantiation of the underwear is merely symbolic. The debate has raged across Europe for centuries. Sir Thomas More's treatise 'Upon My Ladyys Nether Thyyngs' caused eight nonconformist Corsetieres to be burned at the stake in France. Queen Elizabeth, is said to have formed the Order of the Garter in direct response to her sister Mary's comment in a letter "With drawerf Lyke that, your Graciouf Majestie, thou lookst likely to remain our virgyn Queene for the forfeeable future". Sporadic sectarian bickering still occurs with devotees of La Perla regularly stoning wearers of St Michael in the streets.
The English, with ecumenical aplomb, have formed their own special sect which ignores pants qua pants, sublimating any desires in tambourines and tea.

2) Hawking's Trans-dimensional Wormhole

This states that the both lingerie and underwear co-exist in parallel universes. The cooling of passion causes flexion of space/time or, when expressed six dimensionally, 'pinching'. When these precise cosmological conditions prevail a tiny wormhole opens in the bottom corner of the drawer and, in less than a nano-second, the garments transplace. The few scientist who have attempted to understand the breadth of Hawking's thinking have often been driven mad. This is not because the protocol is particularly complex but that it requires us to accept an entire universe where women only wear crap pants on first dates then raunchy drawers for the rest of their relationships.
Stephen Hawking is the only man who has ever been able to prove this hypothesis to his own satisfaction. Is it any wonder they have to wheel him around dribbling?

3) Cognitive Phase-Shift (Meeker and Webelfetz. UCSC 1968)

When Mike Meeker and Schlomo Webelfetz first met at the University of California, Santa Cruz, nobody imagined that these two unlikely characters would change the entire face of psychological research. (Meeker was an All-State running back on a sports scholarship and Webelfetz, a semi-pro skateboarder auditing classes in the Tarot and Rolfing). Their research into the lingerie/pants dichotomy grew from a summer project in New Mexico. In Zuni legend Amit-hai-pooni was a changeling god who appeared in different guises to each worshipper. According to Meeker's autobiography 'Bringing Power and Effectiveness to Human Excellence' they had been drinking peyote tea for eight weeks when Webelfetz commented that this was 'Cool' and Meeker had the revelation that would solve the pants problem...

What if pants had no objective quality of desirability and the 'alteration' was entirely perceptual?

Eight years of research followed, much sponsored by the CIA. Student volunteers were hooded, floated in tanks and fed huge quantities of hallucinogens before being shown pants. No matter what kind of underwear they were shown their reaction was always exactly the same - they giggled and slurred the word 'Cool'.

Meeker is now a personal effectiveness coach in New York, Webelfetz is running a cult out of a trailer park in Oklahoma.

4) The Ffitch-Cadogan equation

Originally propounded by Rupert Ffitch-Cadogan at Cambridge in 1955. Ffitch-Cadogan was a well-born dilletante physicist of little innate talent. (His father endowed the Ffitch-Cadogan Laboratories in 1953, the year his son went up).

He suggested that...

Where fabric = f
Age = a
Desirability of wearer = w

and...

[{f/w} 3.1519 - Kvr] /w + f /{187987987.7} = x

...then

If x> 666.978 then lingerie
If x< 666.978 then underwear

Sadly Rupert's judgement was called into question later that year when he was caught in flagrante with his bedder in the quad, sent down and defected to the Russians.

History has yet to prove if this was any great loss to theoretical physics.

5) The low-number/conspiracy theory

This is my own particular favourite theory but one that undermines many of our deeply held beliefs. What if there are only a limited number of sets of decent underwear? What if it's all a plot? What if there is a central clearing house with an 0800 number? What if your partner sneaks from the bed while you bask in post coital glow and rings the number...

"Hullo. Control? Mission accomplished. I've got him. Send a courier to pick up the date knickers and hand them on to the next operative".

I think it's time I did some work

T

Posted by T at 10:55 AM | Permalink

M'Lud,

Six of 'em. Six lovely cold crystal inverted cones of clear liquid pleasure, that's how many I needed to verify each of your rules. From the screen to the printer I paused only to don a suitably durable splash and thorn-proof tweed and dashed to my local healthcare provider, as they say here. I slammed your instructions down before the barman and demanded he follow them to the letter, and don't bruise the gin laddie. I can confirm the wisdom of your advice and have given strict instructions to my man that henceforth it should be followed to the letter. Never let it be said that a chap's too old to learn eh?

You know those pricey baubles that one has to load up on to placate a chorus girl that he might have inadvertently compromised in the velvet-lined booth of one of Mayfair's oldest restaurants after a night with the green faerie? Well a pal of the OB&C is putting it across a purveyor of such things and while breaking bread with the pair of them I saw a troubling sight.

One of our own, at least geographically, was at the next table and I can't truly say he was one of the best. Having spent his life losing in the ring or else on the rugger field his profile was strangely reminiscent of the cliffs of our hometown, you know the ones, we used to jump off 'em and bounce down on those springy rubber plants. Well, rubber cliff face was also sporting a barnet not unlike that of Chris Tarrant in circa 1978 Tizwas and, of all things, a Hawaiian shirt.

Now never let it be said that I am intolerant, for goodness' sake the last thing on earth I want is for everyone to be the same, how on earth would we tell each other apart then? Vive la difference and all that. So far from shuddering at his other-worldly apparel I instead put it down to eccentricity and enjoyed it from afar. You see how tolerant a chap can become out here in the colonies?

Our meal progressed and, sans-vin, I arrived at it's conclusion with a crystal clear head, which is an odd experience I can tell you, though if I'm entirely honest I suppose there is a chance that last night's martinis were still lurking. Being fed into my Crombie by the smiling hostess the Chris Tarrant haired welterweight prop forward suddenly appeared before me. Come to say hello to a fellow Englishman I assumed, not the first time it's happened and not always entirely unwelcome, though not to be encouraged as a rule.

'Wasswiva trews?' he blurted.
I smiled benevolently, he'd evidently lunched rather well and was struggling as I had the previous night. 'I beg your pardon,' I offered, smiling and making ready to shake his enormous paw.
'Wasswiva trews,' he repeated and pointed his blunt finger at my Blackwatch flat-fronts.
Being a chilly day I'd combined a rather racy black roll-neck with the aforementioned trousers and a pair of heavy head-kicking black brogues, I lacked only the solid apple wood shaft of a Jas. Smith brolly, but it hadn't looked like rain.
So he was complimenting me on my attire, how kind. I smiled in a friendly fashion and once more went to offer my hand.
He continued, 'Y'English arencha? Wasswive trews, y'no'Scotch areya?'

It was at this point that it occurred to me that he was not smiling and while his speech wasn't outwardly aggressive there was no mistaking the lack of friendly bonhomie. A different kind of response was called for.

Being snugly inside my velvet-collared black beauty I was at my most imperious. My eyes may have narrowed just a touch, my lip may have curled imperceptibly, even my shoulders may have squared up to the oaf. I began the slow, silent decent of my withering gaze. Starting at his yellow thatch, down his off-piste visage, pausing for a split-second at his multi-coloured silky abhoration I finally arrived at his 'trousers' which were - brace yourself old friend - of linen. Linen, at this time of year, I ask you. The corners of my mouth twitched. I returned my gaze to his gurning boat-race and, with scant regard for his safety, let him have the full raised eyebrow.

I don't need to tell you that a gentleman doesn't gloat over his vanquished foe. I swept majestically from the restaurant leaving a stunned silence and a chap who'll not soon forget his lesson. Far from ruining his vacance I hope to have taught him a valuable lesson.

S'funny but the use of one's raiment has been on my mind lately, but then when isn't it I suppose. Only yesterday I sallied forth with the usual accoutrements for a day's promenade. Being a rather sunny day, and the last of such that we are to expect for some while I gather, I chose to take with me a paperback to while away a dozy afternoon. All well and good, but the question is; where to put the book when you're not actually reading it? Under normal circ's you might expect one's man to carry it. Well yes, but what if he's off searching for baubles to placate the previously alluded to chorus girl? You see my predicament; to pocket or not to pocket?

When carrying a Moroccan bound volume of Yeats it is one's duty to clutch it before one as badge of honour. Of course. But a worn paperback from your man JPD? Credible certainly but worth clutching before you? I wondered whether one could justifiably disturb the line of ones suit by popping the thing in one's pocket?

And do you know I think one can. And I did. And it's a strange feeling I can tell you, showing wanton disregard for the line of one's suit coat. Having through the years thrown away a small fortune in possessions to ensure the correct line there is a certain sense of liberty in the worn edge of a classic poking out for all to see. Ensuring that the book is of the correct sort I highly recommend it as an experience. I'm now toying with the idea of carrying my flask in my coat rather than hip pocket. Is this evolution d'you think?

And so to close old love here's a quick mention for a chap on the radio who rather embodied the spirit that I cling to over here. I know that the ladies and gentlemen of the fourth estate are usually to be distrusted and occasionally horse-whipped if they're in the employ of a private corporation, especially if owned by Americans or that ex-Australian. Anyway this chap worked for our own beloved Beeb and he'd just been bombed by 'friendly fire' (can you imagine anything less 'friendly' than being bombed?). He was reporting via satelite telephone on the outrage and carnage and while doing so someone interrupted him to point out that he was himself bleeding. Oh is that all?, he said, I thought you were going to stop me reporting. Whether a minor injury or not he seemed to encapsulate a certain spirit of which we see little in these times.

Soon may it return.

Salaam my friend,

S

Posted by S at 04:26 PM | Permalink

Old Fellow,

I was troubled, nay disturbed, by your recent heresies in the matter of cocktails, be they however inadvertant and I felt moved to forward some corrective words of encouragement.

Recently, some discerning chaps invited me to give an after dinner speech. As you know I've never been one to miss the opportunity to don the old soup and fish and the chance to show off on top of it is not to be passed up. I was also allowed a deal of latitude in the subject matter. Naturally I seized upon the opportunity to tutor the unwashed in the ways of righteousness and prepared a forty five minute sermon on the construction of the perfect Martini. I enclose, for your perusal, an excerpt therefrom which should allay any deviancy which, far from the corrective influences of Mother country, you were tempted to essay.

Yours in Christ

The Rt Rev T

Posted by T at 08:02 PM | Permalink