Two Chaps Talking

Mon vieux,

You know it’s amazing how one gets to rely on certain things without realising it. I mean it’s obvious that a chap couldn’t get by without Evelyn Waugh’s Noonday Reviver particularly if he’d dined rather well the night before. And there’s his James Smith and Sons English apple wood fox frame brolly, when barely a day goes by without a sprinkle of some kind he’d be a drowned rat sans parapluie. But who’d’ve thought a Japanese children’s toy could prove so ruddy invaluable?

Well so it is at the mo’ chez-moi. You know the inter-web thingy? It’s like the best bits of one’s preferred chip rags and numerous offers to enlarge one’s todger all on a fold-up telly.

Well last Crimbo the Trouble, amongst other sundry baubles and trifles, saw fit to furnish me with one of these that has, wait for it, dispensed with the need for the trusty Remington. I know. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it? That’s what I thought and I went on to remind the Fragrant One of my inherent mistrust of all things created after Messrs. Rolls and Royce stopped building motor cars by hand.

With nought but a well placed glance she corrected this mis-impression and so it was that I was introduced to the web thingy. I might add that up until that point I was under the impression that it was only good for getting the tyres off your bike to patch your inner tube thus saving your mum’s forks. But this came from Will Self so it was just as likely a fish.

Anyway once the OB&C had fully corrected and instructed me I was able to listen to the shipping forecast, seek out arcane but vital cocktail ingredients and knock off the odd couplet of romantic verse all at the same time, or at least I could’ve if I’d managed to stay awake long enough.

Now it came to pass that after long days and nights of ardent endeavour (Ringpiece note: ‘minutes of idle tinkering’) one became something of a dab hand at this inter-thingy, hence the occasional missive to you old love via little wires under the Atlantic rather than the traditional laid vellum and broad-nibbed fountain.

Ah, I hear you say, that’s why the Mem’s fold up telly only ever has writing on it and never Pop Idol. That’s right. Have her show you how it works sometime.

Or rather don’t.

For, on this glorious day, the Fourth of November in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Three, one day before Guy Fawkes is once more to be burned at the stake, when trying to instruct the jumped-up digital watch to honour me with the dulcet tones of Radio Four I was instead informed that the buggery plastic excrescence was on strike and required re-booting.

Fair enough, said I, I’ve not booted you yet but we both knew it was only a matter of time. I set about strapping on my stoutest Trickers to give the bastard what-for.

Now I won’t tell you the exact words she used to enlighten me for fear of us both blushing but She Who Must Be Obeyed was most forthcoming on how swift and bloody would be the retribution if I set about her lovingly chosen X-mas gift as intended. Suffice it to say that if I’d stomped the thing into the ground and danced on its remains it would’ve got off lighter than me.

Boots back in the cupboard I tried staring the bastard down like a wild tiger, just as that silver haired panto dame should have done in Las Vegas. Alas I had no more luck than he and the twinkly-screened upstart continued to refuse my advances.

And so here you find me. Suddenly bereft of a trinket for which I thought I cared not. Never mind, goes the chorus around the world, remember the Luddites and their glorious heritage. Smash all machines and long live King Ludd.

Absolutely bloody right.

The damnable thing can go to hell in a hand basket and I’m quite content with my old Mum’s Duofold, a bottle of Royal Blue and a sheaf of Smythsons. Even better one can escape the confines of one’s study and venture forth in search of adventure and intrigue.

All of which brings me to where I sit as I write old chum. Fifty feet below a beaux-arts nineteenth century intricately carved wood ceiling featuring cherubim and fauna galore along with three colossal murals in the style of the classics (recently done so I suppose we’re lucky they don’t advertise bottles of pop or fags). A full two blocks from wall to wall (about the size of Selfridges in old money), through the vast arched windows I can see Manhattan’s sky line and storm clouds coming in from the Atlantic. As Reading Rooms go it’s not the British Museum, but the New York Public Library isn’t half bad for the colonies. Sorry ex-colonies, keep forgetting.

So now, dozing lightly, I shall listen to the rustle of ancient parchment and the tinkle of tiny raindrops. One might almost be in Albion.

England’s Dreaming,

S

P.S. Chap just suggested relocating to SH for the afternoon. Not on, I had to tell him. The brogues are fine in a mere deluge of torrential rain but soggy carpets’ll ruin the carefully cultivated country patina I brought back from Wiltshire.