Two Chaps Talking

Dear S,

I too have been holidaying. I spent Easter with the family in the old home town. By the way, am I allowed to call it Easter any more? I know that 'Christmas' is deemed such a political Shibboleth that we needs must refer to it as 'Holiday'- and that was just the fellow's birthday. What of Easter? I would have imagined that getting executed and rising from the dead would be much more challenging concepts to other faiths than merely getting born. Hey Ho. I have declared myself a Druid anyway. Next year I shall avoid the chocolate fest, smear myself liberally with ash and woad and dance naked through Cardiff, ingesting hallucinogenic fungi and waving my wand at passing witches.

Most pleasurable was spending time with my nephew. He's eight years old and in common with the rest of his generation, has two main passions, any sport involving riding a moving board and Top Trumps.

Bournemouth, as you probably know, is attempting to relaunch itself as the surfing capital of the South Coast. Certainly, each summer sees more of the beachfront carparks taken over by camper vans full of lithe teenagers in neoprene - a pleasant change from Mondeos full of pensioners in knitwear smelling of wee and soup. They drape themselves along the lemon yellow municipal benches, lounge against the crested lamp standards ("pulchritudo et salubritas" - was it ever more true?) and gaze at the horizon with bleached cornflower eyes in search of the perfect wave.

The surf shops are busy; the board rental operations and surf schools thrive; the surf cafes are jammed. Oh yes. It's all there. And do you remember the Beach attendants? A couple of ex-borstal officers, cashiered for unspeakable tinkering with their charges and uniformed like Uraguayan park keepers, stalked the front. When they weren't lurking in a shelter over a bag of Glacier mints and the boy's underwear section of the Millet's catalogue, they fearlessly protected the somnolent populace from illicitly deposited dog faeces and speeding bicyclists.

The Beach Patrol 'Team' now have walkie-talkies, rescue boards, boats, natty, yellow sweatshirts and suddenly look more like Baywatch than Neighbourhood Watch.

All of this activity, is based on a shared delusion that borders on mass hallucination. Bournemouth's sea is as cripplingly well ordered as every other part of the Necropolis. It wouldn't dare undulate. In even the most extreme of winter storms the waves rarely rise above a couple of feet. At any time the water is warm enough to enter without risk of hypothermia there is less swell than in a thermos of tea. Surfing is entirely impossible. The only way you could ride a surfboard would be to find a place where the Solent sloped

Fortunately, at eight years old, my nephew isn't actually interested in surfing as such. He would rather scoot about on his skateboard, adopt the clothing, say 'whatever' a lot and watch the 'Extreme Sports' channels on satellite.

I've banged on about 'extreme' sports at some length before but I'd never plumbed the depths of vein-opening tedium until I watched an hour of it on TV.

It's not just that some idiot 35 yr old Californian adolescent is prepared to throw himself off a mountain on a child's scooter protected only by a thick layer of sponsorship - it's the fact that they try to interview him about it afterwards over a cacophony of thrash metal.

"So, Corey. That was, like, a rilly sick run. You were rilly throwin' down there, Bro. What were you thinking?"

"Well, Ethan, I guess it's just about commitment and focus. You gotta, like, rilly want it, Dude. Y' gotta be in the zone, pumpin' adrenaline and you gotta be wearin' Phat Kangaroo (TM) board shorts. Yes! That's Phat Kangaroo (TM) board shorts. The considered choice for men who refuse to grow up".

What actually qualifies as a sport these days? Maybe you can fill me in as it seems to be more about clothes marketing than anything else. Maybe this is where we make our fortunes. There have always been clothes associated with sport, I suppose, but the brand used to be 'Lillywhites' and the only accessories that seemed necessary were a box and a tube of Ralgex.

I'm all for launching 'Extreme loitering' - hanging about in Jermyn street or at one's club, takin' some serious air. Obviously the equipment will be expensive. A hand-made armchair, particularly one of the hi-spec, lo-drag leather jobs, is a craftsman-built piece. 275 seperate arse measurements just to get the plump of the cushion right. That would have to set you back a good hundred guineas. And what about footwear? A fellow can't just go out in trainers and expect to get major toe-in on a slick cobble. A fellow needs a properly built brogue with drainage capability in the welt.

I can see it making the Extreme Sports channel too

"Good Heavens, Charles. You were certainly going at a fair old lick there. I particularly noticed the elegant way you carved the turn into Dover Street. If I might enquire, what was going through your mind"?

"Well, Binky, obviously it helps if one is motivated and, frankly, by the end of the Arcade I was gasping for a brandy and soda. I'd obviously had my man clear and sweep the pavement and, of course, Old Fellow, a chap should never attempt something like this without New and Lingwood's Patent Medicated Undershorts (TM). That's New and Lingwood's Patent Medicated Undershorts (TM)... the only choice for chaps who don't want fungal rashes.

One expects the obsessions of small boys to remain to some degree, timeless. Dinosaurs will always be interesting; similarly sharks. I seem to remember cowboys being a feature in my early years but their relevance has diminished (So let me get this straight, Uncle. They drank, brawled, gambled, caught gonorrhea from prostitutes, murdered each other, slaughtered native Americans, drove the buffalo to extinction and opened up the country for rednecks and Middle Americans to pave over... and these were the goodies? Whatever). Even Action Man has had to be reinvented - demilitarised to survive. Where he used to have gripping hands, 'Eagle Eyes', 'New Dynamic Physique', impenetrably moulded Y fronts, a uniform and a gun he now comes buffed like a gay rollerblader and riding an 'Extreme Snowmobile' .

(actually, now I think about it, I spent far too many of my formative years undressing a wiry little serviceman. It probably explains my empathy with TE Lawrence.

I was refreshed though, to discover that 'Top Trumps', the timeless game of choice for emotionally illiterate little boys of all ages, is still a playground favourite. Dinosaurs, sharks and characters from Lord of the Rings are the favourite subjects (How I long for American Cars or Olympic Athletes '76) and it's still a great way to waste an afternoon. It got me thinking, though.

How about Two Chaps Top Trumps with cards based on cads, clubmen and characters of Mayfair.

Edward Dudley "Fruity" Metcalfe (right)
Army Major and Equerry to the Duke of Windsor
Died 1957
Age: Unknown
Clubbability: 9
Gin Ricky Capacity: 9
Mistresses: 7
Dandyism: 8
Fortune: 10
Dogs: 4

Oscar "Fingal O'FlahertieWills" Wilde
Author, playwright, work of art and alleged 'Somdomite'
Age: That of the Sphinx
Clubbability: -4
Absinthe Capacity: 3 (Followed by weak hock and seltzer)
Mistresses: 2 (My art and my public)
Aestheticism: 10
Fortune: 0
Arrests for fiddling with telegraph messenger boys: Just the one

I wonder if it wouldn't be more motivating for today's eight year olds to see what a chap can really achieve when he puts his mind to it.

Pulchritudo et salubritas
T

Posted by T at 09:58 PM | Permalink

Mon Vieux,

With your shield or on it.

That was how the Spartans' Mums would send their lads off to war. Not like the tearful farewell my Mum gave me; in my little grey suit; on my first day at Grammar School, I can tell you. The Spartans and their mums didn't fuck about. Or so I learned from a program on't television t'other day.

What? Watching the goggle box when it clearly must have been six o'clock somewhere in the world and doing a bad Yorkshire impression to boot? A bloody outrage.

You're not wrong old thing; not wrong: but allow me to elucidate, if you will. The Trouble and I were, you see, up a mountain somewhere in the wilds of North America. I could probably find out precisely where, using GPS technology and OS maps, but once you pass the tunnel leading out of Manhattan it's all pretty much the same thing isn't it? Anyway, there we were, tired and happy after a day's throwing ourselves down mountains wearing fetchingly tight trousers and natty fitted mackintoshes, when the time-honoured hour for cocktails came around. Splendid. Off to our host's rooms for bracers and chasers and one for the road.

With me so far? Good. Aye but here's the rub. You see, being up a mountain, there were but a handful of places to draw sustenance. Michelin Stars? Non. Sleb chefs? Rien. No more than was there; blow fish sushi, black truffles, beef Wellington, sherry trifle, Margaux or any other basic necessities of normal human existence.

Tricky but not insurmountable. We're Englishmen you and I, and we were once Scouts so can draw fire with two sticks and tie reef knots under flapping canvas in windy and wet Dorset fields. Finding a few scraps to keep us going while miles from civilisation is surely the work of an instant. Simply cross the street and ask the first chap one finds shopping on the other side where the nearest feeding station is located. Any fule kno that chaps who're a tad light in the loafers know all there is to be known about surviving in hostile territory.

Cross the road I did. And cross it again. And again. And again. And no matter how many times I pouted and flounced and minced and sashayed I couldn't elicit a single tall-tale glance. I mean, on home turf I'd've been Queen of the Mardi Gras for decades to come, and yet here I encountered odd stares (not least from the OB&C) and nought else. You can appreciate my predicament of course. Without a fully fledged Friend of Dorothy to guide me how the devil was I going to provide food and drink for the Trouble?

And as if that wasn't challenge enough the next day one of our charming number returned from the hot tub to inform me that one of my countrymen was infesting the waters. Now I've talked before about the English abroad and how it's generally safer to give them a wide berth. Imagine my feelings when I learned he was a retired plumber from Essex. 'Shall I tell you which newspapers he reads?' I asked. As if there could've been any doubt. I shook my head wearily as my pal related this plumber's issues with foreigners, asylum seekers and the like.

Not content with polluting my hot tub other assorted buffoonery accosted me on the chair lifts and demanded to know where I was from; and if I knew John from London; and if I'd ever been to whatever bloody dead end one horse town they came from. I smiled tersely and accepted their comments, as the alternative was to drop forty feet into deep snow. But it tried me old thing. Sorely. As one after another of them told me that they really valued Tony Blair's support I actively considered immolation as an act of political protest.

Makes one wonder don't it? I mean. I'm an Englishman. I spent my formative years living and debauching in the West End of London. I now live in New York City. Which of those three qualification suggests a desire to make light conversation about the weather in bloody Arkansas?

Once again I longed for the company of left footers who know how to keep themselves to themselves and don't ask bloody-nosey-Parker questions.

So we came to the end of what was nonetheless a delightful sojourn. We capped the event off with a visit to some steaming hot natural sulphur springs, and this was the one time when I was entirely sanguine about the lack of downtown bath house patrons. Welcome they would have been of course, but me and the Fragrant One had a chilled bottle of Champers and our own business to attend to. With a blue sky above us and whatever mountains they were in the distance, all was well with the world. Took one back to the glory days in Marrakech what?

Might just add that today Spring arrived in the steaming metrop with a smile on its face and a song in its heart. With She Who Must Be Obeyed away in the flesh-pots of Asia I was able to stock up with the necessaries and saunter down to the boating pond in Central Park, there to row myself into the middle. Once far from land I set loose the oars and lay back to stare at the sky. I snoozed, I polished off a rather cheeky Chablis, I got outside of some smashing Fois Gras and, all right, I may have cast the odd mildly lascivious, though respectful and of course entirely covert, glance at a winsome young filly who crossed my bow.

The mountains? You can take 'em.

With my shield, so far,

Your uxorious chum,

S

Posted by S at 09:56 PM | Permalink