Two Chaps Talking

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