Two Chaps Talking

T.
London

Mon vieux,

Shocking. I mean. Ab-sol-utely shocking. You have one extra glass of the Greene Faerie with a Mesculin worm chaser and you wake up six thousand nautical miles east of the Seat with only the most scant of recollections of what you might or might not have been up to for the past three months.

You will recall, old Chap, that we last broke bread and supped wine together in the warm afterglow of your big day in the home town's Town Hall. I spent, if memory serves, an extraordinarily pleasant time cutting the rug with the young sorella of your Mem'. I have half an idea that the following evening I may well have sped north to the Seat and there taken the aforementioned strong waters. After that, nothing.

Well I say nothing, there has of course been the feverish toil at the coal face, and what amounts to the double life of a Cathay LBFM, about which I am becoming rather less than fully enamoured, but of that more anon.

No old Love, recollections of the past three months I have not,. But that isn't what I wanted to address in this, my longest awaited missive to-date. No what is currently rattling around in my 'mind' is an alarming shift in Tectonic Plates occurring even as I speak in my very own gaff.

Pish tish and tosh I hear heavenly angels chorusing. Chap wears the pantalons in his own maison and no amount of TP shifting is going to change that. Might as well suggest the earth is heating up and obese Septics driving upholstered lorries and eating ash'n'fluff burgers has got nothing to do with it. Oh, before I go on let me refresh our memories about dear Mr Bonfiglioli's words on the shifting of Tectonic Plates; he was all for it, because, and here I freely paraphrase since I can't be bothered to look it up, 'If the European TPs hadn't shifted Englishmen would've been foreigners and Frenchmen would be eating bread sauce.' Ne'er a truer word has been spoken.

Just claimed yet another bottle of Champers - not strictly germane I'll grant you but who wouldn't be interested in the surfeit over here? Anyroad as I was saying there has been a sizeable and ever growing shift in the TPs chez-moi. First sign was when the OB&C answered the dog-and-bone to me when I was off in foreign fields earning my crust.

'Hullo missus,' I said. 'Home doing some mending and needle point or something are you?'

No, in fact she wasn't. Rather she was whooping it up with one of my pals after a long day's shopping. Hmm, thought I, can't really complain. The Dear Old Thing has trucked halfway round the world to be with her Old Mucker.

'I'm having trouble finding an appropriate trinket for you my love,' I went on. 'Trawled the streets of [fill in some gawd-help-us hick town name] and can't find a stick of anything worthy.'

Much giggling. Clearly the OB&C and pals had found the font of Krug. After the cackling subsided the Mem casually mentioned that on the contrary, I had in fact managed to give her a splendid bauble. In fact she was wearing it. Made of platinum it contained a fulsome gross of tiny diamonds.

Egad! I choked on my pretzel or whatever slop and goo I was trying to force down. The tinkly laughter trailed off and I was left holding nought but the dialling tone. Gutted. Poorer. And without the option of seeing her dear little face light up at the packaging of my not-bought gift.

All right so I know this is hardly going to set the world alight. 'Work-shy Fop's Wife Spends a Bit Of Cash,' is not going to make the front page. But here's the rub, I saw the note that my dear Little Woman sent around to her pals announcing the arrival of this costly cuff. And blow me down if it wasn't entirely in the spirit of what you and I fire off to each other. One Mem Talking as it were.

So to summarise, one person in our household gets up late, leads a life of unadulterated leisure (with my pals), treats herself to sparkly things that aren't shy of the price of a decent suit, writes in a style not unlike my own, and has no intention of soiling her day with toil. Sound familiar? Yes I know. Bloody outrageous.

When I signed on the dotted line in the presence of the local beak I may have said something about richer or poorer, sickness and health and all that. And to those there gathered it was perfectly clear which one was the well-tailored wastrel intent on living the bon vie and telling the world about it. And he wasn't wearing a dress.

Here I am, jumping on and off jumbo jets like they're club chairs at the Christmas Party, chipping away at the mighty edifice laid before me by the Fickle Mistress and generally keeping the wheels oiled.

And what is Her Indoors doing?

Living my life that's what. It's a bloody outrage. Next thing you know she'll be writing letters to you and nominating sainted individuals for the Pantheon. Has the world gone mad?

All role reversals aside, and far be it from me to cast aspersions on those who wear the other team's kit, I mean I went to a boys' school so I feel their pain, it is just a bit rich isn't it? Really?

I shall pause here to address the problem of the ever growing Veuve mountain in the refrigerator.

There, made some space. So what news my dear old Top? How's your new des res? Got a lid on it yet and all that? Did you go for castleated turrets or gargoyles? Are your load bearing beams flying buttresses or single overhead cam shaft crenalations? Or something.

Hark. Hear I the call of the Mistress or the Faerie? On the morrow one will have me to a land not far from here and not popular with our Sino pals, the other will have me gurgling like a full moon loon and out for another three months.

Only time will tell.

Ave aque vale,

S

PS Hold The Front Page.
In the spirit of remaining forever young and carefree can I just make a brief mention of Friday night's adventure. The Mem and I have happened upon a club for those who if given enough would brush their teeth using Premiere Cru Bordeaux. Well who wouldn't? So imagine if you will the scene, a few score assorted FILTH and FABDOGS (translation to follow in next missive) with one or two of the right sort sprinkled liberally throughout, gathered in the ballroom of one of our town's better hotels. My good pal and I waded in with aplomb and half an hour later were struggling with pronouncing the vintage of that which we were ordering. After the second hour the world was a glorious place and I had single-handedly drunk enough excellent red to address the deficit caused when the Bush Junta declared their anti-Frog agenda.

'Watch this', I said in a moment of particularly high spirits. I picked up the house phone and roared 'Get me the manager' at the frippet who responded. 'Tell him Mr [fill in name] is not happy.' I replaced the receiver and my pal and I giggled like school girls.

What a jolly wheeze I thought. Right up till some mob-handed geezer in a cheap suit bowled up and accused me of ringing the manager and demanding to speak to him.

If time travel had been invented then it could scarcely have done a better job of transporting me back to the headmaster's study. I bowed my head and whimpered something along the lines of 'It wasn't me, Sir'. Cheap Suit looked down on me from behind his bouncers' shoulder pads and spotted My Dearest raising an imperious eyebrow in my general direction.

Bastard. If mob-handed intimidation of a well-oiled young chap wasn't enough he was dobbing me with the Boss. More meat to her gristle or whatever the saying is. Here's hoping it's me wot rights the next 'un or summat.