Two Chaps Talking tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2008://6 2007-03-21T20:17:12Z Movable Type 3.2 The Little Geezer tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2007://6.402 2007-03-21T20:08:54Z 2007-03-21T20:17:12Z Long Story Old Cheese, Long Story. And one to which I shall endeavour to do justice as the wounds heal and the weeks pass. For the nonce let’s just say that the Fickle Mistress and I have once more parted brass rags and involved in that pantomime were, in no particular order, the Bride of Chucky, a Dementor, Sir Les Patterson’s idiot nephew, and goose stepping hordes who could teach Jim Jones’ mates a thing or two about voluntary consumption of chemicals that make you do things gentlefolk eschew. Needless to say one came out on top and is a better, richer, wiser man for it. One met new members with whom one broke bread and made merry. Decent chaps to a man. Yes there were cannons to the left of a chap and cannons to the right of a chap. But was not it ever thus? S Mon Vieux,

Hmm.

Thing is, when I received orders from The Boss to do my bit in siring a scion of the Empire we were in the Fragrant Harbour and life looked very different. Imagine if you will acres of mahogany so highly polished that you could have your man shave you in its reflection; a harbour view terrace that could’ve housed a eighteen pounder that’d’ve scared the bloody Nasties right back to their own Little Island during the Second Little Unpleasantness; a team of LBFMs that’d’ve tended to one’s slightest whim while twirling any Little Bundles Of Joy Round their little fingers; educational establishments to rival the very finest Grammar Schools that our Sceptre’d Isle has to offer, even our own, and; Full English breakfasts, HP sauce and people who know their gunners from their sundowners at every hostelry and inn. In short, some corner of a foreign field that will be F. E.

Yes well, that’s all well and good, so how, interested parties will want to know, does one find oneself in the Last Vestige of Civilisation in this ‘New’ World?

Long Story Old Cheese, Long Story. And one to which I shall endeavour to do justice as the wounds heal and the weeks pass. For the nonce let’s just say that the Fickle Mistress and I have once more parted brass rags and involved in that pantomime were, in no particular order, the Bride of Chucky, a Dementor, Sir Les Patterson’s idiot nephew, and goose stepping hordes who could teach Jim Jones’ mates a thing or two about voluntary consumption of chemicals that make you do things gentlefolk eschew. Needless to say one came out on top and is a better, richer, wiser man for it. One met new members with whom one broke bread and made merry. Decent chaps to a man. Yes there were cannons to the left of a chap and cannons to the right of a chap. But was not it ever thus?

Come And have A Go if You Think You’re Hard Enough, is how one might have put it as a floppy-haired young boy, dallying in the copse during morning break, reading Sassoon and thinking of dog fights over Kent.

Of course the arrival of She Who Must Now Also Be Obeyed (or given her current lack of hair Mini Me) played a minor part in my decision. When The Boss said ‘Enough of this sport nonsense. Pack your bags you idiot, we’re off’, or something to that effect, it was left to me as Master of the House to decide we were leaving.

In spite of the inclement weather and lack of household staff I won’t say I’m sad to be back. Given the cess pool into which the rest of this country has slid it’s clear that all good people need to come to the aid of the party. As you well know the small corner of this vast land that I choose to call home has little or nothing to do with the rest of the place (given the choice we’d tow it out into the sea and watch it sink). So my tasks here are, like my ties, seven fold.

First, ensure that scion is correctly educated in the ways of Albion, starting with the spelling of colour &cet.
Second, cut a dash about town and remind hoi polloi that proximity to cultural oblivion is no excuse.
Third, spread the gospel of beans on toast and sausage rolls; God’s Own Food.
Fourth, help them actually elect the person they’ve been voting for these past two times.
Fifth, explain irony.
Sixth, explain the off-side rule because let’s face it Beckham’ll never do it.
Seventh, explain irony again as they won’t’ve got it the first time.

Funnily enough, or actually not as it’s only the vintage Bordeaux that I’m getting outside of that’s keeping me smiling, I’m not even in the Safe Island as I write. Indeed I’m as far North as somewhere called Scotland (heard of it? They make whiskey and trouble) is from you. The Boss has had me come here to get Coventry’s Finest. Now I don’t mean to impugn the work of our friendly Midlanders but crikey, we only left it for two years! Is that really such a long time that the bloody thing has the right to go on strike? Getting it tinkered with doesn’t bring out the best in the locals either. The first five ‘garages’ I rang scratched their narrow foreheads down the phone and said ‘we don’t do furrrnn cars here’ or something like that, before going back to watching red necks turn left in a field. For goodness’ sake it’s been more than twenty years since Thatcher gave the company to those Yanks. We’re having a specialist flown in from The City. Perhaps then we can escape. I’ve even acquired a special seat for the Little Geezer. Matches the Connolly hide and everything.

And on that note my Dear Old Pal can I just say that I’m glad to be back, even if all it means is that our missives will once more be flying.

My very fondest to you and your fondest,

Yours in the Woods,

S

]]> Dad the Builder (Can we fix it?) tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.161 2005-11-18T21:04:21Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Hard though it may be to believe, there are positive aspects to such ghastliness. I am surrounded by a team of eight handsome, 20 year old Kiwi rugby players who exist only to do my bidding without their shirts, I get to wear a tool belt and a sort of Velcro girdle which, though ostensibly designed to save my back from injury in fact gives me the trim stomach of a 20 Yr old Kiwi. I have learned that Mohammed, my labourer, is not only a fully qualified MBA and fantastic cook but also operated a rocket-propelled grenade in the Bulgarian army. T Dear Boy,

Heavens, the dire depths to which a chap can be reduced. Here I sit, on a saw-horse, in the wreck which will soon become the family kitchen, surrounded by perspiring navvies, dressed like an oik and fully prepared to pick up a tool. In the last weeks I have dug several trenches, mastered the mighty pneumatic drill (we pros call it a 'breaker'), laid miles of brick, unloaded three tons of wet sand single-handed and eaten more bacon sandwiches than any man who doesn't drive an eighteen wheeler will consume in a lifetime.

Hard though it may be to believe, there are positive aspects to such ghastliness. I am surrounded by a team of eight handsome, 20 year old Kiwi rugby players who exist only to do my bidding without their shirts, I get to wear a tool belt and a sort of Velcro girdle which, though ostensibly designed to save my back from injury in fact gives me the trim stomach of a 20 Yr old Kiwi. I have learned that Mohammed, my labourer, is not only a fully qualified MBA and fantastic cook but also operated a rocket-propelled grenade in the Bulgarian army.

Killian, a five foot high, 18 stone demolition team, is related by blood to the whole of London's Irish criminal underworld whilst George, the brickie who looks like Omar Sharif and sounds like the Rev.Paisley works like a demon for three days at a time before disappearing for a similar period in a haze of Bushmills and cheap speed.

Ali appears to be related to Mustapha. He weighs about 80lbs and can shift three tons of intractable wet London clay in under an hour while smiling beatifically. He doesn't speak at all except to offer brief sermonettes on the advantages of Western Capitalism, which he appears to have learned by heart and with no comprehension whatsoever.

Mario, the Polish plasterer arrives at work with a thermos full of vodka that he consumes at lunchtime accompanied by two Marks and Spencer microwave beef stews (with dumplings). Before lunch he can create a surface that Michaelangelo would feel unworthy to fresco, after lunch he is a potent force of demolition. His assistant appears to have no name and even less English but is very good at handling his late afternoon fits of mournful weeping.

His compatriot, Mario the sparks, is a brilliant young electrical engineer who is currently ruining his career prospects pursuing English girls and 'Metal Music'. His day is divided equally between constructing an electrical system for the house more complex than the Kennedy Centre and avoiding the attentions of his boss, Ricky, a South African club queen who looks for all the world like Niles Crane in workwear. Ricky (actually, I think he spells it Rikki with a little star over the second 'i' ) is a touch under 4'11" - I know this because I've measured him against Killian.

All this multi-ethnic mŽnage work like slaves and turn out tremendous results bang on time. The only thing holding us up, I regret to report is the only Englishman on the site, Pete, the plumber. This lugubrious Essex midget combines an almost sublime level of laziness with the low cunning of a shithouse rat. His knowledge of health and safety regulation means that almost any condition of working environment is enough to preclude his actually doing any work. Too dark, cold, cluttered, dusty, or late and he downs tools. Travelling in from some benighted hole in Essex he arrives at the site on the dot of noon and immediately sits down for a sumptuous lunch packed by the wife he volubly and repetitively despises. Every seven minutes he stops work for what he refers to as a 'smoko'. Fifteen and a half minutes of concentrated mysoginistic, bigoted winging, through the noxious haze of a hand-rolled fag.

He's a kind of malignant, workshy hobbit. Alf Garnett meets the smurfs. Though he has a certain Alfie Bass costermonger appeal, it only works with the painfully middle class - the Kiwis will have none of it and keep offering to take him out for a kicking on the grounds that he's a 'bludger' who refuses to 'hook into it'.

In case I haven't made it painfully obvious, I'm loving every second of it. Apart from the fact I have developed forearms like a bas-relief Hoplite Olympian it's a thoroughly cathartic experience. My career thus far has involved being paid to lie enthusiastically to other liars to the ennobling end of improving market penetration of polluting or pointless consumer goods. I have probably spent more time and energy feigning enthusiasm against impossible odds than the most raddled and syphilitic harlot that ever drew rank breath. It is, therefore, with joy and relief that I spend days actually making stuff with real people.

Last week, according to her teacher, L told the class that her Father was building her a house. You don't get that sort of feeling from a really kickass Powerpoint presentation on how to sell underarm deodorant to the under 9s by increasing their level of social insecurity.

This is all strangely reminiscent of TE Lawrence who often waxed maudlin about his men even though he'd never be able to mix with them socially outside of the army or the desert. Perhaps the comparison doesn't quite stand up - I've no intention of changing my name and joining the Airforce, let alone paying sailors to beat me.

We're due to move in on the 16th and everyone is very excited. Though the phenomenal kitchen will be completed I've saved two final jobs to complete alone, after the builders have left. The first task will be the library, an entirely book-lined room with fauteuil and broadband wireless. The second will be an outbuilding - a traditional post-and-beam oak hut at the end of the garden for which I've already laid foundations and services.

There will, of course, be a raising ceremony that I'll naturally invite you to attend. I'm having a pair of lemon kid rigger's gloves run up for you as we speak.

Do you want your toolbelt in alligator or ostrich?

Tote that barge, lift that bale etc.

T

]]> Time Travel and Role Reversal tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.160 2005-10-30T10:22:21Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z 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. S 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.

]]> Moroccan House Boys and White Underthings tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.159 2005-07-31T10:18:27Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Just one thing before I go. I'm all of a-flutter as this very morning a very dear friend of mine (archetypal Yummy-Mummy) sent me a message in advance of my giving it to hordes of the teeming masses to earn my stipend. Along the lines of 'imagine them without their worsteds' it was actually quite specific in it's depiction of standing before a hall full of sixth form ladies sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing short dresses and the whitest of white underthings. A sea of triangles was how she put it. There now I've gone all funny again. S Mr. T.
London


Me Old China,

Funny thing happened in conv. the other day:

Your Humble Servant - 'I couldn't have a cappuccino could I?'
Surly Moroccan House Boy - 'No.'
YHS - 'Oh right then. Any reason?'
SMHB - 'Only with lunch and dinner.'
YHS - 'But surely a cappuccino is a breakfast drink. Do you serve croissant with dinner?'
SMHB - 'Listen. I very busy. No time for this. Do you know we have to serve two hundred breakfast this morning?'
YHS - 'Oh I see. Well in that case might I ask you once again to bring me a cappuccino, only this time get me the fucking manager too. If you'd be so kind.'

I shall return to this theme anon. But,

I'll start with my heartiest congratulations. Little in life compares to seeing an old mucker take the long walk. Brought a fair tear to my eye so it did. The sight of young Ms L joining in with the declarations was as good as it gets, and a better advert for little people could scarcely be conceived, even by the hypnotist-type chap who cropped up on one of the pictures flashed about during the speeches if you get my drift. You and yours are the very finest, and signing on as one who'd been there was a privilege. Thank you.

Might I also give a special mention to your two prominent sisters'-in-law, there may be heaps more but I'm talking about young M's ball and chain and the Mem's young sib. What a fine pair, of s'-i-l I mean cheeky. Being sans the Boss I would've floated about lonely as a cloud, sort of, if they hadn't taken it in turns to look after me. Puts one in mind of Florence Nightingale, if she'd known where the bar was, known her way around the dance floor and had the sense of humour of a costermonger.

Went on to the Seat directly after and what a funny old place that's become, in a decidedly un-funny way. It was a couple of days after the Unpleasantness on the tubes and bus but dear old London was her usual fighting self. As if a bunch of lunatic book thumping zealots could do what even the Chippy Bombers failed to. Tchahh!

Pal recommended an inn that happens to be tucked in behind Her Maj.'s grocer. How terribly convenient I thought. Since this would be the first time I've ever stayed in hotel in London might as well be in St James close to the watering holes, mercers and boot makers. Hmm. Happened to be arriving from the place where that dreadful little Austrian had his bunker (more of that anon. Splendid place though) to find not a soul at the point of entry and hence no one to shoulder the Globetrotters. Not given to manual labour of a personal nature but quite content to pay for it I strolled into the sadly-trying-to-be-trendy reception area and approached a likely looking but empty desk.

Far from a comely desk frippet as one might expect a swarthy Moroccan House Boy finally deigned to appear. Dressed in loose fitting white t-shirt and cotton duck trousers he was ideally attired to fire up the hookah and then chase one round the bedroom or something. However this being the so-called reception of a St James hotel he instead asked if I could be helped. I pointed to my cases and suggested he might care to have someone bring them in. I was curtly informed that a bell boy would take care of them. As I was completing the formalities another MHB piped up from behind me. I say piped up but in fact he teetered on the edge of admonishing me. 'You shouldn't leave bags unattended,' he said wisely.

Fine words indeed, though if the little fucker had been doing his job rather than plucking his eyebrows he'd've been there to greet me anyway.

As you can readily imagine the appalling dump went from bad to worse. Witness the exchange with which I kicked off my missive, it took place at breakfast of my first day there. All right so I confess to being a trifle testy. But it was a difficult time for me with my best friend no longer around.

On the plus side I did find a super double-top oyster and Guinness pub in which I entertained the inner circle and that was worth the trip. But I don't see myself dashing back to the Seat for the nonce. Too many people looking for some argy-bargy for my taste. Have I gone soft I wonder?

I mentioned the home of the bunker in which I spent a week prior to joining you. Not having been there before I'd always fancied it what with Checkpoint Charlie and all that. Not a let down at all I can tell you. Of course after their rather unsporting redecoration of the home of the Jaguar we did do a spot of masonry redistribution, but what were the chaps to do really? And yes the Hans' on the Eastern Side did put up some rather unsightly blocs that Wallpaper Magazine thinks very highly of. But of the people one can't complain.

Keep it to yourself but I'm of the firm opinion that one of our biggest arguments with Fritz has unwittingly been that we're just a bit too alike for either of our tastes. Now don't think I shan't deny this till I'm cold and grey (like their uniforms) but that don't make it any less true. What?

Moving on, back in the Harbour once more. The OB&Cs over in the New World (with the old values ie kill and eat and then kill again) doing some shopping as a prelude to our meeting in the Tuscan hills. Not sure how the Fickle Mistress will take my absence. But she'll just have to bloody live with it. Am to dash off instanter to the Old Mates of my bunker loving pals so no time to spare upon my return. Onwards and Upwards or something.

Just one thing before I go. I'm all of a-flutter as this very morning a very dear friend of mine (archetypal Yummy-Mummy) sent me a message in advance of my giving it to hordes of the teeming masses to earn my stipend. Along the lines of 'imagine them without their worsteds' it was actually quite specific in it's depiction of standing before a hall full of sixth form ladies sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing short dresses and the whitest of white underthings. A sea of triangles was how she put it. There now I've gone all funny again.

And I speak as one who thinks sixth formers are good for nought till they've passed their A level in martini making and then honed their skill for a few years in a London Hotel. Though not the one I stayed in.

Spare me.

Yours in the AC with tweeds firmly in place,

S

]]> Shed not a Tear tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.158 2005-06-24T15:00:59Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Orwell was wrong. It isn't the 'baby carriage in the hall' that is the enemy of great genius - though God knows that's difficult enough to work round - it's the garden bloody shed. A vile, sagging poison-filled, creosote-stinking sepulchre, yawning at the end of my own bloody garden. T
So the demolition crew have packed their equipment - their jackhammers, their steam strippers, prybars, sledges and inexplicable tins of smoked fish - and trooped off like disconsolate Eastern European gnomes. For a short few days I am back at the desk, sorting the idiotic builder's quotes from the merely risible, picking a wary path through the slough of local planning application and enjoying a moment's hiatus before the real battle begins.


I have scheduled a whole morning in which to reply to you and to allow my mind the leisure to wander far from purlins, boomerang ties and noggins, but I find my self drifting into dark philosophical mien, preoccupied like so many men of letters before me, with aging.


Don't, please get the wrong idea. In spite of the number bandied in association with my forthcoming birthday, I am still in the full flush of manly vigour. There has been no dimunition in my ability to wield the mattock or carry the hod, my mind is ever sharp and, pace my cluttered inbox, I have, as yet, no need for interventions, pharmaceutical or surgical, in the operations of the Old Chap.


No, what throws me in to this brown study is the simple fact that I am planning a garden.


To my left, where once teetered a soaring pile of learned texts there is now a short stack of instructive tomes on horticulture, garden design and, God help me, lawncare.


And it is this latter which is the real cause of my weltschmertz. I fear the lawn.


My intended has suggested that I loathe greensward because of some long-buried psycho-sexual association with compulsory sport but, I believe, I have laid those ghosts to rest.


Neither is it some deep-seated class-terror of the suburban. Though any man who grew up in Bournemouth would have reason enough to run screaming at the mention of top-dressing, bents and fescues or pathologically anal parallel mown lines, I have grown through such fears and am the better for it.


No, for me the lawn represents the very lip of an unstoppable slide toward death: a slippery, one-way chute that runs clearly from the laying of the first sod to the patting down of the very last.


I am told that, because I am blessed with a toddler, it would be tantamount to child-abuse to deny her a lawn upon which to decoratively desport herself. I could argue that, Regent's Park, a mere toddle from our door, has herbage aplenty. I could aver that, her generation looks likely to eschew all outdoor pleasures and merely jack their cerebella into VirtualGarden(tm). I could even offer an entirely organic vegetable patch as a better contribution to her health. But no, we must have lawn.


I am not an unreasonable man and I will comply but I know that the women in my life will never understand the awful ramifications of their request.


Once a week, the damned thing has to be attended to. Raked, scarified, weeded, de-thatched, cleared of leaves in autumn, catshit in the spring and, the seasons round, mowed.


If there is to be a lawn, there must be a lawnmower. I don't begrudge the contemplative half-hour spent walking behind the damned thing - God knows I get little enough chance to let the mind wander. I don't mind the scheduled rows about whether the bloody mowing has been done, the tutting of the neighbours at a lawn too long, too short or a mower too loud. I don't mind having to deal with a huge, stinking mound of festering clippings that stubbornly refuse to turn into a rich compost and instead smell like mangrove swamp. What I do mind is this...


If there is a lawnmower, there must be a shed.


Oh Christ, I'm not ready for a shed. I'm not quite forty-two. I've got some hair. I imagined burning bright and short. I wanted to die when, momentarily distracted at the wheel of my speeding Ferrari by the exceptionally competent blowjob I was receiving from a lascivious countess, I hurtled off the hairpin outside Monte and collided with an oncoming police truck containing four tons of recently seized foie-gras, Billecart Salmon rosŽ, high-grade cocaine and pornography. I was destined for better things.


Orwell was wrong. It isn't the 'baby carriage in the hall' that is the enemy of great genius - though God knows that's difficult enough to work round - it's the garden bloody shed. A vile, sagging poison-filled, creosote-stinking sepulchre, yawning at the end of my own bloody garden.


I will not die mouldering in a garden shed, sitting, surrounded by mole smokes, pea netting and soiled copies of the Sunday sport. If I am forced to have a lawn, a mower and a shed, this is what I propose to do.


I shall stock the thing with turps, thinner, 3-in-one, WD-40, barbecue firelighters, charcoal and a half-ton of dry straw mulch. I shall lay in store of fireworks in preparation for of November the 5th. I will fully fuel the mower, oil its blades and park it carefully. I will don my best tweeds, a small flask of absinthe and a briar pipe and walk, for one last time the long, green 72yds of the garden path before blowing, shed, mower and self to ratshit in one last, glorious conflagration.


Do not go gentle into that good night...


Tx

]]> Back in the Jugg Agane tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.157 2005-06-22T15:09:20Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Take this person (gender non-specific) and inflate them to, oh I don't know, shall we say three hundred pounds? (Don't know how much that is in stones, and can't be fagged to work it out, sorry. Actually how many pounds in a stone? Always wondered.) Then squeeze them into a very small aeroplane and, and here's the actual problem (anything else would've been rise above-able), give them a really bad, superior, if-it-wasn't-for-us-you'd-be-speaking-German attitude. Make them xenophobic. Make them patronising. Make them grimace in a look-at-the-monkey way when they hear an accentless voice. Have them ignore the content and stare blankly when English is spoken. Give them lines like 'You! Wan' nu's?' Oh, and tease their hair, make it big, make it 'blonde' in places, load it with napalm-lacquer. S My Dear Old Top,


Ever wanted to return to the good old days? The ones where of a Sunday we'd saunter off to the local beer garden and wait while our Mums/girlfriends/girlfriends' Mums/mates' girlfriends/mates girlfriends' Mums would put together a cracking roast? Well I do and today not less than most.


It's been a trying old time of late and my missing in action status aboard the good ship is the result. Now we both know that my fastening myself once more unto the skirts of the fickle mistress was never going to be pleasant. Well stout sons of Albion have to make such terrible sacrifices in order to keep the flag flying. Fair do's.


But oh how it does try us.


Take the last two weeks for example. Charged as I am with watching out for nastiness it fell to me to jet half way round this earth to cast my seasoned eye over a clusterfuck of five thousand hawkers of my wares. There to be schooled in the greatness that it is their privilege to gain a living from. Or something like that anyway.


Some might feel aghast at the prospect. Me? I take it on the chin. Bring it on I say. Let all and sundry come unto our temple and feed. Problem is the temple isn't exactly in a Teeming Metrop. Oh no. It isn't actually even near a TM. In fact if you pointed to this gawd-forsaken wilderness on a map, assuming you could find it, or wanted to, then with your other arm fully stretched you wouldn't be able to point to a bona fide TM.


Remote is, I think, the mot juste.


Now, you and I have lived in remote places. I once passed a few weeks in somewhere called Hack-ney so I understand the outer edges of civilisation. Don't care for 'em, but there you go. What was troubling about the locale in question wasn't so much its awfulness, though it had this aplenty, but the plane I had to fly on to get there.


I live, as you know, some way outside the M25. Indeed to get to The Coach and Horses for last orders on a Friday would mean leaving the house a-week-last-Sunday, or something. So I'm resigned to a life of being ministered to by LBFMs or whatever. And most of the time these ladies and left-footers do a reasonable enough job. So long as one avoids airlines from the Land of the 'Free' then one can be reasonably assured of courteous and adequate care.


Alas on this occasion my mission took me deep into the aforementioned Land and so after landing at a vaguely civilised airport (they'd recently cut down the lynching trees) I was required to board an aeroplane staffed by, well, I hardly know where to begin.


Shall we start by saying that the average size of the passenger's attire was similar to that of Mr Giant Haystacks (RIP). Some wore hats last seen on The High Chaparral. I won't swear to it but tobacco may have been chewed. That the car park at our destination would be crammed to the gun whales with pick-up trucks was a thousand to one dead cert. And yes of course they'd have gun racks, where else'd go them varmints they done shooted?


All right. Quite foul enough. At least, we assure ourselves, the aeroplane must be staffed by sentient bipeds able to navigate up and down the aisle?


Wrong.


Now I am full square behind equal rights for all. And frankly I'll even extend that to some Tories (no party - bless 'em) for the sake of argument. But surely, for the love of gawd, it is a pre-requisite that a person can actually fit into the space in which they are to work.


Pause for a moment and gurn as hard as you can. Twist your refined and chiselled features into the closest thing to a horror mask that you can achieve. Yes I realise you've just done a perfectly passable Steve McQueen impression but think of the rest of us. Think of someone who wasn't just hit with the ugly stick but truly embraced it and made it their own. Think of someone who, when hungry (not infrequently I'll wager) picks bits off themselves and manages to put together what many would consider a pretty square meal.


Take this person (gender non-specific) and inflate them to, oh I don't know, shall we say three hundred pounds? (Don't know how much that is in stones, and can't be fagged to work it out, sorry. Actually how many pounds in a stone? Always wondered.) Then squeeze them into a very small aeroplane and, and here's the actual problem (anything else would've been rise above-able), give them a really bad, superior, if-it-wasn't-for-us-you'd-be-speaking-German attitude. Make them xenophobic. Make them patronising. Make them grimace in a look-at-the-monkey way when they hear an accentless voice. Have them ignore the content and stare blankly when English is spoken. Give them lines like 'You! Wan' nu's?' Oh, and tease their hair, make it big, make it 'blonde' in places, load it with napalm-lacquer.


Crushed as I was into the window seat of a small cigar shaped crate I endured the cross eyed stares of this creature for nigh on an hour and a half. Yes I could've entered the fray and put the person straight about a thing or two. But where's the pleasure in that? My mission is to educate and bring the great unwashed along with. Not poke fun at the sentiently-challenged. I bore the stares with the quiet dignity that our old Headmaster would've expected. I landed in the middle of nowhere, helped the assembled masses to understand what was what and then raced back to the OB&C and civilisation.


It was a bloody two weeks and I certainly faced challenges to the left of me and to the right of me. But then as ever (deo gratis and insh'allah) I stuck to the rules of engagement and when strong words had to be dished out I did so with a kindly smile and a tolerant demeanour. Neither reciprocated nor respected but that's not why we do it, is it?


And so here I am back in the study with a view out over the Harbour and a glass of Fuller's London's Finest. I know, hardly the Margaux one would expect but I need a shot of England, not bloody France.


I won't deny Old Top that I miss you and our pals immensely. And the same goes for my dearly beloveds in my most recent home (you remember, the last part of the New World to retain some degree of civility). But I shall carry on and I shall keep my Chin Up and Upper Lip Stiff.


It is the right thing to do.


Your Old Pal,
And that of others I hope,
S


P.S. Here's a funny thing that happened while I was away. Pal likes shoes with some sporty chap's name on so I bought him a pair. As I was handing over the readies who should beg my pardon for sliding by but none other than the chap who's name was on the shoes. Would've had him scrawl his sig. if I'd the foggiest who he was and what he did. Something to do with hoops and dunking I'm told. Reminds me of Rich Tea biscuits. Ah the youth of today. What.

]]> Species of Cowboy tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.156 2005-05-28T22:21:59Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z You are imagining, I expect, a scene from 'The Draughtsmans's Contract'. I stand on a low hillock in my commodious estate, with a scroll in one hand and a brass telescope in the other, discussing the placement of haha and grotto with a chap called something like 'Capability'. How wrong you are. T Dear Boy,

Fantastic to hear that you and C met up and quaffed. I'm of course, jealous and not a little miffed as I was planning to spring him on you as a surprise at the nuptials. No matter, we shall drink like depraved beats (I meant 'beasts' but that Freudian keystroke gives me ideas. Let's drink jug wine, eat Benzedrine inhalers and howl shite poetry until we collapse).

All in all it's been a pretty invigorating month here. I have been interviewing builders.

You are imagining, I expect, a scene from 'The Draughtsmans's Contract'. I stand on a low hillock in my commodious estate, with a scroll in one hand and a brass telescope in the other, discussing the placement of haha and grotto with a chap called something like 'Capability'. How wrong you are.

Let me describe for you, a day 'on site'. This will enable me to limn for your betterment, sketches of the principal types of London builder.

11.38 am

Barry was a type now rarely seen in the Metropolis as they have all taken the proceeds of generations of low-grade extortion and invested in mighty time-share empires on the Costa Brava. Usually a 'Loverble Cockerney' or 'Agreeable Oirishman', these men share a genetic disability when it comes to answering a mobile phone.

If I'm charitable, I might posit that their giant spatulate fingers can't operate the answer button. If I'm truthful, it's because they don't want clients to be able to reach them. Clients would either complain, or ask them to do something, both of which can fatally interrupt the real business of the day which seems to be reading the Sun, leering at women, consuming fats and tea and avoiding work. I had undertaken a Byzantine trail of message-leaving to persuade Barry to grace me with an audience and he was naturally two hours and thirty-eight minutes late.

A diminutive Essex crook with the congenital low cunning of a shithouse rat, Barry walked around the house, sucking his teeth and randomly ejaculating titanic sums. It was like viewing the place with a touretting merchant banker. At the end of his tour of doom, he did a brief calculation on the back of a traditional fag packet, offered to halve it for cash and disappeared from my life forever. This may well be a blessing.

1.00 pm

At ten minutes to one, Chris phoned from his car to explain that he was going to be between three and five minutes late. When he arrived, it was apparent that he was not old enough to have facial hair, which, in hindsight, was excellent news as he lacked any form of chin with which to support it. Imagine a man with a small, fashionable goatee hovering a couple of centimeters in front of a chin shaped void - incredibly disturbing. Chris was one of the new breed of client friendly 'Chelsea' builders.

Bristling with mobile phones, laptops and expensive lasermeasuring-devices, he created a massively comprehensive spreadsheet and talked about a percentage management fee for 'making our problems go away' and 'finishing on time and on budget'.

For two days we felt like we'd died and gone to middle-class North London heaven. Then, just before the quote was due, we received a sheepish phonecall asking if 'a couple of my chaps could take a look around the place'. The 'chaps' turned out to be a Cockerny and an Oirishman who after three minutes of tooth sucking, did a calculation on the back of a fag packet and offered to do the job minus the 20% management fee and 17.5% off for cash.

3.00pm

Two enormous men in leather coats squeezed sideways through the front door. By now I was expecting candidates to lack something but these fellows had both chins and operational dialing fingers. What they were missing, though, was hair and necks. One spoke a little English, the other, clearly in charge, grunted occasionally or issued orders down a mobile phone.

They examined the place with a strange cold detachment, as if calculating entry points and the best place to lob a concussion grenade. I mentioned the importance of securing the site to avoid the problem of squatters.


"Squatters not a problem", rumbled the linguist. "The carpenters are Spetnaz".


Finally, after a short calculation on the back of a packet of western cigarettes, he growled,


"Five thousand per room, four thousand for cash, three if the guys can crash here".


He could have said...


"... and two thousand per month for the rest of your life or they find you floating face-down in the Thames".


...at least I could have budgeted for that.

Hobson's Choice, is, I believe, an appropriate term.

Tune in in a fortnight when I shall reveal to which set of knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing set of incompetent extortionists I shall be giving our money.

.
Yours in Christ


T


PS. We finally exchanged contracts and completed on the place on Friday. I picked up the keys and spent a delirious hour crowbarring off the big security boards they'd screwed over every window.
It's gorgeous.


Light flooding in through the dust for the first time in decades - it looks like a recently squatted Chartres Cathedral.


I'm strapping on my mighty toolbelt and may be gone for some time.


Wish me luck. T

]]> Old Chums and Rental Frippet tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.155 2005-05-22T22:19:05Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z My it's been a long fortnight and no mistake. Some might wonder whether you and I have wandered forever into the white light, the one you pray for when you've had seven or eight over the odds and Samson is pulling down the walls of his temple inside your dome. Small wonder though when one half of our union is upping sticks and decamping while t'other is spending a disproportionate amount of time being ministered to by highly skilled LBFMs, thence finding himself in yet farther corners of foreign fields and cet. T My Dear Old Top,


My it's been a long fortnight and no mistake. Some might wonder whether you and I have wandered forever into the white light, the one you pray for when you've had seven or eight over the odds and Samson is pulling down the walls of his temple inside your dome. Small wonder though when one half of our union is upping sticks and decamping while t'other is spending a disproportionate amount of time being ministered to by highly skilled LBFMs, thence finding himself in yet farther corners of foreign fields and cet.


So what's been afoot of note in this corner of the E? I'll tell you shall I. Well for starters I've been once more in that place where they didn't do the square thing during the last Little Unpleasantness and are still not fessing up. Anxious as I am to correct this my mission this time was too instil a modicum of correct behaviour when dealing with yours truly and his like. I'll not say t'were easy but I think I started to chip away at their natural reluctance to play off a straight bat. Much more to be done but as with any other area of world affairs one has to work at these things. (Sorry to use that four letter expletive, I think it's the jet lag).


Funny thing happened while I was putting it up 'em tough and it is to this that I shall address myself for the length of my emission. For a bit of R and R I popped out to survey the mercery and what'd I see but the gurning mug of one of our old muckers from the home town by the sea. You know the one, used to wield the shears at that decayed but elegant clothing shop, then joined us in the Seat to pursue his muse as an artist. He now makes his weekly stipend playing gramophone records in footie stadiums or something. Anyway standing as I was in this mercer's estab. my eye was caught by an array of visiting cards that touted various types of evening entertainment, one of which was our Old Mucker doing a mobile disco or something. Charging mine hosts with the task of sleuthing him down I returned to matters of great import till the phone goes and your friend and mine announces that after an absence of more than nine years he and I are mere yards from each other's locales and would be lifting refreshers together within minutes.


Sing out choirs of heavenly angels. There is nought so delightful as a few hours in the company of a fellow traveller from one's err... Well. One's shall we say livelier days. The jockey of disks and I laughed like well-turned-out drains and bandied names like there was no such thing as preux-anything (noms de guerre bien sur). Our revelry took us across that blighted metrop (the place where the ground shakes every now and then and things get in a bit of a pickle) till we fetched up in a bar crammed to the gills with ahem, City Wankers, and their cohorts.


Now it's a funny thing but I'd been warned about this place before and having vaguely intended to avoid it found myself there only by the purest of accidents. Honestly. All right, well even if the accident wasn't that pure my intentions could only ever have been of an anthropological nature. And studies of an anthrop. nature abounded I can tell you. We all know that City Ws are aspiring-horsey wide boys with ill-fitting over-priced suits, fat bellies, acne, and cockney hair cuts. Loathsome and odious to a man-jack of 'em. These were no exception and one might easily have picked up a tip or two about what the current wave of sty dwellers is wearing. One might have, had not frippets of an unprecedentedly pulchritudinous nature not been draped around a large part of the assembled wankage.


What happens, I'm told, is that these bloated City Ws have a hankering for a bit-of-the-other and make a bee line for this particular estab. where examples of this bit-of-the-other are known to congregate for the purposes of entangling themselves with fat-cat City Ws. No great surprise there, sort of thing that happens all over the place. Hmm, true enough. But where this differs is in the behaviour of the BOTOs. They have, you see, pretty firm agendas, along with their pretty, firm, other things.


The crux of it is that these BOTOs will literally do whatever the CW wants. They will agree, acquiesce, enthusiastically go along with, and generally conform to whatever the CW can dream up, with the proviso that shopping with the CW's credit is part of the deal. And by shopping I mean private viewings at Harrods so the porters don't get caught in the crowds as they march out with the boxes. They do not spend lightly these ladies.


Now the uncharitable might look at these dalliances as some kind of transaction, rather than a genuine union of souls.


They might.


And they'd be bloody right too. These femmes commerciales know the price of their favours and they know where to go to net the kind of fat fool who'll pay it. No it isn't the oldest profession, no more than getting your leg over after a full night's wining and dining anyway. But it's not exactly a coming together that your auntie might want to advertise in the local Echo either.


Still all concerned looked like they were getting what they wanted, and who is anyone else to judge 'em for that?


My Old Mucker and I stared openly at these naked transactions and they lent more weight than ever to our gilded views of life in simpler times when a passing few words in their native tongue would get you pretty close to their, well, native tongue (sorry).


As you can see I need to take some strong waters and to this I must immediately attend. I shall endeavour to purify my mind in advance of our next back and forth which I shall ejaculate within a British Fortnight.


I am and shall remain,


Your Old Pal,


S

]]> An Englishman's Castle tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.154 2005-04-09T15:03:54Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Apologies for the delay in responding but we've been ensnared by the Hydra that is house buying in this benighted country. Not, you understand, the normal process wherein one finds the house one wants, makes an offer pays the money and moves in - no, that would be too civilised. We somehow found ourselves in a sealed-bid auction for an entirely derelict house which we had inspected once, for 20 minutes, by flashlight. This morning they told us we'd won the auction so we now own a recently squatted pile with rats the size of Buicks and no roof. God help us. To give you some idea of the challenge, as I walked around the place with our builder he felt moved to enquire... 'Have you ever seen that movie 'Seven'? T Apologies for the delay in responding but we've been ensnared by the Hydra that is house buying in this benighted country.

Not, you understand, the normal process wherein one finds the house one wants, makes an offer pays the money and moves in - no, that would be too civilised.
We somehow found ourselves in a sealed-bid auction for an entirely derelict house which we had inspected once, for 20 minutes, by flashlight.

This morning they told us we'd won the auction so we now own a recently squatted pile with rats the size of Buicks and no roof. God help us. To give you some idea of the challenge, as I walked around the place with our builder he felt moved to enquire... 'Have you ever seen that movie 'Seven'?

How then, with a blank canvas, to turn it into a suitable home for a chap?

There are several features I'm tempted to keep for sheer redolence of Patrick Hamilton. It was never modernised from the time it was a classic Camden Common Lodging House so the electrical sockets are, naturally, round pin and Bakelite. Most of them are wired directly into the overhead lights by twisted fabric covered flex that hangs across the rooms like Spanish moss. The wallpaper, cheap and nasty when it went up in the 50s, has seen naught but 40 watt sepulchral gloom ever since and is gloriously unfaded. The single bar electric fires speak of drying stockings, tinned pilchard suppers and illicit liaison.

In one room, amid the effluvia of squatters, I found a tarmac layer's gas ring with an enamelled tin pan and the fossilised remains of an egg. I've placed a call to the Saatchi Gallery and expect a substantial sum from them presently.

I could never, of course, be rude about squatters having done it myself on my arrival in the Metrollops. I lived for a couple of grim years, in a gigantic pile on Camberwell Grove, just round the corner from the top secret government listening station (easily identified by the large graffiti we used to place on local road signs reading "This way to Top Secret Government Listening Station").

I became adept at tapping neighbours gas and water supplies. At one point a resident eight houses down was supplying 40 squatters with power from the spur that ran the train layout in his garden shed. I think he had half a dozen Hornby Dublo models that, for the six months before they caught us, were drawing more power than the British Rail London to Manchester line. But I digress.

There is, of course, the pressing issue of the study. I think Carlyle had his cork-lined to provide a more hermitic environment for contemplation. I shall rely upon distance choosing from a small cell at the top of the building, four floors from the Telly Tubbies or the small summerhouse at the end of the garden. In either case, it will be book-lined, equipped with a staggeringly powerful broadband hookup and an utterly silent computer.

I am a little worried about the bathrooms. I fear that the Mem may have frippery in mind. At our last house, she specified bathroom fittings designed by a Frenchman. I'm sure he's marvellous at decorative lemon squeezers but he's clearly incapable of creating anything upon which a gentleman would be comfortable placing his posteriors.

If I am to void into anything, it will be designed, as is right, by Tho. Crapper, have a wooden seat, a long drop and cunningly wrought straining bars. I'm an Englishman for God's sake. I can't dangle my testicles into something 'created' by a bidet designer.

And furthermore, dammit, when will people realise that a 'shower' is a medical appliance used in sanatoria to correct the behaviour of the floridly psychotic? I want a bath... with taps... and preferably a mould-encrusted loofah inherited from a dead aunt.

I will, of course, never see my wishes come to fruition but I still have my secret ways. While the Mem thinks I'm pursuing a costly scruffing, cleansing, toning and moisturising regime, in the sanctity of my own bathroom I will be scrubbing myself raw with the tiny piece of Wright's Coal Tar and the square of rough flannel I keep concealed in the bottom of my washbag. What the Hell is exfoliation anyway? Am I supposed to wash in Agent Orange?

I have probably not mentioned that, entirely incapable of regarding unemployment as an opportunity for rest, the Mem has begun selling her cakes through local outlets. As we live on the borders of London's fashionable Primrose Hill, 'outlets' largely comprise those places where ladies lunch and that can happily charge six quid for a cheese sandwich. She is, not to put too fine a point on it, raking in the cash. I am relegated to the heavier dough wrangling, meringue fettling and delivery.

Which, of course, brings us to the issue of the kitchen. The Mem requires flat surfaces and a cool environment for her bakery and who am I, happy recipient of her pies and tarts, to complain? I, on the other hand, need a place with blood runnels in the floor, with a smoke box near the ceiling, with an extractor fan which would grace the back of a Phantom jet and a large table on which I can dismember cattle.

Were it not for the fact we are to be married in July, I would predict divorce by June.

The good thing is that it is next-door-but-one to the house where Bruce Robinson wrote 'Withnail and I' and has not seen the touch of the gentrifier. I'm planning to arrange a Withnail party, before the builders move in, where the movie will be projected on the peeling, damp-stained walls while we match the protagonists drink for drink. If there is 'matter' in the sink, I intend donate it to the British Film Institute.

Bung Ho

T

]]> Sausage Rolls and Cultural Disease tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.153 2005-03-14T10:41:04Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Now don't go getting all in a two-and-eight. I yield to no man in my abhorrence and loathing of all things corporate. And if by throwing my limp and fey corpse before a digger I could prevent just one Nan and Gramps tea room from being bulldozed aside to make way for the above bastardcorp then just try holding me back. But I'm afraid it wouldn't make a jot of difference. Except perhaps a touch of class would be imparted to the digger until I got washed off it. What would one wear I wonder? Hang on, that's not the point. I shall wrestle myself firmly back in the direction I'd intended. So, S T san, or Mon Vieux as I prefer,

Tell me Old Top, through your gin soaked reverie, have you noticed a certain shall we say multi-culturalism creeping into my syntax of late? I know I know, a true son of Albion has travelling in his blood and with two years of schoolboy Latin under his belt how could the merest whiff of m-c not creep into his s? True enough, but my current deviation from our mother tongue comes as much from my locale as my heritage.

Fine. But where I find myself this week is a place that acted decidedly un-preux during the Second Little Unpleasantness and continues not to inspire love peace and understanding in our elders and betters. Remember when our honourable and dignified Veterans turned their backs on the visiting Emperor during his ride down The Mall?

Not that my current hosts were alone in playing off a crooked bat. Everyone knows that a certain Austrian with a penchant for looking cross was in the driving seat. But at least the Chippy Bombers said sorry in the end and when all's said and done one has to take a chap at his word. Alas my current hosts haven't yet done the square thing.

One has to be mollified to a certain extent by their owning the second largest car company in America thereby giving the Septics a bloody nose. And it doesn't hurt that they make all those smashing little shiny things that one keeps buying knowing not what they do. But it has to be said, the time has come to demand that they do the right thing and take it on the chin. I mean, for gawd's sake, I gather they're still not coughing up for the nasties they did to the fairer sex from one of their neighbours. As I said, all terribly un-preux.

Anyway, far be it from me to chuck the first brick in these days of dŽtente and all that. No, what I wanted to talk about this Fortnight was something entirely different. At least I think it was. That was before the second bottle of sake. I think. Err.

(Two days later back in the Fragrant Harbour).

Now where was I? Oh yes. You know the hell that is 'Cultural Disease' (as opposed to what they call it - 'Cultural Imperialism' - to which I reply with a hearty yet scornful Tchah!). So we all know this CD spawns such ungodly filth as McDogmeat and Kentucky Fried Rat. Well, if we're honest (and we do try to be don't we? Or else Arkela will find out and we'll be demoted from Sixer to Second or worse) anyway, if we're honest, when one's in a god-forsaken hell hole miles from civilisation and frankly not far off being hung from a low-reaching bough by a sheriff whose family tree doesn't branch out and whose sister married his mother etc. then the one place we might seek solace is one of these CDs that I shall refer to as Star-not-entirely-undrinkable-but-over-priced-and-too-much-Kenny-G-and-what-happened-to-the-old-place-Bucks.

Now don't go getting all in a two-and-eight. I yield to no man in my abhorrence and loathing of all things corporate. And if by throwing my limp and fey corpse before a digger I could prevent just one Nan and Gramps tea room from being bulldozed aside to make way for the above bastardcorp then just try holding me back. But I'm afraid it wouldn't make a jot of difference. Except perhaps a touch of class would be imparted to the digger until I got washed off it. What would one wear I wonder?

Hang on, that's not the point. I shall wrestle myself firmly back in the direction I'd intended. So,

(Ten minutes pass)

Ah right you are. Just remembered my point. You know how I live on an island? Well over here the aforementioned vile and foetid bastard corporate murderers at least have the decency to sell, wait for it,

- sausage rolls.

I know. I know. Incredible. And I don't mean 'sausage rolls' neither (Michael Caine accent crept in. Sorry). They're proper. The kind that our 11 pence a day went on at school. Little sachet of HP, fine Irish linen, bone china and the filigreed silver and you're away my son (sorry, MC again).

And don't go getting all Fire and Knives on me Old Love. They are down-to-earth honest-to-goodness pork bangers in a thoroughly decent pastry. They've not been near a 'microwave' (whatever that may be) and they brighten my journey to the Star Ferry. For which I would give unto half my kingdom on the mornings after a particularly nourishing night out when I feel 'special'.

I think it's the heat. Or the humidity or something. Don't know. Feeling feint. Or do I mean faint, which I did recently, rather spectacularly, in a crowded restaurant. Pretty poor show actually but I'll come to that another time. Must dash. Noon Day Gun about to fire which means it's six o'clock somewhere in the world and I have to go to bloody LA LA land next week.

Cocktails?

Yours in his cups,

S

PS Have you noticed a surfeit of inverted commas, dashes and brackets in this missive? So have I. I shall have to look into it.

]]> Penguins and Gills tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.152 2005-03-09T21:45:49Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z I live, as you know, in North London. Camden Town, to be precise. A sort of retirement home for left-leaning intellectuals of the last few generations. In many London boroughs you can roam the streets on a Winter's evening and see all manner of vulgar display through people's front windows. Camden is different. It is de rigeur to have a subtly lit floor-to-ceiling bookcase right next to the window, displaying yards of original, orange spined Penguins. T Dear Boy,

I have never claimed, even in my most Bohemian moments, soaked in Absinthe and surrounded by young muses, to be a designer. No, when it comes to things artistic (by which I mean matters pertaining to art rather than buggery), I lurk in your shadow - a mere hack with a tyro's understanding of things webbish.


All of which made the events following our last edition of the Gazette even more hurtful. I had, you will remember, attempted to ginger up our flagging organ with a new background. It was inspired, as I'm sure you will have noticed, by the gay shirtings we purchased together on your last visit to Blighty. The sort of candy stripe which would have graced an Action Man's deckchair.


Did I receive encouragement and kind words for my poor efforts? Did I fuck!


Several subscribers with skills in the department saw fit to describe the results as 'illegible'. You, unkindly I felt, remonstrated. Agentleman from Norway was rude in extremely precise terms and an academic from Tuscaloosa has threatened to sue for causing persistent nosebleeds and random fitting.


Am I downhearted? Perhaps a lesser man would be but I have returned to the library, sought inspiration and, I hope, have created something which will find recognition, if not favour, with you and our kind readers.


The head of the page, is, of course, inspired by the original two-shilling Penguin paperback. Oh! the happy hours we have spent between those musty covers. I have a few I've inherited and too many I've bought. 'Decline and Fall' and Stephen Potter's 'Oneupmanship' sit before me as visual stimulus and a couple of metres of others sit in silent splendour on the shelf to my right. My young cousin J, a design historian of some note, expressed a quite laudable enthusiasm for Orwell recently and I felt moved to press my prized 'Down and Out in Paris and London' upon him. I fancy it will serve him as well as it has me.


I live, as you know, in North London. Camden Town, to be precise. A sort of retirement home for left-leaning intellectuals of the last few generations. In many London boroughs you can roam the streets on a Winter's evening and see all manner of vulgar display through people's front windows. Camden is different. It is de rigeur to have a subtly lit floor-to-ceiling bookcase right next to the window, displaying yards of original, orange spined Penguins.


For me, the most splendid part of the Penguin, quite aside from its impeccable literary, social, political and design pedigree is the typeface.


I know little of typography but, that glorious, in your face, circular 'O' indicates that we are looking at Gill Sans - a typeface of such abiding beauty that I have specified it for my gravemarker.


Not only is the font transcendent but the man who created it might justly be regarded as a Two Chaps idol - a candidate for the Pantheon.


Eric Gill was born in Brighton in 1882. He was the very model of the Arts and Crafts Bohemian espousing Catholicism and Free Love with equal passion. His life is a model for our own in licentious excess but just a few anecdotes will suffice to make the point.


Gill was commissioned to carve the statue of Prospero and Ariel on the prominent front of Broadcasting house. Not only did he work on the high scaffolding in a homespun robe and no underwear, (causing young ladies to make pilgrimage to the site to gaze up at his vasty orbs) but he also carved the membrum virile of the infant Ariel to gigantic proportions. The grandees of the BBC had to cover it with a tarpaulin until they could persuade him to chip it back to more modest dimensions.


Throughout his life, Gill experimented sexually to an extent that we would now characterise as satyriac. His erotic woodcuts are still treasured by elderly gentlemen who's tastes run to the Pre-Raphaelite (Oh Dear!) and, Deo Gratia, he kept a detailed diary. He ran the usual gamut of casual liaisons, mŽnages ˆ trois and homosexuality but distinguished himself with a fetish for underage servant girls and latterly his own relations. His crowning glory was revealed in two diary entries, shortly before his death...


'Expt. With dog in eve' (the rest has been obliterated) and, five days later....


'Bath. Continued to experiment with dog after and discovered that a dog will join with a man'.


There is a glorious power in Dylan Thomas's raging 'against the dying of the light' and Lear's last rantings - but having the sheer randiness to take a leisurely bath and then slip one to Fido while staring death in the face... well I just hope I have the strength.


One last thought for an Englishman, settling into his new home. The London Undergound Typeface was designed in 1915/16 by Edward Johnston. He lived with Gill and his family in an artistic community in deepest Sussex . The men worked closely together on the early development of the face and Gill acknowledged that Johnston's work was a major influence on his later Gill Sans.


What is most important to any Englishman is that, any time he feels homesick, he can crank up his laptop, open a document, select Gills Sans 72pt, type the word UNDERGROUND and his heart will swell with nostalgic recognition.

]]> A Life in Boots tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.151 2005-01-23T10:46:39Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z When we spoke at the mobile telephone the other day, you were somewhat ribald in your comments vis a vis the boots I had just purchased. I was wounded deeply by your assertion that motorcycle boots should only be worn by 20 year old podium dancers at clubs called 'The Fudge Tunnel' and then only with a white jock-strap and a light basting of oil and sweat. I retired to my study to consider the path my life has taken in re footwear and, by way of mitigation, I now share with you my recollections. T Dear Boy,


When we spoke at the mobile telephone the other day, you were somewhat ribald in your comments vis a vis the boots I had just purchased. I was wounded deeply by your assertion that motorcycle boots should only be worn by 20 year old podium dancers at clubs called 'The Fudge Tunnel' and then only with a white jock-strap and a light basting of oil and sweat. I retired to my study to consider the path my life has taken in re footwear and, by way of mitigation, I now share with you my recollections.

I am told that, as an infant, I wore bootees knitted by doting relatives and soon graduated to Start-Rite T-bar sandals. Time has drawn a felicitous veil over these things but, if my Mother is to be trusted, I was adorable in both.

The first time I became involved in what marketing Johnnies refer to as a 'Purchasing Decision' was at junior school when peer pressure made it imperative that I wore Clarks Commandos. I'm not sure if you remember them but in a world where school uniform shoes were governed by a proscriptive legal framework, Clarks found a way to introduce concealed distinction to those lucky kids who could afford them. An impossibly exciting motif of animal tracks was moulded onto the soles and, concealed beneath the lining of the heel, was a small, working compass.

No matter how bored I have been on aircraft, I have never succumbed to reading Andy McNab, Tom Clancy or any other species of Special Forces Porn. I am thus on somewhat shaky ground when I opine that no SAS trooper or Delta operative, after six weeks living in a hole in the ground, pooing into a Ziploc bag and drinking his own sweat, ever set his bearings for a four-day forced march by checking under the heel of a size 5 3/4, width fitting F, black lace-up school shoe.

At the age of eight though, I believed it. In fact, this was the origin of my compulsive superstitions about footwear. I've never liked shoes that, aside from covering the foot, are designed solely for fashion. Mine must always have a rigidly defined function and preferably associated with some immensely butch profession. The shiny, low-vamp loafer is an abomination (unless you consider driving a Taxi in Lagos to be an enviable calling), whereas the climbing/diving/hunting/fire-fighting/trawling/flying boot confers upon the wearer some of the stature of the men for whom they were originally designed. The slim-fitting office brogue, no matter how spit-shone, looks like the slipper of an effete Regency dancing master and, even when worn by the most terrifying captain of industry, speaks only of bald shins and calf length black lisle socks.

I'm sure I would have eventually come to realise that my Clarks Commandos had a more spurious military pedigree than Prince Edward and this would probably have cured my fetish - but I was never to have that chance. Mum said she couldn't afford them anyway and so, to my everlasting shame, I was sent to school wearing something in a duck shaped two-tone with a crepe sole. Maybe they looked great on Showaddywaddy but they made me want to open my veins.

From that point on my life has been measured out, not in Prufrockian coffee spoons but enormous boots.

In the sixth form, people went big on pixie boots. Adam Ant had a pair and I figured that piracy was a manly profession but the grey suede pair I got from Freeman Hardy and Willis turned out to be a fashion error of staggering proportions. Far from the raping, plundering terror of the Spanish Main I looked like a malnourished Disneyland elf. Fortunately, as it transpired, they were also very expensive leaving me only £7.50 to pick up a pair of pre-worn, Belgian paratrooper's jump boots from Millets'. They curled up at the toes, took two pairs of socks to stop my feet sliding around inside and looked like they'd seen about fifty years of active service in a swamp.

They also smelled, from the day I bought them, like the feet of a conscripted agricultural worker from a town just outside Bruges with no running water and quarantined for epidemic Tinea Pedis. But they were beautiful. Tied up fully, with a double twist of lace around the ankle they fitted under uniform trousers giving off just enough 'Fuck You' attitude to convince the Lower School that you were a tasty punk at the weekends but not so much that you'd get sent home. (In hindsight, I may have given off mixed messages. The boots might have said 'Teenage Kicks' but the long hair, the slim volume of Shelley and the plaster covering the earring disagreed.)

The boots took me through summer working as a cook in a sweaty hotel kitchen and, on the first day at art college finally came into their own - half laced with shredded jeans tucked into the top like the Annie Leibovitz portrait of Matt Dillon.

They lasted another six months. This was felicitous as it took me seven months to persuade anyone to undress me. The boots rotted away and girls appeared. Could these things have been related?

My next pair was bought in a general store somewhere in the Appalachians. Other people had discovered Timberlands so it was important to find something distinctive. The fact that they were called 'Logger' boots was a good start. The fact that the tongue contained carbon fibre strands designed to jam your chainsaw blade before it bit into your shin was a real deal-closer. I walked out of the store a clear inch and a half taller, several hundred dollars poorer and hobbling in pain. Maybe, if I'd actually spent six months clear-cutting in the Ozarks I may have been man enough to break them in. Instead, I just suffered them for three years and four hundred and seventy yards of fabric plaster. I finally gave them to a bum in Charleston who couldn't believe his luck.

"Whoa! Thanks Buddy"
"No, really. It's me who should be thanking you"
"Whatever"

He's probably in a wheelchair by now.

There was a brief affair with a pair of cowboy-style lineman's boots. I was swayed by the soles; guaranteed to earth me completely, at 40,000 volts, when wet. I was not prepared for the fact that they made me look like a Bon Jovi fan before such things were ironic or amusing. I also learned that cowboy boots say 'I'm a sexually inadequate short bloke trying to look taller' even when you're 6'1".

Moving back to England required something more urban for which a quiet pair of ankle length Caterpillar boots sufficed. Soon, though, I graduated to jobs that required suits. At first, with tweeds, I affected ghillie boots mail ordered from Scotland followed by Mssrs Tricker's gingerest brogues, customised, at great expense, with a specialist Vibram(tm) cleated sole. Killing things in the country is butch enough, I think. When tweeds were out of season, R M Williams boots, though poleaxingly expensive, retained enough Jackaroo credibility to meet my exacting standards and I went through two pairs.

Eventually, though, I was beaten down. A couple of years ago, circumstances forced me into a complex act of sophistry and I convinced myself that the suit wearing professions had a certain rugged chic of their own. This enabled me to purchase 'Chukka' boots from Church's in black leather and brown suede that lasted me as long as the suits required them.

Now I don't have to turn up at the office any more. My suits hang in the wardrobe like the sloughed skins of a corporate vampire only to be revived for meetings where I have to demand money with menaces. My Church's boots live on trees, in bags, and are seldom bothered as I have comfortably reverted to type. I feel I deserve my Chippewa(tm), steel toecap, oiled leather, Vibram(tm) soled, motorcycle boots. They're comfortable, warm, functional and bikers are, after all, icons of practical, no-nonsense masculinity. Granted, I don't have a motorcycle - I think I had my mid-life crisis while I was still on a provisional licence - but the queeny Dutch guy at the leather shop assured me this wouldn't be an issue. As he pointed out with a predatory twinkle in his eye,

'These days, most of us just take taxis to the club'.

]]> Ho Bloody Ho tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.150 2005-01-03T23:54:03Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z Please excuse me if I vent spleen. It's the only thing preventing me releasing a sack of starved rats into the sale department at John Lewis and picking off the fleeing provincials with a sniper rifle. T Dear Boy,

GO AWAY, DAMN YOU. AVAUNT. BEGONE. YES, I KNOW. NOW JUST FARK OFF!!!!!!

(Apologies. I've just done the computer equivalent of embracing Rome in latter years and bought a Macintosh. As I have yet to work out how to turn off the STUPID PAPERCLIP, it keeps popping up and telling me that it looks like I'm writing a letter. Do you reckon St Paul had this problem? No wonder he was so bloody snippy with the Corinthians if he had a helpful animated paperfastener trying to reformat his scroll every third line).

At any rate, Christmas is finally over and your perfectly timed missive finds me in an abominable mood.

Perhaps I'm getting old. In my youth, if I'd spent nine days doing appalling, tacky, demeaning things with strange people and bloating my body with meaningless excess I'd at least have had the amusing prospect of rashes and genital livestock. These days I just feel the like Herod did a few weeks after the birth of the LBJ. Unreasonable, liable to wax wrath and quite possibly capable of the slaughter of innocents.

In the spirit of avoiding it all next year, here are a few random observations. Please excuse me if I vent spleen. It's the only thing preventing me releasing a sack of starved rats into the sale department at John Lewis and picking off the fleeing provincials with a sniper rifle.

Carols:

Let's face it, carols are rubbish. Both of us have been known to carry a fair tune, one in a real choir and one in front of a splendid band and both of us love a good sing song, which makes it all the more galling that it's no longer possible to sing carols successfully at Christmas. There are several reasons...


1. They changed all the tunes. When we were at school, the tunes were designed to literally put the fear of God into children, the working classes and subjugate peoples. As a consequence, tunes tended to be bright, simple, memorable and have a faintly militaristic swing. They were designed to be sung when only a monsoon shattered harmonium or a lone bugler survived as accompaniment and could be carried aloft by a small band of singers inspired by enthusiasm, patriotism and sheer terror rather than any innate musicality. By around the fifth form, the dread hand of 'diversity' had crept over the music room and we had to suffer 'upbeat modern Christian musical praise' and, on one memorable occasion, the boy sopranos of New College Choir attempting Jamaican patois.

Most Children today can only recognise carols arranged by Phil Spector, out of date charity records and the sound of cash registers as seasonal music

2. Carols are always sung in the key of J Min. No matter how they're pitched, you find yourself sliding up and down the scale like a greased pole-dancer unable to get a grip anywhere. The only people in the congregation who are happy are the elderly Welshmen who bang out a beautiful, penetrating baritone in a key entirely of their own and the falsetto singing ladies who sound for all the world like amateurish transsexuals impersonating the Queen impersonating Aled Jones.

3. No one remembers the second verse. Well they don't do they? Mainly they hum or shuffle embarrassedly while the three regular churchgoers smugly belt out the interminable extra verses they've learned for the occasion including the four suppressed since the C16th which incite us to celebrate the festive season by 'Puttyng out the eyyes of a Frenchman and crufhing the rebellious Welsh'. This gets worse at New Year...

'Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind... Um...

Tum tee tum tum tee tum tum...'

As far as carol singing is concerned, restrict yourself to the bath

Office Parties:

There is a swear word beloved of American rappers and teenagers which relies for its power to shock on the simple juxtaposition of an action and the single other human being with whom that act would be most taboo and distasteful.

If the word 'm0th3rfarker' makes you feel faintly queasy, consider this - 'Office Party'.

We are all for partying: jollity, drunkenness, fun and games. Any gathering involving drink and conviviality with charming people is to be lauded. Yet, and herein lies the knotty problem, why on earth would one risk one's job, dignity, reputation and sexual health by entering the lists with the people with whom one works?

We are not prudes. We are heartily pro the furtive bunk-up in the stationery cupboard, the magnificently pornographic public coupling with the Head of Personnel over the boardroom table and the photocopying of pudenda; just not with the R's Holes we have to spend every working day with.

With this in mind, the Chaps have decided to launch, in time for Christmas 2005, The Greatest Office Party Ever. A complex, web-based randomising engine will ensure that the staff of each participating company are separated by sexual preference and traded with members of another suitable organisation.

We, of course, are getting the female half of the Royal Ballet while you will probably receive the arse-end of Microsoft's accountancy software development division's helpdesk but... hey! - The privileges of power.

Presents:

When a man is within striking distance of his forties and of comfortable means, present buying becomes pointless. If I want something I've already bought it. I probably enjoyed the experience of finding it and buying it and now it's mine. Your attempt has been charming but, unless you can find a brand I aspire to but cannot afford or, indeed have located something I currently lack the discernment to desire, you can add nothing to my life but clutter. Give up. All those articles about 'What To Buy The Man Who Has Everything' will not help.

Just occasionally, the Two Chaps manage to momentarily gain enough of an edge to buy each other something unanticipated and special ­ but not often. Most of the time we don't bother. And, damn it, we're experts.

Christmas Cards:

Irrespective of the size of your circle of family, friends and acquaintances, if you have carefully failed to send them a Christmas card for the first 23 Christmases of your life then the chances of them sending you one become statistically irrelevant.

Most middle-class English people feel guilty if they don't send Christmas cards - Mummy/God/the Housemaster/Nanny will know and disapprove. They therefore draw up an agonisingly complete list of everyone who might possibly be offended and send them all cards because crossing anyone off would make them feel guilty.

Because children are starving in Africa, however, they feel guilty about spending money on something so utterly pointless so they buy really appalling cards, in bulk, from charity shops and send them second class ­ always guiltily worried that they might miss the last post because they have been so slack and left things to the last minute.

At Christmas, thousands of cards arrive from people that they can't remember knowing. If they receive a card from someone they didn't send one to they feel guilty.

If they receive a card more expensive than the one they sent they feel guilty.

If they receive a card more charitably poor than theirs they feel guilty.

If they receive a card from a more obscure or deserving charity shop they feel guilty.

As the cards have taken everybody so much begrudging effort, time and money, they scribble appallingly curt and formulaic greetings. Reading these en masse makes everyone feel guilty so they resolve never to send another card ­ until slightly too late next year.

This is a season of goodwill, fellowship and peace to all men. Save millions of middle class people from the dreadful burden of guilt by giving fifty quid to the next frozen bum you see and never, ever sending another Christmas card.

The Round Robin or Family Christmas Letter

Many families on both sides of the Atlantic send out a letter to update everyone on the family news of the year. An older family member who is heavily burdened with parental pride and usually a little light on contact with reality usually writes it. The result is an unreadably boastful and unintentionally hilarious list of the family's achievements, holidays, car and property acquisitions, births deaths and marriages. Imagine getting your Mother to write your resume ­ this is worse because she is also using it as the annual opportunity to stuff one to her pikey sister who was no better than she should be, dropped out of school and married that dreadful plumber.

Christmas Dinner

Occasionally, as I drive past the supermarket at Christmas, I catch sight of the legs of a poor person. The rest of the individual is concealed behind what appears to be the bleached, hairless, deep-frozen, shrink-wrapped scrotal sac of a 70' high amphibian. What on Earth can be the motivation behind the purchase of the annual monster bird? Is there a collective delusion of kindly Old Scrooge finally coming good with a superabundance of poultry for the starving Cratchitts? Or could it be just like the Doberman and the widescreen telly ­ steroid-pumped size is all that really matters.

Though I'm prepared to undertake all manner of festive foolishness in the name of tradition, I refuse to consume poultry more genetically modified than the Governor of California. I've no idea how Maria Shriver feels about sinking her teeth into his bronzed and succulent breast but I couldn't do it. Not even if they let me shove an onion up his Parson's nose and baste him in boiling fat.

Merry farking Kwanzaa

T

]]> Virgin Boyscouts and the smearing of pate du canard tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2005://6.149 2005-01-01T13:52:09Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z First, question who it is that would ask you to such a gathering (perhaps some social pruning is in order?). Second, take a crayon and a flattened cereal box (you may need help from an adult for this) and scrawl upon it the words ‘Yew kno ware yew kan stik yore partie’. Third, have your be-wigged and powdered footman deliver the message on a silver filigreed salver, not because these miscreants deserve such quality attention, but because you are a gentleman and it is the way things are done. S

Mon Vieux,


‘Tis a Chap’s duty to attend any gathering of human beings
where electric soup is to be doled out. Ah yes, but what of gatherings
at Soho House? Or those guaranteed to be attended by readers of the Daily
Mail? Or the so-called President’s inauguration? Clearly festering
dung heaps like these should be sped past with the first-and-second fingers
of the left hand holding one’s nose and the first-and-second fingers
of the right hand offering a festive Christmas gesture.


Fair enough but what of the correct form for getting out of attending
these foetid orgies of crassness without causing offence to the innocent?
Ah well, those who paid attention to the words of wisdom that concluded
a recent Fortnightly Gazette will need no further instruction, but for
those of us who ‘read’ by skimming through looking for bold
headlines and pictures of scantily-clad fillies here’re some tips.


First, question who it is that would ask you to such a gathering (perhaps
some social pruning is in order?). Second, take a crayon and a flattened
cereal box (you may need help from an adult for this) and scrawl upon
it the words ‘Yew kno ware yew kan stik yore partie’.
Third, have your be-wigged and powdered footman deliver the message on
a silver filigreed salver, not because these miscreants deserve such quality
attention, but because you are a gentleman and it is the way things are
done.


Anyroad, moving on it is a Chap’s sworn duty as scion of the Empire
to attend any and all other gatherings where the right stuff can be got
outside of. He has after all a reputation to consider both as an Englishman
and a Gentleman. Accordingly he will need to pre-arrange a full blood
change for the first week of January, preferably drawn from a troop of
virgin Bob-a-Job boy scouts in Lucerne, Dib, Dib, Dib, as it were.


So (and here we freely misquote from the sainted PGW) with his hat, his
whangee and his yellowest gloves a Chap may sally forth unto the melee.


When attending parties a Chap should of course always be the best dressed
man in the room. Not particularly difficult in the New World though a
pre-season trip down Jermyn Street avoiding anything nouveau
or on sale is never wasted. However if oceans or suburban bargain hunters
prevent this then any old thing from his extensive wardrobe will still
stand him in excellent stead amongst the great unwashed. We find a claret
velvet smoking jacket (with frogged buttons natch), one’s grandfather’s
T&A starched front spread collar and a slightly faded fez usually
serve us well.


It least been my great pleasure to attend not one but two masquerade
balls this festive season. Imagine if you will my racing heart at the
thought of a bit of liaisons dangereux and some furtive festive
frottage with masks on and identities hidden. All under the watchful eye
of the Mem of course. Social ranks might be forgotten for the night, maids
might cavort with kings, knaves with Duchesses, stable boys with sainted
aunts. Though of course no one’ll go anywhere near Republicans because
they smell too bad.


All this is true and good. Couplings certainly did take place and there
is nothing to suggest that they didn’t concern those who under normal
circ’s wouldn’t have exchanged business cards, let alone fluids.
Furthermore in the spirit of goodwill there is a chance that a member
of Soho House may have crept into one of these gatherings: a man was seen
with his trousers round his ankles, his shirt on his head and truffled
pate de canard spread liberally across his hairless chest. Apparently
he was something called a ‘Charter Member’. We had our word
for him.


While assuming a pose of languid insouciance on the balcony at the latter
of these shindigs I was struck by some thoughts that might help steer
the less informed but still socially conscientious through the troubled
maze of festive etiquette. Allow me to share some of them with you.




Goosing:


A gentleman should hope to be goosed often if only to remind him of his
glory days in the lower fifth. That it isn’t now followed by half-an-hour
in the sixth form copse shows how far he’s come.


In addition it is incumbent upon a gentleman to goose ladies regularly
to show that though they may never know the love that dare not speak its
name they are still jolly fine, if a little odd, chaps and we’d
be sunk without ‘em.


Parties are a splendid place for the giving and receiving of gooses.
These should be administered in fully lighted places with plenty of people
around to avoid any suggestion of subsequent actions. The gooser should
ensure that the target area is far from any delicate bits. The goosee
should at most raise an eyebrow and feign ignorance of the gooser. Thus
the exchange will pass in the correct spirit.




Advances:


Let’s be frank here; mere mortals such as (believe it or not) the
Two Chaps do not get propositioned anywhere nearly as often as one would
expect. We won’t deny it has happened, but that may have been a
Russian circus tumbler after a night of absinthe slammers in Constantinople.
Anyway people do make and receive advances during the Christmas period,
not least when caught under the mistletoe, and this is to be enjoyed.


While under the mistletoe a chap may get slobbered over by a minger,
to use current parlance, which is devoutly to be avoided. Or he may get
some prime totty wrapping herself around him (fat chance) which is a delight
to all concerned. But he’d better make sure his face remains impassive
throughout in case the OB&C spies him. The key here is plausible deniability.
Otherwise there’ll be blood on the moon. Or at least on his brogues.




Travel:


A Gentleman would never ever drink the necessary life-giving nectar and
then grapple with the stick of his spitfire (this is not intended as a
double-entendre as he might well want some Dutch courage to grapple
with the stick of his Spitfire). Well actually come to think of it if
he was going to be actually piloting a Spitfire he probably would want
a bracer or two, so perhaps it was fine as a d-e after all. But I digress.
The point is that if all he was doing was heading homewards in Cov’s
Finest for nature’s sweet restorer and a change of apparel then
he certainly should eschew any business with the front end of the vehicle.
The easiest way to do this is simply to vow only to travel in the back
after the first cup. If there’s someone sober enough to drive then
all well and good. Otherwise he can sleep off the effects of the current
payload, grapple with the stick of his Spitfire, and then resume command
in the morning.




Giving Presents to One’s Boss:


Many things should be given to one’s boss and it ill becomes a
chap to wait for a national holiday to start the ball rolling.


Initially hand signals should be offered to his or her retreating back.
We find the universal two-fingered salute or indeed the undulating cupped
hand are great for starters.


Many look down on the drawing-pin-on-chair or bag-of-flour-above-door
gifts. We do not.


And if one’s boss has incurred our displeasure then we find horse’s
backsides a great supplier of ‘gift items’ for the offender’s
coat pockets. The response can be quite gratifying when one hears of one’s
boss furtively searching for their keys in a little-used pocket while
in the rain outside their house.




Giving Presents to One’s Actual Boss aka She Who Must Be
Obeyed, The Fragrant One, The Old Ball and Chain, The Memsahib, and of
course The Boss:


Without them we would be nothing but immaculately-dressed Flaneurs
with a fondness for the very best in life. With them we are immaculately-dressed
Flaneurs with a fondness for the very best in life and a variable detachable
conscience.


As small boys, when learning how to play cricket much was made of ‘walking’.
A timely lesson in deception it would, we were told, show the umpire that
you played off a straight bat and should be trusted in matters of judgement.


The same is true of one’s nearest and dearest. If, or rather when,
you fail, err, or bugger something up be the first to admit it. Loudly
call yourself all the names under the sun and don’t take no for
an answer in the matter of who’s the world’s biggest idiot.
Thus when you inevitably fail miserably to find anything that The Boss
would even want to be seen returning to the shop she will look upon you
with a benevolent eye and say something along the lines of ‘at least
you tried’. You can then offer to accompany her on a shopping expedition
to find something she actually wants. Which with any luck will see you
in the ladies’ under-things section of Saks or Selfridges for the
afternoon. Thus you are both the provider of quality gifts and the kind
of chap who’s not afraid to go shopping with the gentler sex when
required.




Carol singers: being one or dealing with them if you’re
not:


Chap knows what it’s like when he’s young, looking for love
and short of the necessaries to provide Lucky Jims with which to encourage
co-operation from the fairer sex. What to do? With card sharps, pan handlers
and costermongers already in plentiful supply there’s little else
left but Carol Singing.


In short; gather together a motley crew of heavies and comely maids,
distribute a smattering of the words to Silent Night, and bang on rich
peoples’ front doors thence to threaten their ear drums and more
if they don’t come across with the readies, and pretty sharpish,
if they get your drift.


If the right houses are chosen funds will immediately pour forth and
pubs can be adjourned to for well-deserved Christmas cheer restoratives.


On the other hand…


Upon perceiving the sound of strangled felines in one’s front garden
throw open the door, stare over the miscreants’ heads and say coldly
and sotto voce ‘Do you have any farking idea who lives
here?’ If the correct amount of menace is used then the crowd will
immediately fall silent and quite possibly sweep your lawn with doffed
caps upon their retreat.


Or else they’ll say, ‘We’ve got your number kind Sir.
Pay up. Or in the spirit of this festive season verily we will do you.’


Which means they have. So you should. Or they will.




Correct Greetings at This Time Of Year


We may offend some people here and for that we offer a hearty raspberry.
For you see some people need shaking out of the very worrying stupor into
which they have fallen.


Let’s start at the beginning. For as long as the Two Chaps can
remember Christmas Day has been on the twenty-fifth of December. Closely
followed by Boxing Day which falls on the twenty-sixth. Accordingly when
standing beneath a twinkly-lighted Christmas tree and having one’s
picture taken alongside a man dressed in a fur-trimmed red suit one should
offer the traditional greeting; Merry Christmas. Simple. One would not
dream of saying Happy Easter. Or Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. Or Happy
any-other-bloody-Day. It is Christmas.


Now we at Two Chaps Talking do not choose to burden our readers with
the type of temple to which we tip our caps (actually it would be a bar
and a particular cocktail but we digress). Furthermore we care not a tinker’s
cuss for that to which our dear readers raise theirs. Which is to say
we are equal opportunity Flaneurs and our church embraces all.


Thus at a particular time of year if we are greeted by Happy Diwali then
we show our delight by returning that same greeting. It doesn’t
make us Hindus, just polite. Similarly if such a thing were said wishing
someone a happy Ramadan would not make us Moslems.


And so when we choose to offer a hearty Merry Christmas we cordially
expect to be replied to in kind. What we do not expect is the non-religious,
non-specific, non-exclusive utterly generic piece of politically correct
b0110cks that is Happy Holidays!


You see Monday is Monday, Tuesday is Tuesday and Christmas Day is Christmas
Day. To say Happy Holidays is to wish a person a good two weeks in Majorca.


Saying Happy Christmas does not imply one dresses to the left or right,
it is simply to acknowledge the bloody calendar. Enough said.




And on that cheerful note my Dear Friend let me wish you and yours a very
Merry Christmas and a thoroughly splendid New Year during which we shall
mix freely, drink heartily and err, move to Hong Kong.


Yours in a pirate mask, expectant, under the mistletoe,



S

]]> Correct turnout for iSight and matter tag:www.twochapstalking.com,2004://6.148 2004-12-08T13:55:04Z 2007-03-07T17:31:18Z We live in such technologically advanced times, do we not? I hear you’ve been having job interviews by video-conference (which frankly sounds like trying to buy your wife via the internet and probably has a similar chance of long term happiness). I too, in my small way, have been experimenting. I have purchased something called an iSight and declare it the Wonder of the Age. T

Dear Boy.


We live in such technologically advanced times, do we not? I hear you’ve
been having job interviews by video-conference (which frankly sounds like
trying to buy your wife via the internet and probably has a similar chance
of long term happiness). I too, in my small way, have been experimenting.
I have purchased something called an iSight and declare it the Wonder
of the Age.


Of course, I, like any reasonably educated human being, loathe with every
fibre of my being, this bizzarre affectation of fiddling with the natural
order of capitalisation in the titles of computer devices ExCel, iPods,
WordPerfect etc., but, in the case of this particular appliance I’m
prepared to forgive messrs Apple. The iSight is a WebCam that actually
works. There is a human voice and a picture, moving, at a reasonable frame
rate. I’m awed.


I immediately hooked the thing up with my brother in Sydney and spent
a pleasant hour in conversation. It was lovely to see him with his adorable
family leaping around in the background in their jammies. And therein
hangs the double-edged curse of technology.


George Eliot bemoaned the benefits of the technological advances of her
age in this aside from Adam Bede (1857):


“Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great
work of the steam engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe
them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness
is eager now – eager for amusement, prone to excursion trains,
art-museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even
to scientific theorising and cursory peeps through microscopes.”



I now have an array of splendid friends lurking in a corner of my screen
every time I sit down to work. Now, every time these people flash, or
bleep or whatever God forsaken thing they do, I’m on bloody stage.
There is no space for artifice. When you and I began to write to each
other we loved crafting mannered, spectularly artificial personae for
our mutual amusement. We worked with devilish glee at monumental structures
of parody and great looming arcs of fatuous fictional bollocks.


No we have brutal visual truth.


When I used to work in TV we were given a special manual containing all
the procedures to be followed in the event of war, disaster or the death
of a member of the Royal Family. In cases of total nuclear oblivion there
were a couple of secret locations outside of the metropolis, buried deep
in hardened bunkers, where the last epilogue could be read to the last
few piles of radioactive dust. It was heartening to be reassured that
each studio contained a locked wardrobe with a dinner jacket, shirt and
black tie and a sober dark frock.

There’s a certain sense of appropriateness in that which I feel
we should replicate if we are going to do this whole video bollocks



“Sir?”


“Yes, Jeeves”


“Lady Agatha has pinged you, Sir. Will you receive her at the
VideoPhone”


“I shall, Jeeves, and right readily. She requires our attendance
at Bisham Parva in re geese, a cow creamer and several nephews”.


“I shall lay out your brocade telecommunicating jacket and the
velvet smoking cap, Sir”.


“Splendid, Jeeves. A spot of the cup that cheers and my yellowest
gloves would also not go askance”.


“I shall arrange them directly, Sir”.



Amidst the ludicrous technology that infests my study I will now be forced
to maintain a small wardrobe for video conferencing featuring jackets,
made-up dickies of the sort used by corpses and an array of expressive
hats.


On an entirely different note, diligent research has revealed that Bruce
Robinson wrote ‘Withnail and I’ on the very street where I
now reside; though he has been very cagey about the exact house where
he forged those deathless lines on his battered Olivetti. There’s
a blue plaque for Dylan Thomas a hundred yards up the street and Beryl
Bainbridge lives round the corner but it’s the spirit of Withnail
coursing through me as I pound this thin nonsense into my device.

Must go. I fear there may be matter in the sink.


Tx



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