I made a small purchase at a shop that does not observe Black Friday and has reassuringly high prices.
Frank Smythson sells Featherweight diaries for £42 and does not discount. Frank opened his first shop in New Bond Street in 1887 and the Smythson flagship store is today the other side of the road in New Bond Street. His family have long since lost control and the brand has been picked over by flocks of venture capitalist vultures. The creative director until her husband became Prime Minister was Samantha Cameron. Great job. What will we create next year? How about another Featherweight diary? Sooper, with some different coloured covers and, for the Chinese, a map of Hong Kong Transit. Wow, Sam, you are just so on. Does Dave help? It’ll sell out in Knightsbridge and a few old fogeys will buy it too. Stag and Roe Buck stalking seasons end (Scotland), Hind and Doe stalking seasons begins (Scotland) on 20th and 21st October this year. Buy the Featherweight and you will be British aristocracy, or a game keeper not quite sure when to stop and start killing large mammals.
It rained unrelentingly until teatime today. I read the subject for tomorrow’s post, cheered myself up re-reading Ice in the Bedroom (PGW), ordered a warming Turkish lunch from Deliveroo. After forty winks, Bertie and I went out in the damp gloaming. Robert got soaked walking Bertie in the morning but may have recruited a new member of the PG Wodehouse Society. He’s called Ivy, because all dog owners are called by their dogs’ names here. While Bertie and I were roaming in the gloaming a very tiny child tottered over to say hello, to Bertie of course. Bertie is not interested in tots but he is polite. His father said, I thought unconvincingly, “I’ll get you a dog soon”. I may be repeating myself, but I sat beside the widow of the composer of this timeless ditty at a jolly lunch in Fulham.