I love looking at the Bounce Rate for visitors to this site. I don’t have a clue what it means but it reminds me of my grandfather’s black Labrador, called Bounce. He always had two black Labrador bitches, called Belle, Betsy, Beatle, Bess and Bounce in my time. He always drove a VW beetle and my grandmother, a Morris Minor. He fought in the First World War, hunted two packs of hounds, represented both England and Ireland shooting clay pigeons, won a few races as an amateur jockey and fished almost every salmon river in the British Isles. Even in my day he caught about 50 salmon and 100 sea trout every season. The monthly magazine, The Field, in their 150th anniversary year, included him in their list of the best shots in the past 150 years. He also became in old age an accomplished raconteur and taught me principles of investment which I remember to this day. Unsurprisingly he never had time for a job; those were the days.
My grandmother was a skilled fly fisher but, when I knew her, concentrated on gardening, embroidery, sucking Fox’s Glacier Mints and smoking an inordinate number of cigarettes. A viola was named after her; Viola Jeanie Bellew.
My grandfather subscribed to an immense number of magazines with titles like Field & Stream, Stream & Field, Trout and Salmon, The Shooting Times, The Field, Radio Times, Country Life, The Illustrated London News. There was also The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The London Times, as it was known, to be glanced at and the Financial Times, the pink ‘un as it was known, which was delivered second hand by a neighbour, in exchange for Country Life. There were books, there is a library, but these were never read by either of my grandparents. My grandmother read journals and catalogues from the RHS.
I never know what I am going to write about here but I would not be surprised if you hear more about them at some point.
Charles Moore, an avid reader of your blog, begs to differ with you in this week’s Spectator:
“The press keep (sic) referring to the FT as ‘the Pink ‘Un’. It was never called that. The Pink ‘Un’s formal name was the Sporting Times….Its annuals were actually called the Pink ‘Un. ”
Although the paper ceased publication in 1932 I dare say your grandfather had at least a nodding acquaintance with it.
My grandfather was born in 1890 and always referred to the FT as the Pink ‘Un in my hearing and I was born in 1954. While Charles Moore is strictly correct, readers of the FT continued to call it by this nickname because although the title had changed the colour of the newsprint had not.
On a related subject (pink), it is possible to take Angostura Bitters in a bottle of the permitted size among “toiletries” in a transparent sponge bag. However, at Shanghai airport they were keen to see me drink, neat, a small glass to prove that it was indeed for medicinal puposes, as I had asserted. They did not offer a gin mixer.