I went to lunch and ordered a Panang (sic) Curry. It was, no doubt about it, road-kill. I didn’t need to be a mortician to recognise those little squirrel bones – well maybe it was something else …
People often talk of having “a place in the country” a splendidly non-specific expression that means anything from a castle set in 10,000 acres that has been in the family since the reign of Elizabeth I to a rented potting shed. My place in the country in the 1990s was the latter.
If you live in a democracy it’s a good plan to have the casting vote (just in case). Votes cast for watching University Challenge at home are exactly 50% in favour but I don’t have that casting vote, so it’s a treat to be on my own for a few days and to indulge.
Every two years the PG Wodehouse Society holds a dinner to celebrate his birthday. Demand for places outstrips supply so I often don’t go, to give other members a look-in. This week I did attend but the evening was over-shadowed with sadness.
This is where I lived in August 1976. I had a job but nowhere to live. Fortunately a university friend was away on holiday and I borrowed his flat for my first month in London. I was reminded of this when I walked down Dartmouth Park Hill this week; a Brideshead Revisited moment.
So many posts start like this, but here I go again – more than forty years ago … I was given as a birthday present a novel, actually the only one he wrote, by Max Beerbohm. The donor was a university friend, we are still friends and I still have Zuleika Dobson.
In the middle of July I went on a day trip to Cheltenham to watch Gloucester play Essex. As I am not especially fond of cricket (I was a Wet Bob) there was another reason.