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It’s over to you this morning. It’s a selection of your nostalgic comments in the early days of my website. It was rather Blue Peter; to begin with there were no pictures and then they were upside down, since corrected. 

Once a year JPG used to have a selection of jockeys and trainers to stay at Sutton Place for some local meeting. In the days before mobiles the jockeys needed to phone in to see what rides they had the next day. They were guided to a pay phone in the corridor. Perhaps that is why he was the richest man in the world. It is very reassuring that there is almost no correlation between wealth and happiness.

Fascinating loved every minute my father had an affair with Caroline Blackwood.

I particularly enjoyed this reminiscence as I can recall being shouted at by Billy Filgate’s son out hunting when your brother Bru persuaded me (briefly) to attempt to follow The Louth on horseback. I also remember yet more shouting and the alarming sensation as a hireling decided to have a roll while I was on it; I (and the saddle) were saved by a foot follower who whipped the horse back on its feet just in time.

At one time, when my father was head of the Atomic Energy Authority and Eden was Prime Minister we had a scrambler telephone in rural Essex – very exciting at the time. This replaced Government messengers on green motorcycles with sidecars, who wore goggles and gauntlets – even better as there was something to see (and hear).

To be fair to the Oslo Opera House the photos look marginally better the other way up.
Also worth mentioning the excellent subtitling which allows you to select your own language on the little screen in front of each seat.

Sadly my one effort to see an opera in Oslo was aborted by an unwilling Butterfly, who burst into tears on meeting Pinkerton and ran off stage without singing a note.
A great shame as the opera house was beautiful, especially the auditorium. Despite the eye watering drinks prices.

In 1976 Lord George-Brown was pictured in all the newspapers sprawled in a gutter outside, I think, his club. The Times leader the following day intoned: “The fact remains that George Brown drunk is a better man than the Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) sober”. I personally wouldn’t have thought there was a great deal to choose between them.

My grandmother lived for about 20 years in Brown’s Hotel until she was 100 ( she died aged 104). She, too, had a penchant for crème de menthe frappee ( missing accent, I know), a perfectly disgusting drink. When she was in her 90’s she liked to smoke one of my cigarettes with her crème de menthe and looked like a caricature of a venerable madame in a very high class brothel.

The Hill Club, Nurwara Eliya in Sri Lanka is worth a mention. Built for British planters in 1876 and remodelled later it has the air of a Tudorbethan house near Guildford, but set in misty hills covered with tea plantations. When I visited in 1990 it still had a gentlemen only bar (or perhaps that’s just wistful recollection), anyway it certainly had a bar marked gentlemen only. The bedroom I was in was narrow, austere, with an iron bedstead, clearly for a batchelor, which as it happens I was at the time. There was a golf course nearby with a clubhouse straight out of Surrey, except that the professional there taught me a few strokes, his feet bare. The dining room with a large fireplace served school food type fare. I had been advised to order curry and the other diners looked towards my table enviously. The shades of Somerset Maugham were strong. It may have changed since I was there, I hope not. You do not need to be a member to stay. Sri Lanka has other fine colonial hotels, I think not too changed because for years people would not go there because of the civil war.

May I put in a word for the Candacraig? It is in Maymyo, five hours train journey north east of Mandalay, named after Colonel May of the Bengal Infantry. He was stationed there whilst suppressing an uprising in 1887. He established a thriving hill station to rival Simla. It may now be called Pyinulwin again. I visited the Candacraig in 1977. It was built in 1905 in the style of an English country house (more Ascot than Dorset). It appeared to me that nothing had been touched since the British left in 1948. Very ambitiously, I asked the elderly barman if he could make me a Pimms. Of course he could. The bottle was covered in dust but fortunately the lemonade was fresh. I settled into a well worn leather arm chair and after a few sips, I could hear voices on the tennis court. “Oh good shot, Well played, Bad luck etc.” Moving to look out the window, I could see that the voices were not from 1977.