Much Ado About Nothing

The climate changes and the virus mutates but politics doesn’t change.

On The Andrew Marr Show-Off yesterday Dominic Raab explained that the Brexit-bleed in some trading places would be more than compensated for by trade treaties in the Indo-Pacific region.

Patrick O’Brian often sends his characters to a watery grave. Mr Fox perishes in a typhoon having successfully concluded a treaty with a Sultan in present-day Malaysia, in the teeth of French competition. Trade treaties were more exciting in those days. The leaders of the French mission, English traitors- the Burgess and Maclean of their day – are found in flagrante delicto with the Sultan’s catamite. The latter is beaten to death; the former are assassinated and dissected by Stephen Maturin. It’s all most enjoyable; now I’m reading Clarissa Oakes.

The cold snap in London has come to an end and our cleaner has come back to work after a bad bout of Covid; he was in hospital on oxygen for four days. His return is most welcome as he hasn’t been since Bertie was bitten. It’s how time is measured here. In the context of The PG Wodehouse Society we are looking for an alternative to Zoom for virtual meetings with more than a hundred members attending for more than forty minutes. Zoom is too expensive and I’m sure there are other providers able to undercut.

Barons Court has one of the best butchers in London, supplying restaurants as far afield as Oxford and Cambridge in the old days. Now HG Walter relies on people turning up at the shop. On Saturday, when the temperature was around freezing all day, the scene looked like the bread queues in a Soviet bloc country as only three customers are allowed in. I was pleased when Robert came back with calves’ liver. Liver at boarding school was not up to much and even at Barmeath I don’t think it was calves’ liver. Of course you’ve guessed; it was for Bertie. He has now economised and Bertie is on chicken liver. They are both efficacious training aids, otherwise know as bribes.