Coronavirus Chronicle VIII

This year it will be on Thursday 13th November. It’s when, in the old days, I used to go out at lunchtime in the City and drink Beaujolais Nouveau until I was sick. This exceptional year it was yesterday; the first day Londoners could go out on the lash in pubs and restaurants since March.

Wartime Reading List

John Colville’s Downing Street Diaries are not what they seem He could be taken to task under the Trade Descriptions Act (1968) as on the first page he “was living in luxury, at least by war-time standards, and basking in the Prime Minister’s favour.”

Quizzers

I have just bought an inexpensive, second-hand, dog-eared  paperback published in 1987 in which are appended the author’s biographical notes on some of the people mentioned. Can you identify even one of them?

Uncle George Remembers XIV

“Although it could be said that the Earl Marshal’s office is wherever he happens to be working at the moment, he had a permanent set of chambers in the House of Lords, which were not very splendid, nor very comfortable, and they reminded one of a church vestry because of their substantial Victorian gothic decoration… Continue reading Uncle George Remembers XIV

Sweet Memories

Forty-four years ago I rented a room in the house next door to my present home, where I have lived since 1984.

Old Palace Lane

The walk upstream to Richmond is back on Bertie’s and my agenda. Yesterday we completed it in two hours, thirty-five minutes; creditable considering Bertie had to play with a canine chum, board a houseboat (Avanti), and join a picnic.

Uncle George Remembers XIII

“Coronation committees of several sorts followed one another in quick succession in 1952 and 1953, and one of the most important of them was the Coronation Joint Executive Committee.

Something Fresh

As it’s Sunday we will do Bible study. The Gutenberg Bible, as you know, was one of the earliest books to be  “mass” printed using moveable, metal type. Fewer than 200 copies ran off Gutenberg’s press at Mainz in the mid 15th century; one uxorious frog could do better in the tadpole department, and as… Continue reading Something Fresh

Lock-Down at Blandings

I confess I haven’t found living under lock-down a great hardship. Others, with piles in the country, you know what I mean, have taken the opportunity to improve their curtilages and undertake neglected maintenence. How has Lord Emsworth adapted to the regime?

Pure Gold

  “Is this a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” (Mervyn Griffith-Jones, prosecuting Penguin under the Obscene Publications Act, 1959). I have seldom looked forward to a book so much. Further details when I have read it. Meanwhile, on another note, I spent an hour before lunch yesterday… Continue reading Pure Gold