Kentucky Calling

I lived in a large house, well really a castle, in Ireland as a child. It had one telephone placed under the stairs, made of Bakelite, with a circular label like a now defunct tax disc that read DUNLEER 5. This was useful if you forgot your number.

Athens , 1931

What happened in Athens in 1931? The drachma was introduced? The Greek government defaulted on a debt to Barings Bank? The Greek monarchy was restored? The Greek monarchy was abolished?

Drink Time!

“Drink Time! In the Company of Patrick Leigh Fermor” is a memoir by Dolores Payás describing her visits to his house in Greece near the village of Kardamili in Mani in the last two years of his life. It bursts with her affection and admiration for him and is an admirable coda to his life.… Continue reading Drink Time!

Oblast

Not O blast, try saying ob-last, preferrably with a Russian accent. Oblasts are provinces or administrative districts in Russia; there are 46 of them. This is a fairly useless bit of information, even for playing Scrabble, as who would want to squander two S tiles.

Friday

When I went to work in the City, nearly 40 years ago, there was a dispensation on Fridays; staff could wear tweed suits and brown shoes to segue to the weekend. My office was only a few years old and had air conditioning; unusual those days. Unless someone actually fell to the floor with a… Continue reading Friday

Wake Up, Sir!

I bought “Wake Up, Sir”, by Jonathan Ames, lured by “hilarious” being quoted five times across the top of the cover and this quote from The New York Times Book Review; “A Wodehouse novel for the recovery era”. What could possibly go wrong?

Woolshit

Rob Gore-Langton, in last week’s The Spectator, writes an article about North Cornwall in a slot that I had hitherto supposed to be advertorial. He writes amusingly: “David Cameron has body-boarded at Polzeath on recent holidays, his security detail bobbing like seals around him”.

The Cradle of Democracy

It’s all perfectly simple. The Greek government needs to borrow loads more Euros, mostly to re-pay previous loans. They were offered this on onerous terms at the end of June. They rejected these terms, and this rejection was then endorsed by the Greek people in a referendum.