When I was forty, two of my first cousins gave a party at my favourite Chinese restaurant, Mr Kong in Lisle Street. It closed at the end of 2015 so don’t go looking for it. When I was fifty I gave a small dinner party at my club. When I was sixty …
I had no plans. However, friends in London gave a dinner party for me at their London house and I picked the guests. It was on the eve of my birthday. This weekend David Tang writes in the FTWeekend about private yachts. He likes them to have funnels; as a psychologist I recognise a case of penis-envy. His favourite (yacht) is Mark Getty’s Talitha, pictured in the article (and below) flying the White Ensign.
You will be aware that only the Royal Navy, ships of Trinity House when escorting a reigning monarch and members of the Royal Yacht Squadron can fly the white duster. Talitha is 80 metres and 262 feet. I mention this because of the curious mix of metric and imperial measures; also because the private yachts I have been on are less than fifty feet long.
The Royal Yacht Squadron clubhouse, they call it The Castle, is on the Isle of Wight. It is even less like a castle than Barmeath. The bedrooms have a selection of PG Wodehouse books, a telescope and a list of RYS members in order of seniority, with the names and dimensions of their boats, their wives (names only) and sail numbers. It is most agreeable and I was fortunate to be there for my 60th.
Meanwhile good and not so good news from my back garden in Barons Court. First the limestone paving has been squirted at high pressure with an eco-friendly cleaning agent. Done diligently but not by me, it took four hours and has restored it to almost-new.
Secondly, the trap mentioned in Cydalima perspectalis has caught three moths. This is good as they cannot lay larva in the box hedge; bad because they haven’t been exterminated.