Dear Rowley,
Well, it’s my birthday today so no pictures. Don’t birthdays make you think about those who we are lucky to have and those we have lost? No mawklish sentiment today: just one anecdote that Tony Lutwyche told me yesterday at Lutwyche & Lodger (sounds like Burke & Hare no?). It was a cold, snowy London morning and the Private Secretary to Prime Minister Churchill knocked on his bedroom door with a cuppa tea in hand. ‘Sorry to wake you Prime Minister but it has been reported by the Secret Service that the MP for Frinton South has been caught in Green Park buggering a guardsman’. Churchill grunted, opened one eye and growled ‘in this weather? Makes you proud to be British’.
I must be getting sentimental in my old age. First birthday card I open is from Mrs T who has painted Kaspar the Savoy cat as a Faberge egg. So not only is she no stranger to tiara elastic, she can also paint like a professional. Second card I open is a picture of my best friend Lee’s wedding to Chris. So this is already a three handkerchief birthday. Then I open a card from Auntie Lynda portraying a chorus line on board an old sailing ship captioned ‘Matinee on the Bounty’.
Finally, I open a monstrous card produced by a company laughably called ‘whispers of love’. If it was any less subtle it would be like someone creeping up behind you with a giant Valentine’s card and coshing you over the head with it. The verse ends thus:
So have a lovely birthday
enjoy the fun it brings
for somebody so special
deserves life’s finest things
It was from my Uncle Roy; former companion of my Gran Gandy who always used to send me these cards from the Patience Strong school of versifying. And you know what? I was in floods by 7am. Right-ho, I have a doctor’s appointment, a massage booked mid-morning and a birthday drinks party for 20 at the Savoy in the Museum before dinner at Joe Allen. Now there’s a jolly day. And in the immortal words of Charles Pierce, ‘there’s more darling. There’s lots more’. Until then…