Dear Rowley,
Did you ever meet Mr and Mrs Rausing? I don’t think I did though have probably been to a number of parties that they also attended. Better Half and I had a very serious conversation about the billionaire boys’ club who seem to have the run of the earth and consider the rest of us a secondary breed. It was not without a wry smile that I read about Russian oligarch Duprensky ‘allegedly’ hiring contract killers and obtaining his billions by spurious means. How could it be otherwise? When a single human being has sufficient wealth to bail out Spain or Italy there is a fundamental problem with the world’s collective mental health.
And thus we turn to Mr and Mrs Rausing. I read with some degree of horror this morning in our paper (The Daily Mail) that Mr Rausing had lived with his wife’s dead body in their Knightsbridge townhouse for days before she was discovered by the police. It appears that the couple had been living in squalor for some time in two rooms of their mansion and taking their drug addiction to the only logical conclusion. It made me sad and cross to see the once gorgeous Mrs Rausing reduced to a raddled old drug hag and her rather jolly husband emaciated and mad.
The fact that the heir and heiress met in a rehabilitation clinic perhaps was asking for trouble. Or was it two desperate people recognising addictions and clinging on to each other for grim death like Hansel and Gretel in the petrified forest? So sad. Apparently Mr Rausing is now under the doctor and possibly under arrest though I would imagine the drugs finished his wife off rather than he. Bearing in mind this amusing, talented and kind golden couple were two of the richest people on the planet, it makes us all think that money certainly cannot buy joy, peace and contentment. The fact that the couple gave millions to drug rehabilitation charities makes it all the more poignant.
Well darling, my health is improving and it appears I was right all along. My dentist tells me my teeth are peachy keen and it is indeed my sinuses that need a good ENT guy now. I’ve been saying this for weeks now but it appears everybody else knows me better than myself. I’ve always said the tendency to lift a few is a symptom not a cause. Bring on the Scientologists. Well, I did think that then Better Half said their raison d’etre was to suppress homosexuality not encourage it. Then again, wouldn’t it be a wheeze if their notorious secretiveness and privacy allowed Tom Cruise to schtoop like crazy with men and lead as happy a private as public life? Just a thought.
I was going to take a holiday with Better Half this week and go to a health spa near Fritton-on-Sea but I think I need to sort the underlying health issues with London doctors before we pack our trunks. With any luck I can get it all out of the way and we can weekend on the English coast. Apart from Newcastle and Sheffield I don’t really know England at all. Now might be time to try. Better Half came out with an unexpected broadside yesterday apropos he’d like to sell-up in London, buy a country house, get our dogs and open a shop. Wouldn’t it be lovely?