Please do not concern yourselves, I still exist.
Over the next week there will be deliveries of new stock for Autumn and Winter, photographs will follow, and we already have new cloths for the made to measure collection.
Saturday, I will travel to Florence to purchase more of the finest of cashmere at the lowest of prices, so please register your interest with me.
I would also like to thank those of you who have stood by me in the most difficult of times, I am and will always be very grateful. I speak not of fiduciary assistance, many of you have continued to shop; which has been most kind, but a metaphorical arm around each other’s shoulders, sharing and caring.
So, settle back and enjoy the rant. Brace yourself Effie!
I have been awoken from my slumber by a kiss from… goodness that’s the last time I take one of those pills before bed. I thought they were to enhance my dreamlike state. Note to self, check the bottle… apparently, rather than ‘arise spritely from dream filled sleeping’. It read ‘arouse the sleeping demon’. More Bottom than Titania apparently!
Dark Matters are at work. My money and my mother’s, is on Trump, and it’s not an each-way bet! I wish it were different, but Biden makes my mother seem positively teenage. She’s waiting for this election with unbridled glee.
Then there’s Puppet Master holding the strings, he’s wearing that tiny, bright red tie duffel coat, talking with a heavy Russian accent and scurrying around the side streets like Yoda who’s lost the Force.
Anyway, I’ll come back to that closer to the time.
I did escape and travel for work.
If not, my business would wither and die on the vine. As it is, it is suffering from some horrible, terminal fungal disease. Oh, the magic of mushrooms!
I had quarantined my state of mind, an attempt to return purified, the chilly waters of the Atlantic swirled around my ankles?
A step or two further into that water for a man of my age would have rendered anything below the waist, useless, perhaps for months… And I am a man, never destined to go a step too far!!!!
Now back from a little R and R, and more than a little work, to ‘Six of the Best’, ‘The Joy of Six’, ‘Now That’s What I Call Music – Volume Six’ whilst sipping a ‘Six on The Beach’, toying with my six string, playing ‘Three is the magic Number’ twice, it seems for the foreseeable, there’ll be no ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’.
There are the rules, and we are ruled, by rulers who are better than I. Yet we appear to be led by lambs, no matter much how he faintly reminds me of Aslan, I doff my cap, with a finger raised not so elegantly behind it.
Really, are we making this up as we go along? Can we have six people in a brewery?, Can we organise that? Oh yes, we can! Oh no, you can’t! And who remembers a Watney Party 7.
And then there is a new dance, ‘the workplace hokey-cokey’, I wish it could be Christmas Everyday…come on, sing along, you know the words, and meanwhile let’s all do the Conga. Time, gentlemen please, no East boys and West End girls! All on the banned practices list!
Then, what will a ‘relaxation’ mean, a semi or a doubling up to ‘The Glorious Twelfth’? Spiffing, I’ll have a brace, and make mine a faerie tale and a happy ending!Yet, I feel there is a GP somewhere, hammering away on someone’s knee with a mallet, whilst Thor is whacking away at a walnut! Whoa! Wait someone has startled the PushMePullYou!
Such are the mature and well thought out decisions, we are led to believe that are made for our benefit.
I am not and hasten to add, in any way a conspiracy theorist.
And please do not misunderstand me, my mother is 92 years old, and to lose her or anyone else for that matter, would be a tragedy.
I saw her a month ago for the first time since New Year, and she was in fine fettle. There were well thumbed Sudoku books strewn all about the place, but she is bored, her generation and ilk are now often too scared to go anywhere.
She takes daily walks to the top of her back steps and back down again, followed by a swift check of her wine cellar.
However, one thing that saddened me was that she thought she may never walk down into town again. Piffle. It will happen, but once I am able to take her.
We did use the car to go to Tesco and her favourite restaurant, Reeves of Dunster, (a little plug for Justin and Claire)! They were as amazing as always, and deserving of every success that has come borne of their kindness and charm, not to mention their fabulous cooking. Go and visit them.
I have become unsure of my mother’s position as a value to society, priceless to me, but despite all the platitudes, she like millions of others is a victim. This has become an unspoken consequence of our Governments measures, surely someone must have modelled this.
We are well on the way to solving the problem of conflict with minimal casualties (to the aggressor), because battles can be fought from afar with missiles and drones. Gone are the huge losses of the Somme and Normandy. Unfortunately, the nature of pandemic is different, it is indiscriminate, but if to reduce the transmission requires us to be locked away like Rapunzel, let me remind you, she found a solution.
My Uncle Harry worked on modelling the consequences of a nuclear explosion in or over major UK cities during the Second World War, that was 80 years ago. Given our vastly increased knowledge, and huge processing power; every single eventuality and scenario must have been explored. They said we are war with this virus, and yet we still manage to stumble around in the dark! Like Rambo without a jockstrap!
Don’t think for one moment the government haven’t put a value to the life of every single one of us, a risk assessment for a good day to bury bad news.
They may as well use the slogan: Comply or die, for now is our winter of discontent!
We have looked up to our leaders, despite the Churchillian glib comments, most of us will make it through the Winter, some will not. Life is not, and never will be a risk-free endeavour. Nor should it be, minimise it, certainly, but be mindful some now may never leave the sofa!
I shall leave you with a line or two from a film:
Wanda: You think you’re an intellectual, ape!
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy
Wanda: Yes, they do Otto, they just don’t understand it!
