15October1995

London 15th October 95
My dear folks,

I am working on a project which will enable the over-fifties (the likely market) to avoid birthdays without resorting to suicide. So far, I haven't made a lot of progress but I remain confident of success. Where there's life there's hope, as they say. To sell, the plan would have to retain the celebratory element while losing the unwelcome toll that birthdays underline so unpleasantly. As you may be aware, my various "get-younger" potions have helped me enormously to retain my own youthful demeanour. However, the likelihood of awkward encounters with Her Majesty's snake oil inspectors have discouraged me from turning this little discovery to profit.

One solution I have been working on would be to increase slightly the radius of the earth's revolution around the sun. This would increase the length of the year and so give the punter more time for his money, so to speak. Not a final solution, but a great improvement. I am pleased to tell you that I have made some considerable progress in this field & that only two small steps remain. The first is to find a way of shoving the earth off a bit. The second is avoiding the hordes of angry sun lovers who are pissed off over the frozen wastes of planet earth. As I have pointed out to my fans previously, you can't please everyone, at least not all the time.

Jones & I are ensconced in a little cottage not far from the town of Shrewsbury up near the Welsh border. We clambered into the Rocket and took off on Saturday after leaving our guests, Harry & (his) Barbara, to the tender mercies of Mavis. Most of the trip was made in light mist - up the motorway as far as Birmingham and then cross country. We had found the place advertised in Jones's garden magazine and booked ourselves in. The cottage is one of about 15 which have been installed in converted farm buildings and rather nice. This, regrettably, is more than one can say of the owner, a surly man quite without civility, whom nature had better endowed to run a Victorian prison. The welcome could not have been colder for a Christian on a charter to Mecca. If there had been any prospect of finding alternative accommodation, we should have taken it. But there wasn't, so we reluctantly made ourselves at home.

On the positive side, the farm and adjoining hamlet overlook green & rolling meadows which seem far from the taint of industrial England. The Fox Inn stands ready half a mile away to make up for any lack in the weather. Big horses clip clop down the lanes, bearing female riders, or peer at you over the gate. The trees are studded with raucous rooks whose cries and cackles fill the evening air. Half an hour's walk up the road, a village shop carries supplies of home-made bread & cakes & home-cured ham. Country lanes wind past crumbling red-stone walls enclosing solid red-brick houses. Strangers greet each other! There is a sense of timelessness, or at least of time greatly slowed down. Best of all, there are no intrusive phones or visitors.

We spent two hours exploring Shrewsbury, a lovely old town almost completely encircled by the Severn River. Sunday church bells filled the air. Tall-steepled churches dominate the town although there was little sign of worshippers. "God has emigrated," I supposed to Jones. But she rejected the suggestion out of hand. We navigated the narrow streets & then strolled back along towpath amid families walking dogs or kicking balls. All reassuringly normal! I liked the town of Bridgenorth even more. It clings to hills - also on the banks of the Severn - a place of lovely houses, laced with tiny lanes & steep winding steps - brimful of historic character.

I had meant to get a good deal of reading done in the evenings. I did manage a flick through a Sunday paper but not much more. Half the problem was Pride and Prejudice, the repeat on Saturday evening of the previous week's episode followed by the latest episode on Sunday evening. Jones was as entranced as I was. We noted that the video was being advertised & resolved to buy it without delay in order to be able to share it with (some of) you.

The other half of the problem was the combined effects of long country walks & some excellent red wine over dinner. I'm normally a midnight or later retirer. But I found myself ready to follow Jones' much earlier lead. I have long wanted to try a bottle of Kanonkop but been put off by the stiff price. On this occasion, I thought I could justify it. It was lovely too - fruity & silky! But when one can obtain reasonable wines at a third of what it costs, I suspect that it will be the last bottle for some time.

On Monday we came home, stopping off at the odd farm shop and the ruins of the Roman city of Wroxeter. There's not much to be seen but one is left in no doubt about the thoroughness of those remarkable people & the extraordinary lengths they went to make life comfortable. Wroxeter was originally a fortress they established as a base for their campaigns to subdue the Welsh (or at least that's what it said).

Back in London, Harry & Barbara took us out for supper, to a local restaurant specialising in Portuguese cuisine. It was a lovely way to finish a lovely weekend. As always, such things fly by. In a few hours, it's back to work.

There were many more things I wanted to say but the priority is to get this off to you. So I shall add only my thanks for your faxes and calls.

PS Kev and co, Hi! Gathered you talked to Mum over the weekend. I had a brief word with her yesterday as well. Any further news of visas? I meant to phone BA today about poss. Business Class seats on my return flight. But utterly graunched my computer trying to remove an old application from it and spent an hour on a help-line breathing life back into the poor dear. Nearly gave myself a heart attack. Am getting too old for this. Will talk to the airline tomorrow. Barbs is in the study with me while our guests are upstairs, so will not talk to you tonight.