20November1997

20 November 1997
My dear folks,

Jones & I have been walking along the Thames, dodging the showers & the squelchy patches on the towpath – with mixed success. We had barely arrived at the little tea-room on the outskirts of Maidenhead where we refuel than a huge black cloud thundered in & sent the rain pissing down with a vengeance. In-between times, the sun came out, illuminating the carpet of autumn leaves.

On Friday we walked into town to pick up my scanner & visit the exhibition of Cartier jewellery at the British Museum. Some amazing stuff – including 2 mystery clocks whose hands are mounted in what looks like a solid glass with no sign of a mechanism to turn them. There were several pieces that we could easily have come away with. I could also have come away with some of the leather furniture we spent 15 minutes examining afterwards at a store in the area. I love leather & my heart’s desire is to have a leather suite in the living room (probably a second-hand one, given the price). Jones can barely abide the stuff. We did find one suite she could live with but it cost nigh on 3 grand & even my passion for the stuff stops well short of that. There was a peachy pink settee, temptingly discounted, but Jones wouldn’t hear of it. We walked on!

We’ve the needed the walks, both of us. I had a pig of a week at the Beeb – five 12-hour shifts in six days, most of them without a break - with little to show for my efforts other than an aching back. Our teams have been denuded by recent expansions & the flood of freelancers is about as useful as Gibbon apes. I have complained bitterly about the situation to the bosses who shrug impotently; they’re aware of the state of affairs & are about to board for a whole new influx. Meanwhile we bump along the bottom.

Midweek the rota organiser came along to negotiate a Christmas deal. We did satisfactory business; I agreed to work most of the Christmas week in return for which he’s signed me off for New Year. I booked our tickets to Germany the following day. We also started planning a week’s skiing holiday at the end of Jan when prices are low. Last year we made the mistake of choosing the February half term & paying the price both in company & cash. This time, after careful scrutiny of the brochures, we are seriously thinking about flying to Bulgaria where prices are half those in most Western European resorts.

Jones has also cut out a selection of recommended inns & hostelries from the weekend mags with a view to the odd overnight excursion. I promptly phoned the most likely to ask for brochures. The lady proprietor of one of them said she’d been surprised to find it written up in the Observer as the writer hadn’t declared his intentions. She was concerned only because the article had said they took dogs & they didn’t (typical bloody journalist, I told her). I hastened to put her at ease. We didn’t have a dog problem.

Jones is just loving her holiday back in London. She has already trotted down to Brighton to admire Fregs’s new flat & is planning to catch up on her cultural life. Fregs wondered down the phone how I’d taken to married life again. I reflected that bed now makes itself again & so does supper. The dishes wash themselves instead of hanging around the kitchen. Cups of tea & coffee present themselves unaided. All in all, there’s much to be said for it.

Bevan Jones joined us last night for supper. Jones cooked up some ultra healthy pasta while I delved into our recently rejuvenated wine cellar. The fundi at the local bottle store had assured me that last year’s Genus pinotage was ready to drink & I opened a bottle hopefully. It was too; it just happened to be tasteless. So I opted for a handsome Spanish red instead, plus a S African chardonnay & Bevan brought us up to date on his trading experiences as we supped. He seems to live at life’s extremes, either flying around the world & taking guests to expensive lunches or existing on take-aways. I downed as much water as wine to avoid waking with a sore head, a successful ploy if one discounts half a dozen dozey pilgrimages to the loo. We persuaded Bevan to stay overnight in the study as he had to return to the office on Saturday. He has a lovely flat in a village halfway to the coast but commuting is proving both time consuming & exorbitant. His annual train bill costs more than my commutes to Portugal.

Has Teletubby mania reached your shores, I wonder! I mentioned the Teletubbies to Jones a day or two back & she thought I was talking about overweight people on the box. No, I explained, it was Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa & Po, I was talking about, the 4 animated television dolls which have dominated conversation & best seller lists as well as driving Christmas-gift-seeking parents into a frenzy of desperation. She blinked blankly & I had to hunt around for some literature on the phenomenon to prove the point. Surely the Teletubbies must have reached Portugal! Forget Barbie dolls, politically correct cosmetic surgery et al; they’re history. It’s the year of the Teletubbies. The Spice Girls (their only competitors) thought the year was theirs. But having gone up in a blaze of glory like a Guy Fawkes rocket, they seem to have burned themselves out. Much schadenfreude evident!

I have responded to two calls for help from Herman & Stef, my neighbours in the basement, the first when Jessie, their nervous bitch, fled in terror at the sound of a thunder-cracker. It was during the short section of a walk when she’d been let off the leash. Jessie is the love of their life & I went out on a neighbourly sortie. Fortunately, her details were on her collar & a telephone call arrived from her finders soon after she’d disappeared. The second appeal came when their super-sophisticated fax machine failed. They’re both designers & spend half the day getting & sending faxes to the far ends of the world. Herman is a technophobe who resents the sophisticated appliances he needs for the job; he was on the point of hurling the fax machine through the window when Stef called in desperation. I couldn’t fix the machine but I did run him down to the shops where we obtained a back up which I installed. So my halo shines. I owed it to them. They have looked after Fats any number of times in my absence as well as tolerating his daily visits to their flowerbed. (Jones has put Fats on a strict diet, the effects of which have yet to be seen!)

Thank you to my correspondents all. Cathy, I do hope your dental distress is over for good. You do seem to have had a wretched time of it. We have raided Tescos for the Christmas goodies you mention (plus a generous portion of cheese for Rolf). We also posted off the latest edition of Time-Out this a.m. & hope that your friend finds all she needs there.

Annie, thank you for your recipes which Jones immediately set aside for an early trial. Your account of Montana artisans who put their hunting first rang true of Portugal where, likewise, it’s an exclusively male activity. I have never seen women in the party. It’s a hangover from neolithic days but whereas in Montana the hunters seem to stock the larder, in the Mediterranean they merely denude the countryside of animal & bird life & scatter cartridges around like sheep shit. How we wish they’d shoot one another.

Changing the subject to Riverdance (I have the music thundering in my ears as I write), (Cathy, Anita &) I loved the show but didn’t get to see the “Lord of the Dance”. Will be interested in your views. I’m glad you’re enjoying your entertaining but I won’t pretend to be envious. Barbara & I lunched on a tenner on Friday at a do-it-yourself utterly delicious health food (no-smoking) dive in Neal’s Yard (run by weirdoes). Their nut & raisin slice induced an immediate onset of the El Nino phenomenon but it was worth a little rough weather. Right now, that’s about the limit of my ambitions – that or one of Senhora Oliveira’s amazing salads at the Casa de Pasto in Cruz da Assumada. Every now & then, Jones dreams of going to a real restaurant with candles & flowers & starched linen but I see pound signs floating in front of my eyes & start feeling faint. Roll on the lottery win & I’ll take her out to the restaurant of her choice!

Speaking of which, Jones read me an account in the newspaper of three diners at one of Britain’s most expensive restaurants who ran up a bill of more than £13,000 at a single meal. Most of this related to their choice of wines which included a £4,000 bottle that they deemed "not quite ready” & donated to the staff. Talk about largesse. That’s style for you, not the sort to which we’re likely to become accustomed!

I think that’s about it. Christmas mail is starting to roll in already. Where’s the time gone?

Blessings!

T