You know how some people - not necessarily loveable or good characters nevertheless are perfect in a certain way?  The Japanese have a word for it, something -do. Frank is like that. I was walking down the Broadway the other day when I spotted him on the other side of the road. He was just coming out of a betting shop and was dressed like a lumberjack. He had a large woman in one hand and a can of beer in the other while a cigarette hung from his mouth. There was a betting slip tucked in his cap. And I thought "That is the perfect essence of the man Frank is! He's summed himself up. He is the epitome of Frankness!" I found myself longing for such purity as I nipped quickly into Greggs when he started to cross the road. 

I have a craving for cream horns. They are wonderful pastries in the shape of a horn, filled with delicious cream. I cannot get enough of them. Iceland sell them in packets of twelve which I snap up. The wife has been gone a week now and with the withdrawal of the whip, things are slipping a bit on the housekeeping front. There was a fat lazy fly in the kitchen this morning droning heavily about the place. I cornered it intending it unpleasant things but then, on reflection, I suppose  - recognizing kinship, fellow spirit, pilgrims along the same path etc etc I let it go on its way.

At Shadwell station in Docklands yesterday on route to the bird sanctuary at East India Dock when I spotted a number of lady cello players heading for the station lift. I couldn't resist asking one of them "How do you get it under your chin?" This normally goes down well with cello, double bass, piano players etc etc but on this occasion fell on permafrost and left me feeling silly. In the evening the wife rang from Bonn to ask if I could post her slippers as she'd forgotten to pack them - and also to remind me to put the bins out. Worrying about bins at a distance of several hundred miles is beyond the call of duty and worthy of  mention in despatches 

Did you hear about the poor bloke who was watching a comedy programme one night? He laughed so much that he fell off the sofa and landed with a bump on the floor but wasn't hurt. The man who lived downstairs heard the bump and fearing that our man had hurt himself or worse called the police. They came round toot sweet to investigate, found our man in good shape and then asked him his name as apparently they had to have a name for the report. Our man refused to give his name whereupon the police arrested him and dragged him down the station for skinning and deboning. Am I the only one to think that the police were barmy?

Re slippers, posting of. I thought of doing an Amelie and had a good laugh but in the end chickened out. Frank wants to apply for a job as a bin snooper or Refuse Container Checking Executive as they will be called. We've all cautioned him about it but he reckons that with a bit of luck he can avoid assassination. I wonder. I hear that feelings are starting to run high on the old council snoop front what with hidden mikes, dedicated CCTV covering every living creature in the country and forced extraction of DNA from everyone who vaguely comes to the notice of the police. The trouble is  noone can see that it's wrong. Spying on good folk is  a growth industry - shades of the old Stasi. Where will it end? You may  detect a whiff of revolutionary fervour - I'm thinking of joining the Liberals.

The Council have taken to putting up large cards at traffic lights etc etc on which people are required to stick their chewing gum under penalty of the rack. Its  more disgusting than having the stuff chucked on the pavement. And as George pointed out last Friday - they've got your DNA and an imprint of your teeth should they need it......

At George and Belinda's for a return match.  Belinda had forgotten that she'd told the story about the actress with the fat legs and told it again. George has an extensive collection of cigarette lighters from all over the world which occupied us for most of the evening.  As I walked home after, I reflected on how age takes its toll. There's poor George with nothing to talk about except the faded glories of his career in cigarette lighters and Belinda who lives by the reflected light of the actress with the fat legs. Terribly sad. 

Coming over Westminster Bridge in the late afternoon today I noticed that they were restoring the bridge to its original design. I think William would be pleased. I hadn't seen Bill for months and when I chanced to meet him at the Methodist Central Hall cafe, a propos of nothing, he observed that I'd put on weight over the winter. I was wounded by the careless remark and pointed out that he himself appeared to be in the third week of his second trimester, which didn't go down well. Oil needed. Then outside Selfridges in Oxford street had an odd experience which left me shaken. An elderly woman was staring intently at me with a look of horror on her face. After checking flies etc I concluded that she had mistaken me for someone else and walked off stage right, looking straight ahead, humming to myself.

It's the summer solstice on the 21st and I'm wondering what to do to celebrate; after all its one of the great turning points in the year. I'm not one for dancing naked in forest glades nor for passing the night sitting in oak trees but I really think that we ought to do something. Otherwise its just down the Railway for a few jars which hardly seems appropriate. I must think about it. I have a new  ploy. You know when you are walking down the street talking to yourself you get funny looks; well the solution is very simple. I pretend that I'm on a mobile phone and noone is any the wiser. Everyone thinks I'm acting normally. 

Well, I'm off to the Railway. It's Jock's seventy second birthday and the first drink is on him.
  

I had an odd thought the other day. If there were no computers we couldn't talk about them - because (a) there's nothing to talk about and (b) there isn't the vocab. So if we go back a hundred years or so - no computers and a whole chunk of vocab out the window.  Go back another hundred years and bingo no TV or radio, telephone and significantly no vocab about them. You wouldn't say and indeed couldn't say for example "Let's tune into Victor Sylvester on the Light Programme" or "I'll give Harriet a ring to remind her to pick up the loaf." If you did you would probably be fastened into the ducking stool without the option. Go back another hundred and you loose great chunks of other vocab. Now my point is that if you keep going back eventually you come to a point where there is nothing to talk about, indeed there is nothing that can be talked about except perhaps basics like food and sex. Do you see what I mean? And beyond that perhaps just to food alone. Your vocab would consist of perhaps just two words yumyum and ugh depending on what had floated within reach of your pseudopodia. Just a thought.

Back to the hot weather again. I burn easily and have taken to rubbing cream on my face and lower arms everytime I go out. I produce moles at the drop of a hat these days. I've also started to get twinges in my knees which I put down to standing for hours at bus stops waiting for buses which turn up hours late in mile long convoys. Having said that, being over the age I no longer pay for my travel after 0930 which is a boon. I now scoot continuously about the place, free travel pass in hand, lording it over the masses and taking full advantage. I mentioned the incident with the old woman outside Selfridges - her with the evil eye. Well it reminded me of when I was a special constable in London in my green sapling days. We did John Lennon and Yoko Ono once - I think they'd just got out of bed for the first time in a week and we had to hold back the hordes who wanted to see the bed sores. I remember thinking how small they were. (John and Yoko not the sores). But I'm wandering. The thing is we had to attend a number of lectures including one on indecent exposure. The Inspector who delivered the lecture turned up at the podium in a state of undress. I've often wondered if it was a lesson in practical policing, an honest mistake or something else? 
 

21st June. Jimmy is just back from Stuttgart. He brought me back a rather tasty kind of bun called a Puddingplunder which goes down rather well with a cup of rosey. It's basically a big flat bun with a custard centre. He reports that the lady who sold it to him goes by the name of Frau Lumpp. Received an invitation through the post from the Foreign Office to attend a memorial to old Basil Potgieter-Brookes (Basalt Brookes) who died recently. Basil was head of our Transition German Department which oversaw special relations with East Germany. He was a terrible bastard of the first water - a real martinet - but I shall attend out of respect.

Well, the memorial gathering for old Basalt went as well as can be expected. We started off in the India Office Council Chamber and then spread amorphously onto the Durbar court supping the old vino and chewing away at the For Sec's canopies. Oh by the way, big changes at the FO since our day - they're now promoting people on merit! Not all the changes stand scrutiny though.  Do you remember the old suction pipe system of letter delivery in the FO? Letters stuck in tubes and then tubes sucked along the pipes by giant hoovers in the basement? - all gone I'm afraid - replaced by e-mails. 

After the do a select group went to the Two Chairmen for a bit of a wallow.  Jimmy was in a reflective mood and opened with "What was the name of that bloke whose shoes caught fire?" I couldn't remember his name either but apparently whoever-it-was went to the Army and Navy Stores one lunch time to buy a pair of shoes - it must have been in the very early sixties. It was winter, bitterly cold  and there was snow on the ground. When he got back to the Foreign Office he decided to warm himself in the Messenger's cubby hole by the stairs before going back to his office. He put his feet up on what turned out to be the heater which having been going all morning was at 800C. His Italians burst into flames. It went through his sole burned his socks off and took two layers of skin from his feet. A nasty business. One of the Minister's offered his car to take him to St Thomas's. Jimmy ever the one for the old bon mot said "Nasty indeed ..........but very funny!" And we all burst into laughter. Dear old Oscar a very decent and generous man of the first water long since passed onto that great black cloak in the sky then came floating to the forefront. Oscar came back from lunch one day and tried to lean against my door frame but missed by at least a foot. As he lay prone on the old floor boards he looked at at me and said "Brian (he called everyone Brian when he was two or more parts),  "Disaster! My lunch has gone up 2d a pint!" We were just gathering scarves etc when old Bill dropped anchor nearby, inadvertantly sounded a distant fog horn and said "Shtott a mahshtot inshuttlepopopopsh." I couldn't make out what on earth he was saying but as we stood there in the finest metropop...metropopoplis in the world I realised that I couldn't have put it better myself.
 

Out for my constitutuional I noticed some hops growing at the top of Prince George's Fields and have half a mind to have go at some ale this year what with the wife away. This wallowing business is not always for the good; it brings out the melancholy in me and I sulk for days. I'd been to old Nicudemus in Wimbledon for a cut and nose hair trim and was just reflecting on why a perfectly normal Greek would give up a life in the Greek islands to be a hairdresser in Wimbledon when the whole thing stirred a memory of dear old Charley Stainton. Charley was a barber in School Lane Sandiway in Cheshire many years ago. My father used to go to him for his fortnightly and Charlie used to charge him 1/6d for a haircut (including brylcreme and use of trowel) and 9d each for us two boys. I'd wonderered what had happened to Charley's left ear which was missing the top half. It was several years before I had the courage to ask him and he told me that when he was learning to be a barber he found that he couldn't get anyone to practice on. So he started cutting his own hair. But he found that his left ear got in the way and he couldn't get a nice finish on that side and so after much deliberation he decided to cut the top of his left ear off. It solved one problem but then Charley found that it affected his love life - while an empty eye socket, or a livid scar that ran brow to chin was attractive to girls they were simply not interested in half ears. There's an expression that covers that - something about the lack of something or other- grit was it? - in the female sex. Wasn't it Shelley? Charley swore that it was all true.
  

I was just taking the plum duff out of the oven and no doubt going on a bit about the old days etc as I'm wont, when Rex who'd come round for a game of Cluedo, suggested that instead of talking about it, I write it all down. I must say I'm quite attracted to the notion of laying all bare so to speak but suspect the echelons would have something to say on the matter and would no doubt wield the big pencil. But there again the Aussies seem to lap that kind of stuff up and so I could try and get it published out there? Unfortunately things got a bit heated when I found that I'd put four cards in the little envelope instead of the regulation three and we had to adjourn to the fireplace for a placatory port and a slice of my plum duff. The reason I dwell on the fireplace is that as we sat there, spitting pips into the flames, Rex reminded me of things I'd much rather have left buried.