My old friend and first boss John Sinfield of PSL wrote to me:

Recently you asked me a hypothetical question about how many more cats you might have left in you.

I have a similar absorbing dilemma. How many Burberry raincoats does one buy in a lifetime?

My second is on its last legs – fraying at the edges and generally looking very sad. I calculate that this and its predecessor lasted about 22½ years each. That, it seems to me, is the life span of an average Burberry used predominantly in the UK with average precipitation but allowing for an occasional overseas winter trip to an inclement environment.

Now to the problem. Is it worth buying a third Burberry given the price is now close to a staggering £900?

Perhaps it would be better to nurse the existing model along for a few more seasons. But then if it totally collapsed a new Burberry would cost even more and I it would be touch and go as to which of us gave out first.

Should one abandon the Burberry entirely and go for a cheaper model?

Will the impact of global warming mean a Burberry lasts for a shorter time span?

Is there a market in second-hand Burberry’s?

I don’t remember going through this thought process when I got Burberry 2.

All of this is strangely worrying in a “can’t sleep at 4.00 am” kind of way.

Measuring one’s lifespan out in cats or coats is, I suppose, a valid way to face mortality. It was my friend David Ellis of Bloomberg (no spring chicken himself, but probably 15 years younger than me) who rather mischievously asked me, when we got Bembo and Bodoni as kittens about 3 years ago, how many cats I thought I might have left in me.

I reckon I’ll see another one or two cats out. Coats is a different matter. And puppies — never again. When Milo finally descends to pal up with Cerberus and throw up in the Styx, as he undoubtedly will in about 15 years’ time, his replacement will be a sedate old dog, rather than a cute, fluffy, marauding, despoiling, vandalising, iconoclastic malefactor.

Lord Snowdon’s grandfather was the surgeon Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones. In Caernarfon he had a patient who believed an eel lived inside him and directed his words and actions. “I can’t do that, my eel won’t let me,” he would say.

Sir Robert arranged for him to be anaesthetised. When the patient came to, he was shown a large eel which Sir Robert had thoughtfully purchased earlier from the local fishmonger. “There’s your eel,” said Sir Robert cheerfully.

The man went home cured.

When Von and I sit down to share an eintopfessen (what we call supper that comes in one dish which we divide, I don’t know the English for it, but say for example a bowl of Salad Niçoise, or steamed prawns in noodles) she always has the first helping. It’s only polite.

She will always take precisely 7/19ths of the food in the bowl. This has been verified by careful observation over many years.

This always leaves me in a quandary. If I take the remaining 12/19ths, I am obviously a greedy guts. I must take my fair share. But given that the 12/19ths left over becomes a new integer, were I to attempt to take 7/19ths of that, I would end up with 9/38ths of the original dish. Not fair on me.

So I have to calculate visually what portion of the remainder I can appropriate without causing ructions.

Yes, I get it wrong more often than not. If we both take 7/19ths to start with, that leaves 5/19ths left over for seconds, which should be divided as 5/38ths each. Of the original dish, that is.

But I have no idea how she manages these complex fractions so adroitly in her head. It would be simpler if she doled out my portion.

Then I could Ask For More.

In the wake of England’s superb victory over France yesterday and Wales’s inept and miserable display in Italy, I was reminded of a little piece I wrote last year after Wales won their second Grand Slam this century. Here it is, in all its previously unpublished glory:

About ten years ago I was having a quiet drink in the Yeoman Warder’s Club in the Tower of London when I fell into conversation with a young officer. Fresh-faced, pink-cheeked, fair-haired, RP of accent and demeanour, straight out of Sandhurst, bursting with confidence and not a little hubris, he was astride his world. Every country has his type.
As he extolled the virtues of English rugby he discovered I was Welsh. His lip curled in an involuntary sneer which years of training made him attempt to disguise. But he couldn’t conceal his opinions.
“There’s little point in England playing any of the home nations any more. The English rugby team is now so powerful the only possible opposition they can find in the northern hemisphere is France. Mark my words, they will scrap this new Six Nations Championship and England and France will compete with the tri-nations (South Africa, Australia, New Zealand) for a real Five Nations Championship.”
“You have to be realistic. There is no way Wales, or Scotland or Ireland, will ever beat England again. We’re much too big and rich and powerful for countries as small as they are to worry us. Granted,” he allowed magnanimously, “there may be the odd freak result but it would be a one-off, like Wrexham beating Arsenal.” He smiled condescendingly. “You buggers can play each other. Probably get Roumania to join in, and Italy. It’d be fun. You’d like it.”
Why do I report his speech in quotes?
Because every bloody word is etched on my memory.
And I would love, love, love to have a drink with that nice young subaltern today.
And slowly grind his pretty little nose in the mud.

And despite the magnificence of England’s play yesterday in what was easily the best game of the tournament so far, next weekend they will be playing Scotland for a mid-table end to the tournament, having won two, lost two.
While the subaltern’s no-hopers will be playing each other for the Championship.
Because we blew it against France, only Ireland can win a Grand Slam, something they have managed to do only once in my — or anyone’s — lifetime. They’ll bottle it, because the weight of history is too heavy on their shoulders, because they’re playing in the cauldron of Cardiff and Wales, despite recent showings, has a pretty fine team.
Hello little subaltern! How are you feeling nowadays?

My aunt Alice Jane Headley married Glyn Jones, a pharmacist, in Conway in the early 1930s. For their wedding present they were given a dresser, a desk, a dining table and six leather-seated dining chairs, all carved out of Welsh oak.

Glyn, a jolly, portly man sucking his perpetual pipe, died in the late sixties. Without him Alice gave up and died shortly afterwards. They had no children; they had each other.

I inherited the wonderful Welsh oak furniture.

Then three years ago we got Bodoni the cat. Since then he has methodically destroyed the leather of all six chairs, sharpening his claws (purely out of vanity, because otherwise he never uses them) on the backs and seats of every chair. Our fault of course, because we should never have allowed him in the dining room. But occasionally he got locked in overnight, little sod.

Admittedly, the leather is about 80 years old, and the seats were saggy, so it really was time to bite the bullet and visit the upholsterer.

He gave us an eye-watering quote (that bastard cat) and we went ahead, one chair at a time. We’ve now got the first two back, and I have to say they look superb.

Before and After

It had to be done at some stage. And Bodoni was the trigger we needed.

How can a poor man etcetera etcetera.

My father, the Revd. L. V. Headley OBE, was imprisoned by the Japanese during WWII.

I recently discovered an article by him in Y Llan, the weekly newspaper of the Church in Wales, dated January 1946. Unfortunately I can’t read my native language so I asked my friend Iona Jones to translate it for me. She is the wife of fotoLibra’s first bank manager from HSBC. Not all bankers are evil.

This is her translation from Welsh to English:

The Japanese did not interfere with the Church services in most of the jail camps.  Restricted services were in Java and in some of the smallest camps in Malaya, but in the bigger camps in Malaya and Siam, services and meetings were allowed.

The biggest problem was that the healthy men had to work so hard – from early morning to dusk – they had no leisure hours at all.  This was also the case in the labour camps such as on the railways in Siam, only the unhealthy and the patients in the hospital were allowed to attend religious services.  Towards the end of our imprisonment – from November 1944 onwards, the Japanese restricted any form of meeting, apart from Church services and religious meetings.  The Chaplains took advantage of this situation, and precious work was undertaken.

When Singapore fell in February 1942, there were 30 Church of England chaplains with the British Prisoner of Wars and from these at least 8 died in imprisonment.  The Church was the first establishment to arrange its work and to rebuild itself following the conquest.  Churches were built in various places within the Chiangi camp, within a rifle range, in a cinema and in a mosque.  Also, several popular open air parade services were held.  More men on average had communion in the prisoner of war camps more than anywhere else.

Several came to the confirmation classes and in July 1942 the Archbishop of Singapore was granted permission to visit the camp to hold a confirmation service and to ordain.  The Rev. H.W.K. Sandy, a deacon was ordained a priest and 180 applicants from other labour camps from different sectors of the island were also confirmed.

The work did not progress as smoothly in Autumn 1942, groups of men left to work in Siam, New Guinea and Borneo.  One or two chaplains would leave with each  group and they would be treated in the same way as the men.

I was chosen to go to Siam along with 3,000 men and most of them Welsh.  The journey took five days and five nights in a goods train overcrowded with people.  We  then walked for miles through the undergrowth and desert with the monsoon rain pouring down.  The work was hard, weather terrible and food was bad.

At the beginning services could only be held on a Sunday night as this was the only time we were excused from the registering to attend the Gospel and the communion which followed.

Very soon, the hospitals became full and this was mostly where the Chaplains would work and also they would bury the dead.  When the cholera plague was rife we would bury ten to twelve people every day.  After three months there were only four hundred men left who were able to carry out even light work.  These men were then sent to Burma, whilst the rest were sent to the hospitals in Kanchanburi.

The hospitals were ‘attap’ sheds built on the rice fields.  The water was up to our ankles and there was no drinking water without transporting it from the town which was two miles away.  The Chaplains were kept very busy here, they would visit the patients, hold services and administer the Holy Communion; and very often would perform the last rights.   Also the average burials here was twelve a day.

Towards Christmas 1942, our regiment was sent back to Singapore, only two-thirds returned.  The regiment, known as ‘H Group’ were sent to camp huts on Sime Road, Singapore.  There was a small chapel erected by previous prisoner of wars and this was then repaired.  Furniture and decorations were made from various bits.  The main person in charge of this was Lieutenant Norman Jones from Holyhead who also helped the Chaplains with the work of the Church, especially with administering the Holy Communion.

Services were held daily at the St David’s Church, Sime Road, Singapore and on St David’s Day the service would be held in Welsh.  Attendance was good at all the services until we were moved to the big camp in Chiangi jail.  There were three churches there, St Luke near to the hospital; St George by the offices and St Paul within the jail, the latter for the regiment only.

The programme for the week:-

Sunday
Holy Communion 07.30am and 08.00am
Morning Prayer and Sermon 10.00am
Gospel 07.30pm
Holy Communion 08.30pm

Monday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
Questions Session 08.30pm

Tuesday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
Confirmation Classes 08.00pm

Wednesday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
Gospel and Sermon 07.30pm

Thursday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
Singing Meeting 08.00pm

Friday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
TOC H Meeting 08.00pm

Saturday
Holy Communion 08.00am
Morning Prayer 10.00am
Gospel and preparation for the Communion 08.00pm

This order was held to every week, unfailing until our segregation in September 1945.

The last service was held in St Paul’s on 7 September where 120 applicants were confirmed.

We hope that for those of us who have served Christ in these camps, that our time in carrying out the Lord’s work is not wasted.

Kanchanburi is today a tourist resort in Thailand, for people who want to see the famous Bridge on the River Kwai.

Which I now discover, my father helped build.

Every Sunday there’s a car boot sale in a schoolyard at the bottom of Hornsey Lane, about two miles away. A buckle has broken on my precious Lederhändler leather rucksack, so I thought that would be a perfect place to find a replacement.

Arsenal were playing at home. Milo and I walked the two miles there to find the car boot sale site had become a temporary football car park. So we walked buckleless the two miles back. A futile expedition.

Why are there no haberdashers any longer?

Humiliated and embarrassed by Ruediger Wischenbart’s distress at the Anglophone bias of the BBC’s 100 Greatest Books of All Time Ever In The History of the World And All The Ones Wot I Have Read, I humbly present a list (dredged from memory) of some of the fiction, plays, verse and and romance books I have read in translation, i.e. where English was not the original language. It is embarrassing in its brevity, but it does demonstrate what a wonderful, massive, flexible language English is, that it can keep we monoglot millions so occupied and inward-looking.
Key: Original language (Latin = Italian) / Title / Author / Marks out of five, as I felt when I first read the book:

1.    CH / Selected Stories / Robert Walser / **
2.    CYM / One Moonlit Night / Caradog Prichard / ****
3.    CZ / Tales from Two Pockets / Karel Capek / *
4.    CZ / The Good Soldier Svejk / Jaroslav Hasek / ***
5.    DE / Death in Venice / Thomas Mann / ***
6.    DE / Diaries / Thomas Mann / **
7.    DE / Emil and the Detectives / Erich Kastner / ***
8.    DE / How German Is It / Walter Abish / **
9.    DE / Italian Journey / Goethe / **
10.   DE / La Ronde / Arthur Schnitzler / **
11.    DE / Perfume / Patrick Süsskind / ****
12.    DE / Steppenwolf / Herman Hesse / ***
13.    DE / The Castle / Franz Kafka / ***
14.    DE / The Flying Classroom / Erich Kastner / **
15.    DE / The Glass Bead Game / Herman Hesse / *
16.    DE / The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke / Rainer Maria Rilke / **
17.    DE / The Never-Ending Story / Michael Ende / ****
18.    DE / The Tin Drum / Günther Grass / ***
19.    DE / The Trial / Franz Kafka / ***
20.    DK / Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow / Peter Hoeg / *
21.    EG / Palace of Desire / Naguib Mahfouz / ****
22.    EG / Palace Walk / Naguib Mahfouz / ****
23.    ES / Don Quixote / Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra / ****
24.    ES / Love in the Time of Cholera / Gabriel Garcia Marquez / ***
25.    ES / One Hundred Years of Solitude / Gabriel Garcia Marquez / ***
26.    ES / The City of the Beasts / Isabel Allende / *
27.    FR / 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea / Jules Verne / ***
28.    FR / A Certain Smile / Françoise Sagan / **
29.    FR / Around The World in Eighty Days / Jules Verne / ***
30.    FR / Asterix passim / ****
31.    FR / Bonjour Tristesse / François Sagan / **
32.    FR / Claudine à Paris / Colette / ***
33.    FR / Delirius / Philippe Druillet / *
34.    FR / From the Earth to the Moon / Jules Verne / ***
35.    FR / Gargantua & Pantagruel / Rabelais / ****
36.    FR / Journey to the Centre of the Earth / Jules Verne / **
37.    FR / Le Grand Meaulnes / Alain-Fournier / ****
38.    FR / Lucky Luke passim / **
39.    FR / Madame Bovary / Gustave Flaubert / **
40.    FR / Montaillou / Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie / **
41.    FR / Papillon / Henri Charriere / ***
42.    FR / Remembrance of Things Past / Marcel Proust / ****
43.    FR / Story of O / Pauline Réage / *
44.    FR / The Knot of Vipers / François Mauriac / **
45.    FR / The Little Prince / Antoine De Saint-Exupery / ****
46.    FR / Three Tales / Gustave Flaubert / **
47.    GR / Republic / Plato / ***
48.    GR / Satirical Sketches / Lucian / **
49.    GR / The Iliad / Homer / ***
50.    GR / The Odyssey / Homer / ***
51.    IR / Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam / ****
52.    IT / 100 Strokes of the Brush before Bed / Melissa P / *
53.    IT / Accidental Death of an Anarchist / Dario Fo
54.    IT / Foucault’s Pendulum / Umberto Eco / *
55.    IT / If on a winter’s night a traveller / Italo Calvino / ***
56.    IT / Jerusalem Delivered / Tasso / **
57.    IT / The Aeneid / Virgil / **
58.    IT / The Divine Comedy / Dante Alighieri / ***
59.    IT / The Garden of the Finzi-Continis / Giorgio Bassani / ****
60.    IT / The Georgics / Virgil / *
61.    IT / The Leopard / Giuseppe di Lampedusa / ****
62.    IT / The Name of the Rose / Umberto Eco / ****
63.    IT / The Woman of Rome / Alberto Moravia / ***
64.    IT / Thyestes / Seneca / **
65.    NO / Four Plays / Hendrik Ibsen / **
66.    NO / Hunger / Knut Hamsen / ***
67.    NO / Sophie’s World / Jostein Gaarder / *
68.    RU / Blind Beauty / Boris Pasternak / *
69.    RU / Lolita / Boris Pasternak / ****
70.    RU / Nine Stories / Leo Tolstoy / **
71.    RU / One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich / Alexander Solzhenitsyn / *
72.    RU / The First Circle / Alexander Solzhenitsyn / *
73.    RU / The Master & Margarita / Mikhail Bulgakov / ****
74.    RU / The White Guard / Mikhail Bulgakov / ***
75.    TR / Felidae / Akif Pirincci / *

I don’t do five stars. I’ve stopped at 75 because I’m dredging the bottom of the barrel. I’ve read more, but I’ve obviously forgotten them and you probably won’t have heard of them.
Sorry, Ruediger!

Valentines’s Day.

The MG has broken down in Swiss Cottage and Yvonne is coming to rescue me.

Bollards in a narrow Islington street have been set a third of the way across the street, so the driver’s lane is narrow going, broad oncoming.

But cars have been parked right up to the bollards, so it is very difficult to squeeze the car through the gap.

So Yvonne sensibly and carefully drives through the wider gap. Nobody gets hurt, nobody gets incommoded, nothing is damaged, nobody is bothered.

The CCTV cameras snap.

The penalty fine arrived this morning.

£120.

To repeat: how can a poor man stand such times and live?

Ten years ago Wim Meulenkamp and I published a book called Follies Grottoes & Garden Buildings.

I’m cataloguing my books using the wonderful Delicious Library, and it gives the second-hand price of many of the titles. I keep seeing FG&GB for sale at £100 or more, so I went to Amazon to double-check.

I love the “LOW ITEM PRICE”. Impressive, huh? I’ve got a few brand new copies here, and I’m selling them for £20‚ correction, WAS selling them for £20.

And they can be signed by one of the authors!