I was so very very pleased to receive your last letter.

When the door­bell rang this morn­ing and a scruffy post office urchin deliv­ered a cheery “morn­ing gov! Spe­cial let­ter for ya” I was so delighted to see your return address I lost my head and gave the young fel­low a full shilling as a gra­tu­ity. He was so sur­prised that he nearly fell under the wheels a han­som cab and received a crack from the dri­vers whip. Maud, the chil­dren and I sat around the crack­ling logs of the Christ­mas fire and read your com­mu­ni­ca­tion with total joy. I con­fess Maud may still have inde­cent and improper thoughts about you after that week in Bognor but I have long for­given you and we have sworn to speak of it no more, so I shall ascribe the flush in her cheeks just to a lit­tle too much laudenum.

Young Char­lie was not clear what Mead was. Bless him, I shall have Fort­nums deliver a spe­cial half-bottle to him for when he goes back up to Eton after the new year; though I fear his mas­ters at upper may take it from him since he is still hav­ing to fag. The rec­om­pense is that bru­talised by all this dis­ci­pline he should develop into a nasty men­ac­ing young man and do me credit in our Indian empire. As to this hor­rid mod­ern trend of aca­d­e­mic endeav­our, If I catch him get­ting Sent up for Good at Eton I shall thrash him soundly: I won’t hav­ing boy of mine dis­grace him­self with aca­d­e­mic excel­lence, though if he gets a White Ticket I shall thrash him for being a dunce: the Geeklawyer’s are renowned for a politic sense of the right achieve­ment at the right time, I can’t abide showiness.

Mer­ci­fully young Daisy only has to learn to play the pianoforte and how to make polite con­ver­sa­tion so as to find a good hus­band: minor nobil­ity would be best, or gen­tle­man with an estate and ten thou­sand a year, a par­son at a pinch — but none of these ghastly trades­man who are get­ting so uppity these days. I was walk­ing down the Parade the other day and a milliner said ‘good morn­ing’ to me. He looked me straight in the eye. I led him into a side alley and thrashed him with my cane until he screamed in ter­ror. Damned impu­dence. I think he won’t talk to his bet­ters again with­out being invited to speak first, let alone indulge in social chit chat as though he were on equal terms. I con­fess I rather enjoyed giv­ing him the beat­ing and spent the after­noon with my doxy in Vic­to­ria Street work­ing off the excitement.

I saw young Baby­Barista at my Inn the other day. He is a decent fel­low and I wish him well. I think per­haps your resent­ment of him is born of the fact that he is a Wyke­hamist but frankly despite that he is a decent fel­low, a Quiris­ter I under­stand, and prone to no more than rare acts of sodomy in his days at school: which makes him pos­i­tively het­ero­sex­ual by their terms. And he has a jolly sharp mind too. Good luck to him and his book deal say I; these fel­lows usu­ally need to earn money since they are invari­ably of noble but poor stock.

As for Mor­cambe or Wise I con­fess I think it was only ever notable for Angela Ripon’s legs. I’d rather watch Bernard Man­ning. Your con­cern with pop­u­lar­ity is ill thought out and I ascribe it to being infected with read­ing that six­penny jour­nal ‘Ruthies­law’ too much. Think of it: they are both from up north — or ‘oop north’ as they say it. These are peo­ple who aspire to being lower mid­dle class. Think again dear Charon, think again. Indeed I even have the sus­pi­cion that VM may be a female imper­son­ator, or an Har­rov­ian which is largely the same thing if you will for­give me being otiose. No, for­get such things.

Instead may I sug­gest that we salute our skills? I have a prodi­gious capac­ity for Mead and you for Rioja. I for unspeak­able lan­guage and worse thoughts. You for enter­tain­ing excursa. Besides which I dance remark­ably badly. My céilidh was the talk of Otley, and I mean that in a bad way.

Nor do I think the BBC would be inter­ested in our pod­cast. They are obsessed with real­ity shows. I was invited to their xmas party, as I think I told you. I tucked young Char­lie and Daisy up in bed and ensured that Maud had taken sev­eral syringes of Laud­num. That lat­ter I feel guilty about, but it was always pos­si­ble I might hook some young strum­pet and wish to ser­vice her in a more com­modi­ous place than Browns Hotel. I met sev­eral inter­est­ing young women: the eter­nally com­pelling Becky Hogge (of the Dorset Hogges I think) a young lady who worked for Google which I under­stand pub­lishes an elec­tri­cally dis­trib­uted pam­phlet of some sort and an engag­ing young girl called A** who was slim pretty intel­li­gent and upon whom I have cast my libidi­nous designs for a new mis­tress; to which end we shall meet for tea at the Ritz next month (though the Ritz is irre­deemably infra dig). And there was also young Mar­tin Kee­gan in a state of some ‘refresh­ment’, as I think you call it, although this is not odd since he hails from Aus­tralia. Worst still the ne’er do well is from Ade­laide which is, I am told, a low class part of Aus­tralia, con­tra Lis­more where the streets are paved with gold and the women are comely and viva­cious. Dis­con­cert­ingly I find that he reads my blog, a dis­tress­ing dis­cov­ery dis­clos­ing that he knows me in real life and so I feel con­strained to be hon­est, although that may be over­stat­ing it.

And so dear CharonQC we shall speak on the pod­cast. And sense shall be uttered in some degree.