Suppose it were Friday xciv: Casual is a relative term

    We have casual Fridays,

    we have take-your-daugh-

    ter to work Fridays; we

    probably have bring-your

    own-St-Émilion Fridays.

  

    Just yesterday, we had

    the annual workingman's

    day, and suddenly anoth-

    er Friday. What an en-

    lightened calendar, we

    do live by.

 

What did a country house weekend do for Tom?

I take it that as you have 

come alone

you have been unsuccessful.

Not at all.

I have come to remind you - 

you have made a decision.

Are you thinking that I

have changed my mind?

No. You will not be ready

to change your mind

Until you recover from

having made a decision.

I sometimes wonder, how our

reading represents a series

of decisions about texts al-

most as much as writing does.

The Little Augury blog enab-

led this question to be re-

freshed in a posting on the

30th, of several estimable

writers as they appear in a

scrapbook of a noted country

house. I take the liberty of

reading that information in

this way, but it deserves a

glance from everyone.

For my part, I'm simply glad

of an excuse to revisit an

artist I've cited extensive-

ly, with a frustration I've

found invigorating, of ever

being sure I've been right.

In this state I think one

finds the natural pitch of

satisfaction.

T.S. Eliot

1888 - 1965

The Cocktail Party

  A Comedy

  I, iii

Harcourt, Brace, 1950©

I remember, Geordie's birthday is today

An English dog, promised

to me, was born 29 April

in the Santa Ynez valley,
not far from the seaside
town where I summered as
a boy. Geordie helped me
to raise Robbie and Whit,
and then there was a gap
before Thorny. The first
such gap, between Geor-
die's whelping and join-
ing me on Russian Hill,
expired on Bastille Day,
serving notice of Cham-
pagne's continuing elo-
quence, while acquaint-
ing me with a maxim to
which I've ever since
gladly adhered: never
inflict a great vintage
upon a great occasion,
for nothing could be 
more symmetrically su-
perfluous.

   For those of us who find it useful
   to make periodic audits of our lives,
   it is probably common ground that we
   soon discover that for the exercise
   to be challenging does not necessarily
   require it to be morbid; we also learn
   that while there is real value in ask-
   ing the question, 'Why am I doing this?'
   there is not always a neat and comfor-
   table answer; I don't think that matters.

   Let no one think I am laying claim to
   have done anything important. I am un-
   wavering in my belief that [mine] is
   essentially an ephemeral affair; frivol-
   ous, even. That for me is part of its at-
   traction and its romance .. closely bound
   up with pleasure; both the giving and the
   taking of pleasure.

rmbl, a project I do not think of as a blog, is a manifestation of a taste for the lark, which Jo-han Huizinga had the wit to historicise in Homo Ludens (1938), not the ideal year for promulgating the primacy of the spirit of play in culture. The lark is never afforded an inter-val, however; its char-acter is to interrupt.




I observe a timely interval
of comparative silence this
May, not that it's any more
possible to restrain Huizin-
ga's antic herald, than it
is to enhance his song with
Champagne. In his silence I
still don't doubt his trill.



















Hugh Cavendish
A Time to Plant
  Life and Gardening
 at Holker
op. cit.

ii  Photo Hedi Slimane

Fiduciary metrics, revisited

At a Christ Church [College,

Oxford] Governing Body Meet-

ing, when the investment of

college capital was being

discussed, someone advocated

the general principle of in-

vestment in land, since for

300 years this had always

proved profitable. 

'But you must remember', 

interposed Hutchinson, the 

Treasurer, 'that the last 

300 years have been a very 

exceptional period.'

Hugh Trevor-Roper

December, 1942

The Wartime Journals

op. cit.