The Roaring Noughties

The memsahib and I had a busy Saturday. Chafing at the caliginosity of a drab London day, we leapt into the trusty motor and roared off toward Kent, where a large house called Chevening (now a Government Dacha) nestles a tad uncomfortably between the M25 and the North Downs. A charming hamlet, no doubt constructed to house the army of flunkeys, fops, and hangers-on formerly considered necessary for gracious living, stretches along one side of the narrow road. Our route (now traditional) took us past the splendid parish church and then along a bog-like lane to a farm which appears, for reasons which have always evaded us, to sit in a moat of stagnant slurry. Still, each to their own.

From there, a sharp haul up a bloody big hill and Glory Hallelujah, you're up on the Downs and looking South over Sevenoaks and the Weald. But this is not why we walk this route. No, on we plod, across glutinous ploughed fields and scrappy pasture, passing a large ornamental gateway which leads from nowhere to nothing very much, then suddenly jinking left into woodland. And here we reach our object - a huge carpet of snowdrops, scattered under the trees and gleaming icily in the shadows deep in the woods. We come here every year in early March, to remind ourselves that winter will end and that life is going on. It is a three hour drive (passing, God help us, through Croydon - surely the closest analogue for Purgatory to be found in this benighted country) for what is no more than a two hour walk - but what is the loss of wordly time, compared to the nourishment of one's immortal soul, eh?

Nevertheless, we don't have that many worldly hours to waste so we motored back to London at speed because we had a party to go to. Essential preparations were necessary. One simply cannot turn up to a party in a global recession without champagne, don't you think? And London is now blessed with a chain of Boche foodshops (Lidl) that knock out a damned agreeable champagne at a paltry £13 a pop. And this really is Champagne, not some industrial Cava or dubious Armenian sparkling gunk. It is not Laurent Perrier, of course, but I have, in the course of my official duties, been served much worse by people who would purport to know much better. And whilst I am all in favour of quality over quantity, sometimes "quantity has a quality of its own" as they say.

Anyway, we arrived to find that others had shared our views. The first half of the evening was awash with champagne, whilst the second half floated on a substantial lake of vin rouge. A dangerous mix, I think you will agree. And the upshot was that I was distinctly rowdy by the stroke of midnight. As the evening wore on, things became frenetic. The Foxtrot gave way to the Charleston. Ladies smoked openly in mixed company. Several gentlemen declaimed comic monologues of dubious taste. Wild jazz-age music wailed from the phonograph. By the small hours, I regret to say that exuberance and excessive bonhomie had taken their toll. It was a small and sorry crowd who went their separate ways in the early hours of Sunday morning.

And the damndest thing - we all seemed to have a 24 hour bug the next day. Shocking headaches, shaking limbs, mild nausea, fatigue. Coincidence? I think not. As our host said when I mentioned this today, "I can only assume that it must have been the Salami."