IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE

Among my favourite authors are George Orwell, Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Rudyard Kipling, H. H. Munro ('Saki'), Vladimir Nabokov, and Georges Simenon. Five Englishmen, a Russian, and a Belgian. As a teenager, the last four were my constant companions.

One long summer break in England we stayed at a farm in Devon. It rained most of the time, and I holed up in the smoking room for whole days with my books and my pipes.
Honestly, I had a fine old time. England is lovely when it's miserable.
Tea, tobacco, a good read, the sounds of weather.

Much like the Netherlands, where we lived.

I always found it somewhat regrettable that Priem's bookstore in Valkenswaard did not have a good selection of English books. Their clientele was mostly Dutch speakers who at that time were not as fluent in English as they have become since.
The tobacco store very near Priem's was, sadly, more snooty than the one where I bought my weekly supply, yet did not offer any products like Balkan Sobranie or Dunhill.
Or even a decent selection of Virginia flakes.
They catered mostly to smokers of soggy aromatics.

In the words of my father: "good pipe tobacco does not smell like a Turkish bath house".
Or like a Parisian Bagnio. I'm not sure of the phrasing.
I don't think he had visited either.

The point is, he had standards. Not only in tastes, but in personal conduct, and the people he liked or disliked. It probably was not a generational thing. One can think of many people from that era who lacked moral fibre and were rank opportunists, downright criminals and vulgarians. Heck, the entire postwar period was littered with flaws and garbage.

None of the people with whom my parents associated were like that.

It's a question of gallantry and a generosity of spirit.
Really, about how a person treats others.


There are several people with whom I come into regular contact whose political thoughts repell me, damned well make me despair of society every truly getting out of the stone age. But fundamentally they are sound, just stupid and crazy. So I do not actively dislike them.
Only a few are bounders. Whom one should treat courteously and deal with like a professional, but keep at considerably more than arms length.


There are four whom I like. All four are retired, clear headed, and intelligent.
Profoundly decent people with a gentleness about them.
They're also liberals. Might not be coincidence.




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