Postscript . .
ONE of the many appealing things about the News of the World, which is the paper I turn to first on a Sunday morning, is the coy peri- phrases it uses in avoiding words and phrases that are a commonplace in sush earthier public prints as the Times, say, and the Guardian, which specify, on Mondays, how grave and how serious are the grave offences and serious charges one has read hints about on Sunday. It was the News of the World, a long time ago now, in describing a particularly wholehearted and thorough-going trunk murder, that said that the unfortunate woman victim had been cut into six separate pieces, but 'had not been interfered with.' Last Sunday I was pleased to read of the fifteen-year- old girl brought before a Lancashire juvenile court as being beyond parental control, of whom the policewoman said that, 'on one arm she saw tattoo marks and on the upper part of the girl's body, printed in ink, were the words "Mild" and "Bitter." 'The upper part of the girl's body' seems an especially well-chosen phrase.
take it, by the way, that if it had been Chel- sea, and not, Lancashire, it would have been 'Red' and 'White,' or 'Sweet' and 'Dry.'
On many a morning, as I leave home, I see lying untidily on my doorstep a sizeable length of cheap, yellowish string. Every morning, as I arrive at this office, I see a similar length— sometimes a couple of lengths—lying on the Spectator's doorstep. They have been thrown down by the postmen as they untie the bundles of letters for each address before shoving them through the letter-box. Different postmen serve the street in which I live and the street in which I earn my living, so this oafish untidiness is no individual idiosyncrasy. It will take more than one man, even one of Her Majesty's Ministers, to lift Britain up from its position as the scruffiest country in Europe, and London as the most squalid capital, but the Postmaster-General could make a start by telling his postmen to stuff their bits of string into pocket or postbag.
The sortie I made to Spain, between Post- scripts, was so brief and so completely devoted to sherry—its growing, its maturing and, above all, its consumption—that I hadn't time to see a bullfight. Not that I very much wanted to, but I have long held that visitors from a country which sets dogs upon stags and is cruel to children should at least see what it is they 'criticise before sounding off about the national sport of a country which is kind to children and sets men against bulls. But there was no getting away from talk about bullfighting, for everyone in Andalucia, where the great fighting bulls are bred, seemed to be discussing the new regulations, just brought into force. There's been something of a reaction, it seems, against the princely prestige and the enormous emoluments enjoyed by the great bullfighters, and a good deal of pleasure (not all of it without malice) 1 960 that the new rules are going to make them ear° their cash and their cachet the hard way agaie" Some of them had been refusing to Welt' except for fantastic sums, against bulls OBI hadn't had their horns shaved'—not to blt101 them but to destroy or damage the bull': 3 jar ment in attack: this practice is now forbidden' and more power, and the opportunity to use It' has been given to the local police to act gr, 340 the use of such devices as the dropping heavy sandbags on the bull's back, just before he goes into the ring, and the use of hypodermic' to damage his nervous system. (And who srr we, or our race-going friends, to denounce 110 as un-English?) I have never cared for the idea of bullfightittl, but I have long believed that as a brave Ma! and an artist the bullfighter was a good de3' more deserving of his popular acclaim than crooners and professional footballers are fler/ are at singing and at football, too). If my n 31; (especially as the Spaniards are better than are for bullfighters has been, in recen' years, perhaps a little less than fully justified, is good to know that their public is bringing tbneli up again to their proper position.
Everyone knows that sherry is made on ei solera system in which, as wine is drawn off 1110 oldest cask of a particular type, the cask is re' freshed from 'the next oldest, and so on—all adding up to the fact that there is no such tbiril P. as a 'vintage' sherry. But there are always ex ce tions to what everyone knows, and I visited' in Jerez, the bodega whence comes a via, sherry I have been enjoying recently n` hOme. For nearly all Jerez shippers keep, blended, a very small amount of the wine 01 especially successful years from which to give If special 'finish' to some of their more importati; blends. It is one of the rarest things in the wori° for any of these single vintages to be sold, 1° cask or in bottle, but the firm I visited, Gordo and Rivero, not long ago sold a west-countrl firm a quarter-cask of their 1911, a true vintage sherry and, almost as rare, of the pato type, which lies between fino and oloroso. ° highly prized in Spain and is hardly known here, It is a deepish amber in colour—deeper than in° amontillados—with a full flavour but a jr almost bitter, finish and every intimation of true breeding. oo' Amateurs of the rare and curious should that it can be bought from Crosse Bros., 25 fligb Street, Wells, Somerset, who call it, simply, 'Veil! Superior Old Sherry,' explaining to me that tbl' 'is no more and no less than the truth and av0id5 a lot of explaining about dates, exceptionf. to111° rule, etc.' Not only is it an excellent wine and. true rarity, both in type and in being a `vintagC sherry, but, to complete an agreeably out-of-tbe' ordinary picture, is made by a Spanish nolbleolui' 1 with a Scottish name—Alexander Gordo, M "tr quis of Irun—who has some claim, I gather.° being a clan chieftain, but whose family has beell in Spain, exporting sherry to Britain, since ii4.1. You could hardly have more topics to la' about over a glass of sherry, which makes it 0111, uncommonly cheap to me, even it it weren't good as it is, at a pound a bottle.
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