AFORE YE GO
Leaves from the commonplace book of Wallace Arnold
I have long favoured maroon socks, and I am occasionally attracted by the prospect of sweet sherry, but in few other ways am I what one might describe as eccentric. Nevertheless, the avowedly eccentric have long seen in me a soul-mate. They recog- nise me, I suspect, as a 'people person', delighting in the foibles of my fellow man, collecting them as others collect trinkets or stamps.
My library of commonplace books, stretching back now over 30 odd years, provides an at-a-glance guide to the pecca- dilloes and partialities of the unconven- tional.
I need hardly state how invaluable these commonplace books have proved while I have been compiling 'Those Marvellous Mitfords', an anthology of the antics and aphorisms of that peculiarly British family, to be published by My Lord Weidenfeld in the spring.
Over the past week, section M for Mitford has grown full to o'erflowing, for I have had the immense good fortune to bump into Decca, the most radical of the famous sisters, who founded her own recording company before flying to China to fight for Che Guevara against Franco. Now, as gloriously leftish as ever, she never enters a London taxi without first offering to share the driving.
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