Postscript . .
Look now at only one, and by no means the most pathetic, of the sequels. A parson I know in East Anglia writes (I omit some of the proper and place names): 'Last Tuesday a man came to the house on a bicycle. He had come a long way to consult me. It seems he was a farmer in a small way who had been ill and eventually sold his farm. I should say he is about fifty-five, and he told me his son, aged thirteen, has a scholar- ship to the local grammar school and is doing very well. For the last year he has had no em- ployment, and been living on his bit of capital. but last month he was offered a job in Grimsby. However the weekly bus fare from his home is 35s. which would have made the job hardly worth while. The chap hummed and hawed for a bit, and then came to the point. He had been offered a bed for the inside of each week by his brother-in-law, who is a bachelor and lives in Grimsby, and had accepted. But last week a woman from the village came to see his wife and said, "Your husband will get arrested if he goes to Grimsby." On being asked in some bewilder- ment why, the woman went on, "He's going to live with a man and under this new Wolfenden Homosexuality Law he can be arrested if he stays with a man who isn't married." You can hardly believe it,' my parson friend goes on, 'but the poor little man was fearfully worried, and in spite of all I could say he has practically de- cided not to take the job. What a triumph for Mr. John Gordon ! '
A colleague who watched the last night of I Proms on television and achieved a pleasing stereophonic illusion by having his radio set an at the same time tells me that all was well It'll!' the sound-radio commentator began. `Who 1111' miffy little man was I do not know,' he write' j. `but for unctuous BBC smugness he would be bar . to beat when it came to describing the banoer', brought with them (for waving at the cameras by the Promenaders. "There's one very strange non sequitur," he said, in a voice that sounded if it was suspended over a dead cat, "it sag' ; 'Proms Not Bombs.' I really can't think vill311 that's got to do with it." That was, I suppose, WI, in the BBC tradition of imagining you have ab°1 ; ished something by pretending not to know aVilio it. But it is just conceivable that this man ren'o' had not heard of the hydrogen bomb or the in, that many people want it abolished; he certain); wasn't much more an fait with the rest of proceedings, saying, when Sir Malcolm 9, gent's fellow-conductor came on to take a bc* "And here comes Donald Cameron."' Nobody in this country writes more sensibi or more stylishly about wine than RaY111 Postgate, who is a scholar, a wit, a radical, an I am happy tosay an old friend and occasional]' a colleague. Sc, I am in every delightful waY judiced when I commend his tiny book, 1 , Home Wine Cellar, published by Herbert Jen, kins at a mere 3s. 6d.. and packed with inforl lion on how to create a cellar, what to put 11:1; and what wines are good for.you. He even leo' you how to bottle wine, and although I hart never been able to pick up a hammer with.°,,e clocking myself one, he almost makes me beheld that by following his instructions I really e°1/10 do it myself. (Incidentally, those who want„t1 should first read Postgate and then get in r°11:10 with The Private Wine Buyers' SocietY,' Jermyn Street, SW1, who can provide the sary equipment and who ship appropriate One in bulk.) The only thing is that whatever saves by doing one's own bottling I 011 gladly hand over to someone else to do it forflae, Papa Postgate's book crams into eighty pa not only much sensible information but 'Is agreeable anecdotes and obiter dicta. I liked,, observation .,n the 'unprofessional enthus!aa of some doctors whose zeal for the health-Siv.1 v, qualities of wine carries them.away, 'I have 11110( self heard,' he writes, 'Dr. Eylaud, of the facii, s. of Medicine lof the University of Bordeaux] 45” tain vigorously the thesis that enemas arecv ,4 when compounded with 25 per cent. 01-0, Emilion; I find this hard to believe. In anY late that is not the channel by which I prefer to In my St. Emilicn ' of I trust that the author's manifest sots': humour armours him against the flattering 11'1;s graph on the Spectator in this week's Si° je, Trade News, an organ of the bookselling trno which pays its little tribute to a number ofj distinguished colleagues, among them 13'rn'l Levis and Raymond Postage.
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