It has come to my attention that my name was taken in vain recently on this thread. Well, well. I had shaken the dust of this silly forum off my heels quite some time ago, but a sort of morbid curiosity, I suppose, has compelled me to look in on it now and then. I see that Tweed is still around. Pity! He seems worried about the possibility that someone might geld him. Ha! What would be the point? No female still capable of bearing children has ever been attracted to Tweed, so I hardly think we are in danger of his genes being perpetuated or passed on in the usual fashion. No, dears, I think we can all rest easily and put that dark thought entirely out of our minds!

Things have been breathlessly busy around Rutledge Mansion, what with our frequent trips to Europe, the remodeling of the Henry the VIIIth room, the installation of the Roman baths, and Winston's beastly insistence on continuing with the "sporting life", as he calls it (the murder of innocent wild animals and the wastage of perfectly good horses), and Veronica's roaring about madly in her new Porsche! Yes, Winston bought her a zebra-striped Porsche. Veronica could not decide whether to have a black Porsche or a white one, so she said, "Make it in both colours then!" I am told it is the only one ever made in the zebra-striped scheme, and I believe it! I advised against it, not because of the price (astronomical!) or the appearance (hideous!), but because I fear that she may kill herself in it. Veronica drives just as aggressively as Winston, but with only one tenth of his experience and finesse. Like a madwoman, in other words.

It will be on her head if she comes to grief, and I may have to say "I told you so!" to her gravestone, but there seems to be nothing I can do about it.

I do long sometimes for those carefree days in southern Spain, away from the madding crowd, if I may say it, in stuffy old Twillingsgate and boring old London. Becoming married had the salutary effect of causing the immediate evaporation of a host of romantically obsessed pests who fancied themselves as my suitors, but it has burdened me with a mountain of other responsibilities that I sometimes grow weary of.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair and that apelike, subhuman creature George Bush Jr are persisting in their military madness, and the general tenor and grace of society is declining visibly with every passing season...

It's all just damned tedious if I may say so.

* PR