Baleful

Brilliant solo performance.

Peta, 23, from Essex

I am considering employing Peta in my investment advisory department. She has many of the attributes that some of our male entrepreneurial clients find attractive in a private banker.

And she is well briefed on precious metals' market behaviour.

I dare say she can provide a couple of tips for our clients that they will find most persuasive.

Feel free to add your own puns in the comments thread.

H/T FT Alphaville

An Extract From the Book:

‘I had started jogging regularly out of Downing Street. Occasionally I happened to jog past a hooker standing on the same street corner. With some apprehension I would brace myself as I approached her for what was most certainly to follow.

"Fifty quid!" she would shout from the kerb.
"No way, 50p!" I fired back.

This ritual between myself and the hooker continued for days. I'd run by and she'd yell, "Fifty quid!" And I'd yell back "50p!"

One day however Cherie decided that she wanted to accompany me on my jog. As we jogged nearer the problematic street corner, I realised the "pro" would bark her £50 offer and Cherie would wonder what I'd really been doing on all my past outings. I realised I’d need to have a damn good explanation for my illustrious lawyer wife. As we jogged into the turn that would take them past the corner, I became even more apprehensive than usual. Sure enough, there was the hooker. I tried to avoid the prostitute's eyes as she watched the pair of us jog past.

Then, from the pavement, the hooker yelled:
"See what you get for 50p?"

Road to Nowhere - a Compo

Idle lay in his bath this morning, listening to his 'Desert Island' playlist on his iPod speakers. About five songs in, up came 'Road to Nowhere' by the estimable Talking Heads.

Later on, in the car, someone mentioned Kensal Green on Radio 4. I have never been to Kensal Green, but I know about the cemetery, it being the closing destination in that utterly fabulous paean to England's unstraight roads by GK Chesterton. For those who don't know it, here it is (and it's no hardship for those who do know it):

The Rolling English Road

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
GK Chesterton

So, my requirement for the compo subject was finally revealed: I want geography, or topography, or directions, or sign posts, or being lost. Or found, perhaps. Thoroughfares, byways, dead ends and tracks that peter out. But I don't want travel, per se, nor do I want modes of transport. Chesterton didn't spoil his masterpiece by talk of cars or trains and I don't see whay you lot should either.

Clerihews probably don't spring to mind for this one, but be my guest if you want. Epics, limericks, sonnets, haikus. There is room for them all.

You have a week at least. Tell your friends, not so much because I want traffic on this blog, more because a big entry will make it more amusing for all of us. There will be a prize.

More on The Coward

Another letter to the Telegraph with vital information about The Coward:

SIR – I must take issue with Quentin Smith (Letters, August 24). The “Coward” on the Stock Exchange, Lionel Frisby, had not only the MC but also the DSO. His brother, Cyril, however, had the VC.

Mark Ferguson
Wonston, Hampshire

Nicknames

I love nicknames. I rarely call people by their given names and most colleagues get a nickname whether they like it or not.

Often, the harshest nicknames are the best and most endearing. The Telegraph has had a good run of letters about nicknames over the past week. Today's main letter is a peach:

SIR – Those with experience of the old Stock Exchange floor will readily recall some of the nicknames (Letters, August 22) bestowed upon its habitués.
Among them were two brothers, both with highly distinguished military careers and both winners of the Military Cross, one with bar and one without.
The latter acquired the sobriquet of “The Coward”.

Quentin Smith
Dunley, Hampshire

Tally Ho!

Sorry, readers. I nipped out for a quick fag and a pint on June 1st and suddenly the whole summer has flown by in a blur of music events, sport, the Turf, much drinking and the luxury of a three week summer holiday in France.

After being away for so long, the challenge of restarting the old blog machine was oddly challenging. Alceste, who comments in this manor, suggested a compo, which has cured bloggers' block in the past. I will probably use that ploy in a few days.

But first, the chaps in light blue. It was splendid to perform my morning shave today listening to the complete, unedited speech by Churchill that the Today programme re-ran. I was almost tempted to miss the upper lip and start fashioning a raffish fighter pilot moustache. Had I any Brylcreme, I might have slicked the barnet. Even taken up pipe-smoking for a day. Well done, lads; a magnificent show.

Here is the Spectator's editorial on the speech. It seems quaint, in this modern age of warfare, to read about aircraft production and borrowing destroyers from America. Pity that Blair and his succession of useless Defence Secretaries didn't think about armoured Landrover production, or kevlar body armour production, or night goggles, or boots that could cope with rocky desert, etc etc. Still, at least those expensive new chairs in the MoD were comfy.

Mr Churchill Looks Ahead

The Spectator, 23 August 1940

Mr Churchill surpassed even his own masterpieces of lucid and spirited exposition in his speech on Tuesday, in which he surveyed the first year of the war and the last exciting days of victory in the air and looked fearlessly into the future. During the previous fortnight, and especially during the previous week, the nation had become aware of the fact that the intensified air attack was part of that onslaught on Britain whose approach was trumpeted in Germany. It might be no more than a preliminary to bigger attacks to come, but none the less it has been evident that so severe a defeat in an opening engagement, inflicted by the incredible skill and daring of the R.A.F., could not be without its effect on the whole campaign, whilst the destructive attacks by our bombers on the bases and industrial centres of the enemy proved that our capacity was as great in offensive as in defensive operations.
These spectacular triumphs achieved by a relatively small number of flying-men had already heartened the people and nerved them to endure the casualties which must be a consequence of even unsuccessful raids. But it was left to Mr. Churchill to put these events in their wider perspective and to indicate with authority and vision the grounds for confidence in the future. There was a superb but reasoned assurance in his conviction that the British Empire, though confronting the combined power of Germany and Italy, is capable of bringing the war to a victorious conclusion. He alluded ironically to the new German threat of "total blockade," and affirmed our own intention to maintain and enforce a real blockade of Germany, Italy, France, and all the countries that are occupied by the enemy. He dismissed the pleas of those who asked that food should be sent to France or other occupied countries on the grounds that it was for Germany to organise the food supplies that she had disorganised, and that to allow food to go to the subject peoples would be to help the enemy.
This is an argument the force of which is fully appreciated in the United States. No less satisfying to them and to us is the statement that the interests of the United States and of the British Empire both require that the former should have facilities for the naval and air defence of the Western Hemisphere, and that this country will be glad to afford these by leasing suitable sites in the Western Atlantic to be fortified and defended by them. He refrained from linking up this question in any way with the suggestion that America should send us old destroyers and other vessels. That was wise. In such a matter there should be no thought of striking a bargain. Co-operation, to the utmost that either side feels free to offer, is profoundly to be desired – and Mr Churchill has not disguised the fact that we should be glad of their destroyers. But to attempt to achieve such a result under the constraints of a deal would be the wrong sort of approach to this or any similar problem.
Mr Churchill reminded us that it is not in our hearts only that we have been fortified. In preparing our defences immense advances have been made in the short time that has elapsed since Dunkirk. Our aircraft production now surpasses that of Germany. The Army is growing in strength and equipment with every day that passes. Both the Navy and the mercantile marine are stronger than at the beginning of the war. The forces that we are piling up – numbers of trained men ever-increasing in proportion to the increasing supplies of warships, aircraft, tanks, cannon, machine-guns and rifles – are for the moment acting mainly on the defensive, but not without an offensive in the air which is dealing smashing blows at the very sources of German power and an offensive at sea which maintains the blockade. But though at this stage the defensive is necessarily our first pre-occupation it will not always be so, nor perhaps for long. Behind us is not only the vast potential of our expanding war industries but that of the Empire, and in addition the expanding output of friendly America. We are prepared for invasion now with the confidence borne of resolution and knowledge of strength, and the same knowledge gives us equal confidence of our ability during the next year or two to carry the war against the enemy to a victorious conclusion.