Notes From A Drunk Man Meemed

What Ho Proles!

Well feel free to knock me down with a chicken drumstick. No seriously, come at me, why don’t you!? And I little care what animal you make your weapon of choice. I’m an easy target in my current much-weakened state brought about by the honest grape. You see, I’ve quaffed my fair share of liquid organic compounds these last few days and I’ve completely lost my land legs. Mrs. Priggs claims the count is up to two-dozen bottles of the red but I say that it’s a damn lie and if it’s more than a dozen, I’ll give up booze for the New Year.

However, you might be wondering why I’m breaking my sabbatical. Well, there is a perfectly rational explanation. I’ve been meemed. Is that the right word? Damn odd thing, if you ask me. Mr. Appleyard, a fine upstanding Englishman of great wit and learning, has given me what amounts to a virus of the intellect which I’m now meant to help promulgate. I must say: I feel not unlike a lower league poultry exporter sending out cheap batches of Chinese turkeys for the festive season. Nevertheless, let’s get on with it.

‘The Seven Best Things You’ve Done This Year’.

Well, I’m sure it could be phrased in a way more pleasing to the ear: ‘The Seven Things Most Worthy of an English Gentleman’ or ‘The Seven Most Memorable Accomplishments of One’s Year’. Anyway, I’ve given it some thought and this is what I’ve come up with.

1. Voted Tory. Not so much ‘the best thing’ as ‘the done thing’.

2. Remained true to my Englishness. What’s become of this nation when you can’t randomly walk up to a person on the street and immediately discourse of the merits of Shakespeare’s deployment of the caesura over the length of the metrical line? We must act and act quickly, lest we forget our Shelley or our Byron.

3. Started this blog. Met some fine people. Some less than fine people. And met some Lib Dems too. Still, that can’t be helped. It takes all sorts… Also started to write my Memoir. It’s still in draft form, you understand, but there are 50,000 words up there so far. If they’re not a best seller for next Christmas, I’ll be taking the matter up with my legal team.

4. Blackballed my share of upstarts from my club. The problem with new money is it believes it can purchase everything that comes with breeding or (more rarely) learning. These people have neither.

5. Read some good literature. Much as I’ve enjoyed discovering Mr. Marquez, I have taken the usual pleasure from Mssrs. Maugham, Scott, and Nabokov. In verse, I’ve shunned the modern versifiers in favour of my perennial favourites: the English Romantics sans Coleridge. The Colonial poets or those with Colonial leanings have amused me the most: Mr. Gunn, Mr. Eliot, Mr. Stephens, and Ms. Dickinson.

6. Promoted the Bentley as the only reliable means of transport. I can’t advise you enough. Go and out and get yourself one.

7. Reminded my old friend, David 'Dilly' Cameron, that we old style Tories are still alive and well in the land. He can’t ignore us forever and there are still more of us than the damn foxes.

I understand I have to meem seven others. Bless my soul, I don’t believe I know seven other bloggers. So, let me make this a matter domestic and foreign. On these shores, I name: Mr. John Wilkes, The Devil’s Kitchen, Dave Hill, and two I'm damn sure won't respond: David Davies and David Willets. Across the seas, I name thee: Momentary Academic and Mild Colonial Boy.

Okay, I can hear bottles being uncorked.

Until anon,