Well I never...!

...Wonder why I've been forgetting to blog on Fridays...

This is what I did yesterday: met the infamous Mr B, who was recovered by then from Wednesday's chemo session, for lunch.
Then I tried to get a flu shot but they were all out. So I must call on Monday in case the new shipment is in.

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On a homemade game of Rounders (similar to baseball):
...Players on the batting side must never run inside the bases, whatever these may be -- trees, walking sticks, hats, or coats. In the latter cases, bases should not be stood upon...

Relay races are amusing, particularly if each team contains a very small child, who cannot be relied on to keep to the course.

Some of the more unusual weekend games.

A water game:
...Kissing at the bottom of the sea is a strange experience and not likely to be spotted by the guardians of our morals. The lovers should stand about ten yards apart up to their necks, empty their lungs, and crawl towards each other along the bottom with their eyes open.

Looking at your feet through the wrong end of the opera-glasses while you try to walk, step by step, one foot put straight in front of the other, down a string laid on the floor.

To make a Cockyolly Bird. An old-fashioned night-gown is necessary. Put the legs through the arms, and the head through the neck, then have the bottom of the night-gown tied up as a tail. This fowl is more charming than it sounds.

[It seems these weekend house-party guests had too much time on their hands back in 1924...(Yes, more from The Weekend Book.) If only they had some Jeeves and Wooster to read.]

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Item from the New York Social Diary:

At an auction for the Waldorf Hotel Restoration Project, a 10-week old Jack Russell Terrier from a breeder in San Antonio, Texas, won the highest bid at $15,000.
Then someone in the audience offered to buy her for $20,000 from the previous bidder, who accepted.
When the night was over, Big Spender disappeared without leaving a check/cheque and no one knows who will take the doggie. (Possibly the next highest bidder, actor Tony Danza, for $8,000.)

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Despite all the time he spends gushing over the elite at their glittering galas, it appears the writer of the NYSD does not like Prince Charles.

"He’s perfectly pleasant, beautifully turned out, ponderously pampered and earnestly pompous. He dwells entirely in a world surrounded by more than a hundred servants, extensive palatial real estate, ancient traditions that bestow privilege (or lack of) which walls him off from the vagaries of the hoi-polloi....There are almost no rich men or women on the planet who have it this good, except possibly Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, who came upon their wealth and status in the old fashioned way – they worked for it."

Pardon me...the old fashioned way?
Last I heard, the old fashioned way of owning privilege was by inheritance.
Trust an American to approach it from a Puritan point of view. It is only in the past generation or two that earned wealth has also earned respect in Britain. The British, naturally, have been slower to adopt this mindset, so that today the RP-speaking, public school-educated upper classes have slipped out of their traditional positions of natural privilege and are more often than not as poor as church mice. In fact, the only thing holding some of the crumbling country seats together are cobwebs and rotting twine.

I do believe that this "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" that is the American dream is a major cause of the resentment Britons have always held towards their former colonists.

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"ponderously pampered and earnestly pompous" - picture it and you've got to laugh.
Ever notice how when Prince Charles is nervous he fiddles with his cuffs? Watch him, next time...