Rich Food

To Pierre Koffman's at the Berkeley Hotel with two much travelled friends just back from the Middle East keeping one jump ahead of rioting mobs and noticing only the beauty of the artefacts and the surprisingly good food. But Koffman's is seriously excellent tho rich rich. (I don't know much about Gascony whence he comes but I once went there to a town called Condom - a dreary French provincial town. I hurried on to the fleshpots of the Dordogne).

Rich - such is the nature of drowsiness - reminds me of the famous exchange between Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.  Scott: The rich are different from us.  Ernest: Yes they have more money.  It is generally thgought of as a putdown - Hemingway putting Fitzgerald down for the count.  But I think they've got it all wrong.  Scott was not talking about plain rich people - he meant rich rich people, so cocooned in their wealth that ordinary experiences passed them by.  They were the ones that fascinated him and Gatsby had to get as rich as them to be worthy of Daisy.  I am glad to say that John Updike is on my side.  Comments welcome.
 
Oh dear back to politics.  Someone ought to tell Dave that when a major supplier of oil finds that he has a rebellion on his hands he (Dave) should wait and see who wins and then cuddle up to the victorious side instead of sending good will messages to the insurgents.  We usually let the people we are backing down because we have not got enough guns and tanks and warships and now we are going to have still fewer of them thanks to the "Cuts" which will start any day now.  As for Hague and his disaster with a helicopter raid or mission or diplomatic initiative, I don't know whether to weep or cry. The emissaries left behind their weapons as well as the helicopter so they will all be court martialed of course or they might get the MBE.  Watch this space.