Bow ties, porn stars and the death of the rainforest

14st 6lb; zero alcohol; 1,429; Tasmania (or, as it might be, Borneo).

I’m writing this almost a week after the event. Not that there was an event today, as such, since I’d granted myself a night off opera-going for good behaviour. The reason for the delay can be simply described: e-mail. As a relatively shy person who thinks he comes across better on paper than in person (my God, can you imagine what it must be like to talk to me?) I took to e-mail instantaneously when the technology was introduced to me. Now I can easily spend all day doing nothing at all apart from keeping up to date with my correspondence. So if you think that writing this blog is a total waste of my time, just consider the alternative. In the afternoon, I felt compelled to send a rather sharp note to one importunate correspondent, who complained that I hadn’t sent the requested “detailed reply” to his third e-mail of the day. A line has to be drawn somewhere if I am ever to do anything else.

I was invited out to lunch by the youngest member of my entourage at Madama Butterfly, who disclosed the other night that she had a bit of a thing about men in bow ties (in the context of my comments about the Fat Bloke wearing one in the bar, though at no point did she descend to saying that she fancied him). Accordingly I put on my only non-black one, in the orange and lime green colours of the Trollope Society. The only virtue of these is that they are sometimes mistaken, in a poor light, for the altogether more distinguished stripes of the Garrick Club. In the days before they were compelled to work more or less naked in the name of “infection control”, surgeons used to have a reasonable excuse for wearing bow ties as conventional ones would have kept dipping into the blood and guts, making for an uncomfortable dry cleaning bill. But in anyone else they seem to be a bit of an affectation. Added to which, I am so incredibly virile that mine get ragged from rubbing against my stubbly chin, though this problem may have diminished now that I have reduced my number of chins somewhat.

Anyway, the lady who requested it claims to derive pleasure from seeing me wear it, and that’s the main thing. I don’t think anyone else in the pub is wearing a tie at all, the tone being set by an impressively muscled young man in a tight T-shirt, accompanied by a pneumatic, bottle-assisted blonde. My hostess and my aunt are convinced that he is a sporting personality of some sort, without having a clue as to his actual identity. I rather favour the view that the couple are actors taking a short break from making a porn film in the neighbouring country house hotel, but decide to keep that thought to myself. Until now, obviously.

When I get home, the Elfin Safety work of roadside tree destruction has moved on from huge ashes and beeches to eensy-weensy little trees like silver birches, which would hardly make a dent on a car if they chanced to topple onto it. I have no idea why they have been earmarked for removal, but I am gaining an increasing sense of what it is like to be an endangered animal in a patch of rainforest, on which loggers are encroaching from all sides.