Beware Before You Wear...
A word from the front line of public life
While we are all delighted for fellow Ragster, Munro Tweeder-Harris, as he racks up yet another year of illustrious life as a good Antiquarian, the photo of him happily enrobed in a good Norfolk gave me some pause for serious thought.Just the other club night, I found myself listening to a fine, steady fellow whose nerves were well and truly jangled: indeed never was a G&T so essential for a poor chap's survival!
Only after gulping his third could the poor blighter speak - and this is no stammering curate I'm talking about, the man has taken on all comers in service of the Empire, from the Euphrates to the great Rock.
Nerves shot to pieces, a wreck. It's lightly told, but heavy with implications of responsibility for us all.
Heading office-ward the other morning, he narrowly avoided a nasty accident on his velocipide, while momentarily - and quite unconsciously - distracted by sight of a particularly fine Tweed. Some chap, coming out of a small supermarket, blithely sporting some pucker wool craft as if he was in his own club! A supermarket, I tell you, and one of the smaller, city-centre-rot variety, too.
Our man escaped a most unpleasant entangling with pedestrians of the commoner sort, by a nat's whisker and the grace of Aunty Gary. And who knows what other moments of chaos that self centred buffoon went on to cause that morning, wandering blithely through a city centre full of innocent people?
So have a thought, gentlemen, before you strike out, cravated & jacketed - what's good for the charabanc may be darned dangerous for the casual errand.
Major S.G. Hodgeforth (Retired)
