25 July 2012

Old School Banking

As you may have heard, I've just been recruited for a key investment role by another firm.

My new home is a small New York City-based trust company founded by hard-drinking WASP financiers, whose corporate culture, I can now report, has been happily transported to West Coast offices. Longwing brogues are de rigueur. Facial hair is verboten. Gents' jackets are to remain on at all times. And don't forget cocktails at half six. This sort of thing.

You don't need me to list for you the perks of a new job offer. I can disclose, however, that they do include lavish lunches and dinners with eager headhunters, who, in my experience, seem to vary widely between dull betas and cute and willing blonde fillies, the latter providing an opportunity to charm my way into both bank and panties.

Chaps of my background, experience, and impeccable profile are in stiff demand at the moment. The recruitment process is a bit like courting a new girl. The bank for its part sets out to determine with unblinking eye whether the applicant can provide the necessary assets, networks, and expertise to increase revenue. The aspiring banker, for his part, decides if said bank will put out and provide a home in which he can thrive.

When it comes to marriage, as you know, I'm a bit of a traditionalist. So parlous is the idea of marrying a modern girl, however, that one is tempted to demand a dowry. It's the same in banking, where it appears in the form of a hefty signing bonus. Or, as it is sometimes called in the industry (for reasons that elude me), the money shot.

Forgive me if I appear to honour the occasion in excessive, yet private, style.

California Beachside

20 July 2012

Polo Club Set

19 July 2012

orbis non sufficit

Bermuda Shorts and Tassel Loafers

17 July 2012

Montherlant On Love

"I have heard it said that one loses a woman by loving her too much, that an affectation of coldness, from time to time, brings better results. And so on. I shall play no such tricks with you... Let love be truly love—that is, let it be peace—or let it not exist at all."

Henry de Montherlant, Les jeunes filles (1936-1939)

The Perfect Suit (BBC)




14 July 2012

The King's English (Kingsley Amis)

'But what does shine throughout is Kingsley’s love of his language. He is exact, but not pedantic. Even when making minute points about the letter of the law, he is really talking about its spirit. Amis’s approach reminds me of the best sort of guide to a great city. He has plenty of learning derived from formal study, but he also knows the place like the back of his hand. He loves the city’s perfections, but also its oddities, and even, because they make him laugh, its defects. He loves its past, but lives vigorously in its present. Rome, or Paris, or London cannot be defined: rather, they can be known – the more intimately the better. So it is with English.'

"Mind your bad English, Kingsley Amis 'don't like it'", by Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2011

10 July 2012

Hemingway Loafers

Finca Vigia, San Franciso de Paula, Cuba


09 July 2012

Waugh On Praise


'A man desires praise that he may be reassured, that he may be quit of his doubting of himself; he is indifferent to applause when he is confident of success.'

Alec Waugh

06 July 2012

The English Gentleman: Golf and Tennis

Games like golf and tennis are not taken seriously by gentlemen although they sometimes play them for the sake of the exercise. They do not have the same approach to these games as lesser mortals. In the case of golf, for instance, a gentleman is never seen with one of those vast leather bags filled with gleaming clubs, some of which are adorned with little wooly hats. Instead he has a thin canvas bag with half a dozen assorted clubs, some of which have wooden shafts which he calls his 'knockers.' With these he hits the ball great distances and has the knack of hacking the ball out of the most appalling rough onto the green. He is altogether a maddening person to play against.

The same applies to tennis, for which he dresses in long once-white trousers, now yellowed with age. In mixed foursomes he plays with great courtesy, serving underhand to the lady even if she is a Wimbledon player. Most of his best shots are played off the wood, which has a demoralising effect against even the most expert opponents. When he wins he is so sporting about it and goes on so about the luck of the game that most people feel like wringing his neck.

Douglas Sutherland, The English Gentleman (1978)

Lollies

Huntington Beach


05 July 2012

Reap The Wild Tweed

Hunting Kit