Recent capital market gyrations have encouraged me to rummage round my walk-in closet and get out my banker kit. In the photo (above) I am depicted wearing a pair of Alfred Sargent monk shoes and a grey flannel chalk stripe suit from Brooks Brothers. The current unpopularity of financial workers has probably discouraged some bankers and brokers from sporting the uniform of their profession. Not me. Within the office or without, I sport the chalk stripes with defiance.
Women and weed rightly belong to the world of young men. For more settled chaps such as yours truly, their very availability is temptation itself. Resistance, I find, becomes harder to sustain. It was with that thought in mind that two months ago I accepted a box of 25 Montecristo cigars carefully hand-delivered to me from the Middle East via Paris. The picture (above) shows the lone survivor of the initial shipment.
(i) Today our people exist in a modern techno-managerial state whose increasingly authoritarian form of rule is directly proportional to societal decline. 
During our honeymoon tour of the Indian Ocean and East Africa late last year, my new bride and I travelled in the Seychelles, including a stay on Silhouette Island. My natural excitement at being in the Seychelles with my bride was enhanced by the diverse wildlife to be found in the country.
My bride, knowing my intense interest in zoology, herpetology, and wildlife in general, insisted we visit. However, when we did, we found the NPTS centre closed; I duly left a note with our name and number. That same evening around 9:00PM, as we were headed to the bar, we received a call from the nice English scientist and conservationist who runs the centre. He apologised for having missed us earlier, but had gone to Mahé (the main island) for supplies. He invited us for a tour that night. 
Does anyone, I wonder, remember this most delightful televisual programme from the 1980s? It aired (if that is the right term) in the late 1980s, only for a season or two. I recall watching it not with any special attentiveness, but with a fervent sensation growing in my breast, which, on mature reflection, can only be called envy. Why? It featured two hard-drinking, well-to-do wine merchants, Hugo and Jack, suddenly forced, by an impending recession and their accountant's demise, to brazen out their wine business in grubby shirt sleeves, moist brows, and hours of hard work. It was notable, I think, for the amount of serious wine-drinking it portrayed. Which is why I celebrate it here and raise a glass (or three) to its memory.
"For any authority, however flexible and however enlightened, must in the last resort of all depend upon respect. In King’s we were all accounted equals but we were equals who respected one another and based our respect in a proper recognition of individual excellence; and so there could be authority between equals. But in the world at large there is no respect. Or rather, there is so much respect, since anything or anybody at all must be accorded it, that the word is made meaningless. The most trivial platitudes, the most misleading and sentimental half-truths, the merest non-sense—all must be received with ‘respect,’ less feelings be hurt and ‘justifiable resentment’ aroused. Is the work shoddy? Are the foundations shallow, the support unseasoned, the bricks carelessly laid? But this, my friend, is the work of free and equal men, and even as the house totters to the ground you must treat the builders with ‘respect.’ Fools, knaves, malingerers; the stupid, the incapable, the idle and the vicious, the spiteful, the envious, the mediocre and the mean—any and all of these you must ‘respect.’ Respect the people, respect their ‘rights,’ respect labour and respect its dignity, respect simplicity, respect ignorance, respect superstitious opinion, public morals, minority prejudice and majority hysteria—all these you must and will respect.
But one thing you may not respect. Excellence or merit. Because if you respect this, you stand to allow that someone is better than someone else, and that, by current reckoning, is to destroy respect. Respect has been inverted: it is now what the great or gifted man must pay to his average fellows—in return for which they may possibly suffer him to serve them. Their respect is reserved for a different purpose—to console and flatter themselves. There can be none to spare for the authority of learning or of practiced tolerance or even of plain fact: still less to spare for that honourable figure of a vanished age—the English Gentleman."
I like to imagine this angry young American is wearing a pair of black longwing brogues, perhaps from Alden, J.Press, or J.Crew. The specs and short-sleeve dress shirt, of course, I can do without, and so can you. However, it is what appears to be an Americanised version of the OE tie that would cause me to cross the street to avoid running into this irritated fellow. It's simply not on.
Tonight I co-hosted an investment seminar at a local beach resort. It was a casual event. I wore a lightweight Paul Stuart tweed coat in a tan and green check pattern, charcoal worsted trousers, black tassel loafers, ecru OCBD from Brooks Brothers, and a black knit tie. I normally don't wear knit ties, much less one in black, but I thought it was a subtle enough acknowledgement of the significance of the day. In other words, my very own black badge of resistance. I held court admirably, I think, as a mass of retirees, local executives, and business owners pressed upon me their concerns for the future. If one looked closely, one could see real fear in their eyes. It would have been quite a sobering experience, I imagine, if I had not downed so many whiskeys.
The photograph (left) depicts George Adamson (1906-1989), the renowned East African game ranger, conservationist, author, and film maker. Born in India and educated at public school in England, at age 18 he went to British East Africa (Kenya) to work on a coffee plantation. After trying various professions, he settled on a career as a game warden with the Kenya Game Department. He retired in 1961 to a reserve to care for his growing collection of lions. His life with these animals resulted in, amongst others, the well-known movie Born Free. Adamson was assassinated by Somali bandits in 1989. In the illustration he is depicted wearing what appears to be a tweed jacket in a tickweave pattern, a shirt with a spread collar, grey flannel trousers, and the tie of the East African Wildlife Society. If a rugged chap who spends his life in the bush with lions can look presentable, surely we can too. What is our excuse?
"Les actions les plus efficaces, c'est-à-dire les actions d'avant-garde, ne furent pas menées l'insigne à la boutonnière et le drapeau au vent, mais en civil. Pour prendre une image militaire, elles furent conçues comme des opérations de commando derrière les lignes, mais avec le soutien de la population. Quant à l'esprit et à la technique, leurs instigateurs furent les Robins des bois qui précédaient l'arrivée du Roi Richard.
As you may have heard, my new editor just bought me a Bedouin keffiyeh, or shemagh, to help me cope with the recent cold, damp weather here in Southern California. This particular item was exported directly from the souks of the Near East and sports large, long tassels at each end. I owned a keffiyeh when I was younger. Like my schoolmates and friends, I occasionally wore one in London as a schoolboy; they were particularly popular amongst European students. The special forces in Britain and Australia wear the keffiyeh on campaign. Today I wear it to ward off the chill of a winter climate. I tie it around my neck ascot-style, stuffing the ends down the front of my Filson flannel shirt-jacket or Brooks Brothers tweed coat.
