The day after the Labour party’s astonishing landslide election victory on July 4th, I discovered to my dismay that the essential tranquillity of our afternoon tea ceremony was threatened not only by this catastrophic outcome but by the disappearance of our tea caddy together with the trappings that go with it.
The mystery drove me to distraction.
To an English person it seemed like a sign that augured ill.
So, on my way to buy a tea-strainer and a new canister of loose Earl Grey tea, I visited a friend who lives near Hampstead Heath to seek consolation.
He had just finished constructing a small garden pond, and had added a well-chosen variety of water-plants. He was wearing his white cotton ducks and when he rose from kneeling I saw his knees were streaked with green. (‘Plantation Order,’ he muttered obscurely.) He stood awhile admiring his handiwork and then remarked, ‘All it needs now is a tame frog.’
Without thinking, I said, ‘I’ll get you a frog. Really.’
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that’ll put you to too much trouble. I've already telephoned the closest likely source, and they don’t stock frogs. Or toads. Only fishes. There’s been a run on lampreys for some reason.’
I thought of Harrods, then put aside my offer for the time being.
After buying the tea-strainer, I decided to take a walk on the Heath. It was uninspiring just there, featureless, with no trees, no cover of any sort, and no water in sight. Nothing but an expanse of dried up grass. Yet in the distance were to be seen familiar figures, seemingly dancing an impromptu reel-of-four, whooping with insuppressible elation.
I recognised the quartet . . . the HamIntern . . . perhaps the reddest of the Red Hampstead-Highgate-Camden nexus . . . W. B. Choriambes, the eminent Marxist historian, the two Balmidin brothers, trendiest of politicos, and Luis Tinctorial, deep-dyed Russophile and Soviet ideologue and translator of propagandist tracts for the Progress Publishing House, Moscow. (Classics of state orthodoxy: Journey to Forever, A Time of Wonders, and Stalin: One Perfect Man.)
The last time I’d observed this NW3 cabal was May 1st when they were knelt at the tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery, hands joined in worship. On that occasion they had then sung the Internationale, their voices raised with a quavering emotion that only compounded their portentousness. (The absence from their devotions of Mr Berny Joyce – the Marxist maverick and demagogue, beloved of the Many-Headed – who leads astray the High-Net-Worth citizenry of Islington, was not entirely unforeseen.)
I shuddered at the recollection and looked away.
North London’s gambolling Marxists would drive any properly brought up person to shield their eyes against their excesses.
To an English person it seemed like a sign that augured ill.
So, on my way to buy a tea-strainer and a new canister of loose Earl Grey tea, I visited a friend who lives near Hampstead Heath to seek consolation.
He had just finished constructing a small garden pond, and had added a well-chosen variety of water-plants. He was wearing his white cotton ducks and when he rose from kneeling I saw his knees were streaked with green. (‘Plantation Order,’ he muttered obscurely.) He stood awhile admiring his handiwork and then remarked, ‘All it needs now is a tame frog.’
Without thinking, I said, ‘I’ll get you a frog. Really.’
‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that’ll put you to too much trouble. I've already telephoned the closest likely source, and they don’t stock frogs. Or toads. Only fishes. There’s been a run on lampreys for some reason.’
I thought of Harrods, then put aside my offer for the time being.
After buying the tea-strainer, I decided to take a walk on the Heath. It was uninspiring just there, featureless, with no trees, no cover of any sort, and no water in sight. Nothing but an expanse of dried up grass. Yet in the distance were to be seen familiar figures, seemingly dancing an impromptu reel-of-four, whooping with insuppressible elation.
I recognised the quartet . . . the HamIntern . . . perhaps the reddest of the Red Hampstead-Highgate-Camden nexus . . . W. B. Choriambes, the eminent Marxist historian, the two Balmidin brothers, trendiest of politicos, and Luis Tinctorial, deep-dyed Russophile and Soviet ideologue and translator of propagandist tracts for the Progress Publishing House, Moscow. (Classics of state orthodoxy: Journey to Forever, A Time of Wonders, and Stalin: One Perfect Man.)
The last time I’d observed this NW3 cabal was May 1st when they were knelt at the tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery, hands joined in worship. On that occasion they had then sung the Internationale, their voices raised with a quavering emotion that only compounded their portentousness. (The absence from their devotions of Mr Berny Joyce – the Marxist maverick and demagogue, beloved of the Many-Headed – who leads astray the High-Net-Worth citizenry of Islington, was not entirely unforeseen.)
I shuddered at the recollection and looked away.
North London’s gambolling Marxists would drive any properly brought up person to shield their eyes against their excesses.
The fashionable vulgarity of gestural triumphalism, such as punching the air and whooping, is simply beyond the pale, in my view.
So I looked down, and there at my feet squatted a little frog. It sprang away, but I caught it by dropping my handkerchief over it. The tea-strainer with the handkerchief stretched across the rim was exactly right for a frog carrier.
Certainly, my friend gave me several odd glances when I returned, but he was very happy to accept the frog.
‘What is his name?’ he asked.
I gazed at the little creature, so noble yet so powerless.
‘Born to reign over miscreant pondlife,’ I soothed. ‘If nothing else, at least he’s certain to rule over the algae and see off the scum.’
I retrieved my handkerchief.
‘You shall call him Charles,’ I told my friend.
‘C R,’ I murmured, as I released Charles into his new domain. The new insignia for His Majesty’s letter boxes had been announced just that day.
‘C R,’ I repeated. ‘Charles Regnant. Seer.’
Photo credit: ronsaunders47, Warrington.
PS. On my return home I learned the missing tea set had turned up abandoned in the summer house.
For footnote on the travails of the Frog King Physignathus
see:
Also see:
Sussex folk were first to predict a Queen’s accession.
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/03/prochronism-sussex-folk-were-first-to.html