Will this dread heat never cease?

[Ted Max]

I am changing collars thrice daily, and anticipate greatly the plain luxury of a fresh shirt before dinner. I had cause to reprimand one unfortunate at the bank as he had slipped his jacket off and hung it over the back of his chair - like a tar-handed navvy in a public bar.

Henderson informed me that some of the chaps are even wearing short trousers as they are about their business at the weekend. I replied that I was greatly impressed, as I would be quite unable these days to fit into my old Prep school uniform. This seemed to amuse old Hendo greatly.

[????]

I thought you'd previuosly said "Hendo bought it at Ypres"?

[Ted Max]

That was Hendo. Old Hendo is his father and, like yours truly, was too old for the Great Show.

As well as short trousers, I am also informed there is a current trend for gentlemen to expose their feet about town, save for a thin strip of vulcanised rubber which they grip, pincer like, between their naked toes.

It seems we are regressing to the loin cloth and the dish-dash, even within the better postal codes.

[Brendan]

I fear, Theodore, that such talk of short trousers and exposed feet will only hasten the dampening of your collars. Perhaps you should retire to the club for the afternoon before we have a repeat of the Hyde-Williams incident. I recommend that you refresh yourself in the member?s bathrooms before requesting that they provide you with a cooling iced drink. I will see to it that the necessary sum for an afternoon?s work is deducted from your salary.

[brum]

Indeed. Such regression in standards of dress will ultimately lead to the inevitable... one becoming more akin to......... an Australian. Oh the shame of it. A slippery slope, gentlemen. A slippery slope.

[Ted Max]

Dear chap, it was seeking refreshment in the members' bathrooms that led to the Hyde-Williams incident in the first place.

My driver confided that his family held an al fresco familial repast yesterday, timed to coincide with an Association Football match being played in the Free State. At this event it seems the women all wore bathing suits, despite the lack of any form of opportunity for aquatic excerise.

I asked my driver if his good lady joined in such behaviour and he said she did not, on account of she's just had a new tatoo inscribed upon her abdomen.

I think perhaps I will have that afternoon off after all. Perhaps you would be so kind as to donate my remuneration for same donated to the Distressed Young Ladies' fund that bears my name. Smithkins will have the details.

[Brendan]

I do envy the effortless rapport you are able to strike up with your staff Theodore. The anecdotes you provide us with never cease to delight.

I sometimes wish that I could pass the time of a journey listening to my driver relate a salted tale of common, domestic life.

It would at any rate be a change from the cur?s usual blind-drunk ravings at the traffic as we traverse Piccadilly in the mornings.

[legalbeagle]

What-ho chaps. Don't want to be a stick in the mud but what you old beans need to realise is that these younger chaps are very much dressing in the modern manner often seen down the drones. As are us younger fillies with our strapless sun dresses and kitten heels. Anyhoo, that's the posish - do perk up and I'm sure you'll come to love it. I know I do.

Pip pip.

[brum]

I say, are ladies allowed in the Club these days? Not that I mind the sight of a young fillie in her summer dress, riding her bicycle down Kings Road on a sunny morn, with her skirts all a-billowing to expose a shapely thigh, but really one must have standards.

[Brendan]

I do not, nor do I ever wish to know what such a thing as a strapless sun dresses is but by jingo it does not sound like suitable attire for a lady riding a velocipede.

[brum]

I believe that strapless sun dresses worn by ladies are quite acceptable these days, provided that the lady displays the narrow white lines where her straps should be, thereby indicating that her exposure is merely temporary.

[Michael Palaeologus]

Now steady on chaps, this thread seems to have drifted into pornographic descriptions of scantilly clad young fillies of the type seen in the Parisien post cards that my Uncle used to collect, before his miss-understanding with the Peelers and subsequent one way trip to Australia.

It is rather warm at the moment, but I must warn gentlemen of the undoing of collar studs or the removal of jackets. Such behaviour is unseemly and would see one rusticated by the Army and Navy Club; it may be acceptable to the new fangled Royal Air Force Club, but that I feel, proves my point.

Ladies of breeding will by now have retired to the cooler climes the lower slopes of the Himalaya, being cooled by the fanning of a Punker Wallah.

Gentlemen - keep calm and carry on.

[legalbeagle]

Punker Wallah's are so last year. I have a G&T Wallah. Much more useful.

[katie1997]

I have a forum-wallah.

Honestly, does anyone really believe I type this stuff myself?

And no Ted, this heat will never cease. Frightfully uncomfortable it is too.

[Brendan]

I think by now Theodore is sitting in his favorite wicker chair on the shady half of the club?s veranda, an upside-down copy of The Times in his lap, a lopsided grin on his face, a faraway look in his eyes and the memory of the heat forgoten for now.

I sent a messenger ahead to instruct them to put two measures of Laudanum in his lemonade. This is of course not standard practice but the dear fellow was getting rather out of sorts what with the incessant swelter, talk of chaps toes and ladies wearing less than their under things about town.

I fear it was my only course of action. We simply can?t have a repeat of what happened the last time.

[legalbeagle]

Wise actions Brendan dear. The Housekeeper can hardly look him in the eye these days and I'm still sending money to the scullery maid's family. It simply can't be allowed again this summer.

[HonaloochieB]

This Heat. Quite the band. Group. Combo.

What were they? Trendy-arsed funk of some sort probably. Hopelessly white-boy an' all I'd bet. I'd bet a lot too.

But this heat. This sticky-oxtered groin-drizzle that just won't stop smearing itself all over you, requires a curbing.

A kicking down until it it finds itself near the kerb, sub-kerb in fact.

The freezer's the thing, obviously, it has to be.

Big, stupid-looking and full of ice cubes.

Badged-up as Hotpoint, despite it's only point being it's full of cold. Like I said, stupid.

So you fill your bath with cold water, get a load of ice cubes from the stupid Hotpoint and throw them in.

Chuck your robe out of the bathroom, into the hall. Wait a while, listening to the ice cubes making cracking noises and smirk that some of your acquaintances might be thinking about drugs at this point and congratulate yourself you're not.

You decide to shed yourself of these losers while glancing at yourself in the mirror.

Face OK, in a late Marlon Brandoese sort of way, but you can't help but deprecate the gut. The beergut. The gut full of it.

Time for the immersion. Looking to the cooling. Maybe not looking so much as hearing. The oohing and aahing you'll make as you immerse yourself.

So, come on, butch it out.

Grab the side of the bath and it's feet in.

Fine.

Lower arse into water.

Upper arse into water.

Both fine.

Now its going to be the cobblers. The bollocks. The balls. You feel hesitant.

All synonyms for nonsense. So it'd be silly not to just dip the bastards and have done with it.

And you do and of course the bastards shrivel, but you feel curiously detatched and leave them to get on with it.

And just enjoy the clinking ice-bath for nothing more than itself.

[Ted Max]

That summer she would strip the drenched nightshirt from your drowsy body, and sprinkle rose-scented water on your lips. She'd support your drooping head whilst she turned the pillow to the cool side. She'd sit beside you until you slept once more, black streaks of pain harrowing her sallow cheeks.

She had died of that fever, and you had not. Your father had never mentioned her name again and had remarried by Christmas, whilst you were back at school; just another motherless child amongst hundreds of others.

Why should you dream of her now, out here on the club's veranda? Damn this heat.

[HonaloochieB]

How to draw yourself out of the ice-bath?

Was it self-annointed? Self-appointed?

Hands on the the side of the bath and you swift yourself over the side and against all the odds that you thought possible, you land on your feet on the ridiculous cotton mat.

You stand and look at how impossibly shrivelled you have become, it's marvellous how small all has got and you glory in your coolness and wonder for how long you can maintain it.

No towel-scrub drying, no that'll just bring blood to the surface and raise your temperature.

Just straight to bed, wet and cold, f@ck the sheet, damn the mattress.

Lie there and feel yourself unshrivel, gradually.

[randombloke]

What ho' cheps. I say, I've just been told about the very latest must-have gadget.

Apparently there is a device known as a Thermos flask. Whoever invented it must be a jolly clever blighter. Supposedly you fill it with a cooling libation to combat this damned heat and it keeps it suitably chilled until such time as you pour it into a glass and imbibe it, even the ice cubes remain.

But here's the thing fellows: If you are about the country estate doing a spot of huntin' or fishin' later in the year and the Ghillie suggests a wee drop o' warming broth, you can use the self-same gizmo to keep the delicious potage warm and steaming.

What I want to know is how the very devil does it know which is which?

Fella who came up with the idea clearly must have an enormous amount of the old grey matter. He might be a frightful cove over dinner of course what with all that intellect, but dash it all, he should be congratulated on the very notion.

I'm reliably informed that one can obtain these fantastical items in various colours and finishes including a splendid metal style which as we all know is terribly chichi at the moment, and, here's the good part for the huntin' scenario; a very fetching tartan motif.

What say you we try to obtain some of these miraculous devices?

[legalbeagle]

Oh randombloke you are a card. I've had one of these for simply weeks!

[Brendan]

Talking about heat the Thermos flasks. The heat doesn?t escape a flask because it is surrounded by a vacuum and heat can?t travel through a vacuum because there are no particles to pass the heat along.

I get that but what worries me is that we get most of our heat on earth from the sun which is separated from us by 1.496?108 km of vacuum.

I?m concerned that someone or something is going to realise and one of two things are going to happen, either the earth is going to suddenly freeze solid or thermos flasks everywhere are going to stop working.

[HAL9000]

Aside from conduction and convection, heat radiates in the infrared, which passes through vacuum without touching the sides ? but you know that.

[Ted Max]

heat radiates in the infrared

+ in any frequency of EMR.

Anyway, let us wend our way back to Loochie's iced plums... which should be unfurling nicely by now, unless other actions have been taken.

[Michael Palaeologus]

Steady chaps, steady.

"Thermos" - isnt that a foreign name? Sounds like it to me. I am not going to place my warming beverage in a flask designed by Johny Foreigner. Its Empire Made for me.

Michael Palaeologus Esq