Dear Lumpy Read Online Free PDF Page B

down one day and explain his plans and what he visualises happening in the future. I think it would be only civil to your mother and to myself. I do not grudge you any happiness you may derive from your current arrangement and I am not in the habit of applying moral standards that have largely ceased to exist. All the same, I do feel a certain responsibility towards you, and apart from which I love you very much and have no wish to see you hurt. I had a long talk with Loopy the other day and he is far from happy about the way things are at present. That, however, is a matter for Henry to settle.
    Pongo collapsed after a walk the other day. Luckily I revived him with cold water and was not compelled to administer the kiss of life. Your mother’s trip to Jersey was fraught with drama and one member of the party achieved the rare feat of breaking his ankle while doing a pee. Lucky it was only his ankle! A local lady has been bitten by an adder (on the Forestry Land where I go with the dogs) and is in a parlous plight. I had lunch with the B-Atkins on Sunday. They sent you their love and Rosamund is keen to meet you. Mark and William went to the Test Match and enjoyed seeing the streaker! Last night I took your mother to Longparish and gave that saucy rook a bag of nuts. He enjoyed the paper bag slightly more than the nuts. Lupin was here yesterday; he seems to be doing some rather peculiar jobs.
    Best love,
    R
    My brother Lupin persuaded me to buy a vomit-coloured Fiat from a job lot of twelve that he had purchased from a bankrupt coach company, no mean feat as I did not drive let alone have a driving licence. His original offer of ‘buy two get one free’ was not of great appeal. By then Henry had been my boyfriend for almost a year and had already been given the nickname ‘Hot Hand Henry’ by my father for obvious reasons. Luckily, or unluckily depending from whose point of view, he had just passed his driving test and so we set off for a camping/fishing holiday in Scotland. Miraculously the car got us there and back. Instead of returning to my parents’ home afterwards, we drove to London and shacked up in a friend’s house in Fulham.
    My parents’ hopes that I join the Foreign Office are dashed. Instead Charlie Shearer (my brother’s most disreputable friend) gives me a job working as a general dogsbody in a massive junk shop in Fulham called the Furniture Cave.
    Budds Farm
    24 October
    Dearest Miss Plumpling,
    A lot of people are coming to lunch and your dear mother is in a fine old flap. Lupin has gone to Derbyshire, looking rather yellow and with eyes like badly poached eggs, in the company of C. Hurt who is very pale and whose face now resembles a crumpled towel. Jane is apparently renting a country house with wall-to-wall carpeting and a large garden. Mrs Bomer has bought a new car; the colour is that of the messes made by dogs after de-worming pills. How is the revolting Chappie? Not too exuberant, I trust. Mr P. is back home after his kidney operation and feels weak. This afternoon I am visiting the Surtees in their new house at West Ilsley. The Income Tax Authorities are pursuing me with a relentlessness worthy of a nobler cause. I reply with insults and post-dated cheques later cancelled. Prison looms. Moppet was very sick yesterday after emitting three blood-curdling screams. Your great-aunt stayed here and is as deaf as a telegraph pole. The TV had to be turned on at maximum volume and gave me fearful headaches. Your mother was kissed by The Mayor of Basingstoke and called ‘Darling Cynthia’ when in an intoxicated condition (The Mayor, not Nidnod). She has had her hair done three times since and has bought some gaudy new clothes. Can you beat it? She got sloshed the other night and gave a monologue on religion that went on till 1 a.m. I went to bed at 11 p.m: the guests were too polite to do so. More fools them, I say.
    Kind regards to H.
    Love,
    D
    My parents’ dinner guests are a captive audience for