Taki Taki

High life | 14 January 2012

issue 14 January 2012

Gstaad

By the time you read this it will be mid-January and all your New Year’s resolutions will have gone the way of good manners or mild racist remarks. At least I hope so. Resolutions can be dangerous to one’s health, and definitely a hazard to one’s happiness.

Here in snow-covered Gstaad — we’ve had more snow than there’s cocaine in South America — a new monster has reared its hideous face: envy. Yes, envy is one of the seven deadly sins, although I recognise only two as mortal ones, that and avarice. Lust, gluttony, pride, wrath and sloth, I am rather proud to be guilty of, especially the first and last.

My late low-life colleague Jeff Bernard, who I never imagined would be equalled and surpassed by his successor, chronically complained about his ‘acute lexicographitis’, which he defined as an overwhelming desire to cover blank pages with words.

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