A nice package arrived by post just as I was going to ring a friend in London and inquire how old and how good a title is if the bearer uses it more often than a footballer says the F-word. I will not name the bum because I did a few weeks back and he doesn’t need any more publicity. All I’ll say is thank God for the Almanach de Gotha, which arrived in brilliant cardinal red for 2012, and beautiful Byzantine yellow for the 2013 edition. I thank the publisher John Kennedy because the 189th edition of the Gotha comes in very handy. There are more phonies flitting about than there are blonde Russian hookers, and the Almanach is the ultimate judge of who is real.
The person I was ringing London about, incidentally, ain’t hardly up with the real oldies, but made it through morganatic marriages and other such climbs.
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