i am convinced my learned boss can give peter wimsey (and lord st george) a run for their money when it comes to turning out phrases for a living. his passionate explanaton of why the citroen’s hydropneumatic suspension system is a stupendous feat of design and how the mere act of test-driving one transforms him immediately into an olympian god steering a low cloud is enormously entertaining (i have been told to watch day of the jackals and investigative reconstructions of the attempted assasination of president de gaulle) and while i didn’t pay attention to the mechanical aspects of the story (obviously — as a non-driver i am devoted to the subway and bicycles and walking everywhere) i love his undisguised and unabashed adoration. if i were a multimillionaire i’d buy him one just to make him happy!also, while he was showing me a double-ended pencil in the state court (red one end, blue the other: for amendments — whence the ‘blue pencil test’ for striking out contractual clauses) it was revealed that he was the one who tipped off books actually about where to source for the vintage stationery they sell. it would seem that at an undisclosed location on our sunny island there is a warehouse to rival, he says, the one in ‘raiders of the lost ark’, in which [putting his hands to the sides of his face to mime jawdropping disbelief] every crate you open is a trove of 60′s stationery you have never seen the likes of.
i think if i keep discovering one new interesting fact about my learned boss each day i shall be happy!
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird