Harrrington's - being the collected thoughts of the Hon Sec, by way of excuse and explanation.

Some fellows just have that knack of making you feel that, even if you are a bit of a duffer, you are at the centre of their confidence; your opinions worthwhile and all in all nothing could be more splendid for them but to spend an afternoon in your company.  I once met such when I was working at the Foreign Office. I should explain.   Was a time when most FO wallahs of a certain rank took the Summer off to trudge grouse moors or take in the Tests.   Young chaps were drafted in to keep up the paper work and so it was that between leaving school and going up to Oxford I found myself overseeing the move from Crown Colony to Sovereign State of Sunk Island.   It was a time when, after careful consideration, many coves were feeling that, all in all,   rule from the Motherland might have brought them the benefits of cricket and slightly odd meal times but that was no longer enough.    The good people of Sunk Island had declared they wished to ‘go it ...

  I suspect it is a universal certainty that youth is full of beginnings, endings come only in the form of the pause between the next page.  Were it always the case.  Increasingly I find that, even in our own dear club, I turn a corner and find a space where an old friend had been in residence for many years and in that gap memories flood in.  So it was when I wandered through the Bowls Roof Terrace where Arthur Bland had sat, adding up the scores, for nearly four decades.  People of his kidney took the Official Secrets Act seriously.  I am reminded of those couples who did such important work at Bletchley Park , spending decades of happy marriage without divulging to each other they had been code breakers in the neighbouring huts.  I believe some felt even their names were covered by the Act and never knew each other by anything other than ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam.’  We may speculate on the benefits of secrecy in sustaining any marriage but that is for an...

One of the things that I enjoy about being 'up in town', is just how friendly most people are. You can strike up a conversation in the certain knowledge you are almost certainly never to meet the cove again so the flow of wit need not be capped by regard to have to remember if you told this or that tale before. This is so different to many rural encounters where people will talk to you only to find out your business. Mind you, with increasing forgetfulness this can be useful as a few probing country questions can prod the memory and help a chap recall why the hell he came into this blasted village in the first place. Where was I?   Ah yes. Well, this recent heat had driven Mrs The Hon Sec out of the city and seeking sanctuary in one of the Hill Stations that dot the folds and valleys of the Chilterns. I was a loose end, and, sitting on a park bench and wondering just how long I was likely to be banged up for for feeding either ducks or pigeons - I believe Mary Poppins is no...

It is often one of the surprises for new chaps that, once their name is escribed into the rolls of Harrrington’s, they are immediately appointed to Her Majesty’s Department of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs.  Yes, I know, but the whole thing was started in the reign of Queen Victoria and there is only so much changing of titles the memberships will allow before it becomes restive.   The reason for this additional duty and privilege becomes clear in late December every year.  Imagine, if you will, a poor and benighted member.  A year is spent carefully being away at the moment the wife’s ghastly brother comes to visit.  They have managed, through assiduous planning, to be on a wholly different continent when that Aunt who is to conviviality what King Herod was to the Bethlehem Tiny Tots Club, stayed for the Whitsuntide public holiday.  When the call to do duty by an odious cousin went out, they were not to be found wanting or any...

 Traditions can seem somewhat odd, if not uncalled for, by those who are new to them so, as we will be gathering together for ‘The Naming of the Festivals’ after supper, I feel a word of explanation might avoid unnecessary delays later on.   By time honoured practice, the youngest member of the Club enters the Snug on St Andrew’s day and declares, in a clear and honest tone ‘Happy Holidays!’.   As one, all present must make some startled noise which must have the nature of intelligible words but, on no account be them.   It is them custom for the Captain of the Bridge Team to reply ‘we shall have none of that modern nonsense.   It is and has always been ‘Merry Christmas.   Each word must be audible to all foregathered. The assembled members are required to then make approving noises.   At the this point either the Keeper of the Postage Stamps or the High Walden of the Larks – precedence is given to the man who has been longest in his office...

 I like to think of myself as a man of the world.  I have seen many things as I served across the Queen-Empress’ Empire and good lord if one was easily upset by the hedonism one sees on The Mumbles, with their heathen gods and hot Welsh cakes one would be not fit for service.  Whatever two or three people get up to in the privacy of their own country estate is not my business but on reflection, if the could raise the number to four they could start a polo side. It was that in mind that I was pottering home through Maida Vale in the grey dawn following a rather good dinner given by the ‘Antediluvian Edifices Society’ when I saw young Derrick Latimer furtively letting himself out of one of those discreet little flats known in those parts.   I was about to adopt the air of unseeing ignorance one adopts when the Vicar’s ‘Specialist Lithographs’ arrive in the post by mistake when I noticed something something a little odd in his gait.   He was not setting forth wit...