Making an exit

I'm rather sorry that HMQ didn't storm out of her recent photoshoot but grateful that it was not in the same manner as I exited recently.

Of course it was beneath me but then so was the quality of debate - it is so patently clear that the most efficient way to divide into five a gateau between two adults and three children is to allow each adult to enjoy one quarter and each child one sixth. The arguments for any other methodology were hardly cogent but something pushed me over the edge. Even the splendid surroundings of an Adam drawing room with its matching doors was not going to persuade me to stay. I mentioned matching doors because sadly the door through which I made my dramatic exit was not the one through which I had entered the room; instead it was an identical door in the opposite corner which led instead to ..... a cupboard. In fact a very dark cupboard after I had slammed the door behind me which was itself microseconds before I appreciated my situation. Returning was the most difficult entrance I have ever had to make as my debating pals choked on their port. Note to self: always plan ones exit in case of emergency.

Civic Society

Around September each year it had been the custom for her Ladyship and I to attend the Civic Dinner of a small local authority in Northern Derbyshire. It was also the custom for the same dinner to be graced by His Grace, Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire alongside the mayors and chairmen of surrounding districts, the latter being affectionately known among themselves as "The Chain Gang". The camaraderie between them was evident when the Sheriff of Nottingham joined the top table to the theme tune of a Robin Hood flick being whistled in unison.

Entertained by the Vicar of Cotgrave delivering a witty after-dinner address which included the repeated checking of his watch by hitting against the podium, the assembled throng afterwards headed off for refreshment and relief as appropriate. It had been usual for the dinner to be held at a venue local to the home of the current Chairman of the authority which meant that this years event was held in a parish hall with modest appointments. The toilets and the main entrance were adjacent and so as queues formed for each, her Ladyship found herself in the queue for the 'powder room' as His Grace, not accompanied by Debo, that evening queued for the exit , his civic duties diligently discharged. A renowned lover of female company, the Duke hardly noticed that the melée had mélanged and what had been the queue for the exit was in fact now the queue for the ladies. He held court, charming as always, for the best part of 25 minutes when he was forced to acknowledge that his driver would be becoming anxious and that regrettably he would need to return to Chatsworth - he famously had never seen the point of getting his own driving licence. Her Ladyship was charmed by this remarkable man.

Each year thereafter he took the trouble to reacquaint himself, once reminding me that he and I were both 'anachronisms' and thus it came as an immense shock in 2004 to return from the Caribbean to find that His Grace had passed on and that an age of dignity and generosity of spirit had passed with him. It was clear from the card which we received from Debo that his loss was felt even by those who had never even met him but had perhaps enjoyed the tranquility of his back garden at Chatsworth or the extraordinary collection within its walls. A special exhibition at Chatsworth open until 9 September celebrates the life of Andrew Devonshire http://www.chatsworth.org/whattodo/house_queen_of_scots.htm

Of Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Evelyn Waugh

One is still communing in Romania where the weather forecast for today indicates another day of enforced confinement as heat-related deaths are beginning to be reported across the country. While temperatures nudge the mercury past 41 degrees today, one is developing an unhealthy fondness for ones air conditioning - a kind of automated punkawalla. Today is one for burying oneself in an Evelyn Waugh of whom it was once said "it is surprising that she has time what with her problem page!"

The Romanian Throne

Being 485th in line of succession to the Romanian throne has its compensations - none of which easily comes to mind now one comes to assess it though.

Just in case the worst should happen and a palace coup conjoins itself with a probably quite unlikely series of coincidences leaving most of the crown heads of Europes dead, it behoves one to survey the country that should have been mine. It was for this reason that one found oneself this week on a six and hour hour train journey from Bucharest to Iasi this week not helped by the weather which my office had failed to arrange 'more appropriately' - getting good staff these days remains a problem - so as temperatures sailed into the 40s, and sadly I do mean new fangled celsius and not old-fashioned farenheit, I was sharing my transport with a selection of sweaty Romanians.

Now Romanian's by any description are an attractive race but Romanians know how to perspire with greater efficiency than any other nationality so rather than engage in witty intercourse with my fellow travellers I decided to snooze away the journey using as a pillow the Cardigan which any sensible Englishman carries everywhere should the weather unexpectedly turn and he needs to keep the chill off his kidneys.

I watched the world go by - slowly as it happens. Romanian trains come in a range of flavours ranging from the 'Personal' which apparently do not move at all, they are simply long enough for travellers to be able to walk between stations; 'Accelerat' which itself is probably a gross exaggeration and 'Inter City' which do just that but generally only slowly. The latter two categories have toilets on board - these are what Americans would call bathrooms - but sadly the toilet itself amounts to little more than a bucket bolted to the floor through which one may survey the trackbed. Research continues into suitable flush mechanisms and these are expected to be deployed widely. For those who cannot guarantee that they will not wish to relieve themselves during the next six hours, I can recommend taking your own tissues as these are one of those things that are considered to be an optional extra.

So, the world is passing by slowly and in the immense heat I notice that the overhead lines are wilting between the pylons. I nodded off to enjoy a pleasant dream which included the sights and sounds and surprisingly smells of the Six Form Common Room at my old school. Having not seen my children for days, they too joined in the fun and romped happily on the school playing fields. It was then that my dream began to turn ugly. The Hon. Rupert, ones heir, was playing with a piece of wet rope trying to wrap it around a low-hanging yet high-voltage cable. In my slumber I shouted but no noise came out. He was having such fun he could barely hear me above the hullabaloo. I raised the stakes and shouted harder but to no avail. Finally I screamed a sort of scream that brings to mind Fay Wray giving King Kong the cold shoulder.

My valet prodded my with some embarrassment. The carriage was silent. The Hon. Rupert may not have been able to hear me but I had forgotten to keep the volume turned down for the benefit of my fellow passengers. "Just a bad dream, Sir" he reassured me.

Let me assure them - my people - when Regele James comes to the throne, all Romanian trains will have full air conditioning and functioning toilets with paper. And we'll say nothing more of the girly scream that struck fear in the hearts of ordinary law-abiding Romanians.

Making accountancy sound interesting

A friend of mine apparently uses a website called FriendReunited. An acountant, he wrote a rather dull profile of himself which I decided to 'spice up'. You might enjoy it. We'll call him Peter Galloway....

Peter Galloway is a highly successful author and International Corporate Taxation specialist having made his first fortune in the 'dot.com' goldrush selling pornography to the Dutch through the popular 'gosh.com' website. He divides his time between homes in rural Warwickshire (Le Manoir aux Deux Doigts), London, Montserrat and New York.

Among his acclaimed and award winning literary output he is especially proud of his seminal work "Divorce: The Financial High-Ground" of which critics commented; "brilliantly witty... Galloway at his very best", New York Times; "side-splitting!" ;, Larry King Live, CNN; "A poignant yet stunningly amusing reflection on marriage in the 21st Century - superb!", Cherie Booth Blair writing in Cosmopolitan. Other titles include "Beating the Taxman - senseless!", "Office Politics and How to Control the Photocopier Budget", "Gordon Brown and Me", and his first autobiographical work "Sex in the Office: Between the Balance Sheets". Pete is currently working on a historical account of the early career as a ferret trainer of former Prime Minister, Alec Douglas Home, a close family friend.

Notwithstanding his opulent lifestyle, Pete has endured his share of tragedy when in the Montserrat volcanic crisis of 1997, only 35 rooms of what he calls his 'little island hideaway' were left habitable and he was forced to lay off 10% of his domestic staff.

He has two children and is now mercifully (but expensively) separated from their mother. Once romantically linked to actress Nicole Kidman, Pete is now 'unexpectedly back on the market', having commented in rare interview that 'our passion was just too intense to survive' and 'she was losing her looks anyway, Robbie was welcome to her. The only downside has been that my new workout video launch has had to be postponed!'

Having traded up from NHS Joe 90 specs pretty much as soon as he had a job, Pete notes that all the young trendies are now actually *paying* for identical designer frames clearly demonstrating their abject lack of originality! "It just goes to show the extent to which I was setting the style agenda even then." he laughs.

He didn't get to the recent school reunion which he says 'was a real bummer coz it'd be nice to meet up with all and sundry. Sadly I was shooting a profile with Melvyn Bragg that weekend of my charity work. Melvyn just loves the Caribbean and I didn't have the heart to insist on a Birmingham location.'.

The South Bank Show's "Peter Galloway: A life of giving" hits the small screen on BBC2 in the Spring.

The Ghost Cat

In the normal run of things one spends Summer in one of the less 'popular' parts of France but as the leaves turn to that colour that some would call brown but I prefer to think of as russet, ones Welsh estate is the perfect place. Lady Carlingford is heavily with child - our first - and as September broke one had instructed ones housekeeper to take the evening off while one supervised the ironing of the shirts personally. Now I don't mind saying that I can be a little hard of hearing - a hunting accident led to the hearing loss in my left ear and now I carefully requisition the ideal seat in any meeting having assessed the acoustics of the room carefully and told to move those in the way in a manner that some would describe as eccentric and others merely rude.

The woodsmoke hung heavily in the courtyard that evening at Llanfihangel Ystrad Mynach as we settled down together watching some documentary - David Attenborough can be so watchable but should really step in more quickly when something furry comes to be eaten.

Now one has to understand that the house is what an estate agent would call private and others would call isolated. High up on the hillside the old house sprawls as if relaxing into an old armchair. The nearest estate cottages are at least half a mile away and with no moon that night there was a crisp stillness in the air that was soon to be shattered.

It took several seconds for me to recognise over the noise of a lion gnawing on a gazelle, that someone needed help. A fearful hammering on the door to the domestic wing said 'help I'm about to be murdered'. I moved quickly from the drawing room into the old kitchens and from there up a small flight of flagstone steps to the courtyard door. Carefully placing my foot behind its studded planking, with the commotion continuing I moved the oaken mass a few inches towards me now fearful for my own skin.

It was then that silence again draped the valley, the chimnies poking through the smokey blanket which hugged the hillside. Seeing nothing, I pulled the door wide open with Abigail hiding behind me - she had grabbed a carving knife as we passed through the kitchens. The odd thing was that my old gun dog was still barely awake - the same dog that could have a leg off the postman quicker than you could say "Special Delivery for his Lordship" still lay pondering his dream of how tasty a gazelle might be if spit-roasted.

The other odd thing was that our security lighting system was still considering its options - the courtyard lay in darkness still. Only seconds had passed between the furious hammering and our discovery of the deserted yard. Not even the crunch of pea-gravel gave away some poor soul limping away to find help elsewhere on the estate.

But the signs were that someone was in need - threatened by an unknown danger - and if they were in danger then perhaps too would be one of the estate workers. We quickly jumped into a Landrover, Abigail still armed with her blade and a sleepy gun dog. We drove up the hill and checked at Morgans and quickly told them our tale. Next we called in at Home Farm. Finally, we visited Ty Hir or 'Long House' where the old man with whom we had little contact came to the door offering us a totty to calm us down.

To many who passed, Ty Hir was not a house but part of the national collection of some obscure variety of ivy. Underneath the ivy was in truth a hovel occupied by an old man who could easily have been a latin scholar and who now found sanctuary on the estate - our very own hermit and thankfully one who did not need paying. Hermits can be such a nuisance when they become more popular than their 'sponsors'. And they must always be encouraged to wash more often. Anyway, I digress.

Now the Carlingford Estate in Wales had lain vacant ever since the old squire died in the 1930s. A rambling Lutyens manor of pink sandstone had seen better days when finally it came into the core estate in the 1960s. My father demolished two unused wings before his death and refurbished the main part of the house - once again it became a family home. I still have fond memories of him sitting on the ballustraded terrace with a tartan rug over his knees and a dog at his feet. No-one drank a Pimms with equivalent relish but never before six.

The latin scholar returned the decanter to the dresser repeating the words 'ghostly apparition, ghostly apparition' as he measured what to say next. He turned quickly and blurted out the same words again, this time excitedly - "Ghostly Apparition" he exclaimed. "D'you know, they always said the big house had something of the night about it. Back in the 60s, there was a houseguest who asked your father about the cat that she had felt brush along the back of her calves. She hadn't seen it, just felt it. Other guests had similar stories. Some even stopped visiting. They described an unease in the house. A certain restlessness that they found disturbing. It was about the time that the squire was remodelling the house for his own retirement. The South Wing was horribly dilapidated and who needs a ballroom out here? Anyway it was decided that it had to go. It was during the demolition that they discovered the basement of a much earlier house." He shuffled an old parchment out of a drawer. "See!" he exclaimed. "The old house had itself been a rebuilding of something much older." He poked the parchment and then pushed it towards us. "The old house was built during the 1500s. It was when they were demolishing the remains of the earlier house that the made a startling discovery - a body. That's right a body! The body of.. " He paused for dramatic effect. "The body of .... A DEAD CAT!" He spluttered his drink as he spat out the words, enjoying the drama. "So they did with it what anyone else would do. They buried the cat in the grounds in the pets cemetery. After that the house fell quiet again."

I can't remember what time we left Ty Hir but it must have been one in the morning. Abigail woke me about an hour later. The Hon. Violet was on her way and was born later that day. Further research on her part uncovered two interesting facts - first, that supernatural knocking on a door can sometime accompany the arrival of a new life - and second that the bodies of dead cats are often buried under a threshold to ward off witches.

The smallest landed estate in England

Photo credit "lostheritage.org.uk" - see right sidebar

History has not been kind to the Carlingfords. Like many landed families where fortunes have be made and squandered over the years, Carlingford Place is now no more. The great Edwardian country house parties are a dim and distant memory consigned to dusty photograph albums. Little by little the great estate has been sold off to meet death duties and the other pressing financial needs of the family and we are reduced to owning the smallest landed estate in England.

When I say small, the Carlingford Estate does still boast some of the finest grouse shooting in the country. The problem is that at just over one square metre its difficult to surprise ones victim. In fact there is little sport shooting a grouse at point blank range - such slayings can better be described as execution and often it's difficult to hang the results of ones efforts let alone cook it.

So! Should one sell the last vestige of greatness? Or perhaps open it up and allow the great unwashed to picnic? Chatsworth seems popular with the public although a little larger and more ostentatious. Longleat pays its way but still, why should the aristocracy charge to prop up their dynasties. No! We will be magnanimous - we will allow full and free access to the entire estate where peacocks once strutted and someday we will publish a photographic record so that it can be remembered what the Carlingfords once were - a beautiful reminder of the carefree days of boaters and hampers before the First World War realigned our values.