Well, first of all the sun was a flaming gold and secondly, I was in the park. Exuberantly I jumped the low, fancy railing and bounded exhilaratedly over the grass. And then what happened? I'll tell you. A man with a peaked cap and a corkscrew outlook came and read me an Act of Parliament. It was all about how I could be taken to Tower Hill and shot out of a cannon for walking on the grass. "Blow yer into a thousand bits of meat, it would," he said, "so hoppit."
There was no sense in arguing—| had an appointment with someone a lot more acceptable than he was. I found her sitting under her parasol on the park wall. London salesgirl JANET DE BOLLET. I mentioned how I'd nearly been executed.
"I've seen those cannon," said Janet, "you could have been shot all the way over Tower Bridge. Still, all that lovely grass—you were just a little bit naughty, weren't you?"
I never thought a nice girl like Janet would side with a man wearing a peaked cap and a twisted nervous system. But it's the unexpected quality of feminine reactions that makes girls so interlocutorily interesting, especially when, like Janet, they're of French extraction.
Anyway, she made room on the wall for me, and we watched London go by as we shared a packet of crisps. Janet glowed in the sunshine, and I forgot all about the man with a peaked cap and a sense of umbrage. It was our kind of day. Lots of occasions are made to remember, don't you think?
Do you remember those happy days when a blushing girl hurriedly fixing a slipped suspender by a bus stop made an exhilarating start to your day? Well, it's not a completely obsolete contretemps, you'll be pleased to know. "If it's all right with you," said the blushing Miss de Bollet sarcastically, "it's all right with me, of course."
Span No 186 - February 1970
