Rose early and off to my office After playing the fool with young Nell And thinking a while in my study Of mon plaisir I had had avec elle. To church and there saw a wedding, Young people in merry delight; What pleasure we married people have To see others decoyed in a similar plight.
Strange how a brave, bucksome woman, Professing great pretence to adore Her husband, her family, her religion, May behave like a Drury Lane whore. And so to my home and to dinner, A most handsomely served meal Of a dozen plump larks, all in a pie, Some prawns and a shoulder of veal. The claret has left me quite fuddled, The brandy has gone straight to my head: I played awhile with the breasts of our Nell And being sated therewith, so to bed.
Back in the air and bound for Paris via Bangkok and Dubai. With so many holiday possibilities in this suddenly shrunken world, why anyone would be interested in spending free time in Dubai defeats me, unless you are a worshipper of the Golden Calf and enjoy window shopping for Rolex watches, playing tennis on the roof of a skyscraper or wafting through air-conditioned, marble-clad hotel lobbies.
Like Babylon, I suppose Dubai will end up under the sand, only the tip of a broken ski-lift marking its tomb. Unlike Babylon there will be nothing among the ruins that will interest the Louvre or the antiquities department of the British Museum.
I feel a strong sense of home when I come to Paris; after all we were married for close on fourteen years. But little by little, in her coquettish way, she revealed herself, from her medieval rat holes in the rue Quincompoix to her glassy slopes of La Defense, until she finally came to me completely, nue, toute nue et sans culottes.
