busker

As I said to Mike, thank God I don't have sons to be bullied into lavishing these costly toys. Single-handedly boosting Nordstrom's Xmas stock price by demolishing their inventory of maquillage and skimpy garments is quite enough to be getting on with. (I have daughters, a point I dimly recall once not needing not to add).

Chip Gibbons: great company. We discussed Absolutely Fabulous and the hugely fanciable Jennifer Saunders as well as 'Bubble', Saffron and, of course, Joanna Lumley as Patsy (for whom I once had the drooling pleasure of toting books when she was one of the judges for the Booker Prize).

We also fell to discussing Brad Pitt as JD in his Trivial Pursuit appearance in Thelma and Louise, in which neither of us could remember Geena Davis' name and whose literally brief appearance in Tootsie as April Page Chip hadn't spotted.

I did talk to Philippe Boucher but completely forgot to thank him for including in Ecotalk carpet tycoon Ray Anderson who so impressed me in The Corporation.

Children: Wonderful company! My soup slurping etiquette was in sore need of improvement so I made sure to sit opposite the only lady with decent table manners, the youngest Leung (2) who watched me like a hawk, ate her soup with perfect technique and was clearly less than impressed by my trencher-man scooping.

Also, there is yet to be invented a better sound baffle than youngsters at play and any bugs hoping to have picked up on Dave Henry's interesting run-down would have been foiled.

Ted and I joked about who'd be racing home to file the first blog write-up of the day. Ted mentioned the 21st century skill of "duel editing": you're at a talk, you're taking notes in real time, which the rest of your team is simultaneously editing. I can think of nothing more distracting than a guru du jour delivering his words of wisdom to a roomful of tappers who occasionally look up and across snarl at a disputing colleague. See what fun and funds of information the day was?

Ted was sporting a manly scar on his arm from singeing himself while trying to tweak the Leung Ferrari. Luckily, my man Giuseppe had parked the Modena just outside and I was able to take Ted thru the finer points of raising mph without quite reducing consumption to 40 yards to the litre.

Party Favors: I'm sure they weren't dishing them out but when I finally got home there was a can of Guinness in my passenger flap. I did stop off at Safeway and when I emerged there was a bevy of youths hovering around an identical battered gray Volvo next to mine.

I can only assume that one of them had mistakenly flipped it into *my* jalopy. It was most welcome and made for a genial close to a perfect day.

See also Julie Leung's more measured write-up, from which I was able to update and correct much of my original data on fellow guests.