The relative calm of August is over, the rain has returned (did it ever go away?) and the office is full to bursting with copies of the Autumn issue of Slightly Foxed and the latest Slightly Foxed Edition, Michael Wharton’s The Missing Will. Its author was better known as Peter Simple, whose satirical ‘Way of the World’ column in the Daily Telegraph featured such deathless creations as Julian Birdbath, the unsuccessful writer, the psychoanalyst Dr Heinz Kiosk, and Dr Spacely-Trellis, the go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon. This first, absurdly entertaining volume of autobiography describes his early years in Bradford and the path that finally led him, via a lamentable Oxford career, army service in India and years adrift in post-war bohemia, to Fleet Street.
We’re furiously stuffing books into envelopes and filling postbags to get copies off to waiting subscribers, and Chudleigh the office dog is adding to the chaos by raiding the waste-paper bin and stealing whatever he can lay his paws on. Thankfully he seems to know that books are off limits!
Here he is in a rare quiet moment.
Chudleigh the Office Dog
