I’m currently reading The Trouble With Markets by the hugely-entertaining, if a little doom-y economist, Roger Bootle. It’s marvellous in many ways, not just because he once told me that my Queen of Hearts theory of the downturn was “probably about right maybe anyway I’ve got to go over there” and so every time I turn the page I think I’m going to see it mentioned without my consent and can sue.
The main joy of the book is Bootle’s bracing way with words. When he’s not being staggered by the antics of the Japanese economy, he’s distributing ‘ghastly’ and ‘topsy’ (“private equity expanded like topsy”) around the place like Sir Ranulph Fiennes eating lashings of hard-boiled eggs with ginger beer on a warm summer’s day at a cricket match outside Cirencester (speaking of Fiennes and his influence on our own trip - fingerless gloves: yes. Fingerless hands: no).
Having already eschewed the more festive sections of the English dictionary on this no-watershed blog, it occurred to me that Bootle and Fiennes might be onto something with their linguistic choices. During the more madness/vomiting moments, what could be more reviving than a dash of “well, must buck up” and “huzzah! pasta for breakfast!”?
Plus, we’ll be English folk in Africa. Top hole!
What we have learned:
Nothing about the Queen of Hearts theory. I shouldn’t even have told the Bootle
It’s OK, I’m reading the new Modern Toss too
Boot update:
The long laces have encouraged the cat to use them as maypoles
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