Sextator notes

I walked round to the Spectator yesterday afternoon to dig out some old cuts of mine from the library. The receptionist/librarian, a pretty girl in her twenties, let me in and handed me a couple of the bound volumes stacked two deep behind her. While I was making the painful discovery of what a pompous, arrogant little prick I was in 1981, Michael Heath came in and we did the dance of old farts reminiscing. I hadn’t been in the Spec offices since about 1995, even for parties, though there was a time when I almost lived there. “Nothing has changed”, he said, though we were both fatter, and neither of us smoke any more.
“Well,” I said. “There seems to be a lot more vigour around the office. The first thing I noticed was that the librarian was reading the Marquis de Sade” — which she was, in a cheap paperback edition from OUP. “Oh, it’s dreadful” she said, rallying as best she could. “Absolutely nothing happens. There’s been two people shot, but that’s all.”