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still only three feet wide (I exaggerate, of course), and the cars whizz through what used to be the north-east corner of Chapman’s Wood. Which leaves us, as you might say, out of the mainstream of life. Which is where I am quite happy to be, thank you, and personally I couldn’t be more pleased that the garages have all moved out to the by-pass, and we can walk across our charming little High Street with its pretty red-brick eighteenth-century houses and its faintly absurd Victorian street-lamps (which people are always preserving with petitions) without more than a sixty-forty chance of being knocked down by one of those madmen in goggles driving export models to the docks (speed limit 30 m.p.h.) at seventy-five through the middle of the place where our stomachs used to be.
    You get the picture? I could go on, telling you all about the drears who live here and think that by electing Mr Ponsonby, the ironmonger, to be mayor every year they are helping to preserve all that’s best in Britain. I could tell you about the terrible scandal of Dr Nye, who made the unholy error of patting Miss Spurgeon (age seventy-three) on the knee-cap when she complained of sciatica in her elbow. But I won’t, partly because the whole thing would be tedious beyond words, partly because I don’t believe aword of it anyway, and mostly because I have a much more interesting story to tell you, about Harry Mengel, who isn’t German, as you might think with a name like that, though he isn’t quite altogether English, you know, either, since his great-great-great-God-knows-how-many-times-grandfather was something to do with one of those Moguls who came over with William the Third, who was, if I remember right, the one married to Mary. Anyway, this ancient Mengel married a nice English girl in Cartersfield, and so the family has gone on ever since, though the big-wig from Holland and his lot died out somewhere around the time of the battle of Waterloo. Nobles come, bringing their trains with them, you see, and then they die and the servants stay on. History. Those who’ve read some tell me it’s fascinating, and I’m sure they’re right. From such a minor question as the origin of Harry Mengel’s surname we get a whole picture of social development. Hurrah.
    Not that there was much development in the Mengel family, who remained, I imagine, resolutely servile till Harry’s father bought a sweetshop during the depression, managed to keep it going through the ’thirties, the war, rationing (history will keep breaking in, excuse me) and so on, so that when he died a couple of years ago it was from a thoroughly deserved stroke, since his little sweetshop had become the largest grocery store in the town, he had no inhibitions about testing his stock on his stomach, and his belly was the subject of much speculation among the younger members of our community. Harry, in fact, learnt, or so it seems to me, his business skill at an age when he should have been learning his lessons, because kids being kids, bets would be made about the size of old Mr Mengel’s waistline, accurate statistics upon which could be gauged only by a member of the family—i.e. Harry. He took ten per cent for his measurements. In fact, what he did was to measure his father’s trousers (his father having several pairs, as should be obvious), not his old dad at all, but his figures were agreed to be good. Furthermore, his father’s waist went in and out a gooddeal, since he made spasmodic and quarter-hearted efforts to get off the fat. Thus speculation on his belly was more or less constant, or traditional, rather, among the boys at the school, and Harry did nothing to discourage it, taking his ten per cent without a qualm.
    This precociousness was not the only thing which singled out Harry among his contemporaries, I may say. Of course he stole apples, broke windows, played cricket in alleys, booted a football about and so on, like any English kid, but he did all these