Last night we sampled the delights of ‘t Zuiderhuis, a rather swanky new restaurant which is, crucially, within walking distance of our house.
We had the special – started with a salad with wee bits of pheasant, and the main course being delicious flash-fried chunks of tuna with baked endive. We accepted their recommendation of an Argentinian red wine, enjoyed the food and drink, and tripped merrily home.
But we both woke at about 5 am this morning having had weird dreams. In my case I was setting up a branch office in Geneva with various improbable problems afflicting me in the process, and it was All My Fault. (Anne told me her dream too, but neither of us can remember it now except that it was weird.) One suspects that something was up with the food (probably the tuna).
Well, there you go. I suspect we will try them again, but probably not soon.
This all seems wholly plausible, and supported by the fact that Gaunt in the Moonbase 3 still looks like a taller, fuller-figured SJS.
On the idea that if she was paid off, it would have required memos, and this paper trail should be findable – well, yes and no. Yes, the memos probably once existed, but they wouldn’t necessarily get into the Archive. The BBC Written Archive is, I think, very like the archives described in Yes, Minister (“This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, a few others lost in the flood of 1967, some records which went astray in the move to London, and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence, or cause embarrassment to friendly governments”), and it’s not impossible for potentially embarrassing documentation to quietly disappear (for example, there is apparently no memo in the archive explaining why BBC executives in 1962 thought it a good idea to poach from ABC the controversial figure of Sydney Newman to be Head of Drama – indeed, it seems documentation around Newman’s appointment is surprisingly thin).