FOR SYDNEY

(This post is for my son Sydney. It is the only way we can communicate during these troubled times. So if you are not my son Sydney – don’t read it. Thank you.)

Hello son. Good to see you have your Dad’s interests at heart. But hey – don’t be so downbeat: it will take more than a bunch of fading porn actors to put the frighteners on me.

I’d best not ring though –even from a pay phone. You never know with these Scandinavian buggers: they might have one of their illegal immigrants working for British Telecoms.

No, this is by far the best way to communicate, for the time being.

Anyway, Syd, let us apply our minds to more filial matters: how are you keeping? You must remember to take your vitamin capsules, even though it is May – especially having to exist on that diet of herrings.

And I feel the need to touch upon a rather delicate matter: SEX. I do hope you are practising the safe variety. I fear you may be in some danger, living as you do, in a hotbed of vice and corruption. Just remember everything your dad has told you – and you won’t go far wrong. (if you do go wrong… well there are plenty of clinics over there)

There is not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. Only this afternoon, I was recalling the night you were conceived: New Year’s Eve, it was – and the condom machine in the pub toilets had run out.

Still, as they say, “It’s an ill wind…”



Look after yourself – and “chin up”.