Bingo Little has, again, lost his money on a horse and asks his employer, H. C. Purkiss for a raise; he is refused. On his way to the Drones that evening, passing through Trafalgar Square, Bingo meets Mabel Murgatroyd, a girl he once met during a raid on a gambling club.
Mabel is now a ban-the-bomb protester specializing in sit-down protests; she seizes Bingo and they sit down in the road. They are arrested, held overnight and released with a warning. But he has not got away free as his wife has seen their photo in the paper; she is not happy ...
| Bingo Little | a young man, editor of Wee Tots |
| Mrs Bingo Little | his wife, a novelist |
| H. C. Purkiss | Bingo's employer |
| Hon. Mabel Murgatroyd | a young lady |
| The Earl of Ippleton | George Francis Augustus Delamere, Mabel's father |
| Freddie Widgeon | a Drone and adviser to Bingo |
First published in January 1965 in Playboy magazine (US).
Also published in August 1965 in Argosy (UK).
Brighton
- a seaside town in Sussex.
'... and so to bed ...'
- typical last line of a daily entry in Samuel Pepys's famous diary.
Trafalgar Square
- then and now a favoured site for protests as well as celebrations.
Aldermaston
- the main British atomic research centre in Berkshire. Despite covering two square miles, it did not appear on any Ordnance Survey (the official Government mapping agency) maps, a fruitless attempt to hide it from the Soviets during the Cold War since all they had to do was follow the protestors while trying not to look Russian.
Boat Race night
- the night of the annual rowing race between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, no longer so widely celebrated.
'Joy, in short, had come in the morning, precisely as the Psalmist said it always did.'
- Psalm 30: Verse 5.
'In answer to his query as to why she was not skipping like the high hills ...'
- possibly based on Psalm 68: Verse 16.
'When he learns of this, he'll be fit to be tied.'
- so angry that he'll have to be tied down or restrained.
Cape Hatteras
- part of North Carolina in the USA, it sticks out a fair bit into the Atlantic. Hurricanes tend to change their character on making landfall.
'... if this was not the best of all possible worlds ...'
- Voltaire, Candide.
Mirror
- the Daily Mirror, a national newspaper.
Entrechats
- ballet leaps, crossing the legs while in the air, requiring both strength and agility. Nijinsky was a famous Russian ballet dancer noted for such jumps.
Chipping Norton
- a village in Oxfordshire.
'You know the old gag about women being tough babies in the ordinary run of things but becoming ministering angels when pain and anguish wring the brow.'
- Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto VI, Stanza 30.
Phillips Oppenheim
- (1866-1946) a prolific writer of thrillers.
'With his hair in a braid.'
- with enthusiasm.
Athenaeum
- a London club for the most respectable gentlemen.
Blotted the escutcheon
- stained the family reputation.
Fanny
- buttocks (US slang). A very unlikely term for Lord I. to use.
Flatties
- short for flatfeet meaning policemen from the alleged occupational condition of walking the streets all day (before they all got into vehicles).
'There hasn't been such a scandal in the family since our ancestress Lady Evangeline forgot to say No to Charles the Second.'
- (1630-85) king of England, who had many mistresses and illegitimate children.
'... what some writer fellow whose name I can't recall described as a consummation devoutly to be wished.'
- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1.
Ben Jonson
- (1574 -1637) an English dramatist.
'... that stuff about letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would" like the poor cat in the adage.'
- Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7. The 'adage' or proverb, according to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which we know PG used, is:
'... quivering like an Ouled Nail stomach dancer.'
- the Ouled Nail were an Algerian tribe famous for their belly dancing women.
'... a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.'
- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3.