1990 - Summer
In a movie entitled Ace In The Hole, Mr Dougless said, 'Good news is no news.' Working on this principle, whenever television has deigned to show us aerial pictures of Ohio, the entire state has been flooded.
I have now been to Dayton and am happy to be able to allay anyone's fears. It is a bone dry, quiet, spacious city full of the friendliest people. . . I was asked by a member of my audience how Dayton compared with New York. I said that it is cosier. I hope that was the correct answer.
I returned to Manhattan with just enough time to change my socks before setting out for Tampa. . . Here, though, the audience was very different - everyone was dressed in a three-piece suit - and the city was very different. . . the general impression is one of boundless luxury.
I have now made eight flights in one month. Since going to Dayton and Tampa, I have visited Houston and Chicago. . . Last Tuesday, with once again only time to change my socks, I went to Chicago, a city even more familiar to me than Houston because I once worked in its Ivanhoe Theatre for a whole month. . . On this visit, I did not appear on television, but was interviewed several times on radio programmes.
Having made so many journeys by air and visited four different states in one month, it has taken me quite a while to slow down. . . for about four days after my return from Chicago I did everything fast and with lunatic intensity.
The first task against which I flung myself was answering the mail. . . I turned my attention to dealing with news of the dead. . . One such person was Angus McBean. . . When I first met him the Second World War had just begun. . .When, after a year of silence, the war began to shake London to its foundations, he moved to Bath. There, his exotic lifestyle became instantly conspicuous, and soon met with disapproval. The police broke into his house in which he had generously allowed various young men to take refuse from the bombardment of the capital. Though the youngest of the boys was living there at his mother's request, Mr McBean was charged with the preversion of minors, found guilty, and jailed for four years.
While he was 'away', his mother lived in the lodge of a large country house in Somerset where my mother was a guest. Because the lodge possessed no telephone, it was at the big house that a call from 'Angus' arrived. My mother fetched Mrs McBean and, when the telephone conversation was over, asked her if she were Mrs McBean. Seeing that the poor lady was terrified by this quention, my mother added, 'You have nothing to fear because I am Quentin Crisp's mother.' They instantly pooled their disgrace and became friends.
He became so famous that his early negatives now lie in the archives at Harvard ( or possibly Yale ), but I doubt that he became rich.
I have now been to Dayton and am happy to be able to allay anyone's fears. It is a bone dry, quiet, spacious city full of the friendliest people. . . I was asked by a member of my audience how Dayton compared with New York. I said that it is cosier. I hope that was the correct answer.
I returned to Manhattan with just enough time to change my socks before setting out for Tampa. . . Here, though, the audience was very different - everyone was dressed in a three-piece suit - and the city was very different. . . the general impression is one of boundless luxury.
I have now made eight flights in one month. Since going to Dayton and Tampa, I have visited Houston and Chicago. . . Last Tuesday, with once again only time to change my socks, I went to Chicago, a city even more familiar to me than Houston because I once worked in its Ivanhoe Theatre for a whole month. . . On this visit, I did not appear on television, but was interviewed several times on radio programmes.
Having made so many journeys by air and visited four different states in one month, it has taken me quite a while to slow down. . . for about four days after my return from Chicago I did everything fast and with lunatic intensity.
The first task against which I flung myself was answering the mail. . . I turned my attention to dealing with news of the dead. . . One such person was Angus McBean. . . When I first met him the Second World War had just begun. . .When, after a year of silence, the war began to shake London to its foundations, he moved to Bath. There, his exotic lifestyle became instantly conspicuous, and soon met with disapproval. The police broke into his house in which he had generously allowed various young men to take refuse from the bombardment of the capital. Though the youngest of the boys was living there at his mother's request, Mr McBean was charged with the preversion of minors, found guilty, and jailed for four years.
While he was 'away', his mother lived in the lodge of a large country house in Somerset where my mother was a guest. Because the lodge possessed no telephone, it was at the big house that a call from 'Angus' arrived. My mother fetched Mrs McBean and, when the telephone conversation was over, asked her if she were Mrs McBean. Seeing that the poor lady was terrified by this quention, my mother added, 'You have nothing to fear because I am Quentin Crisp's mother.' They instantly pooled their disgrace and became friends.
He became so famous that his early negatives now lie in the archives at Harvard ( or possibly Yale ), but I doubt that he became rich.