I sit here at my window, fingers slowly moving up and down the stem of this very fine silver goblet.  The wine is so good.  The moment worth contemplation.  I breath in the aromas before I sip, and let the warmth flow through me, relax. 

Spencer let me keep the clay pigeon.  He said it was my prize.  I wiped the floor with him again; he panics you see, you've got to keep your nerve.  Bring the sights up into the flight of the target, slow squeeze. Pow! Simple!

The shooting range is only a short walk from here.  I don't go very often but Spencer is regular as clockwork, every Thursday.  So I take myself down there every so often, just to show him who is top shot, so to speak. I say to him, 'Why play at all, if you don't play to win;' that was our family motto.  Of course I'm a good sport and ask him around for a drink after; but he's always got to go. Kids or someone needing him.

Father taught me to shoot years ago, on the Hemmington- Hursts country estate.  I never lost the knack.  My family were well thought of you see.  We had money. We were always being invited to dine with the finest; and the parties we had.  Oh such a hoot.  Wonderful times, wonderful wonderful times.  Twenty three rooms our house had, and it's own pools, inside and out of course. 

Then there was Jenny.  Jenny and I were an item then.  Well for a short while after Uni, but I guess we kind of drifted apart.  Last I heard, she was saving tigers in some far off god forbidden country.  I told her she was crazy to get into all that environmental mumbo jumbo.  No money in anything like that.

She sent a postcard a few years ago, it's still on the fridge.

Then the global crash.  Father lost it all.  Everything down the Swanee, almost overnight.  Father's health never recovered.  Mother was taken in by her sister.  Dear Aunt Sylvia.   I wasn't able to get up to Glenmore to see her very much in those last few years, long way from London. 

My little brother David flunked College, ended up, with an Ozzie wife and moved out there.  Four kids, Byron, Tracy... I can't remember the names of the other two.  He didn't make much of himself.  A supermarket manager in Queensland.  I said, 'Have you any bargain beans today, any specials I should know about.  Have you had your chips or are you in a jam David'.  He takes it all in jest. I don't hear from him these days. 

I'm between jobs at the moment.  Waiting for something special to come along.  Maybe one of my old school pals will have something for me? Jenkins or Bodkers or Parlow?  I wonder what they are all doing now?

The washing machine has been broken for three weeks now.  I never can work out how this washer fits back into the door mechanism.  I've a list of things that I need a little help with. But there's no one to ask.