One of the blogs I follow ( secrets and subterfuge) is talking about the Serpentine Swimming Club.
My increasingly fallible memory was jogged, and I checked with one of the other participants, and quite definitely I have swum in the Serpentine circa 1969.
From what we have been able to piece together, it was about 3am of a summer's morning, and the general idea was, I think, to get the girls to take their clothes off.
From memory, we managed this, but only at the expense of our own clothes.
Neither the Earl nor myself can, for the life of us, remember what the grand finale was - or even who else was there - but I do know that I found myself on a train to Fishguard in half of my dinner jacket very early in the morning.
You may ask why this would be.
Well, the Earl was/is Irish, and needed to get someone out of the way by sending them back to Ireland. I think the prequel to the swimming was the farewell party. I suspect we had been in Old Covent Garden Market to get red roses for the ladies - always used to work ...
Anyway, the gentleman being escorted out of the country turned up thirty odd years later to visit the Earl in Kilkenny.
The Earl, a gentleman to the tips of his fingers, invited the apparition into his house for tea, then drinks, and finally dinner.
Asked if he would like to stay the night, the intruder remarked " B****r. I knew I'd forgotten something"
And indeed he had. His wife was still sitting in the pub where he had left her....
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