"It Was Like Feasting With.....Alligators"

Well, Oscar Wilde actually said "panthers", but The Herald--that only true competition to Jack and Jill--finished the week with a story of an elderly lady who spotted a two foot or so baby alligator walking toward her Labrador and tore out of the house with a pistol. She fired four shots at the gator and amazingly missed both the reptile and the much, much larger dog. There was no word on passing traffic at press time.


Even I am not above panic; you can imagine my surprise with I spotted an alligator surveying the pool! Oh, it was only Walpole, an old friend I met in San Juan ten years ago and who came back to stay with me. A little eccentric, Walpole--don't call him Wally--fancies himself an exiled Russian princess and lives in the attic (which he also fancies is in Paris). The Princess is writing memoirs of the last Imperial season in St. Petersburg, but took some time to have a martini and talk about the panic pursued by the press.




It was fun to anticipate the lavish pool parties to come.



Walpole's dropping in was fortuitous, indeed, as I had just made a test for some future dinner of pears and brie wrapped in chicken breast and baked with an orange marmalade coating with nuts. (Ben was on his way to pick me up, so it was a short luncheon compared the average here.)

Walpole complimented me on the luscious, moist meat combined with the sweetness of the fruit. "How nice, Walpole. Have you tasted anything like it before?"

"Yes," Walpole replied, dabbing his lips and taking a sip of Santa Magarita, "young children."


We laughed and laughed at that one.