For Patrick, aetat: LXX1

How glad I am that I was bound apprentice

To Patrick’s London of the 1920s.

Estranged from parents (as we all were then),

Let into Oxford and let out again,

Kind fortune led me, how I do not know,

To that Venetian flat-cum-studio

Where Patrick wrought his craft in Yeoman’s Row.

For Patrick wrote and wrote. He wrote to live:

What cash he had left over he would give

To many friends, and friends of friends he knew,

So that the ‘Yeo’ to one great almshouse grew—

Not a teetotal almshouse, for I hear

The clink of glasses in my memory’s ear,

The spurt of soda as the whisky rose

Bringing its heady scent to memory’s nose

Along with smells one otherwise forgets:

Hairwash from Delhez, Turkish cigarettes,

The reek of Ronuk on a parquet floor

As parties came cascading through the door:

Elizabeth Ponsonby in leopard-skins

And Robert Byron and the Ruthven twins,

Ti Cholmondeley, Joan Eyres Monsell, Bridget Parsons,

And earls and baronets and squires and squarsons—

“Avis, it’s ages! … Hamish, but its aeons…”

(Once more that record, the Savoy Orpheans).

Leader in London’s preservation lists

And least Wykehamical of Wykehamists:

Clan chief of Paddington’s distinguished set,

Pray go on living to a hundred yet!