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Then it was Bartle Bull’s turn. Bartle is an Anglo-American and has written many novels about the Middle East and Far East. He told us how he was the only person ever to get a free drink off Elaine, the 400-pound behemoth who ran her place à la Mussolini and then some. He was at Elaine’s when Jackie Kennedy Onassis came in and complained about the notorious paparazzo Ron Gallela hounding her. Elaine waddled out, grabbed the cover off a bin, and smashed the photographer on the head with it. Bleeding profusely, he screamed that he would sue. That is when Bartle approached Elaine, announced that he was a lawyer, and told her he had witnessed Ron attacking her. “Have a drink on the house,” was all Elaine said. It was the one and only time in thirty years that she had uttered such words.

Now back to Brexit. An American woman reporter has been writing a very long, wordy, boring piece in The N.Y. Times about a mighty city trembling at a global crossroad. Her words, not mine. (I write badly, but not that badly.) Never have I read so many clichés, at least not since I was a child reading books for 4-year-olds. She quotes the author of The Good Immigrant, a book made up of essays by nonwhite Britons. The author feels alienated. As well he should. Where he comes from, people don’t get to vote. She then quotes a publisher of the English persuasion: “We should be moving together,” he says. Gosh, what originality and what brio. Better to look outward, says la Lyall, not to gaze inward. I agree. Looking inward can be a terrible thing, much too traumatic, especially if one works for the deplorable paper that she does. Londoners are becoming cold and mean-spirited because of Brexit, is her message. Poor dear. She should go to the Boom Boom on gay and lesbian night, and try to imagine how cold and mean-spirited the crowd was toward the poor little Greek boy.