My fellow dinner guests made me feel like a combination of Messalina and Lady Macbeth

I was walking up St James’s and happy to be in London. For a change I was not rushing but strolling in a leisurely manner, on time for lunch with Charles Moore at his club, when the lack of deference of certain Americans hit me like the proverbial pie in the face: ‘I mean, like, who the fuck does she think she is? I’m not taking this crap from anyone. This is my life and this is me…’ The young woman bellowing at the top of her screechy voice had those ubiquitous wires hanging from her ears, was wearing leggings — she was not bad-looking, incidentally — and was as unaware of her surroundings, as she shouted into her contraption, as it is possible to be. St James’s is a quiet street of gentlemen’s clubs, demure shops selling men’s shoes and an old-fashioned men’s hairdresser. It is probably the last street in London where suits and ties outnumber gym clothes and trainers. The oblivious American kept at it, heading for Piccadilly. I turned into a club and that was that.

I mentioned this during lunch and Charles Glass, the third in our party, cringed. What is it about loud American women that makes men like Charlie Glass and myself, two fairer sex-obsessed males, wince? Is it their pushiness and assertiveness, the high decibels, or the aggression? Perhaps it’s just that I’m old, used to sweet young Southern belles and the shy debs of long ago. Never mind. Lunch with two very old friends was wonderful: one, my ex-editor Charles, a fountain of knowledge and good sense; the other, Charlie, writing books non-stop, his latest about Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and the shell-shock hospital they were sent to after the first world war. The problem was poor little me. The moment I opened my mouth, I coughed, the result of the bronchitis I’ve had since before Christmas.