ABSTRACT
Two English festivals last week-the Investiture and the tennis. But the weather was so good I saw very little of either. Wimbledon, in ordinary circumstances, is certainly worth watching, since the scale of the court fits television so exactly and the repetitions and predictable crises of the game make an almost compulsive rhythm. Almost. I watched parts of Gonzales-Pasarell and Laver-Newcome, but in the evenings, in edited versions, already knowing who had won. Caer-
narvon, on the other hand, I had quite forgotten, until the shops in Abergavenny began to close early, led by an international supermarket. By the time I got back, anxious to learn how to build a dry-stone wall, I had forgotten it again. And that's how it had better stay. In offices and places where men calculate, a planned public relations operation is known to have two effects: direct, in manipulating opinion and sentiment; indirect, in forcing critics to react to it. Fearless exposures, satirical comments, earnest protests: these are all grist to the mill. The thing to do, when the operation starts to buzz, is go away and get on with one's own life.
