ABSTRACT

Memories, according to the imperishable humorist P.G. Wodehouse, are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. Best left unstirred. This may be so, but in keeping with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s (1926, p. 188) equally imperishable assertion that “we are boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” I am obliged to break into the boathouse of recollection, select a suitably rose-tinted skiff, and set off across the mulligatawny soup of memory to the dim ’n’ distant shore of yesteryear (pausing only to spit in the face of mixed metaphors—and not for the first time).