[Varley]

Google doesn't help me with 1720. Not sure if relevant as that is not even time for the pre-prandial tincture.

My palate left school with me and, hardly maturing any more surely, has only clasped coffee; caviar; jamon iberico; Grappa and Calvados to its bosom since (and the last two now denied me).

Eglefino ahumado poached in milk remains a breakfast favourite although, whilst Nanny would have allowed pepper (even black pepper had it been in the shops in those days), instead I now use chilli-milk which I doubt she would have countenanced. It should ideally be a commodore fish, the whipper snappers, short of their 10 years at four rings, are too skinny.

Mind you, I have noticed a certain lack of height in the stature of some very senior RN types (is there a NATO equivalent to Screaming Willie's orange box I wonder).

As I recall my schoolmate was not, then, a towering figure but perhaps he still had a year or so's development in hand. He was and remains good at hockey (and, I am sure, much seastuff else), perhaps that is because he is still quite close to the turf?

KGFS Trafalgar Ball's guest of honour a year or so ago was the First Sea Lord. He did not buck that trend (but did manage the lectern without orangeboxed matelot in tow).