It has been said elsewhere, yet may not therefore be wholly lacking in elemental veracity, that putting is the devil. Systems more numerous than dactyls and spondees in Classic verse, patent putters outnumbered only by howlers in Oxford responsions, bear witness to this graceless statement. Quite lately in these columns have I confessed--_pulvere cineribusque_-- that our side had twice failed at the inconsiderable distance of two yards, even after discarding the small thirty-two. But that further confession will be forthcoming is now wildly and preposterously problematical. For I have discovered the true exorcism for demoniac influence in putting. It is this: First catch your putter. Put the whole length of the shaft up your sleeve. Then--but I must retain something for next Saturday's notes, and, besides, I fancy the secretary of the Club where I am inditing these words has his frugal eye on the consumption of the note-paper. But what I have written I have written. _Litera scripta manet._ * * * * * [Illustration: _Eminent London Architect_ (_submitting his designs to our Village Victory Memorial Committee and warming to his work_). "...AND, SURMOUNTING THE WHOLE, A GRACEFUL FIGURE OF VICTORY, WITH WREATH--SO."] * * * * * THE COALITION OF 1950. "Aren't you being rather badly hit by the price of tobacco?" I asked Charles, whose pipe is a kind of extra limb to him. "I have just been composing the plot of a novel," he replied with apparent irrelevance. "It begins something like this:-- "'Slowly and softly the violet dusk set in. The beautiful young Premiere stood at the window of her yellow-and-black boudoir, gazing a little wistfully at the almost deserted pavements of Downing Street. A white pigeon perched--'" "They aren't white," I said; "they're a sort of purply pinky grey." "All right," said Charles, unmoved, "only it rather spoils the sentence. 'A sort of purply pinky grey pigeon perched pompously--'" "Never mind the pigeon," I said, "tell me what was the trouble with the B.Y.P." "A change in the leadership of the Opposition. The old leaderess had just retired and her place had been taken by a new one, a man this time, young and handsome as Apollo, who had thrown up the Chair of Cinematography at the London University to plunge on to a political platform." "What was the programme," I inquired, "of this--er--furniture-remover?" "He was a reactionary," said Charles. "The Premiere's party had won a not too sweeping victory at the polls on prohibition (not of alcohol, of course--that had been done long ago--but of tobacco)." "How on earth did she do it?"