Monday 9 November 2009

Sabreurs and Old Fashioned Valour

It all started with Mrs Trefusis, tweeting about Sabreurs in Esquire Magazine. Sabreurs are dashing men who can pop a champagne cork with their swords. This idea so excited me I tweeted Mrs Trefusis, saying ‘I want one’. And with remarkable alacrity she found me one, a real, live, modern day Sabreur. So I tweeted him and requested that he come and pop my cork, (as you do). He replied that he would be delighted to do so but that EU regulations forbade ‘rushing about with a sabre’. I tweeted back ‘For God's sake- what's happened to old fashioned valour- Get your sword- your horse and dash out to Exmoor at once.’ To his credit he responded immediately and gathering some Polish Hussar cousins on the way, started galloping from London, sword at the ready. As I waited in my hot tub in the moonlight, my bosoms began a-heaving at the thought of these Hussars, galloping through the night, all ready to pop my cork. But alas, way before Basingstoke, the party had to return immediately to London as Sabreur’s cat needed to be taken urgently to the Vet. I had to make do with the silhouette of dashing hussars galloping across the face of the moon as I sat in my hot tub, all forlorn, champagne still corked, expectations still unpopped.
A few days later I discovered that my dashing Sabreur was actually a famous British historian of paint and colour, who was an expert in original painting materials. That rendered me all a- fluster and in an attempt to impress him, I tweeted that I had once dabbled in tempura when painting icons. His return tweet gently and discreetly referred to ‘tempera’, not ‘tempura’. I was mortified. I had totally failed in my attempt to impress. Instead I had come across as a weirdo who painted icons with deep fried battered Japanese vegetables. But the Sabreur so sweetly tweeted back, ‘Well, it's called many things including "distemper". Perhaps the starch content could be used as a binder’. This showed what a true gentleman the Sabreur is and that great valour still exists in the world today.
. It reminded me of another time when I encountered similar gentlemanlike valour. It was in the days when I was a Director of my husband’s energy efficiency company and was networking at a swanky drinks party at the House of Commons. On the way back from a visit to the Ladies, I approached a group of MDs of various companies, one of whom I knew. What I had failed to realize was that the back of my long skirt was accidentally stuffed in my knickers. The person I knew, a silver haired , distinguished looking gentleman , looked down upon my dishevelled attire and remarked, ‘Oh it is so wonderful to see that you have cycled here today.’ I looked behind me and nearly died as I frantically started pulling my skirt out of my knickers. Very smoothly my saviour engaged the other gentlemen in a discussion of the energy saving benefits of cycling, giving me ample time to sort myself out, before introducing me to the group and offering me a glass of white wine.
That is what I call old-fashioned valour - the ability a gentleman has in being able to transform a disastrous blunder in such a way, that a damsel can continue living and breathing, her dignity intact.

2 comments:

  1. A friend of mine in France actually did open a bottle of champagne with his sword. To my amazement, I noted that the technique actually snaps the neck of the bottle, so that the cork remains in a sort of very tight green necklace. He assured me that this was how it's sposed to be - unless my French is worse than I'd feared.

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  2. No Billy definitely not. A proper sabreur can whip the cork out without breaking the bottle. I've yet to see it but am waiting in anticipation!

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