Any woman who insisted was not allowed to disturb the collegiate atmosphere of the bar itself but was directed to a room at the back furnished with chairs and tables, where Elmer's grand head-waiter would ritually shame her by forcing one of the more elderly and infirm old soaks taking refuge there to give up his seat to her."The note also contains an excellent conceit of Fleet Street as it grinds towards the end of its life before everyone fled to Canary Wharf and Wapping. Women were strongly discouraged from entering. As an exemplary passage, this one will do:"The other was El Vino's (always so-called, with an apostrophe s, like Piele's or Auntie's as if it had a landlord called Elmer Vino). But when I finished it the next morning, the comedy seemed to me to peter out and the ending seemed like a cop-out, the last scene like a Ray Cooney farce (or rather, as I imagine a Cooney farce to end since I've never seen one).The note on this edition, at the start of the book, is delightful reading, describing Fleet Street as it was when Frayn began in journalism. I started Frayn's "Towards the End of the Morning" to accompany me on what was otherwise going to be a pretty irritating train journey, and it worked - I was laughing out loud, and arrived in very good spirits.
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