It Helps to Have...a Beautiful Woman On Your Arm ©

By Bill Longworth
October 5, 2011

As I sat in London’s Lyceum theatre with the beautiful young oriental woman I was with that Saturday night, minding my own business as usual, a stodgy old man sitting alone next to me started up a “small talk” conversation.

“Where you from?” he inquired.

Unimpressed, I looked at the guy not really interested in conversing with him. He was a little overweight and had just a smidgeon of white hair haloing his head. He was dressed in an unpressed brown suit, looked every day his age of at least 80, and, as if for some kind of security, he incessantly fondled a tattered well-worn “leather bound” novel. The little bit of hair he had was pulled back eccentrically into a three inch ponytail at the back of his head.

“Toronto,” I responded in a civil, if not so respectful tone, “And you?”

“Chicago,” he said, “But I spend about half the year here staying at the Reform Club.”

If I’d known then what I know now about the Reform Club, I’d suspect he was trying to impress me, or more probably, the Lady I was with that evening.

“I’m Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. Name's E. Blythe Statton Jr.,* he said, “But you can call me Blythe.”

“I’m Bill,” I said rather apologetically, realizing my “handle” was not nearly as impressive as his, but I suppose I could have jazzed it up a bit by identifying myself as William Longworth, the third.

“And the lady....what’s her name?” he continued, rather aggressively I thought, showing considerable interest in my companion so early in the conversation.

“She’s Helen and she came with me from Canada,” I responded, hoping this answer would give him the message that she was not only with me tonight but that she was also my travel mate.

At this the lecherous old man, after clearly establishing his credentials with both of us, leaned over me and started conversing more directly with Helen.

“I spend a lot of time in London,” he said, “And perhaps I could show you and Bill around the town. Dinner perhaps at the Reform Club Monday evening, as there’s a James Bond film shoot there tomorrow.”

Amazing a total stranger should offer us a dinner in what sounded like such an exclusive place...or perhaps he was arranging a date with Helen and I was merely the “third wheel” tag-along guest.

Anyway, after the theatre, we walked Blythe westward along the Strand towards Pall Mall where the Reform Club was located. We had to part company though at the Charing Cross Tube Station and head south across the Thames on the Hungerford Footbridge to the Waterloo Train station for the 40 minute train ride west to Staines, the London suburb where we lived.

Before splitting, though, we made sure to confirm our plans for the Reform Club dinner. As part of the details, Blythe cautioned me to wear a suit and tie and leather shoes, which also informed Helen of the standard of dinner dress expected of women guests.

The twenty minute walk with Blythe was interesting. He said he had a Rolls Royce in England and another in Chicago. “Women loved riding in them,” he stated, again I guessed for Helen’s enticement.

I was starting to think that Blythe, (despite his appearance, but being impressed with his two Rolls Royces), might be a quite a wealthy guy. I also became impressed with his intelligence when he said he was a Harvard Law Graduate. I wasn’t nearly as impressed when he said his great grandfather invented the elevator brake, which he demonstrated in the Crystal Palace Exposition Hall at the 1854 New York World’s Fair.

I made sure though, before the dinner, to research the Reform Club and the inventor of the elevator brake.

The Reform Club is one of five or six super exclusive by-invitation-only “Gentlemen’s Clubs” on Pall Mall, whose guests are mostly Lords and Ladies, and his great grandfather, the inventor of the elevator brake, was Elisha Graves Otis whose two sons, one Blythe’s grandfather, founded Otis Elevators and installed the world’s first public elevator in a five story Manhattan Department store. The rest, of course, is world class industrial and commercial history.

And the best part, Blythe still writes me from all over the world on his travels and when he visited me in Oshawa two years ago, he commented on how he enjoyed discussing things with me as he said there was so much to learn.

And this from a guy I considered the smartest guy I’d ever met.

I‘ll have to visit him in Chicago to see his whole collection of Rolls Royces and Bentleys going back to the early 1900s, some he said would cost millions of dollars to restore.

And, oh yes, I do credit Blythe’s interest in Helen for being the magnet for my continuing association with Blythe.

And I’ve learned beyond a doubt, It never hurts to have beautiful woman on your arm.


*Blythe’s surname, whose mother was one of the daughters of the founder of Otis Elevator Company, has been changed to protect his identity

Déjà vu ©

Bill Longworth, March 11, 2009


In disembarking the plane in London Heathrow, the customs officer on checking my passport asked who I was. “Longworth”, I said, “Bill Longworth”. With that and my passport in order, I entered the country.

With my worldly, sauve, debonair, adventuresome, intelligent, quick-witted, and smooth persona, I had charmed and impressed the beautiful woman interviewer and landed a job in Cairo. As you can tell, modesty would probably not be listed among my strong suits.

On heading to the new job, I decided to do a little sightseeing on the stopovers enroute.



As I didn’t have much time in London, I went immediately to a landmark I’d heard about, Kensington Market. While there, I saw the unusual Trellick Tower and went inside. As I entered, I had the strange sensation of being familiar with the building and of having been in it before. It was a building designed by well-known architect Emo Goldfinger and gained its fame because some thought it avant-garde in design, while others considered it beastly. Some brought ridicule to the building and to its architect by calling those they despised, “Goldfinger!”

While in London, I was invited to dinner in London’s exclusive Reform Club. I once again had the strange sensation of being very familiar with the place and of being there before. As before, I found it a little stuffy eating among the prim and proper members of British nobility and felt I’d rather die another day and probably another way. I did put on my rich and cultured face though as I asked the butler for a martini, shaken not stirred. I’d feel a lot more comfortable, I thought, swashbuckling through the place with a sword in my hand, similar to the guys who’d been filming here the day before.

This strange pattern of familiarity continued to play its hand as I landed in Athens and started touring some Greek sites. While touring, I did feel a strange familiarity with Greece’s Great Meteora Monastery located on top of a rock pinnacle 300 meters above the Thessalian Plain in Central Greece. “I’ve been here before”, I said to myself, not daring to suggest this to my wife who would have thought I’d gone crazy. I had to restrain myself from swinging hand-over-hand 150 meters or so on the rope suspended high over the plain to the neighbouring Monastery of All Saints St Varlaam as I was sure I’d done in the past. Wanting to keep my foolish desires private, though, I did tease her by suggesting that I had something for her eyes only.

Following my Greek stopover, I boarded the plane for Cairo. It wasn’t long before I ventured into Cairo’s Gayer-Anderson Museum, a preserved traditional Egyptian house from the 15th century. Strange how I felt that I had also been here before. Romantic visions filled my head with the knowledge that my lover would have crouched silently in the secret overhead balcony observing everything that happened as I congregated with the men below. The Spy that loved me, I thought, as I envisioned her there.

As I left the museum and headed for the pyramids just outside Cairo and then Luxor’s Karnak Temple in the South of Egypt, I had visions of also being in these places in the past. Strange though, I had no sensation of ever being in King Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings before now, nor of sunbathing on Christmas Day on a Nile Cruise boat just north of the Sudan Border until now.

I couldn’t understand why all these places were so familiar to me. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower and the Reform Club in London, the Great Meteora in Greece, and the Gayer-Anderson Museum and the Pyramids in Cairo. Was it possible that I was the re-incarnation of someone who went before. Certainly, my science background taught me that energy could neither be created nor destroyed, and I was certainly a bundle of human energy. It struck me that I may have perhaps been revisiting places from a past life.

I started to analyze my Déjà vu experiences with scientific analysis worthy of a James Bond character.

I started to think of my personal characteristics….sauve, debonair, adventuresome, handsome, fastidious, calm, in control, quick witted, and the interests and pleasures that I loved…women, adventure, the world of espionage…a James Bond character if there ever was one.

As I thought of the places I’d been and the clues that had sprung to mind in each of the places, the whole thing started to become clear to me.

Camp X, key allied spy school was located in Oshawa, and Ian Fleming had been posted here to learn the craft. His experiences at Camp X and around Oshawa had laid the foundation for the James Bond Character in his writing. I lived in Oshawa for many years and shared many of the talents, interests, and characteristic Bond had.

“Eureka”, I exclaimed. “ I have been to all of these places before as they were all film locations for the James Bond movies. I am James Bond reincarnated. Ian Fleming fashioned his character after an earlier Oshawa version of me.

Links

Trellick Tower
Emu Goldfinger
Reform Club
Martini shaken not stirred
Great Meteora Monastery Ref.#1
Great Meteora Ref.#2
Gayer-Anderson Museum
Luxor
Reincarnation
Déjà vu
James Bond
Camp X
Ian Fleming
The Spy That Loved Me
Goldfinger Novel
Die Another Day
For Your Eyes Only