Nigel's Got It

One miserable gray afternoon recently I lunched at the Club with my sometime school chum and frequent dining companion, Nigel. I don’t mean to drop names but Nigel is Sir Nigel Ennui-Rivit, the preeminent British architect and partner at the legendary architectural firm Carbunkle Associates, whose career has been distinguished in the main by his oeuvre of truly awful buildings.
In recognition of his odious contribution to the English industrial landscape, and with a wisp of French/English aristocracy somewhere in his bloodline, Nigel snagged an O.B.E. and the title “Purveyor of Low-Income Housing” to H.R.H. herself.
I quite like dining with Nigel. He wears his Scottish tweed rather well, smokes the obligatory Barking Dog in his pipe, serves up a jolly chortle at inappropriate moments, and is an idiot.
I don’t mean that Sir Nigel is a pompous ass. He’s loveable in that sort of Central Casting British goofball way. Like many of the wealthy before him, Nigel thrives on meaninglessness, and he will reduce the profound to the irrelevant in an instant without the faintest clue of what he’s talking about or what anybody is saying or what’s going on around him. I prefer to believe that this Nigel World is the key to his success. What blows past him will just go away and enable him to concentrate on the trivial, which is actually brilliant because other wealthy and odd people like him – his investors and clients -- also appreciate meaningless things while making vast sums of money. Others think he’s a loony and have taken swings at him out of absolute frustration.
With a coal fire glowing from the fireplace of the oak-paneled dining room and the cheery din of hail-fellows-well-met coming from the bar, Nigel and I toasted ourselves with a bottle of pungent Chateau de Wawatuse ’02, which Nigel confidently introduced as a South African vintage, but it in fact came from Wisconsin.
Tucked into an iced platter of the Whelk Club’s finest, our opening chit chat was naturally about football. Nigel can skirt any Building Code in the United Kingdom, but he can’t win a punt on any football match known to man, even those that have taken place in the past. “Poor Tottenham”, sighed Nigel. Obviously, he’d dropped a bundle on the recent disaster at Arsenal.
“I say, old man,” said Nigel, probing the shell of a reluctant whelk with his fork. “What do we think of China these days?”
Having known Nigel since St. Thumbly’s, I knew this to be Nigel Code for ‘Carbunkle is tanking in the fastest growing economy since Holland began trading tulips in 1637. “We’ve been having a rather rough go of it lately.”
Now I was stabbing at a whelk. “I would have thought you’d be sprouting all sorts of Carbunkles in that God forsaken industrial wasteland.” My, that wine is lousy. “You know; lowest architectural standards this side of Somalia; nameless cities found nowhere on any map with empty 80-floor skyscrapers; a mother lode of corruption; giant colonies of ha-penny labour. I’m surprised, old tick. Seems like your kind of place.”
“Indeed”, said Nigel, giving up on the whelks. Whelks 1, Nigel 0. There’s a bet I could have taken. “Even more baffling is that I’ve sold scads of earthquake-proofing in England and nary a taker among the inscrutable Chinese. Bloody profitable, that.”
“My good man, that is odd. The Chinese are rather fond of devastating earthquakes.”
“Quite so. Ah, the miserable East!”
Now, I knew full well that it was by design that a Carbunkle building will succumb to almost anything but old age. A puff of an ill wind, an English rain, or a few simultaneous indoor domestic disputes have all been known to pancake a Carbunkle. Neither could class action lawsuits, insurance claim denials, nor the scorn of the International Society of Competent Architects dim Sir Nigel’s mission to promulgate vulgar disposable architecture anywhere and everywhere.
“What the hell are these things? Whelks?”
“Yes, old bean. This is the Whelk Club. You belong to it.”
“Bloody awful!”
“Have you tried Feng Shui?”
“Never. Is it on the menu?”
“It’s Chinese.”
“Charles, my dear, you know I dislike Chinese food with an unbridled passion.”
“Not food. It’s an ancient Chinese spiritual discipline of divination by signs of the Earth. The Chinese arrange buildings and interiors in a fashion favorable to the Spirits. It involves alignment according to proper angles, direction, positioning and even colors. “
“No, no, Charles, I’ve got that. What I need are some slimy bureaucrats to grease.”
The waiter appeared. Nigel placed our order, though I don’t recall discussing it. “We’ll both have the raspberry glazed wild boar with a macademia nut puree. And other bottle of this exquisite Wawatusa.”
“Nigel, old boar, would you mind terribly if we go for something different?”
“Not at all, dear boy. Waiter, a bottle of the Raritan Schoss Lederhosen ’93, iced to perfection.”
Waiter disappears raising eyebrow.
“Superb little Riesling from the people who brought us the Blitz,” whispered Nigel. [CHORTTLE]
“Well Nigel, I reckon that if you hired a Feng Shui priest to advise you, you’d stand a better chance with the Chinese.”
“The little buggers just need some incentive. I’m considering favoring a few of the more impressionable with cheap replicas of that charming place Elvis Presley lived in, what was it? Wasteland or something?”
“Graceland.”
The boar appeared and whilst sawing at the poor thing Nigel launched into door knobs. Where to get the cheapest in bulk, and so on. Putting the finishing touches on his latest abomination –The Bermley Hall Proctology Wing of Saint Ovarian Hospital, in Leighton Buzzard – Nigel was down to doorknobs. Like magic Nigel had turned a thousands-of-years-old Chinese cultural tradition touching billions of lives into doorknobs.
“Terribly sorry to run, good friend, but I must off to a rendezvous with the Bulgarians. Seems they are looking for a penitentiary with a touch of whimsy. I’ve called in my partner Zip von Ferschunkenah from our Berlin office. You know Zip, don’t you? He’s rather good with these sorts of things.”
“No, I confess never to have had the pleasure.”
“Ah, perhaps the three of us should lunch together, say, a Christmas fete.”
“I’d enjoy that, Nigel. Ta!”
“Ta!”
Nigel disappeared into the miserable London weather.
I absolutely hate it when someone says “I’ve got it” to me. It makes my blood boil. Of course they don’t “got” it. They never do. Anyone who does that to me is a bleeding wanker.
Except for Nigel. He’s in Nigel World, and he’s actually a scream.
Doorknobs. Really.