Worried

Grumpy came home with a copy of Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker for me. He got it out of the library, but clearly the library acquired it second-hand because on one of the first few pages is this inscription, in the hand of a man probably educated in the 1930s, when good handwriting mattered:

Vincent Evans
Xmas 1978
My Christmas present to myself.

Oh Mr Gill, you have written a charming and sparkling memoir, but even as I delight in your prose a little corner of my heart is whimpering over poor Vincent Evans and his honest, gentlemanly handwriting. I hope he had other people with whom to share presents and yuletide cheer at Christmas in 1978.

But if he didn't, at least he gave himself a good gift.