The Legend of le Tuff: (2) His origins, his transportation and an observation on Scrotsmuir
Le Tuff is nothing if not modest, and very few people outside the criminal justice system really have much idea of his many achievements, nor of the events of his life.
The time and place of his birth are not known, to this writer at least, and it is indeed hard to imagine le Tuff as young, but it is said there are in the British Museum some sketchy records of a childhood spent in South Wales, Patagonia, Beijing, Alburquerque, Wagga Wagga, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Ouagadougou, Kabul, Monaco, Tierra del Fuego, Melbourne, Kilkenny, Madagascar, Honshu, Swaziland, New Jersey, Wormwood Scrubs, The Hague, Auckland, Castro Street (San Francisco), Easter Island, Kuala Lumpur, Madras, St Petersburg, Glasgow, Ulan Baator and the Mississippi delta where he picked up a slight American "twang" and a Louisiana record-breaking number of STDs.
A brilliant 43-Man Squamish quarterback in high school, he won an Offshore Rhodes Scholarship and read Natural History at St Helena, taking the university medal in his first year.
When le Tuff turned his mind to the engineering sciences his aptitude was clear to all, and it is said that his substantial fortune today rests in large part on his Thuringian Amplitude Device which revolutionised the sub-Saharan food industry as well as enabling the drainage of marshlands in Iraq. He has told your writer on numerous occasions that the social good that has come from the T. A. D. was well worth the loss of two daughters and three fingers of his left hand.
How he came to reside in Australia is as hidden as the facts of his youth, but Poxlough says le Tuff's intriguing secret is shared by some of the best-known names at Scotland Yard. Be that exciting notion as it may, he has made this country his own and we have accepted him as one of our sons, much as Britain has taken Rolf Harris to her ample bosom. His first antipodean years, spent at some place in Victoria called Pentridge, unknown to your writer, were apparently uneventful, and the later alleged sale of a shipment of date-expired canned food and medicines to a network of Queensland orphanages, mere scuttlebutt and hearsay. Of this I speak on the authority of none less than the great man himself.
His towering mock-Federation home on an ocean cliff just outside the pleasant vale of Toormina-on-Tasman is as eye-piercingly beautiful as it is comfortable, for le Tuff if not for his many less-sophisticated guests (he is democratic above all). Miss Emberley avows that it is the grandeur of the magnificent granite colossus of Sir Robert Menzies, nude and astride the white gravel drive, that accounts for the swooning of many young local girls. Le Tuff self-effacingly shrugs off their disappearance and will take none of the credit. "Nothing to do with me at all, old bean," he once said to me as he quaffed his morning tot of methylated spirits. "They see the faux topiary, and I suppose they are inspired to travel le Grand Tour of the Continent before age and infirmity take their toll." Ever humble, ever kindly, eh, le Tuff?!
Oh, well do I remember my first visit to Scrotsmuir and the very quaint (and amusing) recently deceased 'envelope' in which the purple-edged invitation was delivered ...
To be continued
Le Tuff is nothing if not modest, and very few people outside the criminal justice system really have much idea of his many achievements, nor of the events of his life.
The time and place of his birth are not known, to this writer at least, and it is indeed hard to imagine le Tuff as young, but it is said there are in the British Museum some sketchy records of a childhood spent in South Wales, Patagonia, Beijing, Alburquerque, Wagga Wagga, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Ouagadougou, Kabul, Monaco, Tierra del Fuego, Melbourne, Kilkenny, Madagascar, Honshu, Swaziland, New Jersey, Wormwood Scrubs, The Hague, Auckland, Castro Street (San Francisco), Easter Island, Kuala Lumpur, Madras, St Petersburg, Glasgow, Ulan Baator and the Mississippi delta where he picked up a slight American "twang" and a Louisiana record-breaking number of STDs.
A brilliant 43-Man Squamish quarterback in high school, he won an Offshore Rhodes Scholarship and read Natural History at St Helena, taking the university medal in his first year.
When le Tuff turned his mind to the engineering sciences his aptitude was clear to all, and it is said that his substantial fortune today rests in large part on his Thuringian Amplitude Device which revolutionised the sub-Saharan food industry as well as enabling the drainage of marshlands in Iraq. He has told your writer on numerous occasions that the social good that has come from the T. A. D. was well worth the loss of two daughters and three fingers of his left hand.
How he came to reside in Australia is as hidden as the facts of his youth, but Poxlough says le Tuff's intriguing secret is shared by some of the best-known names at Scotland Yard. Be that exciting notion as it may, he has made this country his own and we have accepted him as one of our sons, much as Britain has taken Rolf Harris to her ample bosom. His first antipodean years, spent at some place in Victoria called Pentridge, unknown to your writer, were apparently uneventful, and the later alleged sale of a shipment of date-expired canned food and medicines to a network of Queensland orphanages, mere scuttlebutt and hearsay. Of this I speak on the authority of none less than the great man himself.
His towering mock-Federation home on an ocean cliff just outside the pleasant vale of Toormina-on-Tasman is as eye-piercingly beautiful as it is comfortable, for le Tuff if not for his many less-sophisticated guests (he is democratic above all). Miss Emberley avows that it is the grandeur of the magnificent granite colossus of Sir Robert Menzies, nude and astride the white gravel drive, that accounts for the swooning of many young local girls. Le Tuff self-effacingly shrugs off their disappearance and will take none of the credit. "Nothing to do with me at all, old bean," he once said to me as he quaffed his morning tot of methylated spirits. "They see the faux topiary, and I suppose they are inspired to travel le Grand Tour of the Continent before age and infirmity take their toll." Ever humble, ever kindly, eh, le Tuff?!
Oh, well do I remember my first visit to Scrotsmuir and the very quaint (and amusing) recently deceased 'envelope' in which the purple-edged invitation was delivered ...
To be continued
Pip Wilson posted item above at 6:43 PM | Permalink
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