From Fitzroy’s Private Diary (Extract 178)

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, people never look up. If Londoners lived in the jungle, they’d all be killed by leopards pouncing out at them from the trees. It might have been hoped that humans would learn by experience, but they seldom ever bloody do. Why, I remember Euphemia telling me the first time she’d seen a man’s head blown off was because the idiot had loaded the wrong size cartridge into his shotgun. If a man is not prepared to properly check something potentially explosive that he’s putting right up next to his face – and triggering it – then just what the hell is he prepared to check? I don’t care how much you bloody well want pheasant for supper, little things – like maintaining the structural integrity of your skull – should always come first.

The unobservant nature of the average British male never fails to surprise! There are places they simply don’t look, which means there are places for people like me to steal through, and hide in. If one chooses to navigate through a dirty alleyway, they can be assured that no self-respecting gentleman will have cause to follow. Traverse the roof-tops after dusk and only the pigeons will notice my progress. What’s more, I’m really rather a handsome fellow but dress me as a footman and – quite astonishingly – no man will pay me the slightest amount of heed.

It’s different with women. We, gentleman, spend so much of our lives cosseting and comforting the dear things, ensuring they’re not subjected to wearisome activities, like fetching their own gloves, that they’ve come to learn that they have lots of free time with which to observe what’s going on around them. We have confined them with corsets, and the silliest shoes, not for the sake of fashion – as they erroneously think – but to hobble them. On top of that, we constrain them with morals and etiquette. They are treated like baubles, nice to look at but with no real function.

But, stationed as they are in restrictive environments, women learn to look, to notice, and to extrapolate. That’s why a lot of the most useful information I’ve come across has been acquired during pillow talk. I like to think of this as a most suitable example of quid pro quo – I satisfy them greatly and they, in turn, do so love to regale me with all manner of stories.