For a hormone filled sixteen year old, this was a gift from the gods.

It was the jostling that alerted me. I looked down and saw a hand removing money from my pocket.

Originally titled, “In a Shanghai Speaker Factory (or, Never Get Your Hair Cut in China)”

I was sitting on a bidet in Budapest, thinking of Sam Tellig.

I recently visited Glasgow and true to form, it poured cats and dogs.

“This is S.I. Newhouse’s personal secretary, I would like to invite you and your wife to a party to celebrate the construction of his new apartment.”

“Hi Dad. How would you like to be my sous chef? I’m doing a charity event in Napa and I’ll need a assistant.” Ilan, my son, was the winner of Top Chef… I had to say yes.

“Please list every single foreign trip you have taken.”

She looked so summery, that I had to talk to her.

“C’est mon mari!” yelled Arianne as we rushed into the kitchen to help her husband.

The four of us shuffled into the doctor’s office. An old man gazed at us from behind his thick glasses. “Drop them!” He growled. “And the underpants!”

New York in the late seventies was run-down, crime-ridden, and affordable.

Hong Kong is a western sea of tranquility amongst the tumult of China. It is also a place where English is ubiquitously spoken.

Hong Kong is a western sea of tranquility amongst the tumult of China. It is also a place where English is ubiquitously spoken.

Furniture stores are magnets for small kids. All they see are bunk beds to climb and mattresses to jump on.

“You should visit the Yakeshi Factory in Foshan,” my friend Richard said. “They make really good products, and after every one of my visits, they send me back to my hotel with two girls for company.”

Invest in a new distillery in the Isle of Arran. Your £450 payment will result in 12 cases of blended whisky and as a holder of a Founders Bond.

“Oh, you speak English? Thank God. You’re the first one today,” said the immigration officer.

“How can you stand to be here after all that happened to your family?”

“Roy, I need you to be on your best behavior,” said my friend Tony who worked for Epos Acoustics…

When I moved to Manhattan in the mid-seventies things were not expensive, but I was almost always penniless.

As a kid growing up in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1950s, it was not at all unusual to receive a whack if you did something wrong.

As I age, I become aware of my mortality. My wife and I have talked about what to do if one of us becomes brain dead.

Somehow, through luck and later, skill, some of the distillers started making and bottling single malt whisky that was drinkable. And that’s the best part of this tale.

“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” “Yes,” she replied, to my great astonishment.

“It’s your move Roy. The bet is two shillings and hurry up, it’s almost lunchtime,” said my English teacher.

In cold, wet, miserable Glasgow the idea of just wearing swimming shorts and walking barefoot in the sand was enormously seductive.

After dinner, I said, “Would you like to go somewhere beautiful?” She looked at me as if I was mad. “More beautiful than this?” She was hooked, and so was I.

I had been friendly with Roslyn for quite a few years.

“It’s Syriac,” he said. “It’s the script used by the Nabataeans over two thousand years ago.”

Unsurprisingly, music has played a central role in my life. Music can be emotional, erotic, transcendent, hypnotic and, in some cases, downright terrible.

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said, eyeing me. “No,” I replied. “I’m a bullshit artist.”
—

“Line up against that wall” said the Captain to my uncle Fred. “Platoon. Get ready, take aim…”
—

She was a head taller than everyone else, and moved like a real thoroughbred. If anyone truly belonged at Belmont, it was she.
—

“What’s that black circle?” I asked the technician while looking at the ghostly images on the screen.
—

She said, “If I would have come here 9 months ago, someone would have shot at me.”
—

“I wish this boat would stop rocking so much,” I groaned to myself as I opened my eyes and looked in the bathroom mirror.
—

“Goodbye” I said with a smile as I stepped over the two bodies twitching on the ground.
—

“Aren’t you Morag and Elspeth from Arbroath?”
—

I was given a key to the senior executive washroom, allowing me to pee alongside the big shots in the store. What a thrill.
—

“You’re going to see that wee, fat conceited bastard?” said the owner. “Why?”
—

“You won’t find a hotel room anywhere for the next 300 miles.”
—

“Roy, would you do me a favor? Can you visit Sammy in Rikers Island?
—

(or: How Adolf Hitler Bought Me a Jaguar)
—

“God bless you honey, God bless you”, said Alberta Hunter to my mother.
—

“If you touch me again,” I yelled, “I will kill you”— and I meant it.
—

“It was the Armani coat that sealed the deal,” said Mike Creek. “What Armani coat?” I asked.
—