What ever happened to the wastrel?

I had a minor crisis this week, a very old ivy clad tree in my garden blew down in the recent heavy winds. As trees go it wasn’t that huge, so rather than flash my eyes at one of the men in my life I decided to try and deal with it myself . This involved  an electric saw and an axe but essentially a ton of back breaking work.(I’m pretty fit but at only five foot four and slim built I’m not really designed for work this heavy duty.) Over a few days I had made major inroads into it but in the process got myself cold wet and streaked with mud, not to mention scratched and exhausted. It left me feeling a bit too pleased with myself and conscious that I’d been a hero, which, being me, lead to a whole chain of thought processes. A hero is what most little boys want to grow up into, but why would anyone want to go through the danger and hardship and misery that being a hero tends to involve when instead you could be a wastrel.

We’ve always had wastrels and always will, but they are very much a creature of the nineteen twenties and thirties, typically the younger son of a grand family. The  eldest son  got the title the house and all the money, so the choices for the younger son tended to be to go into the church, or alternatively simply hang about and be a nuisance to everybody while simply enjoying  life in the most dissolute way possible .

In the country the wastrel  would spend his time burbling around in his two seater  with a bottle of champagne in the boot plus a few quails eggs and a large rug.

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This was just in case he might chance upon a young lady who might just want to share a quiet picnic with him followed by their finding somewhere  they could have a little innocent canoodle, preferably after she’d taken her  knickers off.

The wastrel was very democratic and was at home with night club girls,

or girls about town,

or that new breed who seemed to inhabit some strange demi monde on the edge of society,

All he asked of them was that they were good fun, didn’t mind that he was broke and had no prospects, and that if they couldn’t stay the night with him after an evening out because they had husbands or some other annoyance, at least they could possibly give him a good gob job to show their appreciation.

The wastrel was particularly happy with horsey girls,

and there was one in particular who was happy to give him a ride whenever he felt like it which tended to buck him up for  a good few days afterwards.

A defining moment in his life was happening on his sister being spanked  by her governess,

He thought this was very good news as it made his best friend, Rampant Roger, really sit up and take notice,

so after that he was always looking for an excuse to try it for himself.  He’d always had a special relationship with the  maids in the house as most of them were happy to cheer him up when he needed it and didn’t mind if he paid them one of those special  visits to their  rooms,

so, for their own good of course, he now looked out for any excuse to take one of them to his own rooms for a bit of across the knee discipline.

He always followed this by showing them that there were no hard feelings and that he was of course on their side and Oh my God don’t stop as this feels wonderful!   

Having an aristocratic sense of fair play and thinking it might be a bit unfair that he was always the one dishing out punishment, he tracked down a discreet club in London where the girls could get their own back on him. After all, it was only fair!

  

And while he was in London, it was a good opportunity to pop in and see that young actress who was not only one of his special  friends,

but she could always be relied upon to be particularly nice to Rampant Roger.

We hardly see wastrels any more as they seem to have  been replaced by style bypass benefit cheats and drug addled deadbeats. Such a shame. I’m sure the right sort of wastrel and I would have got on rather well together!