Published and damn'd

Thrice a thousand curses on you, shoddy Hong Kong University Press, for using without permission that photo of my dad as the jacket photo for 'Steve' Tsang's pamphlet on "Governing Hong Kong: Administrative Officers from the Nineteenth Century to the Handover to China, 1862-1997".

And perdition to the lazy editor who couldn't be fagged to pick up a phone and make a courtesy call to local lensman Frank Fischbeck whose iconic - copyrighted -photo that is.

That photo has memories. I was back in Honkers in 1995, working as a PR hack and spare pen. Some print-by-nite mag came on the scene and I was at the editorial meeting where the smartass design chief suggested going with a 'marvelous snap' he'd uncovered of some 'stiff upper lipped colonel blimp fogey'.

He held the photo up for our guffaws and applause.

"Your colonel blimp," I observed icily, "is Sir Ronald Holmes, my late father, and a better man than you.

If you proceed with your lampoon, you will find some people in this town less than sympathetic to such mockery."