I am reading a new book by Hal Porter.

I do not like his attitude. Small things upset me, like the scratchy remarks about other writers which intrude on his fictions, and his period-piece postures with their half-offensive diction, clearly there as a demonstration of distaste for the contemporary political sense which extends to language itself, or indeed for any political sense at all. If I can, on the other hand, relish a suspect simile like ‘foul-mouthed as a feminist’, it’s partly because I sense that his intentions (though baleful to a point) are at least ambiguous and partly because it seems so apt, even though the feminists of my acquaintance are among the unfoulest-mouthed of all to whose utterance I am or am not, as the case may be, privileged to be exposed. (Possibly, as a foul-mouthed feminist myself on occasion, I am simply wallowing in primitive delight at having found on someone else’s page something which apparently refers to me) — where was I?