Big panting

“He was looking as cheerful as one could expect in the circumstances”. So said Samuel Pepys of Sir George Jackson, who was Hung Drawn and Quartered on the site of a pub of the same name in the City Of London, from where I am writing this, so where better than to put to the sword a pint, well several pints of London Pride? The best beer in the world and the only thing that makes London a worthwhile place to visit.

Before I set off from sunny Valbonne on Monday, I experienced the worst exchange rate deal I have ever suffered, this time instead the bank giving me a crap deal, as was customary, it was at the hands of that nice lady decorator. I had asked her she had any English cash. She replied that she thought she did, but she had no Euros, perhaps we could exchange some? I duly handed over a 20 Euro note, expecting some £16 in return. £2.70, that’s all she had, but by the time that became clear, the Euro note had been squirrelled away out of my sight, where the sun does not shine and apparently the deal was sealed.

My picture today was taken last weekend on my way in to Valbonne on foot to collect the Sunday Times, and shows spring flowers beginning to send winter on its way.

Spring on the way to Valbonne

So year 2 of the blog is underway. I am in the city of London for a few days helping the old country to emerge from difficult economic circumstances, so cannot be at home to acknowledge the adulation that I know will not be heaped upon me for this momentous achievement. 600 words of erudite informative and witty prose (with the odd deliberate typo to keep one or two of you anally retarded followers interested) is sometimes hard to achieve each day for 365 days in a row, and there are many (including the wingco; “ghastly” as he described this column) who would say that I have failed in that quest.

To paraphrase old pal Paul Kendall, aka Ken Poodle, the wingco suspects that my readership was as big, if not bigger at the start of the blog as it is now.

I am instructed to visit some shop called Next and buy some up to date shirts and “underwear that does not look like something my dad used to wear” according to that nice lady decorator. I don’t know about my contemporaries, but personally I find it rather rewarding and very comfortable to follow the Bridget Jones example of the wearing of big pants. The modern fashion of course, is for ones pants to be visible above ones waistband, and despite my protestations that I can achieve exactly the same effect with items that Bridget could identify with, apparently having underwear that reaches up to one armpits is not the look she is seeking for me to adopt. I have just learned to my cost that a Y front is nothing to do with asking why?

Mr Clipboard (aka Mark Gurdon) is even now trying to organise his schedule for next week, in order to maximize golf, tennis and lunch opportunities. Regular readers will know that he has become an obsessive time manager since he moved back to the UK, forgetting the disorganised lifestyle attitude that epitomizes the ex pat community in the south of France. Doubtless the clipboard is filling up with commitments even as I write. But as usual we will all ignore his schedule and do what feels right at the time. This is particularly true of the wingco; as polite as he is late to every appointment.

Chris France