Anorexic Lesbian?

At a lunch gathering in Mougins yesterday, our host, northern man mountain Peachy Butterfield, described himself as an anorexic lesbian; every time he looks in the mirror he looks fat but he still likes girls.

It was a splendid bash in warm, almost hot sunshine  with Peachy in top form and his lovely wife Susie looking peachy, alluring attired as she was, in the tightest of mini dresses.

I met a splendid chap there, who will have to remain incognito for reasons that will shortly become clear.  Peachy had excelled himself in the wine department, serving the freshest red wine I have ever encountered. There are not too many 2010 Bordeaux that are ready for drinking yet. I think he felt that the Cheshire Chardonnay and Pennine Pinot may be a tad too rich for the local tastes and decided to treat luncheon guests by shipping in some Bordeaux Insuperior in a frankly doomed attempt to satisfy local taste buds. He does try so hard though, his work ethic is very strong, in fact he stated that if you can get a harness on a northerner, you can get an awful lot of work done.

My picture todays was taken at the Knights Templar festival in Biot recently, and shows an uncanny resemblance to modern northern cooking methods which were do doubt applied to yesterdays wonderful meal.

State of the art cooking methods, Cheshire style

Anyway, back to our mystery man. I had only previously seen a picture of Rusty, as some may know him, with a manic expression driving a boat at night whilst naked. What emerged yesterday which was slightly unnerving was that only he and man mountain, Peachy were alone on the boat at the time. Perhaps it was rather warm?

On its own, that fact would merely raise a whiff of suspicion, a tiny schism of unease, but when one discovers that, as well as being a party animal, he is also the official leader of an obscure but fully registered political party in the UK, and that he once ordered a naked gin and tonic at a hotel (it involves getting all your kit off whilst the barman’s back is turned), that suspicion about what kind of a party political animal he is, becomes somewhat heightened.

Personally, I found him engaging and witty, but at his own admission he is a bit wild, hence later in the afternoon “the handbrake” as he described his lovely wife, was applied with gentle pressure to slow him down.

Yesterday, I was perhaps a little too hard on Mike Preston, who featured in this column in perhaps slightly less than flattering terms. He has made a fulsome response on the comments section today but he does have some redeeming features. He was able recently to exact terrible revenge an oik who borrowed 10 euros from him recently. At home in Plascassier, he received a knock on his door from a youngster with a scooter and crash helmet who asked for10 euros for petrol to get home to Nice. Mike took pity, but also took his name and address and was promised repayment the next day. The name the scooter lout gave was of a prominent french footballer, so it was clearly a scam, confirmed by the non appearance of the scooter lover to repay his debt. Mike had however taken the bike number and spotted it some days later in the Super U supermarket car park, where he chained it up and left his phone number.

It took 2 days before Mike got the call, whereupon he said it would cost 15 Euros (£12 at today’s exchange rate) for him to come and unlock it, 10 euros to repay the debt and 5 euros for his time. Better than that though, he told our scooter lover at midday that he would be busy until at least 8pm. One up to the good guys!
Mike is running another of his incomprehensible (to me) quiz nights at Brittains restaurant in Valbonne this Friday, the phone number for bookings is in his comment on yesterday’s column.