Hangover on the Richter scale

Monday is traditionally hangover day, and yesterday was amongst the most intense I have ever experienced. The combined effects of the Antibes Yacht Show on Friday, champagne and cake party on Saturday and being Peachyed on Sunday combined to create a startlingly new high in the hangover scale. If there was a Richter scale for hangovers, this would have measure 9+, and as is often the case with events on this scale, and without wishing to be too indelicate, there was also an accompanying tsunami of sorts  in the bathroom.

There was no social occasion yesterday, that must be news in itself. So calm could return gradually and some work eventually undertaken in the late afternoon but not until after siesta.

I see some more intemperate remarks in the comments page, some apparently from an embittered Scotsman who seem to be upset at being beaten at golf by an old git despite a 13 shot start.  It’s not as if the Scots are not used to losing, one would have thought that it would be second nature to those wild Picts to the north of even Yorkshire. Mike Preston has also had his say.

Marianne Faithful will be appearing in Cannes tonight and it is my duty as custodian to the rights of several musicians from that era, that I attend. No doubt that nice lady decorator will wish to swig several magnums of champagne at the Carlton before the show unless I can divert her into Morrison’s for a far more reasonably priced pint of Guinness, a necessary saving in these times of poor exchange rates.

It seems we left the Butterfields residence just in time on Sunday as I have seen evidence today that once again, Rusty the leader of that UK political party I mentioned yesterday, was unfortunate in that once again all his clothes fell off in mysterious circumstances. Funny how that always seems to happen after a drink. He could have been the man who when stopped by police late at night having imbibed freely, said he was on his way to a lecture about the misuse of alcohol and its detrimental  effects on the body. When asked where this lecture was to take place, he said “at home from the wife when I get in”.

One of the very few bad things about living down here is the number of time your car gets dinked by the French, who will not accept that a car parking space is to small, and instead gradually manoeuvre into a gap by nudging cars front and back until they are nestled between two, now newly dented, cars. I had a particularly violent one last week which broke the rear light on the Merc, so early yesterday I had to trail down to Cannes to take the car into the garage. This was when I took this picture and it sums up quite subtly what I think about this French habit and the effect it has had on me.

A dichotomy. Give way in French and the Winston Churchill salute just behind.

Whilst I am grumbling, it reminded me that My Happy Mondays blog for angloinfo was posted yesterday, another masterpiece of misery from a grumpy old git. You can read it here

Later this week, we are taking pity on a poor family from Yorkshire, who are clearly exhausted, cold and disgruntled as usual from the terrible weather that is Yorkshire in the winter. Tundra sandwiches with a tripe dressing is no food for a man, so we have invited one lucky family over to enjoy a few days rest and recuperation and to feed them up a bit and to try to give them enough resolve to face another Yorkshire summer, although frankly how one can tell winter from summer in the god forsaken north is an observational art I have yet to master. The man of the family is also emotionally wrecked having apparently  been working on a gritty northern real life disaster TV production about The Chuckle Brothers. He thinks it is a comedy, but anybody not from Yorkshire knows the truth.

Chris France