Yorkshire refugees

Never again. That nice lady decorator decided last week that she liked the meadow look at the end of the garden, so it was not mowed until today, by me, with a borrowed mower. The grass was at least 8 feet tall, and as you know I never exaggerate, but it is over, me and hand mowers are officially finished, I don’t care if the lawn turns into a jungle, no more mowing.

We have the poor deprived family arriving today from Yorkshire. Their desperation for some sunshine is pitiful, however it takes them about five days to turn from blue to white, so as they are only here until Monday (something to do with having to tend the pigeons or maybe they need to look after their livestock or maybe its lambing time?,  – steady, Steve Weston) or some other third world activity, they will scarcely have time to thaw out before it is back to the land of tripe and Yorkshire puddings.

Whilst they are here we shall try to give them as good time as possible. I invited them to the Internations event in Nice tomorrow evening that I shall be attending in my capacity as fat controller for Currencies Direct in the Valbonne area, but they just looked blankly at me. I don’t think these simple folk have yet worked out there is anything worthwhile outside the borders of Yorkshire.

My picture today is the one I wanted to show from last week of the wingco guarding a new delivery of wine to favoured lunch haunt the Auberge St Donat.

wingco welcomes in his next few days supply of wine at Auberge St Donat

Friday will see me taking the male contingent of the party from Yorkshire to Top Marques, the exclusive car show staged annually in Monte Carlo. I shall be there as a guest of new super car club Type-41 who are launching their club at the show. It will be different from other car clubs in that their entire selection of super cars are limited editions. Ferraris’s, Porsche, Mercedes, and countless others, all limited editions, are available to members to drive a certain number of days a year, and what a great way to drive a super car without the hassle of owning one. I am sure that most of my readers have already signed up, but just in case you have no yet done so, please mention that you saw it covered in this column and then I may earn sufficient commission to be able to afford to help other unfortunate families from the third world.

Of course the chaps from Yorkshire will no doubt have eyes like saucers, having seen few cars in their lives, and that limited to the occasional Ford Anglia (we have all seen that series Heartbeat, which they claim is set in the sixties, but is really a futuristic depiction of what life may be like up there later this century).

I guess the film equivalent might be Crocodile Dundee, where a chap from the outback with no idea of the modern world experiences the joys of a big city.
So with guests in situ for the weekend, no golf for me. Of course I shall doubtless be verbally abused by various REGS members for being unavailable, but I like to think that any abuse is a reflection of my enormous popularity within this elite golfing group.

On the plus side, this may require me to go to the beach at the weekend for lunch, which will be a change for our Yorkshire incumbents. Would they prefer Grimsby ahead of Cannes? or Scarborough ahead of Juan Les Pins? Of course the idea of eating anything other than fish and chips and mushy peas will not have occurred to them, and I will be interested in how they react to actually sitting on the beach and having food not served in newspapers.

Chris France