Vallebona and Viagra unrelated

A friend mentions that he is “back up the docs” today and my first thought was that it was something to do with backing up his hard drive, but what he probably meant was that he was collecting his new consignment of Viagra on prescription. God I love the french health service.

Last night we stayed in Vallebona in Italy, near Ventimiglia, but I will fight anyone who suggests that there may be any connection between the first and second sentences of this column. Regular readers will be rightly convinced that linking the words Viagra and Vallebona is merely coincidence and that there was no attempt at toilet humour or innuendo just for a cheap laugh.

Talking of a cheap laugh, the exact opposite occurred when we stopped at Ventimiglia on the way, just over the Italian border. By way of a number of what I considered to be cunning ruses, I had managed to delay our departure until midday in a failed attempt to arrive at a market with that nice lady decorator, that I thought finished at 1pm.

Disaster loomed however as the market continued well into the afternoon, and despite a small diversion for lunch on the beach, as my picture today illustrates, that nice lady decorator managed to fill at least a dozen carrier bags with a wide variety of detritus.

Prosecco on the beach

The most criminal of the stalls we visited was the one that collected a full 27 euros from me. It was the “everything for 1 Euro” stand. Amongst the 27 unwanted (by me) items of which I am now the proud owner are; a hairbrush, six tubes of super glue, a padlock and key (it is her birthday, so this was, at least, slightly more intriguing), some playing cards, a set of screwdrivers, a corkscrew, ( a cuddly toy, a fondue set – this especially for fans of popular Bruce Forsyth TV show The Generation Game), an egg slice and oh, I forget, by this time I had almost lost the will to live.

So we struggled back to the car with my arms as long as an orangutan under the weight of these gleefully (on her part) purchased items, only to discover there was no car. Yes, it had been towed away by the gendarmes.

Earlier in the day when we were “enjoying” the shopping, that nice lady decorator was lucky enough to experience what the french consider to be a very fortunate event, when she was shat on by a bird. Personally, judging by the size of the lucky deposit, I thought she had been visited upon by a rather small sparrow, but she was of a different opinion and wanted all albatrosses, or at least any bird with a wingspan of 12 feet or more still in existence to be exterminated immediately.

Almost immediately, she was looking to profit from the situation where her car had been impounded. “My car has been towed away, its my birthday, I want a new one” was one of the themes discussed, but I manfully summoned my best Italian and asked a nearby policeman in English where the car pound was.

So some hours later after a visit to the police station, and a walk of nearly a mile to the car pound, I was 140 Euros lighter, my arms were so stretched they were dragging on the floor, and the wonderful array of items that we bought had become a much more expensive purchase. It was at that moment that I wished I was the victim of the bird attack, perhaps I would have had the luck to avoid being towed away.

Today after a walk around this charming Italian village of Vallebona, we will brave the motorway tunnels, stock up with prosecco and Barolo (if we can find the latter at a decent price) and then on to a barbecue with several senior executives with Currencies Direct, who have just taken over Tor fx. We shall no doubt be discussing the fun we had on Thursday night when the police removed the direction signs for the venue for Le Tour De Finance, and the final plans for next Tuesdays “Le Tour” at the Boscolo Hotel in Nice.

Chris France