Madcap drinks

An alcoholic haze. No other description works. I am writing this whilst stuck in the web late in the evening with that nice lady decorator, with a shed load of wine on board, listening to Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs seminal 1970’s album. Blimey it is weird. Those of you who are old enough to remember the drug infused times that were the early 1970’s will understand how brilliant this was, but it is imperative to have either imbibed freely or to be chemically challenged in order fully to appreciate the wild unbridled madness that encapsulated those times.

Luckily that nice lady decorator had reached the required level of imbibement (can I say that?) To be able to reach that state.

Lunch had been a triumph. Lou Fassum, the Michelin star restaurant had provided a sumptuous feast in the sunshine on the terrace looking down to the Mediterranean, over Mandelieu La Napoule rather than the more swanky Cannes, and although the drinks we had consumed eclipsed the food bill three fold, it was still remarkable value, just 50 Euros a head (about £42 at todays exchange rate) and an event that we continued to celebrate when back in the web in mid afternoon.

The one down side was the attire of the day chosen by Savin the senior. Three quarter length trousers are one of my pet hates, and I think he wore them deliberately in return for his golfing hiding on Thursday. As I once heard him say of a person fashionably challenged in the same way “either you have grown remarkably in the last few weeks, or you need to sack your tailor”.

My picture today was taken of the fine deserts that were served against the terrace railings, which somehow encapsulate the wonderful prison we found ourselves in during the afternoon (this must be a contender for Psueds Corner in Private Eye).

Lou Fassum terrace desert

It is possible that I fell asleep some time after lunch for a few minutes (try 90) but thereafter I was in full effect, especially when Wayne Brown from FR2day arrived, once again without a viticultural offering (the second time this week), and proceeded to help me with a fridge problem. The problem is that my drinks fridge, although quite sufficiently large to accommodate most peoples needs is not being big enough to cool the vast store of wine that we were required to lay in to cover the enormous appetite exhibited by house guests The Savins. Thus him not bringing a bottle helped me by failing to exacerbate the storage problem, and enabled me to line up another stay at his apartment in Cannes during the summer.

So the evening continued to develop, the Savins produced a piece of cheese that had earlier cost 19 Euros on Valbonne market, so I broke open my Chateau Gloria as a nice red was required to compliment it. This lead to a nice little 2000 Bordeaux that I rescued from the local supermarket recently. I think it had been on the same shelf for ten years.

Today, the final Savin golf clash will take place at the Grand Bastide. The same rules apply, if I win expect boasting of the highest magnitude, should an unexpected reverse occur, little news of it will emerge through this column. Of course nothing should go wrong, carefully laid plans have worked well, he will have  hangover to match mine, but I find a hangover also calms my golfing exuberance, so this must surely be an advantage. Also, by carefully avoiding the golf course where the unexpected happened last year, and by cunningly choosing a course which I know he does not favour, I have left as little to chance as is possible.

Chris France