Horse eats pencil shock

My presence yesterday was sought, even required, at the Premier Mardi girls networking event, staged by Karen Hockney at her wonderful villa in Bar Sur Loup. I should have known, Premier Mardi literally translated means first Tuesday. Work it out, was yesterday the first Tuesday of the month?

None of the very attractive girls in attendance at this women’s networking group seemed at all phased that yesterday was not actually the second Tuesday of the month, but no matter. A small turnout was perhaps down to the confusion of exactly on which Tuesday the meeting was to be held, but for all that the quality of the assembled (small throng) was undeniable. I like to think that the lure of my presence was sufficiently daunting and sexually charged, that only the strongest of characters could face up to the metaphorical challenge of a man amongst girls, however more likely is that a combination of sunshine, summer, and boredom with the concept of blogging (for which apparently I am an acknowledged expert) by an old git was sufficiently diverting to reduce the expected numbers somewhat.

Karen Hockney, media princess, and owner of the fabulous venue, the villa in picturesque Bar Sur Loup which overlooks the verdant Loup Valley, was our host for this event and as a writer for The Sun, the Daily Mirror and a host of other if not top-notch, at least well-known publications, regaled us with tales of her best and worst interviews and interviewees. Rather surprisingly Steven Fry did not impress and other stories circulated, the details of which I cannot reveal, however I can tell you that Elle McPherson (for whom she is currently finalising a feature for Hello) is Elle McPherson. That’s all I can say.

Amongst those who braved the meeting, desperate apparently to emulate my err… “success” was Faye Villalba who runs yoga classes in Valbonne most days and kindly offered me a free yoga trial, but I am not really a yoghurt fan, although I am sometimes partial to a rhubarb activia if you will pardon the expression. Dawn Howard is another media type who now limits her writing to the Roquefort Informer. She did however reveal that in the very early stages of her journalistic career, she was assigned the task of interviewing Princess Anne at some horse trials. It seems that the interview started badly in that as she prepared her first questions whilst our Princess was amongst the horses, one of them (the horse, no, that’s not who I meant) ate her pencil. It did not get better from there.

We were all moved by details of a charity for a Kenyan village and what it is trying to do to help. Of course I ventured the opinion more than once that Currencies Direct could help here and in fact everyone gathered, but as I have heard said in the past “some fell on stony ground”.

Having fought my way out after a very convivial lunch, I adjourned to the web for the customary siesta whilst I digested lunch  the mornings events in readiness for this lovingly created column.

Max, joining me this afternoon in deep contemplation

I was not alone in enjoying some lateral thinking as my picture of Max the proper dog shows. Luckily I was able to edit out that black and white horse sized catastrophe of a dog that belongs to that nice lady decorator, who was undertaking some ironing wither new I-Ron. She says she was ironing for four hours. She could tell because she had watched four episodes of Midsummer Murders on TV whilst getting to grips with (for her) this very modern piece of technology.

Chris France