Bad taste awaits

So lunch was taken at Clipboard Towers after a brief adjournment to a local golf club on a lake nearby, where the locals were enjoying themselves by playing with radio controlled yachts. At the same time a lady arrived on the river bank on one of those electrically controlled bike-like contraptions designed for the disabled, who seemed to be having a bit of difficulty controlling the movement of it. Rather childishly there was some conjecture as to whether the radio signals being sent to the boats may be interfering with the propulsion system, but all was well, and there was no unfortunate incident or drowning.

Lunch was once again taken at Clipboard Towers and our host consulted his wine cellar clipboard and produced a 1994 Grand Cru Classe St Julien for lunch which was splendid. Of course it had to be opened to allow it to breathe, and as the accepted norm is ten minutes for each year, Mr Clipboard (so-called – by me – due to his newly found precise organisational obsession that he has embraced since returning to England) enjoyed the challenge of ensuring that the wine had been open for exactly the requisite time to be served at lunch. This involved coordinating the time of lunch to be one hundred and seventy-five minutes (ie ten minutes for each of the seventeen and half years) after it had been opened. Thus he was able to amuse himself by constantly adjusting the cooking speed of the lamb burgers to ensure they were cooked and ready at exactly the right moment. The evidence is the subject of my picture today.

A nice little drop for a Sunday lunch

Before lunch I was challenged to a game of singles on the tennis court and was cruising to victory after the first set, before allowing the triple factors of blisters from new tennis shoes, borrowed racket and the politeness of not humiliating ones host to engineer a draw 6-3, 3-6. Mr Clipboard was very pleased , mostly I think with the neatness of the scoreline.

By contrast, an excellent lunch was followed by yet another nightmare journey on English public transport. Escalators have clearly not reached England yet, as at each station change we had to carry heavy suitcases up a number of staircases, exacerbated by enforced use of temporary bus services because of the inevitable engineering works. By the time I reached Buckinghamshire, my knuckles were dragging along the floor, which at least gave me some physical resemblance to our host last night, Mr North.

We are staying with Mr North, the ex-butcher and fridge magnet salesman, who has not featured in this column recently, mainly on the grounds of my trying to avoid bad taste. But bad taste will riddle every sinew of my being over the next two days. Mr North has at least changed his “paki gold” (has favourite colour) Hyundai for a slightly less down-market but embarrassingly over the top truck-like vehicle of uncertain origin, ideal (in his mind) for challenging driving conditions faced in the suburban home counties. The embellishments of fluffy dice, klaxon and Arsenal stickers all help to illustrate what I will be up against. Parking this beast amongst the BMW’s and Mercedes at the golf course today will be embarrassing, what he will be wearing will be in bad taste and his general demeanour will be in bad taste. He is a good lad though, as long as today’s golf goes to plan.

Finally, I just wanted to point out that I have not made any attempt to plug Currencies Direct in this column today and will ensure I do not do so.

Chris France