Panto season? Oh yes it is

Where does she get the stamina? After that nice lady decorator rolled home some time after 2 30am yesterday morning from a girls drink up the night before, and this after a series of late night end of summer shenanigans, she was up again before 9 yesterday morning going for a stiff walk, and then when Clive Panto (that cannot be his real name? oh yes it is) and his lovely wife came in at 11 30am, the rose was open and she was off again, but on this occasion I came too, if you understand me correctly.

Clive Panto is a scream. It is his real name and he would be great at pantomime but probably only as an ugly sister. Much as I love him, he can be very funny and enormously irritating. Today he was just funny. With a belly now the size of Devon, and hair which is restricted to two tufts, one behind each ear, he has general air of a clown and with a clowns face that makes you laugh (interpret that which ever way you like) he is amusing company. His claim to fame is that as an actor he was the one who said “you can’t stand it with a bandit” in the iconic 1980’s commercial for Bandit chocolate bars. If you are old enough to remember that then you have my condolences. Anyway, he is holidaying here, loves France and wants to move here, but so far I have managed to put him off.

So bad signs early on. Rose being consumed before mid day is always a bad sign, but the Pantos left (oh yes they did) before it all got out of hand, and so by the time we came to go out last night, we were fully recovered and ready to go.

Given our frenetic life style you may think that featuring a picture of a dam burst today might have a deeper significance, a sort of underlying message, and you are probably right, but I cannot work out what that message is. The picture was taken last weekend when we went over to the Var to find the site of the Malpasset dam which collapsed with horrendous loss of life in 1959, five years after it was built. This picture shows the size of one chunk of the original wall that collapsed and was washed some 400 metres from the dam itself. That little dot on the top is that nice lady decorator. It is not often I get to call her a little dot, indeed I have a number of far more ill-fitting epithets for her, but I still value living so in case she ever reads this I will keep those to myself.

The end of Malpasset dam and the end of Ramadan, how poetic? but what's Banjo the horrid hound doing in this shot?

So scrubbed and dressed we went to the Auberge de Provence in Plascassier, a charming off the beaten track restaurant in old Plascassier because that nice lady decorator expressed the opinion that she had been square bashing enough recently. We were accompanied by two people who were adamant that they did not want to be identified in this column and discussion ranged across various subjects. One of them is involved in development or, as I like to call it, missionary work in Africa, mostly in Burkino Fasso, whereas I am involved in missionary work a great deal nearer to home, where I am converting people with foreign exchange needs to use the services of Currencies Direct. Both activities are equally laudable in my book. I venture to suggest that he makes more money than I from his efforts, but such are the rewards for public service. I have made my bed and I must lie on it. Good night.

Chris France