Ark building time again

Who was it, over the weekend who was complaining about the lack of rain because his lawn was still requiring watering? I do not recall who was the guilty party but I hold them entirely responsible for the deluge that has descended on us in the last 24 hours. I took the picture below of my lawn yesterday morning, receiving some rain as requested by my guest at the weekend. Maybe now is the time to turn off the automatic watering system?

On a day such as yesterday, there is very little one can do except office work, planning, and I think our Americans friends call it brainstorming? So the opportunity to brainstorm and plan over lunch at Auberge Provencal in Valbonne which was offered by Valbonne’s very own mortgage broker, Matt Frost from French Mortgage Xpress  was timely and welcomed by both myself and that nice lady decorator as time out from her decorating duties. But with the Auberge Provencal shut for reasons unknown, lunch was transferred to the ever reliable Auberge St Donat. The planning aspect of the meeting over lunch was the most difficult to agree. Basically we have too many people coming to the book launch and not enough room for anything else, so lunch is situ at the venue was designed to enable us to consider what was to be done. But no matter, a few glasses of wine and we could imagine anything.

God overdoing the rain bit

So dear readers, I do not want you running away with the notion that I was squandering time on lunch, oh no, decisions of enormous import were at least considered. The conclusions? They are secret. So secret that I cannot remember them or more likely I have deliberately forgotten them due to an invitation to extend lunch at the Buftons (of which more tomorrow), but I am sure any actions required were successfully delegated too whoever will be in charge.

What I do remember was a discussion between Roly Bufton (who was celebrating his wedding anniversary with the lovely Leslie) who joined us as we sat down and Matt Frost about Napoleon. You might think that this would be a perfectly acceptable discussion, deep in France about one of their most historically important leaders? Well, what seemed to be exercising their minds more than his march across the Alps (or was that Hannibal?) was the Radio 4 programme about a supposed on-going conversation between Marengo and  Copenhagen. In case you did not read the classics, and here I must declare an interest. You may not know (as indeed I did not) that Marengo was the name of Napoleons horse and Copenhagen was the name of Wellington’s horse. It seems that Radio 4 are broadcasting or about to broadcast a programme that suggests that the two horses were in contact and that they exchanged views prior to the battle of The Somme or whatever it was they were fighting over. This seems to me to be an entirely acceptable use of the tax payers millions, people can die of starvation in Africa, but the BBC can still spend money on a latter-day version of a re-enactment of a variation on Mr Ed, the talking horse. Splendid!

My dear friend Christine Bryant who is also a Regional Controller for Currencies Direct has become the southern French representative for Micha handbags. I asked her if they do a golf bag but it seems not at the moment and my suggestion that they do a tennis bag or a bag to put ones football boots in was met with similar disdain. It is clear that as a man I would not be expected to understand this craze which is sweeping America, but I am sure that my fashion and style guru Mr Humphrey’s (if he is free) will be considering attending the local launch which is at Hotel Mercure on 15th November.

Chris France