Potting the pink?

So after the excitement of the signing event at the English Book shop in Valbonne for my book yesterday had subsided and the crowd control barriers had been removed, quite a long time before they were deployed, we adjourned as I had predicted to the Cafe Des Arcades in the village square for a quiet and well deserved lunch. I wanted to savour the sale of all three books sold at the mornings signing, however, if one is to be diverted from a quiet lunch, after a walk in the Valmasque forest from where I took this picture this morning in order to build up an appetite for lunch, who better then Master Mariner Mundell and the naked politician?

There are a number of characters at whose feet I would always like to be able to lay the blame for such diversions so to encounter the Naked Politician together with his lovely hand brake wife Dawn, also lunching in the sunshine in Valbonne Square suggested that luncheon was not going to be either short or simple. I sensibly made notes on my blackberry during the afternoon of some of the conversations that occurred before things got out of hand. That the blame for lunch getting out of hand later can be laid entirely at the door of my friends is undeniable.

It was the Master who persuaded us to stay longer at lunch and then and afterwards to go back to the his residence. Initially I resisted of course but once that nice lady decorator had granted tacit approval (by not forcefully confirming we were due to return home) then my post luncheon fate was confirmed. Before that, the naked politician seemed to forget that I write a daily column much read by his peers, and revealed rather too much information about his current activities. He is a very successful commercial property developer, so successful that he now resides in the errr…. advantageous tax zone of Monaco.

He is well known for being naked on occasions, as pictures that have appeared from time to time on this blog will confirm, but he is also a politician for part of the time, and a property mogul for the commercial part of his life. I made the mistake of questioning him about one particular property owned by one of his companies in Deansgate In Manchester. I am a great lover of snooker and have a long standing affection for old snooker halls, having spent some of my early twenties in one of these where one of the artists I used to manage, Wild Willy Barrett, did some of his best work. The news that one of these venerable old establishments had fallen out with their landlords and were being closed down filled me with sadness. Yes, the naked politician is that landlord. But with every cloud there is a silver lining, so the closure of one of Manchester’s most famous snooker halls was tempered with the knowledge that the venue would give way to what the naked politician described as the biggest lap dance club in Britain, perhaps Europe. The naked politician in close proximity and with certain inalienable rights as a landlord, such as permanent access? yes, I also forsee possible problems.

It seems that local media reaction to this news is brutal, and the BBC have been especially active in providing a platform for local opposition, so much so that the naked politician made the mistake of telling me that he was intending to keep his head down…in a lap dancing club….hmm. You will know that I am one who usually tries to avoid smutty innuendo and I hope you will note that I have avoided any use of expressions such as potting the pink or the brown, or indeed of mentioming Currencies Direct. Perhaps I may have mellowed?

Chris France