Balls up on the cover?

My honour is being impugned. Pat Coombs, who arrived at our house last on Tuesday evening with her husband Tony “I invented the internet” Coombs, who was there to fix my internet connection, is convinced that the photograph on the front cover of my book “Summer In The Cote d’Azur” available now for Kindle and in print from Lulu (order now to be sure of getting it for Xmas) in part exposes my manhood, the right one as you look. Indeed can there be a wrong one? My position is that it is clearly a part of my knee, but I can see that in certain lights, and with the benefit of a magnifying glass, that this relatively benign pose could be misinterpreted.

This is the only reason that I again show the possibly offending front cover, and in no way could this featuring be construed as a cheap marketing opportunity to sell more books in the run up to Christmas. That will happen a little nearer the festive season.

Left knee or left gonad? you decide

Today we leave the wonderfully sunny south of France for a night in the tender hands of a hotel near Heathrow before heading off to Nairobi on Saturday. The hotel is called the Jury’s Inn, but frankly, until we have experienced the hotel itself the Jury is out. Peter Lynn, who recommended this hotel, kindly remarks that he hopes that all traces of the recent typhus outbreak there have been eradicated, but I said I only ever drink Earl Grey tea so it should be all right.

I have five British Airways pilots as friends, all of whom are long haul specialists. It is no secret that I have acquired economy class tickets from BA for my trip to Kenya, the land of vultures and predators (so a bit similar to Valbonne then) with the near certainty that one of my five close friends would be flying the plane or at the very least will do the decent thing and secure us an upgrade. Even if there is only one upgrade to be had, I know that the nice lady decorator would insist that I received the benefit. As I write, there are 5 pilots all scurrying around doing their best to ensure that there are no slip ups. None of them will wish to risk failure in the clear duty and the subsequent punishment that would inevitably follow in this column. Messrs Warner, Coward, Macfadyen, Rogers and Allen, you have been warned.

Yesterday afternoon it was my duty to meet with the very beautiful Cathie the Culture, the cultured Australian, in Cafes Des Arcades in Valbonne to complete the necessary documentation to open her account with Currencies Direct. Part of this process requires me to secure a copy of a passport and a utility bill, quite easily obtained from home by use of a scanner, or if that was too technically challenging for La Colture that we could meet up for a drink after I get out of Africa… I suggested that she may be able to scan these and email them to me, but received a blank expression, the sort you receive when asking a 5-year-old to explain Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity. I explained how to do it but later received an email saying that she felt that was “technically challenged” and was looking forward to that drink.

So farewell until the 7th December. There will a post tomorrow before the big bird takes me south, and I hope that an internet connection will be available to allow you to follow my African adventure daily, but if connection is not available or fallible you may not get a report every day, but having now posted 642 days in succession I will not miss a day lightly.

Chris France