A literary travesty

The tennis lunch at Auberge St Donat yesterday reached an undreamed scale of atrocity. Having won the tennis as predicted against Mr Clipboard on the basis that at one set each when lunch beckoned, the MOGS had secured victory under the Chris France scoring system by dint of winning the first set by a larger margin than losing the second set, the scores being  6-4, 6-7, confirmed also by a simple count back (12-11 in case there are any public schoolboys reading this who still find arithmetic a dark art), I managed to sell a copy of my book to Mr Clipboard.

However, delight at the sale that turned honest endeavour as a writer into success turned to horror when he decided to set fire to his purchase as we enjoyed cognac and grappa after lunch. I knew it was a hot literary offering, but quite how hot I had not appreciated until the flames licked into the content as my picture below captures.

The Nazi's were famous for burning literature, but as you can see the practice is alive and festering in the public schoolboy fraternity

Much amusement was afforded the attendees to the much superior tennis lunch home leg, as opposed to the very boring away fixture last Friday at La Source at Le Rouret, by the ritual burning of a volume of my work, but the real pain I felt later when I discovered that I had been robbed of the 10 Euros (already in two pieces a result of previous tortuous negotiations) which was stolen from my wallet in broad daylight. I say now that I know who is the culprit and would have suggested that I turned out the light and invited the thief to return the money, but with public schoolboys and their pre disposition towards buggery, I decided I would prefer to take the financial loss rather than risking the loss of considerably more dignity should any of then want to revisit their childhood habits.

From this you will have come to accept that at lunch I was surrounded by a number of public school types who had all managed to avoid working for much of their adult lives in complete contrast to yours truly who even today was working, thinking about how best to promote Currencies Direct. Indeed today as I metamorphosed from ordinary author, like a caterpillar into a butterfly and became a successful author as my book turned into a profitable enterprise as a result of four more sales, jealousy of the most green-eyed kind reared its ugly head in a variety of forms. Not only was one of my books summarily burnt as evidenced by my picture today, but also my luxuriant goatee beard, a deeply hated sign of virility much maligned by the largely balding contingent of public schoolboys who surrounded me, was reduced to a mere shadow of its former self by an unwarranted physical assault on my person. I will now forever be aware of the deep hurt suffered by Tom Brown in his school days as I was roasted on the fire of jealousy which has built up ever since I, a mere council house boy, had his book published.

The more literary accomplished (but only in their own minds) coterie of public schoolboys simply could not bear to witness a poorly educated upstart eclipse them in the literary stakes so they had to revert to public schoolboy bullying of the most unpleasant kind to assuage their own lamentable lack of literary achievement. I suppose it could have been worse as one of them in an alcoholic haze made the statement that “the rich boys will lay waste to your bottoms”. Old habits die hard (so to speak).

Chris France