Eccentric Earls Court

So to The France Show in Earls Court to a frenzied melee of desperate people, determined to buy the limited (and that should not be construed as any type of comment on the quality of the writing) first edition of my book.  So rushed off my feet was I that I cannot recall if it was 3 or 4 copies I sold, my feeling was that it was 4.

It is the kind of show that attracts a large number of what I call one per centers, dreamers who dream about living in France, others that have lived there, some that love french culture and food but have no intentions of ever living there, and the odd eccentric. My picture today is of an odd eccentric.

How a moustache and beard could look if not ravaged by public schoolboy bullies

Let me start with the eccentric. Mark, pictured here today and with an email address ending in “business-matters.org” was the highlight, mainly because he had been able to spend several years cultivating this splendid beard and moustache. Regular readers will already be aware of the inherent dangers of trying to nurture a moustache of this luxuriance and magnificence when one live on the Cote d’Azur and as a result one finds oneself surrounded by a large number of apparently jealous public schoolboys, whose whole being is centred upon the “regularisation” of beards that offend them. It is thus very rewarding to glimpse of what might have been had one not lived in such a beard averse community.

Another great character and old friend who holidays regularly in Cannes, Gordon Cato, was visiting, I think with the sole purpose of buying a copy of my book.  over a glass of wine in the champagne bar at the exhibition he expounded an interesting theory about regulation ones drinking. A man with a prodigious appetite for wine of any colour. He was advised some years ago on average to take one day off from alcohol per week. His theory was that as he didn’t drink a drop until he was aged thirteen, he had a lot of days in credit. Now that advice has been recently raised to avoid alcohol for two days a week his plans are in disarray and a recalculation is necessary. This is the man who a number of years ago asked his doctor what the maximum number of units was recommended for a man to consume and was told 28. “That’s fine” he said, “I couldn’t drink that in a day”. The doctor meant per week. I like a man who knows his own limits.

So after a busy day at The France Show at Earls Court rescuing people from using their banks to send money to buy houses in France by instead using the free services if Currencies Direct, work that will continue throughout the weekend before returning to sunny sanity in France late on Sunday night, the delights of Earls Court and a meeting in a pub of course with old pal John Otway. I am excited about the possibility of proper English beer in the shape of The Blackbird, a very fine fullers pub selling the best beer in the world, London Pride. He is excited about the fact that he has already sold out the Royal Circle at The Leicester Square Odeon in October for the premiere of Otway The Movie, a film rather unsurprisingly about himself. He is less excited, it must be said, about the progress of the filming. It seems that I may feature in a small way in this production and indeed I am to be interviewed on camera on Sunday.

Chris France