Rugby party ends in shame

I had forgotten the excellent magnum of Wrexham Rioja which I had found quite by chance in Super U in Plasscassier. At least that is what the label said after I had spent three minutes with a computer and a printer before setting off for dinner with Peachy Butterfield on Friday night. So pleased was he that he wanted to get his own back show his appreciation by coming around yesterday lunchtime for a small tincture as he called it.

Earlier, after some work for Currencies Direct,  I had been doing my best to impersonate a lumberjack in the Valmasque forest where any number of tree branches, mainly pine, have broken off under the weight of the unaccustomed snowfall recently. There is something primevally satisfying along the hunter gatherer theme about going out and collecting wood for the fire. I had to stop Mr Paul “slash and burn” Thornton Allan from embracing this concept rather too enthusiastically, he was all for taking his chain saw and cutting down an acre of two of protected national park, something that may have upset the authorities. My picture today illustrates some of the successful endeavours.

The proceeds from my lumberjacking duties

So I was ready for that drink when La Grande Peche and lovely but seriously hung over wife Suzanne eventually showed up so we popped into a bar in Valbonne to have a drink (or in her case a coffee) at La Fontaine Du Vin for an overpriced beer and underwhelming glass of wine followed by a pizza at Cafe Des Arcades.  I don’t know why I thought it would stop there, what with an invitation to “Slash and Burn’s” house to watch the England versus Scotland Six Nations rugby match at 6pm, and as it turns out it did not, but I am getting ahead of myself.

The Revered Jeff made a comment about my piece yesterday about Peachy Butterfield becoming a curtain salesman and suggesting that this could lead to a number of curtain puns. This “rings” true I would rather draw a veil over this suggestion, a blind man can see it will be curtains for him if he continues to go off the rails, we are poles apart here.

Ok, that’s done. So we left the Cafe Des Arcades just in time to miss the first ten minutes of the rugby. By this time it is fair to say that we may have outstayed our welcome and whether we were any more welcome chez “slash and burn” is debatable as we had collected some human flotsam during the afternoon including The Wingco, Master bully Mariner Mundell and Nick “I am not 60 yet” Davies who as his name suggests is in aged denial. I sense the aroma of a bus pass here.  A splendid evening followed with hordes of rugby fans spending loads of time in the kitchen avoiding the rugby, eating shepherds pie and consuming yet more wine.

Many people’s blushes were spared as the battery in my blackberry which doubles as my faithful reporters notebook upon which I like to make notes to remind me of embarrassing interludes or funny stories had died. Some recall of events was triggered this morning when I discovered the two gentlemen to whom I have alluded above asleep in my house. One was in the spare room, one on the sofa, at least that it was they wanted me to believe, but quite how that item of clothing owned by that gentlemen on the sofa arrived in the spare bedroom is not something I want to go into but I will say these former public schoolboys just cannot leave it alone.

Chris France