Rabbiting on

The rain-soaked English house searching odyssey will commence again this morning. Yesterday as we viewed a house in Chichester owned by an old lady who was the proud owner of a Stannar stair lift, I suggested that it would not be very expensive to have it removed but that nice lady decorator commented that it could be left in place as I may shortly be in need of it.

My first reaction was one of hurt. I am in the prime of my life, a magnificent honed vital creature but then reality set in. I am just a year a bit away from my seventh decade and I gradually realised that she has a point. But there is an upside. Imagine, after a skin full of wine and beer, arriving back at one’s home and having a stair lift up to take you up to the top floor for a nightcap? What a splendid invention.

After a torturous set of viewings of many a poor house alongside a couple of nice ones we asked where best to go for lunch and were recommended to the George and Dragon at Burpham. A lesser writer than my good self when presented with the twin facts of a lunch taken at a wonderful Sussex countryside pub and the village of Burpham may conjure up at least one very poor joke about the exhalation of wind after eating and drinking, but I know my readers would not want me to stoop so low as to indulge those who may be amused at such low humour, thus I shall not mention it.

Exhausted by the viewing process and encouraged by a sudden break in the weather we walked after lunch to The Black Rabbit, the riverside pub a couple of miles outside Arundle from where I took this picture. The art involved in framing Arundle Castle in the background of both the River Arun and the pub sign should not be over estimated.

The Black Rabbit on the banks of the Arun

The Town House in Arundle, the dinner venue was also splendid. A Chateaubriand for one is a thoroughly wonderful departure. Normally it is a cut prepared for two and I have long wondered why it could not be sliced in two, in fact one might say I had a bit of a beef about it, but now it can and was enjoyed to the fullest possible extent by that nice lady decorator who would normally require me to be the other steak holding (erk) party. I was thus able to enjoy a far more modest but very tasteful monk fish in a seafood sauce which was as good as her for me as the beef was bad for her.

The more perceptive of my regular readers will have noticed that I have not yet mentioned the wonderful benefits that will accrue to anyone opening an account with Currencies Direct and using it for their foreign exchange receipts or payments, but they may also have noticed that it is a Saturday today and thus part of the weekend, so I am having a day off.

My impending return to the south of France and Valbonne in particular on Monday is filling me with enthusiasm. I shall need to check up on the progress of the Marina Kulik painting competition for the cover of my next book. The only real issue is that at some stage I will have to write it, so much of my summer, a large amount of which I shall have to spend out of France will be spent in a creative cocoon, which some may say is another expression for an alcoholic haze. I find the creative process is helped immensely by the self-administering of some wine.

Chris France