Garden design shock

I made the mistake of mentioning to that nice lady garden designer that I liked the idea of a tropical rain forest theme being adapted into the new garden works that she is undertaking, but had not imagined she would that she would embrace quite such a Brazilian touch as my picture today, ruined by Banjo the nasty Friesian cow look-alike, rather poorly depicts.

A Brazilian theme takes shape

Two days of almost total abstinence was almost inevitably to be followed by a fall from temperance grace and the crumbling of this edifice began last night after another resounding victory on the tennis courts for the MOGs, the Moustachiod Old Gits. The MOGS, a doubles pairing of myself and the Wingco acquitted ourselves extremely well, our opponents, Dancing Greg Harris from Cote d’Azur Villa Rentals and Blind Lemon Milsted not so well. Some us are winners in tennis and life some of them are losers. Details are unimportant to anyone but me but a final set score line of 6-1 tells a story that I would dearly like to tell.

Talking of stories, over the victory dinner afterwards at Capricchio up the hill in Pre du Lac I mentioned that I had recently to attend a funeral for a friend who had been hit by a tennis ball. It was a lovely service.

The Wingco also told the true story of how he spent two weeks in chains in an Indian prison some years ago. On a visit to a rural part of India, I think he called it Arselikhan to watch some horse race or the like he decided to leave his passport behind in Delhi not knowing that one should keep ones passport about one’s person at all times. You might think that such a minor offence could be quickly dealt with by way of a cable (one must consider given the Wingco’s vast age how long ago this must have been before modern communication was invented) but it appears that his overblown countenance coupled with loudly expressed statements in his best English accent such as “Do you know who I am?” and “I am English, I demand to see the Ambassador” or “Where would you be without English manners and culture you half wit” did not endear him to the local police with the result that he spent a fortnight in chains until this unfortunate oversight could be cleared up.

Dancing Greg is off to Devon for the weekend and we got talking about the quality of some gastro pubs in the south-west of England. I don’t like the idea and said I that I for one would never eat at one, a clear case of gastroenteritis.

Having fallen off the wagon last night, I have accepted an invitation to lunch today in Antibes. We have gate crashed a gathering between Blue Water Yachting’s newest yacht broker, the naked politician in his first gainful employment for decades and Roly Bufton and the lovely Leslie, John Hurts former cleaner to discuss skippers for Roly’s new yacht. When I say gainful employment I use the term loosely. It seems his brief is to lunch as many yachty types as possible on the most spurious of pretexts and then submit an outrageous expenses claim. It was on this basis we, led rather inevitably by Peachy Butterfield, decided to gate crash lunch. I can sometimes spell the word yacht correctly and have been on a couple so that seems sufficient to qualify.

Before that this morning I must once again take to the tennis courts with Roly and Peachy who require further guidance from their tennis mentor. I prefer the word tormentor and I shall be endeavouring to put this into practice this morning at the Vignale.

Finally, I do hope you have noticed that I have not mentioed the benefits of using Currencies Direct for all your foreign exchange transactions today, and nor shal I.

Chris France