Prevaricating Pomegranate

What is more boring that watching paint dry? Even more boring that watching a dour English football team grind out a victory against world beaters Ukraine? Answer, spending the afternoon watching that nice lady decorator looking at paint drying. She loves to walk around and drool at cans of paint whilst stalking around a paint shop. It is worse than watching it dry because whilst it is in the can it does not dry very easily, so the whole process takes longer, much longer.

She is painting everything that moves, and much that does not, at the moment in readiness for the summer rental clients that we do not yet have. Indeed I have to keep moving in case I get painted, which, in a very different way I have recently with the competition to paint a picture of me for the front cover of the new book. It seems a “bring your own lunch” is taking shape for Monday July 2nd at Marina Kuliks Painting Studio in Plascassier where I shall be judging the entries and deciding on which work wins the prize. The prize of course is having the winning painting featured on the book jacket. It is a prize that any aspiring artist would want, honest.

Paint shops are of course the natural habitat of the decorating species, who get excited about things like oil based derivatives and Elephants Breath (this is apparently a Farrow and Ball colour but my attempt at humour, that as a comedy duo they were crap, so why are they so good with paint, fell on deaf ears).

By the time we got back, with a skip load of paint, with names like Sheep Slobber, Snowgoose Snot and Parrots Phlegm it was hot. 30 degrees is enough to do two things; 1/; to heat up the swimming pool to 25 degrees and 2/; to ensure that the afternoon was entirely unproductive, especially in terms of finding new clients for Currencies Direct. The only activity that can be undertaken in these conditions is the rigourous testing of the garden furniture ahead of the rental season, should we get any clients. It seems a lot of people will be remaining at home despite the weather to “enjoy’ the Olympics.

Pomegranate tree responds to unfriendly persuasion

My picture today is taken of my pomegranate tree which has suddenly gone mad and is festooned with flowers. Two years ago I had warned it that as it was so ugly in winter, being deciduous, that it had better start producing some flowers and fruit or it would end up as an addition to the log pile. With no discernible response at first I had sharpened my saw but on the day set aside for its cutting down to size it rained. Other jobs then crowded in on that nice old git gardener and it survived. Finally the tree seems to have got the message and is now playing ball and my little talk will soon, literally, bear fruit. A case of the prevaricating pomegranate perhaps?

Tennis, not normally known as a contact sport, is due to resume tonight at the Vignale Tennis Club. For the time being at least, our opponents, Blind Lemon Milsted and Dancing Greg Harris from Cote d’Azur Villa Rentals, have discovered enough backbone to accept the challenge of the MOGS (Moustachioed Old Gits) which comprise myself and the Wingco, so the white feathers that I keep in my tennis bag can remain undelivered for the time being. Unless there is some late back sliding, or an unreported reverse, discussion about their inevitable defeat will loom large at dinner, traditionally taken after hostilities have ceased.

Chris France