Mediterranean sunset

Are inflatable balloons better than non inflatable balloons? This was the apparent contention of Slash And Burn Thornton Allan as we sat down to barbecue chicken at the home of the lovely Julie and the slightly less lovely, but still cuddly, Peter Bennett, Head honcho at Blue Water Yachting last night. Slash and Burn seemed quite unaware that an uninflatable balloon is, in effect, just a piece of plastic.

It was almost as if last night that as they are leaving today to head back to London, I was deliberately being fed with material for this column by him, such was the range of snippets I was able to capture on my blackberry ready for today’s missive. His mad professor countenance often conveys the almost certainly true perception that he is off somewhere with the fairies, arriving back into conversations after a little cerebral time-travelling in a rather disconcerting way. Often one can be talking about him and that vacant “the lights are on but nobody is home look” is on his face, but then suddenly he will make some incisive and pithy retort giving the wholly false impression that he has been with you throughout.

Last night there was a conversation about insomnia and I thought he had glazed over and entered a different astral plane, then he snapped back to reality and announced that he had been awake for three hours between 3am and 5am. Call me pedantic if you like but surely that is only two hours?

Any pirates around?

When I suggested he was slightly arithmetically challenged, (not artistically challenged as he took this fab photo today) he accused me of picking on him, which I do not deny. As an example, he brought up the story in yesterday’s offering, about how he lost tooth. I suggested that with the missing implant he looked a bit like a pirate, especially as he was tucking into some after-eight mints at the time. I think he had eight pieces, or would that be pieces of eight?

Conveniently for an arch observer like my good self, he went on to complain about what he would have to go through before his tooth could be properly repositioned. Polygrip was mentioned and I asked if this might be the name if his parrot.  Then he was gone again, with that mad far away look we have all come to love.

Talking of looks, his steely eyed goddess of a trophy wife, Lisa, who is rather too young for him, has one of those looks that I often receive from that nice lady decorator. It is a sort of laser beam stare of such ferocity you forget who you are. I was the unlucky recipient of one such beam last night after she had said that she could count on her hands the number of times something or other had happened. Certainly less than ten. I laughed at  this mathematically challenging concept but then the laser beam was tuned to stun. Suddenly I had a look on my face. “Rabbit in the headlights” sums it up.

Earlier in the evening, the MOGS had administered the now regular ritual humiliation to Currencies Direct affiliate Dancing Greg Harris from Cote d’Azur Villa Rentals and Blind Lemon Milsted on the tennis court. Three sets to nil is a rout, a humiliation of the highest order, and had not the Wingco been determined to smash winners from every point in the last game of the last set, we may have had a whitewash. Indeed we had a “whitewash point” but his attempted booming forehand return of serve sailed out of the court and landed in nearby Plascassier.

Chris France