Plane evidence

Who would have children? I have made it clear to mine that they were their mother’s idea and I had very little to do with their conception. Much as I love them now, having to reject an invitation last night to dine with the most stylish man to emerge from the sixties, Anthony “Dock Of the” Bay, and his impossible young and gorgeous wife, Amanda ? because we had previously promised to take the sprogs out for a meal, stuck in my craw. Anthony may have been wearing either his bottle green crushed velvet suit, or maybe his silk Indian house coat, both undoubtedly fantastic photo opportunities for this column, and, as he is not yet a customer of Currencies Direct, I would have had a chance of converting him.

He mentioned that he had considered sending me an email expressing dissatisfaction about our non-appearance. It was to have taken the theme of “how dare a grammar school oik refuse a gracious invitation from a former public schoolboy”, but had decided against it as he thought it might appear in a slightly edited form in this daily column, but nothing could be further from the truth. It would have been heavily edited.

Anthony was, of course, present at the lunch at the turn of the year at the Auberge St Donat when a number of public schoolboy bullies held me down and forcibly removed my luxuriant beard, and then claimed it was an accident. Indeed it was from this lunch that Mr Clipbeard had his named changed from Mr Clipboard. Anthony claimed that he never took part in this event but I was able to show him this rather grainy photograph taken on the day which forms the basis of the case for the prosecution.

Food fight?

The physical assault on my person on that day had very little to do with my beard, minor irritant that it was intended to be, but was in fact rooted in jealousy. My first book had just been published, to considerable acclaim at least in this blog. Many of these chaps consider the whole idea of a self-made man like myself, from what they consider to be a lower caste, writing and publishing a book, to be an affront, which required punishment or at least a little humiliation. Mr Clipbeard had bought a copy and then proceeded ritually to torture and eventually destroy it. This would have hurt had he not paid for it, but a sale is a sale. The book, a living, vibrant commentary about the lives of the idle rich in Valbonne, was then the subject of an attack, which I felt as if it was my own soul being abused. Fire was used,  one of my genitals (one of which they claimed was visible on the front cover – in fact it was my knee) was attacked and many pages were ripped out and used as paper planes. Anthony claimed that he did not involve himself, but when I found and showed him the incontrovertible evidence in this photo he changed his story, saying that he was merely passing the paper plane, shown in his hand, back to a fellow public schoolboy, but in the time-honoured “food fight” manner to which these chaps are clearly accustomed. It is a shaky defence and one that I intend to destroy in much the way my book was destroyed.

I expect to be back at the scene of this attack tomorrow lunchtime after the Moustachioed Old Gits (the MOGS) have once again dismissed the challenged to play tennis with Nick “Trousers Down” Davies and Mr Clipbeard which will be followed by the traditional lunch. They are under the illusion that the MOGs can be beaten but they have the same brittle confidence of a certain taciturn Scotsman who was once again a loser at Wimbledon yesterday.

Chris France