Purple rain (hut)

Sprog 1 turned up unexpectedly requiring food, drink, washing, clothing and more food. His car looks like it has experienced a particularly wet Glastonbury, both inside and out, due it seems, to getting stuck in mud somewhere (do they have mud in Guildford?)  and having to be towed out. The driver’s door won’t open and it looks like a muddy skip inside. It is burning oil, the back tyres are worn, it rattles, leaks oil and misfires, but other than that it is fine. That is what I tell him when he complains. I well remember my first car which was so rusty I used paper mache to fill in the gaps. It worked fine until it rained. Kids need hardship, it toughens them up.

Surprisingly he was up before noon and volunteered to go for a walk along the beach with us, his doting parents. I smelled a rat immediately, such out of character, ingratiating behaviour indicated to me that he knew we would end up in a pub, and so we did, the Sea View at East Preston. If there is a sea view then you need a ladder, the sea was certainly not visible from the ground floor where I was standing, straining for a glimpse of the waves, even at the peak of a spring tide (is there no such thing as an autumn tide?). I did however get a nice full-on view of the adjacent caravan park, stuffed full of Top Gear bait. Juan les Pins this is not. My picture today is of him enjoying up market student accommodation on the nearby (but not visible) beach.

Purple haze?

The massive re-edit of The Valbonne Monologues was finished in the early hours and dispatched first thing to the formatter. By mid evening, I had heard nothing, which is bad news. Some Christmas stockings are perhaps going to be bereft of the finest book to be written in Valbonne this month.

Now tell me, what is the difference in the effect on the lounge carpet between me walking into the house forgetting to remove my (dry) shoes, and the dogs being invited into the lounge after dark?  Answer; there are clearly different rules for dogs. Do they wipe their feet? Oh, to be that high in the pecking order. Perhaps, when being yelled at for not removing them, I should not have said that if standards were applied evenly then that Nice Lady Decorator should be bathing the feet of her dogs before they are allowed in? My alternative suggestion, that they were fitted with slippers before venturing past the kitchen door, was also singularly not welcomed.

Then it was ironing. Most husbands I know have wives who do all their ironing. I am unlucky enough to have one that considers ironing to be character building. I have become used to doing women’s work and am actually quite good at it, but that is not to say that I enjoy it. I do not. So the idea of ironing clothes ready to fold up in a suitcase, only to be ironed again when the clothes are unpacked and want to wear whatever you have ironed is anathema. Yes, that Nice Lady Decorator wants everything ironed at least twice.  I very nearly made an another inappropriate observation; I wanted to suggest that rather than just twice, why not iron it all again in Bangkok, and then repack it and then iron it all again when we get to Adelaide. Luckily, I saw that a sense of humour failure was bubbling and headed myself off at the pass.

This is your cheesed off Currencies Direct fat controller signing off for today.

Chris France

@Valbonne_News