The Monologues are imminent

At last, I have seen a print of my new book, The Valbonne Monologues and it is beautiful. The pixie problem with the photographs, which delayed the publication of my second  assault on the literary world at Christmas, has been sorted out and the launch will happen in mid March in Valbonne, once I have decided what to do. Watch this space.

After an unfortunate run in with, I think, a dodgy peanut yesterday, I am afraid I was not at my best, indeed I spent more time than usual in the bathroom reliving err.. the evacuation, even retiring to my bed in the afternoon. I emerged after Sprog had arrived hot foot (in a cloud of putrid smoke) in his Citroen Saxo Mischief from college at Guildford. My second shock of the day was to catch him watching ghastly TV series Miss Marple with that Nice Lady Decorator. Whilst I have come to accept that this futile ridiculous excuse for proper TV will often be given house room on dreary afternoons in England,  I was astonished that a 19-year-old exhibiting all the usual traits associated with the student fraternity, trousers perched half way over his buttocks, rolling tobacco and a healthy interest in the opposite sex, might be seduced by Joan Higson, the actress responsible for this aberration. I came to believe that I was delirious.  Later Sprog 2 arrived and a family reunion took place.

It won’t take long before these start disappearing and end up in dubious cigarettes

So I spent much of the afternoon considering how best to continue to reach out to people with foreign exchange needs, admirably handled by Currencies Direct, now the official partner for the soon to be Oscar nomination winning John Otway, who will need some euros for his Cannes events at the Film Festival. Who better than I to be on the spot as their faithful representative to ensure that everything goes according to plan?

Today will be the last day of preparations before the skiing trip, which we depart on Friday morning. Due to my malaise I managed to remount the temperance wagon, mainly because I did not want to vomit over everything in sight. This lasted until Sprog 2 arrived home quite late demanding a pint of cider. She has her mothers genes.

I must recover today, and to help ignite excitement for the skiing trip I had a conversation with Mr Clipboard who, along with Slash and Burn Thornton Allan and respective families will comprise the whole skiing party. Rather unkindly Mr Clipbeard is bringing some oven gloves with him, a rather cruel but amusing reference to an oven, broken by Sprog 1 in juvenile New Years Eve party, trying to reenact a scene from a Film called Project X in which a dwarf is inserted into an oven. I rather suspect that there will be a few more jokes “cooked up” over the forthcoming week of skiing at Meribel. It would all be very amusing except for the many hundreds of pounds it has cost to replace said cooker. However, us Brits laugh at adversity, and joke about disaster and anyway, he will pay us back one day. I have told him to consider it his very own student loan.

So my beloved France will be in sight tomorrow, the delights of the channel tunnel and after a  burn down the motorways of northern France, I shall, gloriously, be ensconced in the centre of Beaune, savouring some of the local produce I hope, as long as the squits have left me, and I don’t mean the Sprogs.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News