Last tango in Arundel

“Message in a bottle” intoned The Police on the radio as I drove around yesterday doing all the jobs for which I had been earmarked. Actually my ears were more than marked, I would say lacerated due to the continuing torrent of instructions being issued. Of course if one thinks about it for any length of time, there is a message in a bottle. For a baby, that message is to eat. For a grown up, the message, as I understand it, takes on a more liquid form. After a fortnight of decorating and cleaning mayhem, I took that message a bit more literally than normal yesterday.

Being our last day in England for at least six weeks, and with a raft of errands run and completed, by 4.30 pm I was in need of that message or was I need of the bottle? or more accurately that barrel. Message in a barrel? Lets not split hairs, I needed a drink. With sunshine making a very late appearance, deliberately mocking the fact that we are about to go hunting for some decent weather in the south of France, the pub called but only briefly.

Colin the Pirate and his Sultry Goddess Sandra have bought a new house in Arundel and it needed to be house warmed. They claim it is in the up market part of the town, or the right side of the river, whereas all decent people know that the Bohemian quarter on the opposite bank where our house is situated is really the place to live. Over a couple of glasses of fizz, we debated the relative merits of life in the different quarters of the town and, after I had won that particular argument, we fled back to the more favoured quarter for a final drink in our garden before an early night. Here is a picture taken just after the sunset. You see, God (if you believe in such a ridiculous concept) is having a laugh at my expense, and it being a Sunday too, well it is now.

Arundel after dark

By the time my myriad of readers are beginning to consume this column with that same rabid determination that I would, if I did not write it myself, we will be on our way to Portsmouth to catch a ferry to Caen. What a stupid expression that is. How would one catch a ferry? From why height would it be dropped? But, as has happened before, I digress.

Back to the trip. Portsmouth to Caen is scheduled to take 4 hours but with the Channel Tunnel about 3 hours away and Caen some 100 miles further south than the tunnel arrival point at Calais, I calculate that it will take less time to drive to Portsmouth and get the ferry. There will be the added advantage of sea views, a spot of breakfast, a leisurely look at the Sunday Times and a long hard look at what I shall be able to achieve this summer in support of Currencies Direct.

Tonight we hope to have reached the wine area of Beaune or Macon and the salivation will begin. All right minded people know that the best wines in the world emanate from France (with the exception if Chateau Musar which is made in of all places the Lebanon, but in a French style). There are, I am afraid, those in my own family whose wine education is sadly underdeveloped, claiming to prefer wines from similarly underdeveloped areas like Australia. That Nice lady Decorator (who will hopefully be able to reclaim her “nice” epithet now that all the decorating a preparation for non existent rentals are complete) will no doubt forget this preference once presented with an ice cold rose from Provence in our pav in Valbonne tomorrow evening. However, before that, it is almost a racing certainty that an early attempt to get to grips with what Peachy Butterfield describes as “crushed fruit” of the French variety will occur this evening.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News