Aristo bashing

Anthony “Dock Of The Bay” has coined a phrase which I think will become a watchword for this column whilst I am staying in France. “Aristo Bashing” seems to me to sum up what I have to do to fight the pauper, grammar school boy corner when confronted by the Right Honourable public schoolboy brigade.

Take last night for example. Alms for the poor were being handed out by Mr Clipboard and his lovely blonde trophy wife Ashley. He had invited his poorer neighbours (us) to his sumptuous villa in Plascassier, mainly I think, to gloat over our comparative financial misfortune. Things will work themselves out though, I shall have to give him a lesson in humility on the golf and tennis courts in the next month.

I did not have a top hat and tails to hand, so had to slum it in shorts and a loud shirt, which I hoped he would see as a Bohemian contribution to proceedings. He used a different word beginning with the same letter, B. Anyway, in true Oliver Twist fashion, I was able to extract a good deal of booze and food from the Beadle, as Mr Clipboard may in future be known, before we were ejected from the mansion and told that our presence was no longer required. The phrase Please sir, I want some more was not rewarded.

Also there was the scarily tangential Slash and Burn Thornton Allan, and his lovely and especially blonde child bride, Lisa, from who I was hoping I would be able to record some pearls of blonde wisdom. Slash has a brilliant mind which very few of us understand. Brilliant in very small doses, doziness at its most brilliant. He is also an aficionado of cigars so we were able to enjoy a smoke of some of Cuba’s finest whilst partaking of the cellar of Mr Clipboard. There was one rather alarming interlude when, for some reason, Slash awoke from his trip into a different astral plane to show off what he called his “iguana face”. Apart from the iguana like facial contortions, the most worrying aspect of this look was the darting tongue. I may be wrong but I though that it was at that moment when the lovely Lisa began thinking about bed.

Views from a terrave in Plascassier

I took this picture from his terrace so that I could show how he is able to look down on some poor people, which seems to be a habit he cannot break. Normally he does not like to see poor people as it depresses him, but in my case, or, more likely in the case of That Nice Lady Decorator, he makes an exception. We were treated to the usual stories of fags (I don’t mean cigarettes) buggary and roasting oiks on fires that seems to epitomise his school days, and I was able to escape with my luxuriant handle bar moustache intact, despite a tricky moment with a lighter. Readers of my book, The Valbonne Monologues, which incidentally, sold another two copies yesterday taking the Currencies Direct inspired novel sales to a massive 115, will recall that Mr Clipboard was renamed Mr Clipbeard for a period of time after a very unfortunate restaurant “accident”, in which I was held down by four public schoolboy bullies and scalped of my lovely long goaty beard a couple of years ago. I don’t like to use the word ringleader or to suggest that he was the main instigator of this bullying (or harmless fun as he put it) but as they say, if the cap fits, wear it.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News