Screamin Lez and the Mindbenders

The second best gig I have witnessed this year unfolded before us in the Jubilee Stage at the Arundel Festival last night. The immense Screamin’ Les And The Mindbenders were a sensation. Second only to the great Leonard Cohen in Lucca last month, the log man and his band snapped and snarled in good-natured rock and roll pastiche. Even funnier than AC/DC in Nice a couple of years back. Personally, I love to hear a great rock band but the necessary posing and posturing that a really great performance entails always makes me laugh.

Screamin’ Lez lets rip

It was a big and long day. With Mr Clipboard, Slash And Burn Thornton Allan, both contented Currencies Direct customers, and their much prettier wives in town for the festival, a few drinks at lunchtime developed into lunch at ours. Instead of the planned walk to the Black Rabbit, lunch was served in the garden, on a glorious English summer day, by those charming chaps at Boco Nuevo. It is so handy having the pub next door, and an inspired idea to ask the attached restaurant if they would serve us in our garden.

In late afternoon we ventured 50 yards or so across the river to the Jubilee Stage to take in some of the festival events, the first of which seemed to be some kind of dancing competition, spiralling towards the comic with a line dancing demonstration. However, the bar was open and what better way to spend a warm afternoon in England beside a river with a well stocked beer and wine outlet?

For some unaccountable reason, us chaps were at one stage discussing exactly what would make our respective wives particularly unhappy, and given that all three are very much into interiors and interior decorating, and here I include, of course, That Nice Lady Decorator.  Exactly why we should stray into such dangerous ground escapes me, perhaps the heady mix of beer, wine, champagne, sunshine and music had gone to our heads, anyway, the conclusion reached was that wiping ones manhood on the curtains after sex would undoubtedly upset all three in an equally spectacular fashion.

This led a downward taste spiral in which discussion developed about embarrassing events which have occurred when staying at friends houses. The lovely Ashley Clipboard has recent form in this area, with some spectacularly bad behaviour by one of her dogs on a new carpet whilst visiting, meaning that now the dogs do not travel. Mr Clipboard highlighted the issue of stained sheets in general and had some particularly gory details of several incidents, none if which I want to delve into here in this column. He did relate one that I feel I can mention, in which he was the innocent protagonist. He had been to a themed James Bond party and had painted one of his fingers gold as in Goldfinger. When removing whatever substance he had used to create the effect, he had unwittingly a left a nasty stain on a towel, which bore a resemblance to something that might have been mistaken for something else, if you a get any drift, and it seems his explanation to his host in the morning as to how this nasty mess had come about was accepted only in a disdainful and disbelieving manner.

Slash and Burn and I are big cigar smokers, and by that I mean we both love a big cigar and can bore for England on the relative merits of Cohibas over Monte Christos. Mr Clipboard is not so well versed in the world of Havana tobacco, so it was perhaps understandable that he mistook mention of another great cigar name, Partagas. His genial agreement that he also often suffered from Party Gas was either the symptom of ignorance, a sign of his increasing deafness, or a weak joke. Knowing him as I do, I favour the latter.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News