I love a cow in red boots

Astonishingly, we managed it. Two days without a drink. Boy am I going to make up for it at lunch today.

It was a game of chicken. A successful meeting about a land sale at 6pm at home would normally have inspired the popping of corks, if they had not been popped already. But as That Nice Lady Decorator reached for a bottle of Dandelion and Burdock and then mixed it with lemonade, I realised that she was serious about not having a drink, and so was I, apparently. This can have nothing to do with the annual blood tests which are planned for sometime this morning? Could it?

In the end, the prospect of Loudmouth Largy being the fourth at tennis at the Vignale Tennis club before lunch was sufficient to scare off most who would normally been able to play, and so it was universally decided just to have lunch instead. As it turned out, Loudmouth could not have made it because of being taken to find the grave of his grandfather, who fell Anzio. I am not sure that his grandfather would have appreciated the gesture, but I live in hope.

OK you psychologists out there, explain this?

Another blissful day of warm sunshine had me longing for a beach lunch but it was not to be. In its place, I had a nice healthy salad and a glass of pineapple juice. If this is how the other (sober) half live then they can keep it. In fact in the afternoon I began to hallucinate or have flashbacks. I kept seeing a spotted cow wearing red boots, but it must have been a pigment of my imagination (did you see what I did there?).

I was even seduced into doing some gardening, which, if it had not involved killing something, I would have detested even more. I am in the Jeremy Clarkson camp when it comes to destruction. Give me a hammer in an axe any day.

With destruction wrought over everything I had been told to destroy, I spent the rest of the afternoon considering how best to project the benefits to you, dear reader, of the opening of an account with Currencies Direct, and finalising a deal to sell some of my music interests. It is time for a younger and more motivated a person to take the reins (and pay me a great deal of money for the pleasure). Yes, nearing the start of my seventh decade, it is a time to consider what one wants to do with the rest of ones life, and I want to live it, not gradually turn into an old man and eat salads and drink fruit juice, so i can hang around writing this unbalanced prose for a few more years. Again like Jeremy Clarkson, when I go, I want it to be backwards in a Ferrari at 160 miles an hour, in a cloud of smoke and fire. The reverend Jeff believes that something similar is what is waiting for me on the other side, whereas I consider the idea of seventy-odd virgins is a much more appealing scenario. Perhaps, if I am ever diagnosed as terminally ill, I should consider my religious options?

The bucket list has commenced. 100 things to do before die. Most of mine involve travelling, but also the owning of a classic convertible car like a Rolls Royce or Bentley once again. As I have a significant birthday just 4 months away, I have been dropping less than subtle hints about what presents I should wish to receive. So far she has failed to mention the classic car magazines which I have routinely spread about the place. I have even taken to circling the desired beasts in brightly coloured luminous felt tip pen, but perhaps she is playing a canny game? Again, I live in hope.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News