Vegetarian pasta shock

Lets not make an issue of it but I was dragged out of my pit, in front of the fire on a cold and damp Tuesday evening, ostensibly for a bit of fun and a decent meal, to be served vegetables.

That Nice Lady Decorator was off on her annual wild goose chase to MIPCOM, this weeks Cannes convention, for a girlie night out and I , having been left to fend for myself, and with a cooking history little better than Manchester United’s premiership form this season, I needed something fulsome to eat, like a big steak to help me through the evening. So how does vegetarian pasta sound to you? Probably wonderful to the very few vegetarians who dare to read this column, who are probably all gay.

Look, I like vegetarians, but I don’t think I could eat a whole one. I went last night to be fed by Peachy Butterfield and Roly Bufton, who together had promised a pasta delight. That should already have had the alarm bells ringing. The delight would have been the expression on the faces of those amongst us who do not eat meat. It was all very pleasant but I am sure you have all been to meals where you need to have a McDonald’s on the way back home?

Anyway, there it is, I was an enforced vegetarian for the evening, as long as you ignore the Parma ham and the pate, neither of which I did. We did however enjoy some nice red wine and some amongst us “enjoyed” some Chardonnay out of a box. He calls it “wine poncery”, the appreciation of a good wine, whereas I have had to learn to appreciate a good whine from Peachy.

Max the dog has a paddle

Talk turned to cars and the theft of one that has been suffered recently by people close to me. It was a VW Golf, but apparently it had a nice interior, which probably means fluffy dice and a nodding dog. Anyway, we were discussing what normally happened with cars stolen in the south of France where they often end up in one of the eastern states or get shipped off to the Middle East. I called this car laundering, but Peachy, failing to understand the joke, wondered if they would be better off putting them in a car wash, which I admit, literally, is a good way of laundering them. God give me strength, actually, not god, the Reverend Jeff give me strength.

The limericks at still bubbling away in the comments section, two decent ones yesterday from the Reverend. So far no one has come up with one that uses the expression Currencies Direct, even though it rhymes with erect, but I Iive in hope.

You may have noticed that there has been a lack of tennis in my life recently and this is because I am injured. I have pulled a fetlock or something and am hoping I don’t need to be shot after seeing the specialist today. A less accomplished writer might have made an asinine joke about not being able to get one’a leg over but you know the high standards to which this column regular fails to adhere and so there will be no mention.

Apart from a trip to Mouans Sartoux to have my leg amputated, I have very little on my agenda today, but am hoping to invited to lunch in Friday with the able bodied tennis players with whom I associate, unless they are going to spurn me as a cripple. It will be the penultimate time I shall be able to enjoy a Friday lunch at Auberge St Donat this year as the time for the departure back to the cold wastes of England is nearing and the dreaded packing has begun. I shall be taking my summer heat with me due to possible visits to Australia and the Caribbean which I have planned for when the weather gets too much to bear.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News