Rain sodden Gatwick or Juan les Pins? Hmmm…

So whilst I braved the wild windy and wet weather at Gatwick, and struggled through the rain in England, That Nice Lady Decorator decided to go to Juan Les Pins to have lunch on the beach in wonderful late summer weather. Such are the trials and tribulations that are the daily menace faced by senior music business executives such as myself. She delighted in sending me pictures of her with a glass in her hand whilst I huddled in a bus shelter waiting for a gap in the weather, a gap that did not arrive until the ten minutes after I arrived back soaked at the house in Arundel. In fact I have a picture of her today on the beach with the lovely Currencies Direct client Tracey Belazaire, who was helping her enjoy the sunshine and the rosé. I was going to use a picture I took from the train in the gloom and wet, but this, I think you will agree, was slightly more appealing.

Gatwick Airport in the rain, Oh sorry, I mean Juan Les Pins in the sunshine.

But the music business must endure, and I shall endure with it, or perhaps more accurately it has to endure me. Having completed the tasks planned for yesterday by early evening, and with a pub next door, and being a man denied proper beer for several months, what was that man to do? The White Hart, The Swan Hotel or The Kings Arms? It was a quandary, so, unable to make a decision I decided to visit them all. First stop next door to the White Hart to gain sufficient sustenance to make it the 400 yards to the Kings Arms. Then the plan was to visit The Swan on the way back, but as I left the first venue, that evocative smell of fish and chips wafted across the road and, with that in my nostrils, instead found solace in The Trawler, the fish and chip shop. In normal circumstances, English fish and chips are a terribly good way to get even fatter and die early, such is the amount of stodge in each serving, but I can tell you that, after a long day travelling, no lunch, and doing my own trawling through files up to 25 years old, I was so ready for that most traditional English meal, and mighty fine it was too. At least, until you have finished it and the gastric juices begin to churn the mixture into methane heaven of Fukushima proportions. Like events in Japan, I am not sure whether it was the earthquake or the tsunami which was more destructive.

On the way to methane heaven, I encountered James Desperate Dan the landlord at the White Hart and bar manager Terribly Tall Timothy Taylor, who seems at last to have stopped growing. Nowadays the only thing about him that is expanding is his air of disrepute. They tried to persuade me to go back to the Kings Arms, but I had that aroma had a vice like grip on my taste buds and the autopilot could not be turned off.

it was very good to get some proper beer inside me; Harvey’s and London Pride, but, coupled with fish and chips, on top of three full months of excess in Valbonne, I sense a realignment approaching, and that means addressing and dealing with extra weight I seem to have collected over the summer.

Anyway, this afternoon, music commitments satisfied, I shall be back on Easyjet this evening, ready for one last gasp grasp of French culture for the weekend, before the end of season pack up and go. Back in blighty by the middle of next week, but I know it will not take too many rainy days for me to be looking for loopholes in the plan to spend winter in England.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News