Trouble with pigs?

So tennis did not take place today due to the unreliability of the man with no job, Blind Lemon Milsted. His footling excuse was that he is in England looking after a sick parent. Does he not know where his responsibilities and allegiances lie? Surely, if one has to depart on an errand like this, one asks one parent to stay in, watch TV and one will be there as soon as one can? I have checked the Easyjet schedules and I know there is flight availability this afternoon, so this is not an excuse that can be accepted.

Lunch however was convened and attended by the reliable three-quarters of the tennis four at the traditional post tennis venue of Auberge St Donat, for what will almost certainly be the last time for me this year. Currencies Direct customers The Wingco and Master Mariner Mundell were both under some kind of weird misinterpretation that I was paying. I was able to disavow them of this theory over a very fine lunch which was a pre cursor for an excellent siesta.

Before retiring, I had a conversation with the cadaverously slim Nick Peeeeerrrch, as he likes pronounce it, who had joined us for lunch. I say slim as he has substantially less body weight than the three other gentlemen at lunch. He is having trouble with pigs. Wild boar, which are quite prevalent down here and very scary if you come across one in the forests, can be enormously destructive to lawns, tearing them up in much the same way as a rotovator. They have been routinely breaking into his garden which backs onto the forest. He was asking whether any of us had a roller and seemed a little put out when I told him I had once had a Bentley. It seems he wanted a garden roller. The only pig trouble I had was with the andouillette from yesterday’s menu pictured below.

Auberge St Donat menu

After being awoken from a blissful slumber, I was dragged by That Nice Lady Decorator to the Queens Legs for an early evening pint of Guinness. This is another wonderful establishment to which that is probably my last visit of the year. There we bumped into The Cornish Tsunami himself, Matt Frost and the comely Gerald from Blue Square estate agents who has just sold some land for us at a ridiculously high price. He was accompanied by the lovely Pippa, head hunch for Currencies Direct France, who was singing my praises for my work with them. She even invited me to lecture new recruits at The France Show at Earls Court early next year. I said that should I accept I imagined there should be a large fee involved, but it seems my imagination has run away with me. Apparently a good dinner and a free ticket is more likely.

This evening we are invited to the Wingco’s abode by his wife the lovely Maryse, who had joined us at Auberge for a post luncheon drink. This was where I read out a limerick penned by The Reverend Jeff which had appeared in the comments section of this column yesterday. It was about the Wingco and his assertion that this daily missive is “ghastly”. How long can it be now before he takes a sneaky peak, especially as his beautiful wife is a regular and avid reader?

After a final Sunday lunch, on, well Sunday, we shall depart this fair land on Monday morning and trek north. We need to get within spitting distance of Caen if we are able (did you see what I did there?). From where the ferry will whisk us to Portsmouth on Tuesday afternoon. I can almost feel my arthritis beginning to kick in, my nose begin to run and the cold and damp seeping into my bones. That proposed trip to Australia for the first Test will be under serious consideration after the first week of rain.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News