Gentle persuasion, not blackmail

The “eat the freezer” lunch threw up some interesting food combinations, but as far as I know at the moment, no one threw up as a result. It attracted a few locusts of local ill repute to pick over the remains of summer in France. It also has the effect of solving a problem that had arisen earlier, when, with the skip (That Nice Lady Decorators 4 x 4) packed absolute to the gunwales with all sorts of vital goods (blue garden pots for Christ’s sake!), ready for our departure north towards England this morning, there was going to be a row about how to squeeze in those cases of Haut Medoc. As a final gesture, my picture today evokes the spirit of the summer, now finished. As it turns out, the solution was simple; invite The Master Mariner Mundell and Peachy Butterfield to lunch and they will help you drink it all!  There is a fatal flaw in this solution but my head is hurting too much to figure it out.

Summer in the south of France

First to arrive was, of course, man mountain Peachy Butterfield, the man who will never turn down a free meal, who had obviously acquired a bottle of wine from somewhere. I hate to use the word stolen in this context, but I know arriving with a bottle would go against his card Bordeaux ethos of drinking only from boxes of what he called crushed fruit. However, it still had the Carrefour price on the bottle and I guessed he had decided that 1.29 euros (about £1.10 at today’s Currencies Direct exchange rates), although expensive by his standards, was a gesture of deep respect and gratitude for the invitation, him being wife-less for the weekend. That reminds me of the old expression heard in barber shops when I was young; “anything for the weekend sir?”. At his age, a bottle of wine would probably be preferable to what the barber was prepared to supply. As I said, he came with a bottle.

Next to arrive was The Master Mariner Mundell, who, with that misplaced air of superiority so imbued into the public schoolboy fraternity, and despite arriving with an uninvited guest, an old friend who he has bumped into on the way over, AND arriving empty-handed, (not even a 1.29 bottle of wine) proceeded to spend most of the afternoon lecturing me on good manners. It is fair to say that he did not see the irony, seeking to justify himself on the basis that as a council house oik, I should be glad to be in the presence of someone so grand.

Whenever he is under pressure from my stiletto sharp dissection of whatever point he is making (I must argue on every point as a matter of principle) he will resort to asking to repeat myself due to what he calls “poor enunciation”, whilst refusing to accept that his occasional stutter is anything other than a deliberate ploy to try to give his arguments some gravitas to make up for a lack of content . I do so like a good argument and I am going to miss him.

His guest was one of the Masters old friends, a willowy and stunning lady called Sam, who runs a website called On Board Online, aimed at the local yachting fraternity, and, with Sprog 1 in attendance and still in search of a job in the yachting sector, my antenna were (was?) twitching. Suffice to say that a plan has been hatched which should hasten his entry into gainful employment and avoid any embarrassing details of the revelations and behaviour exhibited yesterday. I particularly liked the references to watching gay porn videos, but am sure she will live up to her promise to get him a job and none of this need be aired in public. I do hate the word blackmail, I prefer to think of it more as gentle persuasion, a little like the actions in that video content, but my lips are sealed.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News