Cheese eating surrender monkeys?

Breakfast was a banana and an orange. After a diet day? I ask you if that could be construed as mental or even physical cruelty? Obviously a man in my weakened state would not be able to cook for himself and anyway, when one has a wife, might one be entitled to expect a cooked breakfast when one is returning from starvation? Why have a dog and bark yourself? You see how stupidly brave I can get when delirious?

So after another gruelling (as in gruel, obviously) 5 mile walk around the Sussex countryside, the day took another Twist (did you see what I did there?) when the Bridge at Amberley hoved into view, just as I was considering that there was something positive about Dignitas and that it might be the way forward. Lamb shank and a couple of pints of Tribute restored some equanimity, but I was still sufficiently drained to require a siesta afterwards, one way of making it through a November afternoon in England.

Awaking to be told we were going to the Red Lion to see if they still had Timothy Taylor Landlord in tap, which they had, It was when I asked what was for dinner that the trouble started. It appears that as we had taken lunch, we were not expecting to have dinner. That was the royal we of course, and with another diet day in prospect today I needed something to keep the wolf (or Dignitas) from the door.

I bought some cheese from the Co-Op across the road (note that there was no reference to the Reverend Flowers) which suddenly That Nice Lady Cheese Eating Person decided that she would like as well. It was cold and unappetising as is normal in UK. In France cheese is never served chilled, it is severed at room temperature or above, as was intended by the producers, and is far superior, but apparently this offends the EU food inspectors, who act like and are obeyed like the Gestapo over here, but act more like an amiable uncle in France, taking a sensible view there on what is effectively a mouldy product. The mould is an integral part of the process, a fact conveniently ignored by the food police in England. The French are very good at ignoring the stupid EU rules that occur from time to time. Indeed, at one establishment in Valbonne, they keep the cheeseboard behind a curtain (obviously to obscure it from the French cheese police) ensuring that it is served properly, rather than frozen to a near tundra state. Luckily, this is a view we share and so I have a picture today of the lengths we have to go to in order to get cheese served at the correct temperature.

heating up the cheese on the grate

More misery will have enveloped me by the time you are reading this, and I will be wondering how I will get the ubiquitous mention of the wonderful foreign exchange services of Currencies Direct into this daily limerick strewn column. I shall have paid my respects to a slice of Nimble (58 calories – no butter), half a can of Heinz baked beans (60) and some mushrooms (10) and will be on my usual route march around idyllic sun kissed Sussex countryside whilst you, dear reader, are considering whether to get out of bed or not.  This is of course a dream rather than reality, which will have me in galoshes and Wellington’s braving the worst that the dreary English winter can conjure, trudging around the muddy countryside in pursuit of the ridiculous concept of regaining the body shape I left behind when I was 19.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News