After The Lord Mayors Show…

There is an old expression I recall hearing when I was a kid growing up in London; “After The Lord Mayors show, the dustcart”.

It is an apt analogy for today. After a magnificent weekend of great times with great friends, enjoying fine food and wine and culminating in my 60th birthday on Tuesday, yesterday was mired in paperwork, tax returns, paying the tax man, driving through rain to a hospital and then driving back in the rain and the dark, to eat the left overs of the curry which had delivered to the pub last Friday night, and then to finalise the arrangements for attending a funeral next week. Add to that the fact that I think I have pulled my Achilles’ tendon after the fall on Tuesday and I am getting a cold, and the danger that it will turn into that most evil of afflictions, man flu and I think you get the idea. An ugly day bereft of merit. When I got home, I tried to lift myself with glad thoughts of the benefits to the customers of Currencies Direct, but even that did not work.

To rub salt into the proverbial wound, today is a diet day, declared by That Nice Lady Diet Enforcer, and with me being unable to walk at my customary weight-shedding four miles an hour, and the subsequent bargaining position that gives me with my lifestyle, I may have to dig the bike out and see if I can find another way to get up to my exercise threshold. Cycling in the rain is even more unpleasant than walking, but if that is the price I have to pay to retain the body of a 35-year-old, then so be it. Alternatively I think I need to go to Body Shop and see what they have for sale.

Mr Clipboard proudly displays a page of a calender of unfortunate pictures of myself he kindly created as a birthday present.

I was looking forward to going to Cannes tomorrow, but I am hearing dreadful news about the usually benign winter weather experienced down there. I had visions of sitting on the beach in shirt sleeves, sipping a glass of rose beneath the imposing presence of the magnificent hotels in the Croisette. However, with something like a foot of rain (that is about 30 centimetres to all you decimalised chaps) having already fallen this month, and winds that have been strong enough to tear tiles from the roof of my house in Valbonne and destroy some valuable garden furniture, I am not so sure now. In fact my dear friend Deborah, The Naked Forker, sent me a classic piece of French insurance nonsense. Apparently, when trying to claim back for a huge table , chairs and umbrella, ripped apart by the wind, the insurance company wanted confirmation that the free standing furniture wad cemented into the ground before they could entertain the claim! As the Monty Python team once joked in a sketch in the 1970’s, she must have plumped for the “no claim” policy.

I am sure I will make this best of it. On Saturday afternoon it is the 6 Nations rugby tournament match between England and France, so I suspect I shall find a bar, probably Morrisons, in which to watch it. I shall be unable to be accompanied to that particular bar because as many of my long-term regular readers may remember, That Nice Lady Table Dancer is barred from there for repeatedly dancing on the tables after being told not to do so by the manager on several occasions.

However, the scintillation’s of international music cannot be slowed by a bit if rain, so onwards and upwards, but perhaps with a brolly to hand.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News