Sunday plans go awry

It was a very sound plan. That Nice Lady Decorator had decreed that Sunday, that day of rest for all us non religious types, should be spent relaxing on the sofa, reading The Sunday Times in front of a roaring log fire in our old cottage in Arundel. The weather forecast was desperate, suggesting strong winds and rain, the staple diet of this winter in England, and what better antidote could there be to such a disgusting scenario? Anyway, she found one.

It had stated innocuously enough. We had driven over to West Chiltington to collect the Merc, having taxied back from our close encounter with Barry “Teddy Bear” King the night before, and had popped into the Roundabout Hotel for a restorative, but frankly quite poor, pint of Doom Bar prior to the planned lighting of the fire and settling down for a quiet afternoon ahead of a roast chicken dinner. She will insist on calling lunch dinner, but she spent a long time up north and still has some bad habits, but I forgive her. It was as we arrived home that the best laid plans began to unravel.

It was actually quite pleasant outside. There was no sign of the wind and rain with which we had been threatened, and so the Decorating Operative suggested, at complete variance to what she had said earlier, that we should pop down to the Kings Arms for a pint before retiring to our living room to implement plan A. It was a good plan, but sadly doomed to failure.

The Kings Arms in Arundel is all that you could ever want from a local pub on a Sunday lunch time. A collection of locals, none as yet Currencies Direct clients, from the widest range of backgrounds and ages, gathered together in a quintessential English social environment, to pay homage to beer, and keep an eye on the 6 Nations rugby match between France and Italy, (Ok I accept that this aspect is not entirely a part of a traditional English Sunday lunch). From 91-year-old David Goulding, DFC, a veteran of the Second World War, down (and I mean this in the most literal sense) to one Ian Porter, probably 60 years his junior, the age gap mattered not a jot. However, anyone entering such an environment who dares to make a dreadful fashion statement must accept the opprobrium that is that hallmark of English mickey taking.

Mr Porter, whom I had not met before, was wearing the most appalling trainers it has ever been my misfortune to tread on, deliberately. I have a picture of them today. Forget the laughably straight legged jeans, concentrate on the footwear.

No,no and no

This sartorial sin was compounded by his shirt. Now, when one is wearing a tie, as was our favourite local war hero, it is necessary that one does up the top button of ones shirt. There is no other occasion when this is either acceptable or desirable, Mr Porter begged to differ and had his shirt buttoned up to the top. Perhaps I should not have mimicked him in such a cruel way, and in retrospect I think it was unwise to draw attention to his faux pas in quite such a public fashion, i.e. by buttoning up my own shirt in a similarly disastrous fashion, but my sense of what is right and wrong was coursing through me, and I know when something is wrong. I did not look beneath his rather trendy jacket but I have a sneaking suspicion that his underpants would have been visible above his trouser line. His one saving grave was that he was accompanied by his rather gorgeous wife Jane (?), well, whatever she was called is good by me.

Also in attendance was flame haired siren, the lovely red-headed Carolyn, who insisted on ruining a good pint of beer by adding lemonade to it, so in terms of good taste, she had a good companion in Mr Porter. Anyway, at about 5pm, and having adjourned to the White Hart for a pit stop on the way home, I was looking forward to the promised chicken lunch (dinner) but, by now, something as technical as that was beyond the capabilities of That Nice Lady Decorator, so we had warmed up curry left overs, and very delicious they were too.

Chris France
@Valbonne_News