Welcome Ronnie and Reggie

Some readers will be sad to note the demise of my nemesis, Banjo, the hound much beloved by That Nice Lady Decorator. His appetite for life (and stealing my food, especially cheese) sadly extended in his later years to biting people, but now he is up in that great cheese emporium in the sky and we have not one, but two replacements, Ronnie and Reggie, so with one thief gone for good, what better way to start again with eyes wide open and name them the new puppies after famous thieves? If we are able to train them not steal, perhaps I will be able to describe it is a Kray’s they are going through? But maybe not.

The future of the Valbonne underworld is in their paws

And so last week to a gentlemen’s evening, hosted by Cote d’Azur Villa Rentals, Dancing Greg Harris, even more debonair that usual now that his nose job has settled down. Well, I say nose job, but it was just the removal of a wart of some kind which was bigger than his nose. You would think that going to that amount of trouble one might have chosen a better design but personally I like a Roman nose.

It was a splendid evening, with the Dancing one acquitting himself well in the kitchen with “lapis aux pruneaux” although if I hear of a sudden increase in the disappearance of pet rabbits locally, I will be suspicious. Frankly, I am surprised I could recall the meal once we had worked our way through the 50-year-old aquavit, vintage port and fine ancient Armagnac. Some of us are made of stern stuff, and it did not stop myself and Nick “fallen of his” Pearch (at least that is what his mobility resembled ahead of his hip replacement) completing a thrashing of The Wingco and Master Mariner Mundell at tennis the next morning, (I did not even have to invoke the count back, a little used tennis scoring system I use when it is one-set-all and lunch is beckoning, for which I am justifiably known as the “countback c**t), however the subsequent Currencies Direct lunch was the most hung over I can recall, with only 2 carafes of wine between 5 of us…

The venue was The Source in Opio, a change from our usual venue, The Auberge St Donat, which is closed for “ravalement”, which translates as “cleaning”. It makes you wonder just how dirty it was.  I am hoping that it will just involve merely a lick of paint and perhaps remarking the car park spaces on the tarmac in the restaurant.  No, I am not joking, the management enclosed much of the car park many years ago with waterproof plastic sheeting and have not got around to dealing with the tarmac, and long may that last. Any change might destroy the unique ambience.

One of my regular readers *(there are several, a fact that the Wingco might find hard to understand), has asked for news of the many characters who have graced this column in the past; The Wingco still thinks it is “ghastly”, The Master Mariner Mundell is still unemployed, despite waving around some “Jet Broker” business cards, Peachy Butterfield is still too fat to kidnap, That Nice Lady Decorator has been busy up ladders, mostly held by me, John “800 years of repression” has maimed himself falling over on a green ski run (the easiest), Anthony “Dock Of The” Bay has been named as a Conde Naste expert on Provence, and I am preparing for a nearly significant birthday (actually they are all significant when you get to my age) in Portugal at the end of the month.

Chris France