As a child one considers all sorts of careers that may lie in one’s
future. I’m not sure when my youngest son, Jack, decided on his chosen path but
I congratulate him on securing his first job, as a graduate quantity surveyor –
whatever one of those is – after getting a 1st class honours degree.
Well done, fella.
My own decisiveness never quite came to me so young, other than that of
being a farmer, and I sort of stumbled through one career into another for most
of my working life, each one slightly more bizarre than the last. Cattle
hair-dresser, computer programmer, fiction writer, they all happened as if by
accident and none were a real surprise; but in all my wildest dreams I never
considered that I would be negotiating with the Ukrainian Mafia. Yet, today it
seems that is my very task. Having been gazumped on a property deal right at
its closing stage, I then get a phone call from Don Mishkof Corleone making me
an offer that I cannot refuse, no questions asked. ‘Consider it that I am doing
you a favour,’ he said, in the voice of a Bond villain. I will admit that I was
somewhat disturbed by the call, and thankfully the lump under the duvet when I
crawled into bed last night was not a horses head, just my beloved, snoring
quietly. Should I accept this man’s offer? I have checked out his credentials
and he is definitely a cosha baddie, complete with Limmo and facial scars, and
what he wants with a small beachside apartment in Bulgaria is probably something
highly dodgy. But business is business, so I suppose I most go ahead,
particularly as he didn’t seem keen to take no for an answer. If this column
never appears again, you will know that I have been sent swimming in the Black Sea in a concrete waistcoat during the sinking
season!
Maybe it is just good fortune – or luck, as some people refer to it –
swinging my way for a change. Lord knows, we could do with a touch of that. I
must be the only person in the world who chose to take 5 days holiday by the Bay of Biscay last month to endure constant rain. 6
inches in one day, no less! Meanwhile, back home at Chauffour, less than 3
hours away, the sun blazed away continually, frying the sheep in their woolly
jackets. We did get a few nice days, eventually, when we could run the dogs on
one of France ’s
few dog-friendly beaches. This in itself was a tad traumatic as the local
authority had also designated it as ‘playa naturism’, although, in my mind,
these two hardly go together. So we did get into a few scrapes as Pooper, our
unkempt terrier, has a habit of surprising sunbathers by licking their ear as
the sleep. This in itself would be alarming enough but when said sleepers are
totally naked, it tends to freak them out a little. The screams from one poor
chap are still echoing around the hills of the Pyrenees
as we speak, as he ran towards the ocean in a dangly fashion. Needless to say,
we will not be allowed back.
When we did return home, however, the rain followed us up the autoroute
and hasn’t stopped since. Week after week it pounds the petals off the roses,
encouraging the grass to grow like bamboo which requires mowing 3 times per
week. The poor lawnmower will need at least a couple of pit-stops if it is to
make it to the end of this season. We do have a great crop of tatties though,
if only I could wade through the swamp to get to them. And yet, it seems, that
we are the only ones to be enduring such torrents. This week I spoke to a few
colleagues in Scotland
who claimed to have had a month of dry weather and could do with a little rain
to dampen the dust! Well, be careful what you wish for, as I set sail for Edinburgh next week and
may just bring some with me.
I am actually in UK
for a couple of weeks, and then a further one in Ireland ,
so the law of sod will dictate that the sun will beam on SW
France while I tramp around the Grande Britannia in my Kagool.
Those in the know say that ‘timing is everything’, and it appears mine is a
little out of sync this summer.
Having built it up over the last couple of months, I have to report
that our annual party was not quite such a blistering success this year. Guest
numbers were well down, due to other commitments or general lack of interest,
and this was just as well, as we were all ensconced indoors while the skies
rained down and the cold east wind chiselled its way in from Siberia .
Our only saving grace was the large open fire roaring away in the garage as we
stoked it up with expired Ikea furniture in order to keep warm. They did manage
to much their way through a 4.5kgs shoulder of mutton though, which had slowly sizzled
away on the bbq for 12 hours. And delicious it was too, although I say it
myself.
During the event we had a giggle when Wendy’s phone rang. On answering
it, an old lady’s voice asked if we could bring her a cup of tea! Initially
considering it was a wind-up from one of our friends, she soon ignored and
ended the call. The problem is, however, that it was genuine. Somehow, a dear
old lady has got Wendy’s mobile number programmed into her phone and continues
to call, every day at 3pm, demanding her tea and a biscuit. We have no idea who
she is, or from where she is calling, but we do feel a tad responsible for her
daily disappointment when her afternoon sustenance fails to arrive. Recently I
have gone to great lengths to try and track the call so that, if only once, we
can obey her wishes and send a bob-a-job boy-scout round with a cuppa. But
there is the problem. Although the world and his dog can manage to obtain my
mobile number and constantly call me trying to sell me things, when we want to
do a little good in the world, the information is more classified than the
president’s nuclear launch codes. On the off-chance that someone reading this
has their granny secured in the attic with a new cell-phone, please oblige us
by firstly taking her a daily brew and digestive, and then deleting our number.
Thank you so much.
