Hets in Normandy Even More Poor Little Rich Gay than Last Year «

Hets in Normandy Even More Poor Little Rich Gay than Last Year

31^st July 2010

As you know, I’ve been in a family setting in Normandy with Laura Malcolm and Esmé Manning. Ivor Driver, Laura’s eldest son, 21, brainy, washed his hair. ‘What did you use?’ I said. ‘Whatever,’ he said. After dinner, we played Boggle. You have to find the words from a jumble of letters, the results unthrilling: ‘I’ve got “sit”,’ a family member cries. ‘Stem’ ‘Him’ ‘Car’ ‘Cars’ ‘Door’ etc. I couldn’t get Laura and Esmé to take much interest in my struggle to find, in my early years in frockage, trousers that were long enough. And when I tried to explain the frightful ordeal I’d had with Harvey Nicks to take back the Burberry cardy (£240 after 40% discount), which had gone bobbly, they took up their novels.

But the menus! That completely new mackerel dish was just the beginning . Laura undoubtedly surges up and up year on year. Tomate Farci aux risotto de courgette, carrote et pois avec un sauce de tomate. That was Raymond Blanc actually. Beyond belief! The detail, seven ingredients for the sauce alone and the whole thing only the first course, followed by rack of lamb with sauce verte, cheese and Breton gateau.

Then Matt Driver, Laura’s husband, regained First Class from New York, where he had been saving the Johnson and Johnson account. You can expect a lot of him. Last year he gazed at fairy rings. Sometimes he agitates outside estate agents, scheming for a chateau, never quite achieved. We played Boggle again, but now on the edge of our seats, waiting. Nothing for a few rounds, all orderly and disappointingly normal …until, a sudden flash of jaws. ‘How did you get that word?’ ‘All your answers will have to be checked.’ ‘You’re always horrid to me when we play…’ Laura and Matt love to murder each other over games. This time Matt claimed innocence and was still claiming it the next morning.

And you just won’t believe what Esmé Manning had up her sleeve, only revealed at the last moment – yes! Portable lav paper. ‘On the Go’ by Andrex. In addition to a mink lip liner by YSL and a special brassiere by Rigby and Peller, which she invited me to inspect in the middle of the lounge area of the filthy channel steamer – unfort we did return by the same route in the end.

Throughout the Norman experience, of course, stalked the Drivers’ blue mink cat, fully luxury furred right down to where his paws meet the ground.