Saturday 13th August 2016

Friday 5th August was the journey out to Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver’s Norman Fastness. I got stained at Folkestone Eurotunnel Terminal by the Leon Moroccan Meatballs (no rice). Can you believe it? I’d been under massive laundry pressure after returning from Salzburg only on the Monday. I ironed 17 pieces in one go. 7 outfits over 5 days Laura said was the minimum.

Laura herself fell into a crevice that same morning and scraped her leg. She was carrying the breakfast tray to the new breakfast terrace. But unfortunately Jean-Florian-Baptiste (from the village) hadn’t quite finished the work. There were holes for the fence posts, but no posts. So in the lady of the house went. It’s not done in France to shoot a member of staff in these circs; rather they lop off the genitals of their wives’ lovers and fling them about the village. This is what happened in a neighbouring commune only a few years ago and is still mentioned. What a lesson! Or would have been had he not shot the man dead as well.

Glorious sunshine for Normandy. It has been glorious for some years now. I don’t think I’ve ever expressed it enough in previous years – just how crucial is this summer jewel in the Poor Little Rich Gay crown. The fete champetre, the deck chairs (harder and harder for the middle-aged to get out of), the eBay-sourced vintage loungers (flower-power covers), the long table laid in the garden for lunch and dinner, the garden life, like Monet had at Giverny,

Weeks of menu-ing go into though. A permanent croissant and baguette order is placed at Coraline’s in the village, to be collected by Laura at 9.30 each morning. Jams have to be made. A new breakfast terrace built. Going further back, a new drawing room was made out of the barn, with bed and bath above. Matt Driver has been driving away. Picture framing is his new thing: he self-frames. In the new bathroom is a photo of his grandfather parading as Chilean ambassador at the funeral of George V. There’s a blurry small girl standing behind a guardsman in the top left-hand corner: I’m sure it’s the Gay Mother. She was there, you know.

My Official car, stuffed with outfits for the simple rural life, wended its way through rippling sunshine, to the secluded chateau-fragment in its own grounds. Matt insists that no other house must be in evidence whatsoever. The merest hint of a plan and he’s round to the mayor. But they own as far as the eye can see, on the whole.

I was shown to a new suite on the 1st floor. Now that the Driver children have grown-up there’s been aggrandisement. This suite has got a day-bed and the walls are crammed with the products of Matt’s framing drive. EBay, he confided, is the source of the actual frames. I do so agree.

Shortly afterwards arrived Beamish O’Halloran, of the Mail, and Moira McMatron (she’d have preferred a pink Fiat 500) with a bulk order of Prosecco in the boot and we began at once the Kier Royale life of outdoors on deckchairs. A shadow though: Laura’s father, aiming perhaps too high for one last cruise, was laid up in hospital at San Remo. Chest infection. Awaiting reports. The one thing I hadn’t packed was mourning.

We forged on through a rabbit welcome dinner. Word came that the Laird and Lairdess had gained the Premier Inn, Ashford from whence they would spring upon France in the Towrag in the morning. ETA at the chateau-fragment: lunchtime.

Stained at Eurotunnel Terminus: Leon Moroccan Meat balls (no rice)

Laura Scrapped when She Fell into Pit Carrying the Breakfast Tray

The Celebrated eBay Vintage Loungers: Note Matt’s Triumphant Lavender Hedge in the Background. Now in its Third Year