Wednesday 17th August 2016

The Toerag finally gained at lunchtime on the Saturday. The Lairdess was pressed into the shape of the vehicle so long had she been on board. Even dinner the previous evening had been taken in motion. At once she assumed one of the flower-power loungers and within 15 minutes was ‘marée basse’. This new expression formed the ground base to the Norman days. Laura and Matt had collected it the previous week while staying in Provence. It means ‘low tide’. Their hostess, Parisian and still in a bikini at over 50, was horrified to find her excessive sister-in-law waving her empty glass about and shrieking ‘marée basse’ to get it refilled. Herself she served a vodka cocktail – one each – and sometimes no dinner.

Once you’ve started with marée basse there’s no end to it. One result, possibly, was that a nun-made Spanish praline was gobbled up at lunch and Laura never got her share.  The alternative, some Spanish chocs with coconut filling, was considered filthy. The Laird and Lairdess presented their hostess gift – a shot-glass chess set, found in a charity shop. At a press dinner at the Dorchester, Beamish O’Halloran of the Mail recalled, it was very odd how the goody bags suddenly disappeared from the table where he was sitting. A certain Irish TV celebrity of advancing years (front hair now rotting) said she couldn’t think what had happened, but Beamish could see them peeking from her own bag under the table. The Laird’s drone appeared through a gap in the hedge and crashed into the trellis. We got back into the loungers. The Laird showed the laminated card he had made with the reference number of his Eurotunnel reservation. He often laminates at dead of night.

The Laird is planning ahead. After dinner, we modelled his fully computerised Christmas quiz for the Usk Rotary Club. It was men versus women. The women won. I mustn’t reveal the questions. Someone is trying to make trouble between Rosie Boycott and Beamish O’Halloran. It’s all to do with the fur coats given by Mohammed Fayed, later stolen while her car was parked in Stow-on-Wold. Beamish has published a book, you see, all about his adventures over the years. Anthony Burgess phoned up the editor: ‘I’ve been tricked by a Hibernian rogue,’ he boomed. But Brit Ekland was delighted: once Beamish had explained to her who Salman Rushdie was and what a fatwa was, she declared she’d punch the bastards who’d done it. ‘At last I’m being taken seriously,’ she said when the story was published. Or there was the time an engineer came over from Ireland to install a fax machine in the London offices of the Irish Press. It was meant to take two days but he was there for two weeks, most of the time flat out on the floor. One of the staff had a side-line in home-made hooch, you see. The creme de menthe was especially more-ish.

Oh Beamish O’Halloran! What a greatness! Completely fearless but not without scruple. Fleet Street’s finest. Well, yes actually.

So the days went on. For the third time, the Laird explained that golf originated from archery. Is golf archery but with feet? Laura and I couldn’t get it. We went to look at antiques. The brocante of years ago is no more. In 1986, I got a whole Louis Philippe mirror for 25 francs – with original glass (we won’t mention the £460 it cost to get it restored). But I bought a gilt frame – now I will have to find a masterpiece to put in it. A masterpiece of the right size. A caramelised garlic tart was served back at the Fastness. Another day there was another tart with leeks. Both of blinding excellence. The Laird modelled a cardboard collar he’d made from the cardboard piece which you find inexplicably on the bed when you arrive at a Premier Inn. He turned it into the human equivalent of those lampshades you put on dogs to stop them scratching. A useful and important invention. Every morning Moira MacMatron was down late with fantastic hair. She’d been working on her hair. She and I played ‘hair’ at the dinner table. You play this by stroking each other’s hair with a dumbfounded look on the face. I didn’t let on that sometimes my hands were a bit cheesey from the cheese course.

Finally finally Laura got a salmon in before breakfast and 18 were expected for lunch as a fete champetre. The Laird explained his terrine art. He’d brought two or possibly three terrines from Usk. All that is required are bricks with holes drilled for ventilation and pieces of MDF cut to size on which to mount the finished item, as well as the actual terrine ingredients of course. The bricks press the terrine into shape as it cools. So a triumphant buffet table emerged, the guests loomed and it was ‘marée basse’ until sundown. We couldn’t think how some of them were going to self-drive home. Matt Driver turned impish and naughty. He really is a first-class husband: ‘I come in and don’t get in the way,’ he said. That’s not quite the whole story, although important. Some of his talk is like the Away Team on the bus home after they’ve ‘had a few’.

The Laird recited a fiendishly complicated poem after lunch as well as the one by Ogden Nash about ladies on diets which he’d recited a day or two before.  I was awfully tormented by this poem for some reason. Then Beamish read from his book the marvellous passage about what really did happen to Angela’s Ashes and what Richard Harris told him in some drinking hole near the Savoy and how he, Beamish, got thrown out of the launch party to which he’d not been invited anyway for bringing up the subject raised by Richard Harris of what really happened to Angela’s Ashes. The number of times Beamish has been thrown out… I sang ‘Amazing Grace’ Verse One. I gave everything to my perf and the audience roared and roared. Laura sang part of her song about being over 50 and one of the French guests read the opening of ‘A la Recherche…’  – in French.

In the evening, after the guests had gone, we had a gangster film on DVD – it was called ‘Killing Them Softly’ and was incredibly ‘noir’ and filthy. About half way through the Laird played the Benny Hill theme tune on his pet whistle.

The Terrines in the Holding Bay at Usk before Loading into the Toerag for Normandy

The Laird and Lairdess’s Hostess Gift, from in a Charity Shop

Laura Malcolm was Deprived of Her Share of This Nun-Made Spanish Praline

The Drone Surgeth Forth: Cameras on Board

The Laird’s Ingenious Adaptation of the Welcome Cardboard Strip Found on Beds in Premier Inns: Useful to Prevent Self-Scratching After Insect Attack, Injury or Surgery

Lunch Laid for 18: as Nothing to Laura Malcolm from the Catering Point of View