Tuesday 23rd January 2018

When we got back to the Norman Fastness Chateau Fragment from the Paris train, the Cruisings had already arrived. In fact we drove round the circulation of the arrival town several times, possibly in the wrong direction, trying to gain entrance to the Supermart. It could be seen but not reached through the tangle of French traffic systems. Finally we were in and plunged straight into a menu crisis.  No sole! Laura didn’t break down or scream. Incredible.  She forked 67 euros for a sea-bass instead.

The Cruisings’ vehicle, The Triumph of the Waves, was parked outside the Fastness, recalling the time Matt Driver reversed into one of their previous models (The Wonder of the Waves, as I recall) many years ago but never forgotten by Percival Cruising who can’t recover from a damaged car.  So all the more agonising the present fate of The Triumph of the Waves. You won’t believe it.

The Triumph of the Waves didn’t move sadly for the entire three days of the Norman retreat. All that happened was that Percival Cruising sat in it (or her) for smoking. At other times he smoked out of the window and that might have been when he showed his pants. A Boeuf Bourguignon was served the first night. Laura Malcolm had cut out 8 hours of ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ carry-on (much loved by Val) and achieved precisely the same result. Then we hurled straight into arm chairs for the 1st epi but not before Sidney Cruising had showered a Tesco Special Selection Choc Selection over the company. There were six boxes in a carrier bag in the corner. Miss Elizabeth was now married and installed at Greenwich. The only trouble was her poet-husband was too refined for intimacy. In fact he got very fancy and superior at the merest hint of it and wanted to go on holiday with the dodgy manservant. Miss Elizabeth tried motoring and nearly ran over a lot of unimportant people in a park. But it didn’t help. Still she wanted to be married. She terribly blew up when she heard Rose and the new manservant flirting in the kitchen, but later sobbed in the bedroom. Rose was most dignified and merely said, ‘When would you like me to leave?’ Of course she was secure in the knowledge that she could always go ‘back to Southwold’ where all over-spill from the show, whether upstairs or downstairs, were assured of secure retirement grazing apparently. But Miss Elizabeth didn’t want her to leave really. Rose was all she had to cling onto, if the truth be told.

My thing in Normandy was to be like Rose, therefore vac-ing and dusting the drawing room and dining room before the family were down. But Percival Cruising said it was a fetish. Kelm and Ivy were never down, at least not before lunch.

It wasn’t until the next day that Up Down took such a sensational turn, with Lady Margery and Mr Bellamy actually waiting in the drawing room while the doctor attended Miss Elizabeth upstairs. I just couldn’t believe it for 70s TV, or indeed TV in any era. On New Year’s Day afternoon, of course, we had the Music’s Sound – I was waiting to see if anyone had got round to cleaning that paintwork round the door handle in Maria’s bedroom since last year.

Percival Cruising Smoking out of the Window. But did He Show his Pants?