SOME DON'T LIKE IT HOT

“Ooh, Matilda, it’s so hot!” complained Marilyn Monroe. I am like a wilted lettuce in this weather. Wayne-Bough Towers is unbearable in the mornings, and not just because the Berlaymont is the first thing you see when you open the curtains. My residence faces East, and mornings from about 8 until midday are like a sauna, I drift from bed to armchair in a sarong, fanning myself with a copy of the New Statesman and cursing the day I left the servants behind in Africa. You’d never think I’d spent years in the tropics. Perhaps it’s my Time of Life.

I am not good with hot weather. I’m not a beach person, can’t bear grit in my crevices. Being of Celtic colouring, I do not tan. If I do go (under duress, usually) on a beach I have to be under the shade of some trees (those silly beach umbrellas just give you sunburn in the shape of the Coca-Cola logo), wearing a long white organza dress, picture hat and calling for mint julep. The sun does horrible things to me. I cannot see well with the sun directly overhead, get headaches, and cannot read. My earholes are malformed and the earpieces of an iPod will not stay in, so if I wish to listen to music without disturbing others I have to use a set of BBC radio producer headphones which makes me look like some kind of DJ doing an outside broadcast, and I am constantly pestered by youngsters bombarding me with requests for Busted and The Streets. The other alternative is to take my “ghetto blaster” as it is popularly called, and I will be the first to admit that not everyone likes Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

As for the sea – ugh! Don’t get me started. Like many people of my generation who saw “Jaws” when it first came out, I am very wary of the sea. Even around Clacton you can’t be too careful, especially with this global warming business. All sorts of unexpected things could be popping their heads out of the water. I was once swimming in the sea when I glanced down and saw a great black thing underneath me. I didn’t know I could walk on water until then, but I literally ran on the surface all the way back to the beach, before realizing that what I had seen was my own shadow.

Swimming in the sea these days is like volunteering to immerse oneself almost naked in a sewer. Not to mention what the sea does to one’s skin and hair. Salt has its place, and that is in the kitchen. After a day on the beach I come off looking like a lobster that’s had an electric shock. I will probably have been bitten by something nasty, stubbed my toe on something septic, and have swallowed some sea water, which doesn’t bear thinking about.

I came across, in a manner of speaking, this early 19th century woodcut by Hokusai which shows the sort of unspeakable things that lurk in the ocean. It's put me right off calamari, I can tell you.

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND, MADAM?

This is just a filler to keep you quiet until Sunday. The ladies and the gayboys amongst you will enjoy this. Hetero males should look away now. Especially if you like rugby. This could kill it dead for you.

For a real eyeful, go to the Dieux du Stade 2007 website. It's described as a "rugby calendar". Ha! There's more than rugby balls on show, if you know what I mean. This photo is cropped, in the interests of keeping Pat's blood pressure down.

Steady yourself, Aunty.

FOR BETTER FOR WORSE FOR WEAR

Tippler’s latest post about a stag party he once survived reminded me (although not very much) of a hen party I was invited to a few years ago. Harold had gone off with the groom’s party on a weekender, meanwhile the girls had organized a “hen” weekend, which was to take place over two evenings. The guests were mostly from the British diplomatic community, so I looked forward to a refined and ladylike gathering.

The first evening was to be a movie night at the home of one of the bridesmaids. As the bride was a young Spanish girl from a good Catholic family, the film considered suitable viewing was “My Best Friend’s Wedding”. Glasses of Cava were handed round accompanied by some tapas, and we were about to settle down to a pleasant evening, when Eileen arrived.

Eileen was a diplomatic spouse known for her quite undiplomatic behaviour. She was reputed to partake of more than a drop of mother’s ruin well before “sundowners” (round about breakfast time it was rumoured) and was persona non grata at most dinner parties due to her propensity to hog the Burgundy, make loud and inappropriate statements and then fall asleep on the table with her head in her plate while the Ambassador was still in attendance. Poor Eileen did not fit in. She refused to make cakes for the coffee mornings and would do the Lambada with the servants at parties. She even (horror of horrors) did not wear matching hat and gloves to the Queen’s Birthday Party, and was once spotted drinking lager out of a can at an official reception.

Eileen lurched into the gathering waving a video, which turned out to be “Bad Lieutenant”, in which Harvey Keitel plays a most ungentlemanly policeman and displays considerably more than his acting talent. One of the bridesmaids managed to prise it out of her grip and into her own handbag before Constipación could see it. We spent a pleasant and sober evening, ignoring Eileen who sat in a corner sulking, and after two bottles of Cava between 14 of us, trooped merrily into the hired people carrier which had been ordered for 10 p.m.

The second evening was to be drinks at someone’s house followed by a restaurant. As three of the ladies present were in the family way, there was no smoking and very little alcohol. Eileen, of course, turned up late and slightly the worse for wear, and presented the bride with a copy of the “Dieux du Stade” calendar which had greasy fingermarks and traces of saliva on it. Even worse, she was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “It begins when you sink into his arms, and ends with your arms in his sink”, which was hardly the appropriate message to impart to a new bride (even if it is true). Fiona bundled her into the kitchen and threw a pink tabard over her with “Hen Party” and a picture of a chicken on it, which we were all wearing. After a few drinkies we set off for the restaurant, where a non-smoking private room had been booked. A couple of bottles of low-alcohol wine were enough to go round, as most of the ladies were drinking mineral water. Over dessert, after the appropriate coo-ing over Constipación’s wedding dress and going-away outfit, the conversation turned to literature.

“Has anyone read the latest Harry Potter?” ventured someone.

“Never mind Harry f***ing Potter,” interjected Eileen drunkenly (I think she had a hip flask in her handbag), “Who’s shagged a black man?”

There was a stunned silence, although I did notice three hands shoot up and down again very quickly, and I swear one of them belonged to Serena, the mousy girl from Accounts who never spoke in more than a whisper. Constipación looked horrified, and burst into tears. A few embarrassed coughs later, the muted conversation resumed, and Eileen slunk off outside for a smoke. She never returned.

The wedding of Constipación and Gary passed off without incident, largely because they had made a point of not inviting Eileen. I later heard rumours that the boys (including Harold) had behaved outrageously on the stag weekend and had narrowly avoided being arrested en masse thanks to the intervention of the British Consul (who was part of the stag party but had had the good sense to keep his trousers on in the lap dancing club). Luckily cameras had been confiscated by Gary's best man at the beginning of the weekend, everyone was under instructions not to give their real names if questioned by the police, and any record of what they got up to is still subject to a D-notice and will only be released under the Freedom of Information Act in 30 years time.

I think I know which weekend I'd rather have been on, don't you?

AN EASTER BUNNY BOILER

Oh to be in England, now that April's here. I spent my rehab week back in Blighty, visiting friends and marvelling at the beauty of the English countryside in spring: lambs gambolling in the fields, daffodils in bloom - I marvelled for hours, stuck between junctions 6 and 10 of the M1 where the traffic was at a virtual standstill due to road-widening works.

I went into therapy to cure my blogging addiction. Retail therapy. I swept through M&S, Boots, W.H.Smith, Virgin Megastore, John Lewis, New Look and Sainsbury's like a locust. My Belgian Visa card went into meltdown and I had to resort to the spare. I met Vi Hornblower for lunch in Debenham's, where we took the weight off our credit cards over a couple of sundried tomato and goat's cheese filo tarts, washed down with an iced frappuccino and a freshly-squeezed cranberry and passionfruit smoothie. Gosh, it seems centuries ago we used to meet for a cup of tea and a buttered scone.

I spent a couple of days in London, and managed to squeeze in a trip to the Zoo where the new Gorilla Kingdom had just opened. It's terribly stylish, I think Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen had something to do with the interior, as the residents didn't look too impressed. I gazed with wonder at the large silverback alpha male, who stared back impassively. He appeared to wink. Probably just a tic. However, I nearly had apoplexy when he vaulted the fence, loped up to me on his knuckles and shook my hand politely.

"Lady Daphne, I presume?" he inquired in a surprisingly posh voice. I don't know why, but you'd rather expect a gorilla to sound a bit like Phil Mitchell, wouldn't you? Gorilla Bananas (for it was he) introduced himself. He was in London on monkey business, and had recognized my trademark fruit basket hat, which he advised me to remove before the other gorillas mistook it for breakfast. When I had recovered from the shock of meeting the Great Ape in the flesh, I invited him for tea. He is certainly a most eloquent animal, and I was charmed by his delightful manners and the way he crooked his opposable thumb when he drank his tea.

I returned to Brussels to a rabbit stew bubbling away merrily on the stove, in the form of a comment on my last post from an old hoofer I worked with in Paris many moons ago in my previous incarnation as a dancer. I used to be a little coy about my former artistic career, for fear of Harold finding out, but now I don't have to worry. Or so I thought. Bette Noire claims to have seen my late husband in Milton Keynes, at the wheel of an Audi TT! A beige one, I shouldn't be surprised. I cannot believe my beloved Harold would have done a Lord Lucan. And to find out he might still be alive, just as I was coming to the end of the traditional African mourning period and was looking forward to wearing French knickers again. The shock has been so great that I fell from grace. I lapsed. I had to resort to a stronger crutch than chocolate. I am a fallen woman.

Readers, I am blogging again.

JUST SAY "NO"

For some reason the last post went totally skee-whiff, there was no comments box and Quarsan's witty logo didn't appear. It's too late now, the moment has passed. Hope you enjoyed the Amy Winehouse clip anyway.

I am out of Rehab, and so cured of the blogging addiction that I am not posting anything today except this photograph as a reminder that it's never too late to kick a bad habit.

(I'll be back later in the week).