Question...how can you maintain your reputation as a high flying doyenne of showbiz journalism when you are inhabiting a caveman like scenario where following electric storms last week we had no mobile phones for five days followed by no landline or internet for a further week, rendering us incommunicado for approaching a fortnight?
Answer... be intrepid, drive hundreds of miles in search of a connection, rack up hundreds of euros worth of mobile bills when the signal finally returns and whatever happens, do not lose your sense of humour, which as anyone who knows me will testify never happens (people I live with are exempt from having an opinion on this last point.)
Trying to file features,get copy approved and liaise with A list celebs and magazine editors on tight deadlines is not easy when you are stuck in the communication desert .... even the views of my valley, which is lush and green because of all the rain, cannot make up for this aberration. As you can see from the picture, Oscar has no such worries, oh to be a fat lazy pug whose only concern is sunburn and when the next meal will be served...
After burning the midnight oil til 1am yesterday morning, I thought I'd hit on the solution...to Fayes house first thing to send copy in a laidback fashion before embarking on zen-like calming yoga. Instead it was a wacky races rush from Faye's where the internet was also down as of the moment I arrived to Chateauneuf where the internet cafe secretary was barely capable of boiling a kettle, much less sending urgent copy across to an incredibly important interviewee. This culminated in me in a sweat not caused by yoga and people arriving at my Premier Mardi meeting before I was even home!
All in all, it's been a terrible week what with the internet debacle, my lovely new Armani sunglasses being whipped from my beach bag on Sunday while I swam in the sea (there were a film festival freebie but that's not the point) and falling down the stone garden steps in a storm, badly bruising my shin and making the prospect of surfing in Biarritz this week remote or best case scenario, incredibly painful(cruel bystanders might say this is nothing unusual given my surfing prowess.)
I have had no sympathy from the Handyman, who reckons my fall was precipitated by far too good a time over lunch at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival and the fact that I was wearing my impossibly high Prada wedges at the time. This is purely circumstantial and not the root cause obviously....
Anyway my semaine horribilis was nothing that a coffee and a slice of lemon drizzle couldn't fix..not to mention a glass of rose at lunch as I didn't have to negotiate any steps in the company of a small but amusing bunch of lunch guests including fellow blogger and man about town Chris France. With our collective memories of the music biz and Fleet Street in the 90s (or the last century as the girls love to say) it's safe to say many people in the public eye and monarchy were defamed, ridiculed and shamed in the privacy of my four terrace walls and that is all that can be said on the subject...unless you read Chris's blog which will no doubt shed a more revealing light on the conversation.
This is without even mentioning the MC TV fest..the highlight of which was Prince Albert shimmying on the dance floor with rather enthusiastic Desperate Housewife Felicity Huffman as Kool and the Gang played at the gala dinner at the Sporting. It was surreal, a sight to behold and probably, quite fortuitously, never to be seen again.
Many of my friends ask me a. How I know all this stuff and b. Why I didn't take a picture of whatever was going down. The answer is a. I was there and b. I might have got chucked in Monaco's equivalent of Traitors Gate for showing His Serene Highness letting down what little hair he has. Maybe he was treating the evening as a dry stag run for his forthcoming wedding?
This was all preceded by drinks with lovely Juliet from Hello, where we sat at a bar on Larvotto beach putting the worlds of showbiz and European royalty to rights....again in a most slanderous fashion.
Tomorrow, the merry-go-round of work, chores and dog-walking is stopping for a few precious days as me and my swollen green gammy shin head off to Biarritz to meet fellow surf chicklets Norma and Sarah for four days of extremely competitive watersports, with perhaps a glass of something fairly pink and well chilled making its way into our company.
On our last surfing trip to Cornwall, Norma's unplanned excursion into a rip tide at the far end of Watergate Bay ended with the Baywatch lifeguards steaming up the beach to rescue her and her board. This was 20 minutes into our first surf session. One can only hope this year's trip yields the same levels of adrenaline and excitement...the coastguards from here to Calais have been warned.
