Monday, June 16, 2008

Another wedding and a bit of polo

I feel proper country-like today. It's too cold to work in the house (aka The Freezer), and not quite warm enough to sit outside, although it's sunny. So I'm working today from the back of the Land Rover. Praise be to WiFi. Great weekend. Went to another country wedding - proper from-the-country this time. Beautiful tiny church with every inch of pew bedecked in summer flowers. Speeches that had us all sobbing. Supper was served by what appeared to be the local school dinner ladies (we all got told off for trying to have a bit of coronation chicken AND lasagne) but was hearty and delicious. And then a lot of bad dancing to the local mobile disco outfit. The only tricky bit was the annual perilous event of walking across country lawns in high heels - I decided you have to approach it a bit like a run across hot coals - never landing too heavily to bear the consequences.

Yesterday was the Vivari Queen's Cup at Guard's Polo Club. In the Royal Box, natch. Well, only to help set the table. Then a very exciting match between Sumaya (with one of the infamous Leguy brothers playing) against Ellerston (with legend Kerry Packer's son, Jamie, in shirt no.4), who won 10-9. The Queen was there in fetching raspberry but I was more distracted by Chris Evans sitting behind me and canoodling with his very attractive wife. Celebs. In the country. I know!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Shoot 'em up

I spent yesterday in the company of 180 bankers, all loaded up with guns and rally driving around an extremely muddy Highclere Estate. There are some for whom walking into a room full of tweedy testosterone is life at its most perfect. They were all carted round the five different drives to compete in the City Shooting Championships, sipping soup and scoffing flapjacks in between, before sitting down to a game pie and potatoes lunch. They're were all jolly good fun. Not a scrap of denim or slick dance move between them, I expect, but plenty of woollen socks and outrageous stories. My favourite, told by a peer of the realm, involved a Swiss restaurant up a mountain, a challenge to split a cork in two with an axe, all his clothes coming off and 50 gobsmacked French people watching ("my children didn't talk to me for two days!" he roared).