Today it is wet and cold. I think I should stop talking about the weather, unless something extraordinary happens, like snow falling.

Yesterday, I had a long walk with Domino after endlessly driving around Warwickshire and Gloucestershire earlier in the week; we needed fresh air to blow away the cobwebs.

And then I continued to read Nancy Mitford, as she is a tonic. I am reading The Blessing, detailing the marriage between a British aristocrat, the innocent rose, and a French aristocrat, a naughty but charming cad; the union between a pheasant and a goose.

It is illegal, I have been told by a Frenchman, to eat the ortolan songbird whole, which weighs an ounce. But the French covertly do; they cover their heads with a napkin, to cover the shame of the act, and they eat all of it; even presidents have been rumoured to partake. I think it’s awful.

The novel, publishes in 1951, highlights the difference between the grooming habits of English and French women during the second world war.

When the Frenchman, Charles-Edouard, first meets the Englishwoman, Grace, he asks her what she does all day. He comments that appearance and clothes fill a Frenchwoman’s day, entirely. He asks her, “How do you fill those endles eons of time when Frenchwomen are having their hair washed, trying on hats visiting the collections, disussing with the lingere…?”

When I first married in 1989, very few Sloane women spent hours on grooming. Makeup was minimal or entirely absent. One friend told me long ago, that her husband hated the smell of foundation, and she was banned from wearing it. Certain pheasants, do, prefer their women to come a la naturelle.

Diana, the Princess of Wales, wore more and more makeup as the years progressed, and she became more glamorous over time. Remember the heavy eyeliner on that fateful Panorama interview, when she split the beans on her unhappy marriage? Peter York who wrote the original Sloane Ranger Handbook in 1980, later wrote Cooler, Faster, More Expensive (2007), about the evolution of the Sloane into various forms, like Eco Sloane, Chav Sloane, Bongo Sloane and, finally, Sleek Sloane. The last variety are heavily into grooming: spray tans, blow dries, mani/pedicures, botox, facials, waxing, makeup, designer clothes. They are like current day Frenchwoman of the same class.

When Hugo had just started at Harrow, his boarding school, he came with me to Cannes for a short holiday; we stayed at a hotel on the  Promenade de la Croisette, along the beach front. I was going to go for some R & R; Hugo’s holiday plans had fallen through.

I forgot that Frenchwomen often sunbathed topless. Not ideal when you are with your teenage son. The hotels have private allocations on the beach front, and you have to pay for a lounger. The front row is allocacated to those who have the best rooms at the hotel; the back rows are for those without sea views and facing the street behind the hotel. We were in the back row. I was fascinated by the French family occupying the front row. They never swam. They had the sleek, olive, unfreckled skin that reeks glamour. Madame wore a white bikini and high heels. Her hair was blow dried to perfection. She wore a large Cartier watch on her wrist.

 

I, by comparison, a kangaroo, bounced in and out of the water, looking dishevelled. She visibly shaken when I dived into the water in front of her.

Today I am having lunch with an Aussie girlfriend.