Rather than send you 2 emails; you know, what with the cost of postage these days, I have combined the Newsletter with information regarding the next Wine Tasting.

Firstly, an update on the launch of my new product: the revolutionary i-Adrian. Due to an unprecedented demand for this product, the queue of people wanting to come back as me is stretching round the block. Subsequently, it means the launch of i-Adrian will be delayed until I have completely tested and exhausted the prototype. It, and I, may be a while!

STOP PRESS… Shock horror, designer posts a disrobed photo on Instagram! No, no, no, not me…

As I regarded the photo for research purposes: PAH! Disrobed my derriere, all it is, is bit of thigh and a varicose vein, isn’t it? I show more than that at work. At least you can console yourselves that it wasn’t me and it didn’t involve Lycra, yet this has spawned another idea!

Carve yourself a slice, Danish!

I nominate Karl Lagerfeld and Mugatu to post similar images.

So our next wine tasting will be on Bastille Day…. The 14th of July.

However, “Up yours Delors” or a more topically, “We’re not bourgeois, Francois”, we’ve done French wine for the moment and before you get up on your high horse with the help of that little Napolionic stepladder, hitch up your skirts and flounce off into the distance.  That was a joke courtesy of “Le Roast Beef”! Make mine medium rare….

I had been contemplating Greek wines, but Vash told me that the shoebox full of Drachma I’d saved would only get me a glass of Retsina and when I’m thirsty you know that won’t go very far. However a certain Mark and I have clubbed together (not the Ibiza version) and found we have enough Drachma to buy the rest of the Parthenon. He’s looking at the option of putting in a helipad, an artificial snow maker and ski lifts!

The evening will be hosted by Vash, one of my closest friends; he who runs the Cork and Bottle Wine Bar in Leicester Square. Shouldn’t we all have a close friend who runs a Wine Bar? I can hear one or two of you saying, “only you”. This is something we are updating with the new i-Adrian, there will be an app and a wristband to manage and maximise your intake of alcohol!

So for the wine evening we are off to the New World and I’m building an ark as well as a small bridge.

Please let me know if you’d like to come, and I will forward you the details.

Right, let’s get down to the newsletter and all the shenanigans that I may have been up to over the last month.

I went to a “Gelato Festival” in Spit all Fields on Sunday. Goodness, they really were that close together. Call me a snob, but to queue for a thimble-full of ice cream you must be mad; I could have made my own in the time it was taking to queue!

This was followed by my first attempt at Ten Pin Bowling. Now, I’d never played before and I may have had a solitary beer, but once I had dragged myself out of the gutter, Wolfgang our barman asked me how long I’d been playing, as I made strike after strike.

I’m now signed up for the equivalent of the Manchester City of Ten Pin Bowling, based in Brick Lane and playing for beer… Oh well, shame it couldn’t be for Petrus.

Travel moi?

Don’t mind if I do.

I ventured back to Ibiza for a birthday; a young lady, Tania, was turning 30 (ahem) and a group of fourteen of us headed to the island. It was a truly amazing weekend for everyone, people who just gelled.

And of course a panorama.

Sunday (the Birthday), was spent cruising between Ibiza and Formentera on a large Sunseeker, lunch at Beso Beach and then on to walk the sandy strip between Formentera and S’Espalmador. It was followed by drinks at Es Vive and then on to La Bodega in Ibiza Town for dinner.

Those who could dance then did VIP at Pacha with David Guetta, the next day was Hed Kandi at Ocean Beach and it was topped off with a day at the beach on Tuesday.

It sounds extravagant, it wasn’t, and shared between so many lovely people it was an absolute joy. And because we didn’t go to Amnesia, unforgettable!

I should have sent postcards to all, but the only person I know who still does this is my mother, and before you get any ideas, she doesn’t send the saucy ones!

I hadn’t been able to raise mum (mother) on the home phone, and she has a mobile which she never switches on. I spoke to my brother, who was unsure of her whereabouts when, lo and behold, a postcard arrives entitled “Beautiful Ullswater”.

My mother is shortly to celebrate her 87^th birthday, so clearly she had me very, very, very late in life, and still displays the wanderlust that both she and Kathleen grew up with.

She’d been up to see a red squirrel colony, clearly in order to exact revenge for the great squirrel attack of 2013, which left her with a broken wrist! You’ll just have to look up the reference to this.

Then on to walk a goat path, I quote, “I did a mountain goat trip up to Ashness Bridge + passed the Lodore Falls + over Honister Pass + up to the ancient stones on foot.” I passed Ian McKellan and a hobbit on their way down and glittering in a gully I saw a ring…

OK, I made the last bit up, but for an 86 year old with Macular Degeneration she’s doing pretty well. I keep expecting her to do the Donald Pleasance thing from The Great Escape and leave pins on the kitchen floor to impress me with, or in my case step on!

Congratulations are in order for Shirley at Colbert, who is expecting her second baby shortly; clearly Jason has been working his magic again. As he would say as he sits perched on a banquet at The Wolseley, “This is where the magic happens!” He is certainly perspicacious in his dealings. Do you remember “The Good Old Days”?

After the magnificent weather of the last few days spare a thought for Adam and friends, who are cycling from Caen in France to the Med, it has been over 40C everyday so far. The lengths people will go to for a wash in clean water!

He is undertaking this feat for Charity and I would have liked to have gone along, but it meant being away for 10 days at a busy time of year. I may attempt to do it next year. Adam has been suggesting that I should be the front half of a tandem. As this is the man who was testing a Velcro jumpsuit for marathons to attach himself to a speeding Kenyan, I suspect I know how this is going to end!

I asked for an action shot, but all he sent me were these.

Good luck Adam.

I will finish with a tinge of sadness. After what has been a very long battle, my good friend Tanya Vilmashkin gave up her difficult and painful fight against breast cancer.

She died at home in Australia with her family at her side. She left behind her many friends here in London. She had hoped to live to see the birthday of her best friend Tania; sadly she died the day before.

I struggled to find a picture of Tanya as they all had her friends in them, but not one had all of them in, so in the end I went for this one, as I’m sure this is how she might like to be remembered to everyone.

The plan was for a group of us to enjoy a holiday together in Ibiza. We were 14 in total, 15 with Tanya, and as I outlined earlier in the newsletter it turned out to be a truly unforgettable weekend. Tanya was definitely along in spirit, we will all miss her.

 

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