February Newsletter 2015

February is a short month, but I’ve been getting it out a lot. I think this is the third time, lucky you.

I was in Rome, Bologna and Florence at the beginning of the week.

Once again I must raise a glass and an empty plate to those who watered and fed me. Simone, Stefania, Edy and Emanuele thank you all.

Emanuele thought we’d found a symbol on the tablecloth of the infamous crime organisation SCHMEER (The Secret Company of Huge Male Egos, Eccentrics and Rogues), but it was in fact a wine spill that looked like a scorpion.

SCHMEER

SCHMEER

However I was in Rome on a top secret mission, well not so top secret now. They are shooting the new Bond movie along the banks of the Tiber outside Max’s office. Why was I there you might ask?

Well as you ask, as Monica Bellucci’s stunt double. I’d hoped it would get me closer to her, but it only involved me wandering round in a slinky dress and wig trying to look alluring before I was arrested, then told to take my business elsewhere. By all accounts from behind we could be twins, that’s if she walked like Dick Emery.

Phoaaarrr!

Phoaaarrr!

These mild mannered trucks contain Bond's Aston Martin and the villian's Jaguar

These mild mannered trucks contain Bond’s Aston Martin and the villain’s Jaguar.

I will be back there to shoot more scenes very soon, as soon as the restraining order that Monica has against me expires. Oooooh “Restraining Order”, that’s so 50 Shades…….

Talking of “That’s So!” I have been deeply disturbed by the Money Supermarket advert of the twerking man in denim shorts. My dear Sir, have you not heard of Spanx?

However it was made infinitesimally worse by having DC’s head transposed onto the video. I’m now waking up nights from a nightmare imagining all sorts of people twerking at the end of my bed in denim shorts. No of course it’s not what’s really happening. There is a list of miscreants at the end of the Newsletter!

DC.........

DC………

One of the items that the statistics offer me regarding these newsletters is the most popular searches and where the website has been opened from. No, not the exact address, but it allows me to see in which country on this planet it has been opened. So Sam, I have no idea if you are opening it on your way to Mars or just circumnavigating the globe.

Last week, imagine my surprise when one of the most popular searches for my newsletter, was “Bulging Tight Speedos”!!!

Well I wasn’t really surprised given my propensity for wearing Lycra. However at no point have I ever posted a photo of me in Speedos, not even in that Superman way of wearing his pants outside his trousers or undressing in a phone box.

However, closely related to the Speedo issue, a friend has been telling me because he wears designer stubble most of the time that he is starting to wear through the collars on his shirts fairly rapidly, but there is also a rather alarming side effect to this stubble beyond his problems with the collar.

Whilst swimming front crawl in his tight Speedos the stubble is giving him a nasty rash, on his shoulder, I hasten to add. Better that than a carpet burn on his chin. You know who you are, and in both cases, how it happened!

A friend, whose real name is not Natasha has moved back here from Germany to work once again for a friend of mine who is also not called Sergei. At this point I’ve lost track of where I am and who I am talking about, but I will bravely carry the story forward.

Oh yes, I remember! She shares a house with several gay men, goes to the gym and the sauna with the same said men who delight in pointing out the buff, semi-naked men around her are all of the same proclivity.

She has likened this to be being as frustrated as a kid in a candy shop with diabetes. Must be the German sense of humour!

But she has helped to solve the riddle about the whole beard thing, heavens I’m so stupid it’s all that hair around a pout, it’s so 70’s. Men move forward, try a Brazilian, a Hollywood, even a bit of glitter.

Finally before that list of people wearing denim.

A client from Texas has been telling me about their “Open Carry” Law. By that I thought that particularly ugly babies had to be wheeled round in closed top buggies. Apparently that’s not very nice and also incorrect. Well excuse me!

It pertains to the open carrying of weapons in public. He had been asking me if I could make him a walking cane with a thermal nuclear warhead in the tip. The handle is to house a trained Curare frog, which can fire darts made from its own poison, less of a killing machine and more of a personal statement.

Cute, but lethal

Cute, but lethal

By all accounts gun crime there is on the way down, but it would be when everyone is walking round with a Sherman Tank on a lead!

Now for that list:

At number 1: Dave and Gideon (George, to you commoners)

2: Dear Silvio

3: Vladimir P

4: Donatella Versace

5: Madonna – If she could stay on her feet.

6: Robbie Williams

7: Francois Hollande and now I’m feeling ill, so I’m going to draw a line under this…….

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Copyright © 2015 Adrian Holdsworth. All Rights Reserved.

January 2012 – Volpe Newsletter

Well, I suppose you thought I’d forgotten.

The truth is my hands are so cold that even a random striking of keys was not producing anything coherent. So I have employed someone to blow on my hands to keep them warm. Trust me it’s cheaper than heating the shop, and at a time when we are looking at every penny we spend, I am doing my bit by employing someone.

My friend Michael has recently joined the fold. He has proved to be a rich vein of anecdotes. My current “fave” is how he spent a small fortune on museum quality blinds for the back of his house, which is entirely made out of glass. You may have guessed where this is going. Lit from behind with low lights and soft candles, he has managed to produce his own perfect shadow puppet show, sometimes, more than once a night and even the “odd”, very odd matinee.

Enter stage left, Ian, a friend of longstanding.

Now that Rosie has relocated to Neuschwanstein and stable of Astons, Ian can park his cars outside without incurring her disapproval. Today he arrived with his Ferrari 360, he has a predominantly Italian collection at the moment. I have known him *%# years, stop it, you at the back, it reflects my failings, not his.

In those days he drove a Ferrari Testarossa. It used to infuriate my boss at the time. My boss only drove a Jaguar XJS, or the “Big Cat” as he called it. Meow. He would often unleash it, a la Alan Clark along Piccadilly, mounting the pavement outside Fortnums and pulling a handbrake turn in front of the Albany, just to get a bit of lunch. We only worked a couple of hundred yards away. I could have walked it in half the time.

It sported a number plate with the letters FOL in it. As a child on long motorway journeys, mother would always get my brother and me to play games. One of the games was to make a phrase from the letters in the number plates. I’ll leave you lot to play that one, and feel free to email your examples.

Many a time my boss and I would speed off to Heathrow to catch the early shuttle to Edinburgh at 7.00am. Like an automotive Arthur Daley, he would be dodging here, weaving there, and the taxi that had been alongside us outside Harrods would be in front of us by the time we got to Terminal 1.

However, my favourite Ian story is……Shall I save it? No I’ll take a punt. One of you might do something interesting in February worthy of a mention.

Oh, now look M*#k, put your trousers back on, it’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s not, February.

Sorry, it is big and it is clever. Do you feel better now?

Anyway back to Ian. He and his lovely family have a house in the hills, just outside Cannes, and a few years ago we were holidaying in Cannes. At this time Ian was keeping the Testarossa there. I asked him if we could meet up for dinner, but he explained that they wouldn’t be there at the same time as we were.

However, he enquired as to whether I had arranged for a hire car (second creative writing course, please note Richard). Ian explained that he would be driving the car to Nice airport on the Friday, before I arrived on the Saturday. He would send me the spare set of keys and I could use the car for a couple of weeks before returning it to the house…….

Lost for words, I dreamt of cruising “The Croisette” tanned left arm, hanging out of the window. Arriving at restaurants, eager valet parkers grabbing the keys from my hand to put a thousand kilometres on the car before dawn, only to meet Dawn and find out she was David from Droitwich…

Meanwhile I can hear Ian chuckling. He was offering me an elastoplast coloured Peugeot 309. I had been suckered, and not for the first time, by the dreams of riches beyond my wildest desires. I would be a Russian oligarch, call me Otto (It means eight).

The car was perfect, just the right shade, but the air conditioning was heaven sent, and wherever we went the valet parkers made sure the car was well hidden. Nobody was going to kidnap me and demand money for the release of my daughters.

When I returned the car to Ian’s house, the nice chap from next door waved as I parked it on the drive. He was holding a lighted taper and striding towards the cannon on his lawn. For once, I was unsure what to do next.

Hit lit the fuse, and began to run a flag up his flagpole. Oh stop it, it’s not a metaphor. It was his personal coat of arms. The cannon fired, fortunately only a blank. Time for lunch; what ever happened to gongs?

If this is what money does to you, then I want to know what happened to mine. Touched by madness, I may have frittered it away, here and there. But it seems more likely there, than here.

The sale is nearly done. Life will return to normal and I may regain my sanity. Unlikely I know, but……

 

Copyright © 2012 Adrian Holdsworth. All Rights Reserved.