scratch | Volpe

The “Closing Party Season” is upon us.

I am sat outside the shop adorned in a garment I will mention later in the newsletter, happily tapping away at the keyboard, enjoying the last rays of summer sun. Around me people are as inappropriately dressed as I am, oblivious to the onset of the evening air which will wrap its cold arms around them like a vampire’s embrace (creative writing course)!

Friends from far and wide are descending upon Ibiza to enjoy one last hurrah, before they hang up their Glo-Sticks for a few months.

The weather in Ibiza until now has been everything it hasn’t been here, hot, very hot and sunny, and did I say hot. However for the last weekend of the season we managed to send them a little rain and some thunder in an attempt to dampen their spirits, whilst they wander around Circoloco at DC10 or whichever club they can blag their way into.

Mateo, the mild mannered architect from La Coruna is there for a stag party. Not his own I should add, but he phoned me to ask me where he could buy a fluorescent “mankini”. How the heck should I know? I would have said something else, but the spam filters you know! We’ve been friends a very long time and because we are the same size, we’ve shared clothes, but never, ever again. I mean I shudder at thought of sharing my mankini with anyone! Anyway I need mine for the weather here.

Neil, the tattooist phoned me yesterday to complain that I’d been neglecting him. So we chatted for a while on Skype. I have missed him this year, but intend to make up for it next. Well, that is if he ever speaks to me again after Mateo and his group of drunken mates turn up requesting tattoos of gecko’s, dolphins, stars and Pacha cherries.

Neil is going to hit the clubs of Asia and Slovenia in the company of superstar DJ, David Morales before going off to find himself. He did mention circumnavigating the earth in a coracle with Scratch his dog. Where do you start talking someone down from doing that? Hopefully the Ibiza madness will subside, and he’ll just climb a mountain again instead.

Sam has had a birthday this month, and as he is always reminding me that the newsletters are nearly always late, or is always nearly late? I will remind him that he will never be as old as me. Everybody else with a birthday and anniversary this month, many congratulations, I include Jake in this, it’s his birthday today and I have given him the day off. You see I can be merciful. Now I should be able to get away with buying him some useless gadget, like a pen or propelling pencil, as the wheels are already starting to come off Wolves season, they’ll be no need for the new away kit. He’d probably ritually burn it in a fit of pique whilst sticking pins in an effigy of Joey Barton.

Dorothee has been in to buy a “racy” burgundy knitted silk tie for hubby Colum. She didn’t know how to get a mention, so I took pity. Like so many of us she has been dealing with builders. Apologies to the builders amongst you, like retailers we know they are not all the same. Yes I know, in my case some are worse than others.

Now, I have to mention Jason from The Wolseley who has been unwell. In his absence Sara and the crowd have been masterful. Jason has lost weight and won’t mind me saying he looks better for it. It may have been the illness or the fact that the “Spring” in North Africa has moved north and his dictatorship is in peril. He has given up smoking and is worried that eating will be his only solace, when I thought just keeping the others in line should be stress enough. Secretly, or not so secretly as you all know now, he prints these out and I’m sure frames them for the smallest room in the house.

Anyway enough of Jason, my next target is the Maldives. According to James Delingpole and the Times Atlas they no longer exist. I thought this was self evident, they have been holding cabinet meetings underwater recently. Does this mean that Alan Duncan is going to have to stay out of the deep end? Personally I have been donning my Bacofoil suit to avoid the aliens and regularly commuting to Atlantis for years. From there the Maldives is just a short trip, and if I stay underwater the little green men won’t see me.

How quickly the summer passes. No sooner were you slipping on the shorts and Birkenstocks than you were forced to put your shirt back on.

All right, those amongst you who support Newcastle United from the Gallowgate end never wear a shirt to matches as a badge of pride preferring to daub yourselves in black and white stripes of body paint, the name of your favourite player mis-spelt across your shoulders. My friend Alan with his black and white cashmere scarf will be labelled a sissy. What japes!

But, I may never go onto a beach again. Note the use of the word may, because, as you know I worship the sun. But though I laugh in the face of skin cancer there are some things that scare even me.

A recent survey had Princess Beatrice tied with Jennifer Aniston for the fourth best beach body in the world. The bit about being tied to Jennifer I can understand, but how on earth can Bea, out of Her Fergieness and stablemate of Huge Knees, have ranked so highly or indeed anywhere unless it was bringing up the rear in the 2.30pm at Chepstow?

Who makes this stuff up? And for once it’s not the wife.

Once again sciatica has raised its ugly head in the tattooing brotherhood. This time it is not Neil, who appears to be making a recovery (update below) but his now less able assistant Pink, not that big, shouty girl but a compact bloke and the least Italian Italian I’ve ever met.

The injury struck following a night of drinking Ricard and hierbas involving Neil, Scratch, Gillian and me.

I feel the tipping point was when Pink’s landlady Charlene, who doubles as the waitress serving said alcohol, popped up in the small hours to extract the payment of rent in kind. Pink is now wearing Neil’s corset, Charlene still being busy with hers.

It’s a flattering garment if you have the personality to carry it off and I will be stocking a few for autumn.

September has brought relief to Neil. An operation in Paris seems to have done the trick and restored some colour to his pallid complexion. He really was the palest man in Ibiza. “I don’t do beaches, man,” he has often told me.

Neil and I will continue our discussions about Adidas, and that fact that I wear the wrong type. It is a style statement for him and I wear it for exercise and never the twain shall meet. So I will not be out “sniping”, sorry – cheating – him out of that vintage Ivan Lendl jacket on eBay.

I think it is time to introduce a new celebrity. My D-list friend is still stuck with his vuvuzelas but has a panto gig for Christmas. I wish him well, it’ll give me a chance to torture him with Macbeth, while he rehearses as an Ugly Sister. He is already complaining that the make up artist, J’son, feels he may only need a little touching up and is unsure exactly how to take that remark.

This new celebrity considers himself A list. What sauce! He currently crosses the street to avoid me and shuns me in my favourite breakfast haunt, The Wolseley.

The shunning is made easier by the fact that I always get a better table. This is not the only location we cross swords over table rights and he always loses. Big up, all at The Wolseley, Jayne, Claudia, Jason and welcome back Shirley, keep up the good work, I know it really gets under his skin. No, it’s not Michael Winner, who was charming if a little sqwarky the only time I sat next to him – like being next to a tanned parakeet.

Recently Gillian and I went back to an old favourite restaurant. T’was an interesting evening. It prides itself on service and the quality of its food. Note, I say quality, not quantity. The service was slow and haphazard as if to mimic the lazy french driving style of a post lunch 2CV, desperately clinging to the road when a strong gust of wind would puff you into a ditch, if not the heady mixture of bordeaux and calvados. My rack of lamb was a lonely lamb chop, a single rib, artfully arranged to look bigger than it was. OK, those of you know me well will know this is a technique I have often used myself. Perhaps someone swiped the rest from my plate on the way from the kitchen; some hungry soul who may have still been waiting for his main course since lunch.

And finally a plug; we now have a stock of new winter merchandise. Well you didn’t think I was doing this for my health, or just promoting other peoples businesses.

Volpe

Tag Archives: scratch

September 2011 – Volpe Newsletter

September 2010 – Volpe Newsletter