Jilly Cooper time

[Disabrie22]

It’s that time of year again - when I want to be a character in a Jolly Cooper novel - and only eat orange and steak for a week so I can squeeze into a too tight dress with a stain I’ve artfully covered with a brooch, after I have drenched myself in scent so I can get off with a dangerous drunk mysterious man who is loaded with cash and will whip me away to San Tropez, where I will only have an old bathing dress with moth in the seat which I keep falling out of. There I will meet a loveable old lech covered in Man Tan and flirt wildly while getting tight after too much gin.

The smell of wild garlic in the hedgerows always sets me off into Jilly land.

Ha. I've just been reading Jilly in the bath.

DH isn't home so there is time for a half-Argentinian polo player to come round and find me with shepherds pie in my hair, smelling of wild garlic and painting in a mans shirt reeking of Fracas.

I've just had a good gallop around the estate, cheeks flushed, hair untamed and wild.

His legs will be stripy because the man tan wouldn’t go over the hairs.

Do not worry because you will be transformed when an ugly but desirable man takes you shopping and buys you clothes in colours guaranteed to take the redness out of your sunburn.

you must look boot faced when your wild offspring are rusticated and raid the fridge to make off with the Bolly and a shepherd's pie which they will fork up while allowing the black lab to lick the plate.

With a glass of cold dom perignon from the otherwise empty fridge?

Ooh yes - time for a glass or three of pouilly-fume and a ramble through some hedgerows full of traveller's joy while you sadly quote Wordsworth. Just when you're feeling most sorry for yourself a beautiful, swarthy man with a scar on his cheek will clatter across the road in front of you astride a highly strung horse. Upon sight of you he will compare you to a lost fawn, insist that you need taken care of, then lay you down in a bed of fragrant grass and make love to you as the blue sky deepens and the evening swallows come out.

Actually where is DH?

Has he parked his Rolls in hedge whilst he rakishly bursts into his secretary's Queen Anne honeystone cottage which he pays for out of the profits of his TV franchise?

Slightly concerned now. She's probably wearing a strappy dress that clings dangerously to her and no knickers and her fridge only contains Shepherds pie and Krug too. And there might be a fire that smells of applewood. Bugger.

Oh he's home. Not even the merest sniff of bolly or wild garlic. And we appear not to have a Rolls.

And we appear not to have a Rolls.

Devastating when this happens

It’s the early mornings when one can go mushrooming, and paddle in the bubble of the frogsmore whilst wistfully dreaming of El Orgoluso.

Or spend hours riding ponies in palm beach, watching polo and being given bags of goodies from Revlon whilst some fat balding men scream obscenities in the pony lines as the rest of their teams, made solely of lithe tanned lads ride circles around them.

Or drive around canvassing at rugby clubs, and making beds up for parties, being sent faberge necklaces.

But yes, mainly I want to lose 8lb in a week drinking Perrier and eating grapefruit.

I'm worried about my mother in laws opinion of my illegitimate but precociously beautiful teenage daughter. Thank goodness there's cow parsley rioting along the hedgerows to take my mind off it, and isn't the wisteria looking lovely this year?

Oh the wisteria is divine. My father in law commented when he popped in to drink the rest of the whiskey. He’s separated from his seventh wife, and I do wish he’d stop latching at my little sister, the goaty DOM.

Oh, and gossip, gossip gossip! Guess who’s just been pictured in Tatler with Tabitha?!

I have been busy whipping up a batch of kedgeree in an old t shirt because my wildly glamorous mother has stolen my new cords and gone out to the pub for lunch.

I saw her there, giggling like a school girl at the pink and white faced young Etonian waiter.

Illegitimate and precociously beautiful daughters should be swiftly aimed at that very decent slightly older man who isn't conventionally attractive but has a delicious sleepy smile and a quiet manner concealing fiery hidden depths.

I've literally just got in from playing naked tennis with a local MP. some half wit with cloud ya of masses of dark hair and a gruff Irish voice turned up screaming about the stubble burning

I’ve also had my hair cut very short so I look like a sexy stable lad so I can be ravished in an exspensive hotel suite and have my labia painted with cooling oil for some saucy pictures.

You can easily lose 2 stone by surviving on a bottle of white wine and 20 Marlboro a day
Whilst still smelling only of honeysuckle and expensive perfume

The best line she ever wrote was that a letter was 'straight tippex' (on an old fashioned typewriter - can't remember if it was due to nerves or alcohol)

Oh I miss her early writing. The latest stuff is unreadable

RCB will always have a place in my heart

Somebody called Taggie, Portia or Tabitha is about to see a juvenile quail that has been half mauled by a semi-feral stablecat and, recognising a kindred spirit and metaphor for marriage, will start crying hysterically and make futile attempts to save its life.

Ah @Disabrie22 did your lover arrive with a briefcase containing a shirt, a toothbrush, razor and a bottle of gin to cover all eventualities though?

I'm worried that my adored dog is on his last legs and have been sobbing hysterically all evening while swigging Chablis from the bottle, dressed only in a Thomas Pink shirt left behind by my polo trainer lover.