The American publishers of my novel tell me to find "international equivalents" for Melvyn Bragg and Ann Widdecombe. The mind boggles. Diary
To the south of France to celebrate our birthdays and research (honest) the novel I'm currently working on, Azur Like It, a comic-romance-murder-mystery set on the Riviera. Thanks to tight publishing deadlines, the previous summers we've been here I've worked all morning in my hotel room. This time, I have an extension, so I'm actually free to be with my husband. He, however, is not free, having a prior engagement with the World Cup on the telly in the bar.
My birthday. During lunch at the Colombe d'Or I almost have a seizure trying to finish their famously huge hors d'oeuvre. The 15 small white oblong china dishes cover the table, each one containing something different. Boudin, soused herring, chickpeas, couscous, alternately arranged slices of baked aubergine and tomato, beetroot, red cabbage, stuffed courgette, cucumber in hollandaise sauce . . . and many more. All served with slices of charcuterie, a basket of whole raw vegetables and hard-boiled eggs, lest one still felt un peu peckish. Being from Yorkshire, where waste is sin, I'm determined to eat as much as possible. I have the additional excuse of being pregnant, although this is more like eating for 200 than two.
Afterwards, we stagger round the modern art collection at the Fondation Maeght. The temporary painting display suits my overfed state - most look as if Mr Creosote has exploded over them - but soft, what's all this being installed outside on the terrace?
Someone else from Yorkshire, I'm certain. A vast crane is wobbling into position over some bronzes which, despite having no titles or artist yet assigned, look familiar. Henry Moores? We go outside and watch the massive machine inch the statues into position. I make inquiries of a bespectacled man in shorts, who explains that they are indeed Moores, from Much Hadham, and he accompanies them round the world on their various travels. "You must know them like they're people," I remark, to which he replies that he jolly well should, as he made them in the first place. It turns out that he was one of Moore's two assistants, and a sculptor himself. A truly monumental birthday, in every sense of the word.
The south of France is rich, but particularly rich in eccentrics. We once had a friend, Robert, who had a magnificent, marble-floored Nice apartment and an equally magnificent, marble-livered capacity for alcohol. He rarely left for work without a bottle of pastis in his briefcase, and his idea of pudding was buying a family-sized chocolate mousse from the supermarket and emptying a whole bottle of Jameson's into it. Sadly, Robert no longer lives there, but plenty of other characters still do. My favourite is the owner of Antibes's famous Cafe Felix, celebrated former haunt of Graham Greene. Despite owning a goldmine of a position in the town - a peerless harbour-front spot - the old patron is magnificently impervious to its potential. He closes early in the evening (well before aperitif time), rarely exchanges more than a grunt with customers and phut-phuts around Antibes on an ancient Mobilette (often hung about with loo rolls) wearing whatever is least appropriate to the weather. A scorching June lunchtime last week saw him sporting a thick red jumper, a knitted woolly hat and his habitual suspicious expression. A less glamorous doyen of the Cote d'Azur can hardly be imagined. And yet the place would be the poorer without him.
Not all cafes shut as early as the Felix. There's plenty of opportunity to sit in the evening sun and drink in the atmosphere and the chilled rose. But good weather exacts a terrible price. One's bottom has scarcely hit the cafe seat when - under the uninterested eye of the establishment's owner - a weaselly duo with out-of-tune guitars appear and proceed to twang their way through "La Bamba", "Kalinka" and "Let it Be" (if only they would), with all the toe-tapping tunefulness of a cat being squashed in a door. We escape to a romantic outdoor restaurant but, even as we wind our forks round the first mouthful of pasta, yet another such minstrel appears. Mais quelle surprise! Barely has the first note of "Stairway to Heaven" been missed than monsieur le patron shoots out of his lair and orders the busker out of the square with a terrifying bellow. Riviera restaurateurs may seem largely indifferent to their customers' troubadour traumas. But there are clearly limits, even with them.
Just before I leave for France, my US publishers send me an "Americanisation" list of things they want changing before my latest novel, Fame Fatale, can be published in the United States. It's a revealing document. British words and phrases meaning nothing to your Yank in the street include "grotty", "slapper", "piles" (as in haemorrhoids) and "Ronseal tan" (as in Donatella Versace). Fame Fatale is a comedy about celebrity, but not all the famous people mentioned in it apparently resound across the herring pond; Melvyn Bragg and Ann Widdecombe, who feature in a scene at a literary festival, are among those requiring "international equivalents". The mind boggles.
Wendy Holden's novel Fame Fatale is published by Headline (£5.99)
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