Sunday 9.15 am
I’m just about to get on my Vespa to ride 100 yards to the cafe for a coffee (I’m a lazy guy), when someone shouts: “Can you help me!?”
It’s ‘Sam across the Street.’
(That’s 90-year old ‘Sam: the man with the thickest head of white hair in the West’. Think of a poodle, or a baby sheep on his head).
“My phone’s in my car! It’s ringing but I can’t find it. Please can you help me find it?”
Incredibly, I’d just read a pop-up ad on my phone about an ‘amazing’ new product that ‘finds your keys, credit cards and your phone that have fallen down between your car seats!’
Trust me on this.
I walk over; he gives me the number of his phone.
I ring it on my phone.
I can hear it ringing as I’m bent down inside his car, sliding my hand down between the seats. It’s ringing!. Only it’s NOT ringing in the car!
“Sam!! ..it’s in YOUR pocket!” I shout.
Monday 2 pm – St Paul de Vence, South of France
I’m having lunch on the terrace of La Colombe d’Or.
A man at the next table leans over. “Hi I’m Tripp! Are you a Brit?” he asks in a broad American Boston accent .
“Yes, I certainly am,” I say.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Peter”, I say.
“Pete!? Hi Pete! I’m Tripp! ”
“Hi Tripp!’”I say.
“Pete! I’ve got to tell you about my nail clippers!”
As opening conversation gambits between two total strangers go, this could be a first.
“Pete, I flew to Nice from Heathrow yesterday and guess what happened!?”
“What happened Tripp!?”
“At Heathrow security I get stopped!”
“Gosh! Why, Tripp!? Did they think you’re a terrorist!? Or a Trump supporter!?”
“No!” he said.
“Why then!?”
Peter Rosengard
“My nail clippers Pete!!”
“Your what, Tripp!!?”
“My clippers Pete! My nail clippers!! They confiscated my nail clippers!”
“Tripp, that’s terrible!” I say.
“Pete, let me tell you something. I’ve been all over the world with those clippers! Never had a problem! Not once! From Bangkok to Belfast! Five years ago I paid £60 for them in a barbershop in your Jermyn Street !”
“£60!? For nail clippers Tripp!? Were they made of gold!?”
“No, stainless steel Pete. They were VERY good nail clippers.”
“Look at these nails Pete!”, he stretches out both hands, just missing my Loup de Mer poché sauce Mousseline.
I have to admit- they were very nice nails.
Tuesday
Breakfast 9:30 am
I’m here to write a new book and I’ve just remembered it was also here in 2011 that I had started on my memoir: ‘The Adventures of a Life Insurance Salesman’.
I’d rung my mother: “Mum, what was I like as a child?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t remember anything about you at all darling,” she said.
“What!? I’m your eldest child! your first born! You can’t remember anything about me!?”
“I’m sorry darling, but I was very busy looking after your father and the practice (he was a GP ) and also looking after the house and your brother and sister. But, I promise I’ll call you if I do remember anything about you.”
A week later she called.
“Darling” I’ve remembered something about you as a child!”
“Great! Fire away!”
“You liked to read the newspapers at breakfast!”
“Yes! Good! Go on!”
“No, that’s all! Goodbye darling.”
Wednesday 3pm
I get a WhatsApp from my sister Tabetha; she’s on holiday in Sicily.
I tell her about the time I sold life insurance to a Mafia hit man from Sicily: Francesco ‘The Strangler’ di Carlo.
“Whaaaat!!? Your insurance company accepted an application on the life of a Mafia hit man!? Where were their morals!?”
“He didn’t disclose it. He told me he was a wine bar proprietor in Surbiton.”
Sunday afternoon.
I fly back to London.
Arriving home, I can’t find my flat keys anywhere .
Then I remember I’d left them 10 years ago with ‘Sam across the Street’.
I call him. “Sam, I can’t find my flat keys. I think you have them somewhere.”
Five minutes later he texts me.
“Sorry, I can’t find your keys.”
One hour and half a dozen calls to locksmiths later, all closed for the Bank Holiday, and having emptied all my clothes onto the pavement, I find my keys down the side of one of the six zipper compartments in my Samsonite carry-on bag.
In the flat, I turn on Radio 4 just in time to hear Desert Island Discs guest Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Nobel Prize winning writer asked: ‘what’s the one thing you want to take with you on your desert island?’
“A pair of nail clippers,” he says.
- Peter Rosengard is a life insurance salesman and Comedy Store founder.
