Diary of a Monagasque Diva

Wednesday:

• Board flight for Nice, Cote d'Azur. Sit with the voice of British Broadcasting, who bellows beautifully, and one of the sport's finest technical writers, who has been drinking (well it is afternoon).
• Collected from airport, driven direct to the heart of Monaco, right in front of the casino, with its lights and palm trees, and water features.
• Immediately hed to the port, for the launch of the new Subaru. Am given furry hat and other PR presents.
• With cap in hand, we proceed to the more upmarket yacht club for the launch of the Citroen team. Girls with tight tshirts and LCD displays saying Kizz Me hand out energy drinks and cigarettes. Men in suits hand out delicate pastries and pour wine with deft flicks of the wrist. The place bustles, men talk into cuff links, the prince pushes me, and his bodyguards glare. It's my brush with royalty. Amidst much air kissing, I poke someone in the eye with my glasses, step on a mini-eclair, and drool over a new photographer.
• We lose our car in the carpark. I wait 58 minutes for a train rather than pay forty Euro for a 11 km taxi ride. I take the wrong directions for hotel and walk noisily with the pesky Samsonite on wheels through tiny backstreets of Beaulieu sur Mer at one am.

Thursday:

• I wake to bird song, blue skies, orange trees, the sea, and men renovating pale yellow houses with faded shutters. It is bliss. I breakfast on the beach, smooth stones underfoot, the sea spraying salt in the air, the mountains looming impossibly above me, the gentle ting ting of yacht masts in the background.
• Much air kissing, greeting and meeting, Welsh TV crews, Russian press officers, Hungarian photographers ...
  
• Lunch catered for at the port. Dinner with too too young boys.

Friday:

• Breakfast is rich almond croissants in the sun.
  
• Coffee at the famous Cafe de Paris.
  
• Shopping in the Metropole Plaza; the world's gliziest centre commercial.
• Lunch catered for.
• Much strutting around wearing sunglasses and perfecting the enigmatic smile.
• Aperatifs on the port, speaking Italian.
• Two sumptuous baths
• Long walks through empty streets looking for a restaurant where it won't be noticed that I am alone.
  
• Dinner in an alley way scoffing Thai food from a container. How the mighty have fallen.
  
• I watch three episodes of Sex and the City (a programme I loathe but it's more tolerable in French) and cry when Samantha gets cancer.
  

Saturday

• Shopping in Zara and FNAC (practical but certainly not decadent)
• Lunch catered for.
• Superfluous strutting, pouting, sunglass wearing. Both the 'bored and disinterested' and 'eyes-right through your soul/heart /clothing' stares are perfected.
• Drinks in local bar, drunk on two wines. Phone number given out to local boy in heat of the moment, who sneaks a cheeky bisous.
  
• Dinner at the well known Bambi's.
  
• Late night laughs with Germans, Norwegians and Swedes. Rejecting calls of local boy.
  
• My room buddy snores. It ain't all Diva...
  

Sunday:

• 9am meeting in a well-kitted motorhome.
• Press conferences.
• Lunch catered for, Italian.
• Afternoon nap.
• An hour of pampering and preening. I walk out, hair fluffed and draped, in slinky satin, and kitten heels, lips glossy, stare both dis-interested unless interested, pout perfected. Even the doorman at the Metropole turns his head. Until I stop at the bus stop. I don't pay 12 euros for a two km ride no matter what city I am in.
  
• Dinner at the Marriott.
• Private function at Stars and Bars with the events winners.
• Dancing and drinks with the boys.

Monday:

• Get home at 5am.
• Get woken up at 8am.
• Feel like shit at every hour.
• Lunch at Tip Top with the Finnish mafia, surrounded by old school Grand Prix posters.
• Coffee at the Cafe de Paris surrounded by Ferraris we don't know the models of and Porsches that look tacky in contrast.
  
• Panadol from the Airport pharmacy surrounded by ringing in my ears.
  
• Sunset over Nice as the plane takes off.
  
• Rallye Monte Carlo; the last one for me, over. Sentimentality is evaded by hangover. Good move.