HERE, THERE & ELSEWHERE. Ladies’ brunch

“You can’t come!” I tell Bins. “It’s for ladies only! And anyway Muriel has only two tickets!” But in fact she has three. When Bins hears this, he puts up such a show of pouting and tugging on his moustache that we have no choice: he comes along. He wears his only white-on-white outfit — a chikkan kurta over white canvas pants — and pulls his scraggly hair back in a tight, neat plait. “How smart I look, huh?” he says, leering at his reflection in the mirror. “You ladies will have to fight off the other ladies.”

The event is a sponsored fashion show plus tennis match at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It’s in fashionable Newport, half an hour from Elsewhere. We get there just as a line is forming at the front entrance. Muriel has put her hair up and is looking stately in a white linen blouse and floral print pants. She is right at home amongst the other ladies, most of whom are dressed in crisp linens and white lace, with diamonds winking from their rings and earlobes, tanned calves and bare arms flashing in the summer sun.

I was expecting to feel Third-Worldy and under-dressed in my usual old black tee-shirt and tights but the crowd is remarkably non-threatening and friendly. Bins looms above us, beaming. He loves being surrounded by women. “The perfume!” he whispers in my ear, “The hair! The thighs!” I send a poison-tipped glance his way. Then we file into the grassy inner court, where sparkling white deck chairs have been arranged in a long oval. Attractive young men and women are holding long-stemmed glasses of gently fizzing mimosas and Bloody Marys. Soon the three of us are seated. Bins is at the end of the row, Muriel next to him.

Small eats are being passed around: tiny single-bite quiches, dried apricots topped with goat cheese and a walnut. A very young waiter with deep dimples on either side of his smile approaches us with a full tray of mimosas. Just as he reaches Bins, I think: what if he stumbles? Whereupon he does. The slender glasses topple over one by one, dreamlike, in slow motion. Even as he jumps up, Bins gets fully doused in champagne and orange juice. Five people run forward at once, with napkins and jugs of plain water, stammering apologies. The young waiter is wild-eyed with shame and crawls off to the guillotine.

But Bins is brilliantly good humoured about it all, claiming he has always wanted a champagne-flavoured shirt. We spend the rest of the morning watching models sauntering around in outfits by FILA and Brooks Brothers. We enjoy a tasty sit-down brunch with three ladies who are thrilled to meet a Frenchman with an Indian accent. We collect our goody-bag, which includes bracelets by Ani and Alex. We watch half a match of the Davis Cup quarter finals. We visit the excellent museum where we can ogle a hologram of Roger Federer. Then we go home, still giggling about mimosas-on-the-grass.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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