The historian Sir Lewis Namier once said that in a drop of dew could be seen all the colours of the rainbow, presumably as a reply to those who accused him of writing more and more about less and less. However, it is definitely true that in the smallest interactions can be seen the temper of the times: in our case, the bad temper of the times.
I was waiting for my wife in a car park in France recently when I noticed that the car next to me was British. In the car, door open, was a little boy of eight or nine. He was extremely handsome, and had a heart- melting smile.
While his parents went shopping — for fast food as it turned out — he had been entrusted to the care of a man, evidently the friend of his parents, of about 40 and of quite transcendent vulgarity.
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