Vernon fancies this new age elfin-faced French woman who owns and runs a restaurant. She’s hard-working, she’s a reader, and she has a great library, he says. He would chuck his Stetson into the ring, he says, but every now and again she comes out with some bonkers new age or woke statement that makes him lose confidence in her intelligence.
Vernon doesn’t oppose new age or woke thinking because he is on the right. (He is at heart a socialist.) He opposes it because he thinks it is shockingly unintelligent. ‘Man,’ he says. ‘If you saw her library, you’d think here is one bright lady.’
I understand his dilemma, I tell Vernon, but why talk? Against this Vernon argues that he has arrived at a stage in his life where he values companionship and intelligent conversation more than he does sex. But who knows, he says? Maybe if he went along for the ride she might convince him that the unintelligent position on woke and new age ideas was in fact his scepticism. Which proves what an open-minded sort of fellow Vernon is.
The other day he rang me up. ‘How about rounding up them stogies for lunch at her restaurant tomorrow?’ he said. ‘She works hard on her chow but business ain’t a-happenin’. A table for six hungry cowpokes just in from the dusty trail would brighten up her day.’
Covid regulations have been relaxed here in France for a fortnight. I’ve eaten out three times since and already the novelty has worn off. I can think of other things I would rather be doing than sitting at a restaurant table talking twaddle. Like talking to my tomatoes. Like trying to copy some of Mick’s great harp licks from early Stones stuff.
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