A dear friend came to stay for two nights. Could I be persuaded, wondered he and Catriona, on the first morning, to venture out to a restaurant for lunch?
Descending the stairs to welcome guests these days takes a bit of effort. Bare feet, boney ankles, flapping pyjama bottoms; the guests look up in fascinated horror as the anchorite wobbles down the creaking wooden steps attended by importunate flies with his revelry face on. They have even stopped insisting how well I look. I might last an hour in an armchair in the sitting room, refusing alcohol, before exercising an ague’s privilege, excusing myself, and returning to the horizontal upstairs. Since my last trip to Marseille in the taxi three weeks ago for treatment, the farthest I’ve been is to the composting bin to scrape in leftovers and usually contemplate for a moment the insatiable forces of putrefaction.
But my friend is a wonderful man who had driven 14 hours in spray from Yorkshire to come and cheer me up. His peerless impression of Marlon Brando’s judicious Godfather is all it takes. I said I would put on my medals and give it a try.
It was a day of sparkling sunshine. I felt far from well. Wellness now seems as remote and unlikely to me as Arthurian legend. I showered and shaved and put on a green Fred Perry and clean pair of Levi’s and topped these off with a Peaky Blinders cap. In the bathroom mirror the overriding impression was a praying mantis in a funky hat.
They had chosen a mid-range restaurant enclosed on four sides by vines, which run right up to the terrace edge giving the delightful impression, in full summer, of dining in nature’s abundance.
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