I flew from Marseille to Gatwick, rode the Gatwick Express to Victoria, and walked down the thoroughfare of Victoria Street eating a Marks & Spencer egg and tomato sandwich. In Victoria Street, I bought a shirt, pattern of flying ducks, from the House of Fraser selected menswear sale, to replace the sweat-soaked one I was wearing. Then I cut through the passage leading to Palmer Street and dropped in for an unpremeditated haircut at the Pall Mall barbershop. The chap who cut my hair was lively and talkative.
Where had I come from today? France, I said. France? He didn’t like France. He’d tried it a few times but France didn’t agree with him. He just couldn’t get on with it. And what were my plans for the rest of the day? A few drinks outside the Two Chairmen pub, I told him, then a weekly paper’s summer party. Which paper was that then? I told him.
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