Low life | 18 August 2016

I took the only spare chair on the terrace of the Modern bar, one of four bars on this Provençal village square. By repute, it’s the bar where the least snobbish of the villagers meet and drink. Rough, some might say. Old-fashioned ideas of masculinity and femininity are more clearly marked here than at the posher bars up the road. It was market day. Sixty or so locals, plus one Englishman — moi — occupied the steel-framed wicker chairs arranged around the trunk of a plane tree.

At the next table a sweet little girl in a pink kimono embroidered with flowers had a balloon attached to a small bat by a string. She was batting her balloon in a desultory, bored manner. She reacted to my loving smile by scowling and looked away. Six leathery old men were betting noisily on a card game with square plastic counters and swilling back glasses of watered anisette.