My evening as a rapacious capitalist

An isolated Provençal stone farmhouse from the outside; from the inside a comfortable English country house. Sunk into the garrigue a short distance away is an impossibly blue infinity swimming pool. My two grandsons came here direct from their tiny house in Basingstoke. Catriona was fortuitously asked to house-sit for ten days. I’m the wounded Master of the Revels. We have looked forward to their regular summer visit for months. The presiding unspoken feeling this time was that this might be the Master of the Revels’ farewell annual appearance.

The boys have rarely heard a controversial opinion and they rejoice in their grandfather’s outspokenness on various delicate subjects; and in his colourful language; and in his habit of appearing at incongruous moments, like an apparition, indoors and out, without a stitch on, saying: ‘OK. I’m ready.’ They rejoice in his passionate, incomprehensible, probably lunatic denunciations of their brave new world, then having to go and lie down in a darkened room with a fan pointing at him.