Nuns, a maquisard and the Devil’s Own Rum: a Provençale pilgrimage

Avid Spectator reader Mr Brown had endured the very strictest of lockdowns for family health reasons in Tunbridge Wells. Since March he had interacted only with delivery drivers, his wife and their two children. He was therefore quite unsocialised when he stopped with us for a night on his journey from Kent to the Pongo Delta in Guinea, where for the next 12 months he will be organising the security for a mining company trucking bauxite 200 miles through bandit country. I found him standing outside a village bar looking at his watch because I was an hour late. He heaved a shopping bag for life filled with booze and groceries into the boot of my car, urging that it must go into a fridge as soon as possible.

The previous evening I’d met an English expat from our village who had spent the confinement period wandering about in the vast communal forest behind his house.