Spirit of reconciliation

I was lolling in a deckchair with a vanilla ice cream, watching the literary types in their interesting shoes pass to and fro along the cobbled path, when, 30 yards away, across the grassy courtyard, Martin Amis appeared in a doorway and lit up. I recognised the face instantly.

I watched him carefully. He must have been gasping. How many seconds, roughly, do ordinary smokers inhale for at each visit? One second? Two? With Martin Amis I counted up to five. He sucked the guts right out of his fag in about four goes. The last time I saw anyone attacking a cigarette with as much boggle-eyed addiction was on a long-stay ward in a psychiatric hospital in the mid-Eighties. Martin Amis paced up and down a bit, head down, deep in thought. Then he looked up, as though suddenly arriving at his senses, and took in the courtyard lawn, the knots of festival-goers in deckchairs, the food stalls, the bookshop, and the Great Hall, inside which he would shortly be interviewed in public by Philip Hensher.