Summer is the season most associated with the enjoyment of life. It’s when people forget their cares, down tools, and head for the beach to enjoy sunny days and sexy nights. That’s how it was for me anyway until I came close to life’s polar opposite – barely surviving two close brushes with death. So for me summers are now indelibly associated with a sudden end that I twice narrowly escaped.
Tearing off my soaking shirt, I stood bare-chested in the rain, feeling the same sense of mingled relief and ecstasy as if I were Caesar
The first close encounter with Mr Death came in the Dordogne. My wife, daughter, and I had hired a horse-drawn caravan to explore the highways and byways of that enchanting province. Apart from the difficulty of making our idle steed – let’s call him Dobbin – move any faster than a sedate plod, all was going well until the thunderclouds arrived.
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