We have a gardener, Philippe, who comes once a week. He lives in a ruin a little way down the cliff, which he is carefully and sensitively restoring using traditional materials and techniques. Philippe is in his late twenties, single, tall, slender, beautiful, hard-working, ambitious, educated, courtly, gentle, speaks good English and has a ponytail
I’ve swapped my carer’s tray in Devon for a barrow and spade halfway up a cliff in the south of France. Right next door to the modernised, carpeted cave in which we live is a concealed cavern, home for hundreds of years to troglodytes (the ceiling is black with soot from their fires) and their
I said my goodbyes and went outside with my trolley bag to wait for the taxi. While waiting, I looked across the sheep field at the sea. The wind direction had changed from due east to south-west and the surface of the sea, formerly turbulent, was placid. For the past ten weeks I’d been my
Does the BBC suppose that it will convert the public to a belief in equality if it does not, in its heart, believe in it itself? Unlike the genial guidance of wartime propaganda, this current stuff feels like snobbish contempt. Of course no one forces me to watch state television, and apart from snooker, darts,
Standing in a messy kitchen at the tendril tip of a county line at three o’clock in the morning, Trev was applying his concentration to the intricate business of washing the coke in a dessert spoon with acetone and a lighter flame. When the impurities had burnt away, Trev goggled with incredulity at what remained
My fifth week confined to barracks as nurse, chief cook and bottle washer. I drive to the supermarket about twice a week, otherwise my horizon has shrunk to a vase of cut daffodils on the kitchen table, and through the window a fluorescent orange football in the garden with the grass growing up around it,
To begin with it was mice. The house was overrun with them. She saw them out of the corner of her eye shooting across the room. Then they became bolder. Instead of running away they ran towards her, menacing her. So she set traps and laid poison. I’d come home and open a linen drawer
My sister’s boyfriend is a solitary man and easily overwhelmed by another’s presence. On his rare visits he flits in and flits out again. On this occasion he was making his usual dash for the door when he saw me, remembered something, and handed me two battered old pocket diaries in that offhand, embarrassed way
Just before I left France, Oscar’s mum sent over a photo of Oscar in his classroom at school showing the camera two school awards. One was for ‘pupil of the week’, the other for general sporting excellence. His expression was a comic parody of being proud rather than pride itself. I’d seen him hardly at
‘The whole of my life I’ve had difficulty.’ I heard Sylvia say this through the door, which was slightly ajar. ‘Sometimes it’s absolute torture.’ I knocked and entered my mother’s small sitting room unctuously, bearing a tray on which were two gold-rimmed Royal Worcester cups and saucers, the cups filled with steaming, freshly poured Yorkshire
My first night back in Blighty, I sat all evening at the kitchen table drinking wine with a charming, courteous English gentleman stricken in years. (I’ll call him Bertie. He enjoys the column and wrote inviting me to visit him at his pile on Exmoor.) I’m partial to old-fashioned English gentlemen, relishing above all their
We drove down from the hills to visit friends of friends with a house by the sea and on the journey I experienced all the usual mixed feelings of a trip to the coast. On departure: the not unsnobbish excitement at the prospect of a day out on the glamorous French Riviera. On arrival: the
We were eight for dinner on New Year’s Eve: four men and four women with a combined age, I would guess, of around 500. A quarter of the company — two of the men — had been officially diagnosed as suffering from one form or another of dementia. We whose brains still neatly fitted the
The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as having a single bed, this small space was extraordinarily well equipped, with a wardrobe, huge fridge, sink, draining board, ironing board, microwave oven, kettle, two electric hobs, a set of saucepans and enough cutlery and
At the turn of the century, I started a diary. I’ve mostly typed it on old typewriters, bashing out a sheet of A4 like a hyperactive muppet, without giving any forethought to what I am going to say. The pleasure I get from the daily typed entry is partly mechanical. When the page is done,
I entered the cave house carrying groceries and panting from the climb to find an old hippie woman displaying rugs to Catriona. Evidently Catriona had narrowed her final choice down to the two spread out on the red floor tiles. She and the hippie were silently contemplating them. One was about six feet by four,
Three of us on a cold metal bench waiting for the bus. It’s almost dark. Winter arrived yesterday and we are frozen. Next to me sits a small, moon-faced woman wearing a brown beret. Her spectacles are missing an arm. She is wearing unlaced plimsolls with no socks, a thin black skirt and an anorak
Evenings, I sit in a chair facing the cave interior and Catriona lies on the new sofa facing me (and, behind me, the window). Neither of us likes telly much so we read. She is currently consumed by a biography of Gerald Brenan; I’m enjoying The Unfree French, which is a history of the German
The monument to this French village’s war dead is a plain white stone block with the head of a grizzled old French infantryman chiselled on top. His big capable hands are gripping the block’s edge, as though he is peering intently over the parapet of a trench. On Sunday we assembled around him to honour
Three years ago we were given a bag of skunk, Catriona and I, provenance Glasgow. It was one gigantic dried bud wrapped in polythene. Cannabis in any shape or form usually renders me paranoid, especially if I smoke it in company and there is conversation. I’ve come to hate it. The delusion is always the
