My brother and I were taking a short cut through an alleyway and saw a copper coming towards us through the rain with a fishing rod in his hand. My brother is also a copper, though currently taking time off work for an intensive course of chemotherapy. He knows all the older coppers in the
Repatriated after two months sur le continong, I walked down the sunny high street marvelling at English cheerfulness. A poster in the window of Lloyds bank showed two young chaps hugging joyfully below the words ‘He said yes!’ And a man loitering beneath these newly betrothed I recognised as my great friend Tom. When I
My joints were aching suddenly and unaccountably — fingers, wrists, elbows, knees, toes — so I cried off the dinner invitation, volunteering instead to pick up Catriona and her lovely daughter, who was staying for a week, at around 11 p.m. At ten, Catriona rang. Had I forgotten? She sounded a bit squiffy. No, I
After circuiting Spain by train, I went east to Italy, stopping on the way at the French border town of Menton. Until the first world war, Menton hosted an English colony of 5,000 residents, two Anglican churches, a lending library and an English-language newspaper, the Monaco and Menton News. The dry, sheltered climate also attracted
In Spain, I stayed in youth hostels in Barcelona, Alicante, Almeria and Seville. But that first hostel in Barcelona, where the manager got me totally stoned as part of the check-in process, then took me out to a huge dancehall, where about 2,000 Catalans were throwing shapes to a fantastic reggae band, remains the most
All told, I find that in the last week I’ve slept with a Chinaman, three black women from the United States, four South Korean women and one South Korean man. I slept with the South Korean man first, for two nights running, at the Chameleon Hostel in Alicante. Joon-woo and I shared a 9’ by
I stepped off the train in Barcelona at 7.30 in the evening and followed directions to the hostel. The February night air felt almost balmy. I found the street easily enough — a busy thoroughfare of bars and independent shops. The hostel entrance was an ancient door in the wall. Next to it was a
A deep frost in the winter of 1821–22 killed the orange trees in Nice. The Anglican minister to the English colony, the Reverend Lewis Way, appealed to his congregation for relief funds to provide work for redundant orange-pickers. The money raised was spent on the construction of six miles of coast road, the redundant orange-pickers
Dr Ivan Mindlin was the in-house casino doctor at the Stardust in Las Vegas in the early 1970s. Mention any of the main characters in Nick Pileggi’s true-crime classic Casino: the Rise and Fall of the Mob in Las Vegas and the Doc knew them well, including the central characters Lefty and Geri Rosenthal. The
Dr Mindlin called. I needed cheering up? If I fancied a week in Antigua as his guest I should be at Gatwick airport by 9 the next morning. I packed in 15 minutes, caught the last bus to Nice, flew to Gatwick. Next day he flew us to Antigua and we checked in at an
‘If life is a race, I feel that I’m not even at the starting line,’ I said to the doctor in French. (I’d composed, polished and rehearsed the sentence in the waiting room beforehand.) She was a sexy piece in her early fifties with a husky voice. She listened to my halting effort to describe
Our friend Anthony was reportedly dying and a party of four drove over to the nursing home to say cheerio. The journey across deepest Provence was an hour and a half each way and we went in my old Mercedes. I fixed my attention on the badge and the twisting road beyond it, rhythmically chewing
Still depressed, or, as Matthew Arnold put it, ‘the foot less prompt to meet the morning dew’, I got out of bed one afternoon and exchanged the soggy Devon hills for the tower blocks of Canary Wharf. I went at the invitation of Dr Ivan Mindlin, orthopaedic surgeon, Las Vegas casino house doctor during the
On the Monday before Christmas, the black dog came around again and I couldn’t get out of bed. I lay all day staring at the wall. Depression has little to do with sadness, I think. It’s blankness. The same thing happened to me about 15 years ago. I was like a prize gonk for the
I drew back the curtains. Yet another absolutely still, sunny day. Early-morning mist lying in the valleys. An echoing report of a distant hunter’s rifle. Another day in bloody paradise. But I was leaving it. After breakfast I was driven to the bus station. ‘Would you like to do me?’ said the young woman behind
We’re driving east, destination Grasse. Hairpin bends circling oak-clad hills. Autumn gold and scarlet. Exciting cambers. Blinding winter sunshine. The radio tuned to France Musique. A virtuoso Latin jazz trumpet. A bit poncy but it’s better than nothing. We’ve been talking and not talking. Now we’re talking again. She asks me if I like the
My mother is a bore magnet. They travel from miles around to sit in the chair opposite hers and tell her every last detail of their lives in a protracted monologue and then they leave. It’s like a surgery. One after another they appear at the door, bursting with a narrative of their incredible lives.
Six months ago I bought a garden chair on eBay. When I went to the address to pick it up, the bloke drew thoughtfully on his fag and said did I want a child’s folding snooker table, balls, cues and a little brush for a tenner. At the time, my six-year-old grandson was watching a
The day after the American people applied a very welcome touch on the brakes to the Enlightenment juggernaut, I went for a walk with my brother, who the day before had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Which is a crying shame because three years ago, after I had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, he had
I didn’t fancy the hotel breakfast, so I wandered into Arles old town looking for a café. The weather and the season had changed overnight. The day before had been hot, golden and still. This morning an icy wind was yanking the last of the dying leaves from the plane trees and my thin canvas
