If the truth be told, I feel a little out of sorts…

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day whatever it is in the heaven that is the South of France (© the various travel supplements of the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator (‘the Speccy’ to various right-of-centre fuckwits) and, perhaps, the News Statesmen on those days when the revolution is on hold and they feel guilt-free enough to acknowledge their middle-class or aspirational middle-class roots (‘I’m working class and proud of it’, a statement which, on only the most superficial analysis, proves itself to be complete bollocks). Day whatever it is and I am curiously out-of–sorts. I don’t really know why. I think it is the result of a number of things which are all conspiring to ensure I am not quite my usual jovial, devil-may-care self.

For one thing, where we are staying – it is a renovated house in a narrow alleyway of the medieval part of Caunes-Minervois – as, for me who is on holiday, one flaw. If it can be made sufficiently warm in the winter, and I imagine the temperature can drop quite a lot in these parts, it would be superbly cosy. But in the summer it is perhaps a little poky and, crucially, there is nowhere to go and sit in comfort, no terrace or courtyard or anything of that sort. And sometimes I should like to do just that, sit outside, perhaps with a drink, perhaps without one, and read or even just sit outside and do nothing. But there is nowhere, and nor is there anywhere nearby which might do the trick.

Then there is my brother who is curiously inert and, to my sheer surprise, tonight announced that he is ‘old’. I have two brothers and as I have never been close to my older brother, I have always felt close to this younger one. We both share an ironical outlook on many things, but whereas my cynicism is to a large extent a pose and at heart I’m just another sweet little pussy cat, his seems to have taken hold rather alarmingly over the past few years and especially this last year. He is an interesting chap and a fount of information – I won’t say knowledge as he, too, can be rather brimful of prejudices – but there is a lack of something there which I have long been aware of, but this year seems to have become more marked. I’ve noticed that he has no small talk, no chat. He can talk at length about many things but I’ve realised he never initiates a conversation of any kind, never asks questions, never talks unless he can talk about something.

Years ago, he told me that as far as he was concerned ‘life is just a question of filling in time’. A day or two ago, I reminded him of that and asked him whether he still thought so. Yes, he said, he did. He’s always been a solitary sort, and that was one reason why I persuaded him to come on holiday with me last year and why I suggested we should go away again together this year. Quite simply I wanted to get him out and about a bit, out of his rut, and I thought I had succeeded last year. But in a strange kind of way this year is different.

There was, for example, his rather startling claim an hour or so ago that he is ‘old’. While we are here and because of the lack of a terrace or courtyard in which we can sit, it has become our habit to prepare two very large gins and sit in the alleyway outside on two concrete bollards (pic to come). This isn’t quite as public as it might sound and is well in keeping with the Mediterranean practice of living more in the open, and as local French pass by as well as a variety of tourists, we wish each other bon soir as is the French habit. Each large gin will be followed by another large gin while whatever meal I am preparing (going on holiday like this is a chance for me to cook which I enjoy very much). Some of time he will scrutinise preloaded tweets on his iPod Touch. Then we might talk a little about this and that. Tonight, I don’t know how or why, he announced that he is ‘old’.

The point is that he is only 54, whereas I am 62, and although I don’t regard myself as a spring chicken, I honestly don’t yet regard myself as ‘old’. But he does regard himself as ‘old’. And this, as well as his otherwise almost totally solitary life, is disconcerting. I told him he should socialise a bit more, but in insists he has socialised in the past and has had enough. I suppose it comes down to how one socialises and with whom one socialises, but how, for heaven’s sake can, one be fed up with socialising.

. . .

The other odd thing is that increasingly I just feel like spending a bit of time on my own. I could happily sit in the sun somewhere for hours on end doing nothing at all but day-dreaming, but I would feel a heel informing him that I want to get away for a day to be on my own. So, of course, I don’t. The trouble is, I still want to. Incidentally, he doesn’t read this blog (as far as I know), and although my sister does, I don’t think there is anything personal I have written here which would upset her.

. . .

 There are two other things which have rather unsettled me, one of which has now been resolved, but I shall come to that in a minute. The first was the other night: I drink rather less than I once did, but the other night, my brother Mark and I had three large gins each, then I finished off a rest of the white wine I had used for cooking, and then – it was while writing the blog entry before this one – I had two glasses of pastis. And while we were drinking outside and then while I was writing, I must have smoked at least five, if not six, cigars. It became a very long night and I didn’t get to bed until very late, much later than usual here.

I knew I was not sober when I went to bed, but nor did I feel in any way drunk, although I was aware I had drunk to much. Then, at about, 3am, I woke up. I found I had been waking up at that point every night, but this night was different. I did not feel any chest pain, but I felt a growing, and physical, feeling of unease working it’s way up towards my neck. And my pulse was racing. This is it, I thought, the second heart attack. Sod’s Law, well, at least the French health service is efficient and - thank the Lord - I remembered to bring my NHS health card.

I talked to myself rationally and reminded myself that I was not feeling any chest pain and that a heart attack usually involved chest pain, but it all continued for several minutes until the sensation encroaching my neck abated. I lay quiely in bed for a few minutes, wondering what to do. I knew I had drunk rather too much and smoking cigars does no one any favours (though they do taste good), and then it started all over again. I took my pulse, and registered that it was about 120 beats per minute. I have gone far above that in the gym, but it shouldn’t usually be that when one is lying in bed quietly and then waking up halfway through the night.

Several years ago, in the early 1990s, I suffered rather badly from panic attacks (which can be extraordinarily unpleasant and which, before I actually had a heart attack, always convinced me that one was in progress or, at least, imminent). Bit by bit I persuaded myself that I was not, as I feared, about to suffer a second heart attack, but that is was somehow akin to those earlier panic attacks.

The trouble was that at the same time I was quite aware that I was – and possibly am – rationalising it all. The following evening I didn’t have a cigar and did not drink gin but just one can of lager, and I slept better than I have slept since we arrived. I have not had any gin or pastis since, though I have been back on the cigars. The bottom line is that it all very disconcerted me.

. . .

The third thing which managed to get me out-of-sorts was a text from my 16-year-old daughter asking whether she could go on a ski trip sponsored by her sixth-form college. She said that she would contribute from the money she is earning from her newly started waitressing job, but could the rest be as her Christmas present? The killer was the price: £899 for, what I later discovered, was just a one-week trip. We have funded other school trips for her, but none was anywhere near as expensive.

I spent the night mulling it over and decided that no, she couldn’t and that I would have to tell her. I wrote her an email saying as much, but in the course of it I also told her a few home truths: that she is in the habit of taking just a little too much for granted and that, for example, she has, despite my repeated requests, never bothered to haul herself off her sofa, where she half-watches TV, half-texts her friends and dabbles in a little Facebooking if she has the time, to walk the few hundred feet down the lane to drop in on my stepmother, who is an invalid and very much cherishes little visits. I told her that it might be no skin off her nose, but that old folk are touched by such attention, that even a short 20-minute visit can cheer them up enormously.

I was not unpleasant but not did I pull my punches. I then sent her the email, asking her to text me as soon as she had read it. The trouble was that I felt awful. When she was born, a friend who then had two slightly older children remarked to me that ‘we need our children just as much as they need us’, and boy don’t I know it. Life would be unbearable if I knew my children disliked me. So I feared that my email laying it out straight would achieve something but not least that she would hate me. And until I spoke to her this afternoon on the phone, that has been at the back of my mind ever since. Happily, it seems she has not taken that point of view (and happily my wife agreed with me that £899 for a one-week trip was far too much).

. . .

In some ways the purpose of this entry, mentioning my unexpected thoughts about my brother, my fears of suffering a second heart attack and my fear that I might lose my daughter’s affections, is a strategy of sorts to allay those fears a little more if possible. I’m sure most of you reading this have been there, too. But there again, there’s nothing much wrong with that and very little to loose except readers deeply disappointed that I haven’t rattled on again for the umpteenth time about what a dog’s dinner the euro has become. And on that note . . .

Beethoven, Scarlatti, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, S.O.S. Band, Purcell, Alexander, Pink gay and straight, belly port (roasted with onions, white wine and crème fraiche, and leeks), pastis, gin and surprising tourists everywhere – it’s all here. Oh, and I might play a little early Prince, just to round of the cultural experience. Read on (and get in touch, especially those of you in the more obscure parts of the world like Leicestershire or Durham. White trash is especially welcome – I’m nothing if not modern, liberal and enlightened)

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day whatever it is in the back-of-beyond-but-tourist-stricken Languedoc parish of Caunes-Minervois – ‘Minervois’ to distinguish it from the 1,001 other Caunes parishes here in the French Quarter of the glorious European Union – and in one or two odd ways I am relaxing a little more and wishing I – we, as I am here with my brother – had rather more than just another six days on holiday.

But last things last, as they say: my brother Mark has one of those little gadgets which are speakers for an iPod Touch, and we – lately I as he, at the time of writing, has now gone upstairs to watch German TV - have just listened, in order played, to the fourth, choral movement, of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, then Bill Evans playing his own composition Young And Foolish (which I can recommend to anyone dying rather slowly – that’s everyone over 40 – who wants to recapture the emotion of being young but doesn’t want any of the concomitant hassles), followed by Scarlatti’s piano sonata K466 in F minor (and that would be Domenico Scarlatti – there was a whole tribe of them but I am not familiar with the music of any of the others), followed by Purcell’s Dido’s Lament from – I think his opera – Dido and Aeneas, then Ry Cooder with Earl Hines playing Diddy Wa Diddy (or however it’s spelled and I don’t actually think there’s a definitive version of the spelling), then Chet Baker’s version of Autumn Leaves, followed by one of Miles Davis’s versions of the same tune and (now brother Mark has fucked off upstairs) the glorious S.O.S Band with Just Be Good To Me.

That finished several minutes ago and the album is still playing. And how, I hear some of you asking – though most certainly not all of you – can anyone who thinks Beethoven composed some of the best music ever, with his Ninth Symphony being some of the very best even bear to listen to the S.O.S Band? Well, sweethearts, I’ll tell you: it’s just as glorious, though in a very different way (apropos which Weekend Love is now playing and just to spite all the snobs, once it has finished I’ll play Alexander O’Neal’s track Innocent which is just as glorious. Then to persuade you innocent doubters that I haven’t totally lost my marbles, it will be Bach, Mozart or something entirely different – if I feel like it.

Which all gets to tell you: absolutely nothing. Great music to listen to is great to listen to whatever it is. I do so dislike snobs. As my brother has just come down to the kitchen, I thought I would play him Wicked Soul by Kubb. The rest of the album it’s on isn’t much cop, but this track is ace.

. . .

It’s a little late and tonight I’ve had three gins and a glass or two of Chardonnay. Unfortunately, there’s no wine left, so it might have to be a weak glass of pastis and possibly regrets tomorrow. I’ve now put on Karen Tweed, who I’m sure is not well known, but she is a superb accordion player. More great music, as much in keep with Mr Beethoven, Mr Scarlatti, Mr Miles Davis, Mr Chet Baker and the S.O.S. Band as anything else.

. . .

In keeping with previous nights, I did the cooking tonight (as I love cooking) and I roasted on of the most underrated pieces of meat known to man: belly pork. It is not difficult, though a damn sight cheaper than many other cuts. I made a sauce from the juices, a little of the Chardonnay and some crème freche, using the onions I roasted at the same time. The crackling was a little – er – burned, but tasty just the same. Served with roasted par-boiled potatoes i.e. not too roasted, and leeks sautéed in butter. And if the whole shebang cost more than a couple of pence for two, I shall be very surprised. Still holding off from the pastis – a spirit, which is not good news after gin and wine – but I don’t think I can hold off much longer. A cup of tea would do the trick, but what’s tea when there is a glass of – albeit weak – pastis to be enjoyed.

. . .

Mark rather surprised me tonight by something he said as we were sitting outside. It has become our habit, for want of a terrace to use for a pre-dinner drink, to sit outside in the very narrow alleyway on two bollards to enjoy our gin and me a cigar. And sitting there, in the alleyway, we are passed, every few minutes, but all kinds of folk, mainly locals who live hereabouts but also tourists, but French and Brist, but, as far as I can tell, every other nationality under the sun, to whom we both always say a polite and friendly bon soir.

We were sitting there when Mark announced that they all, the locals and tourists, probably think we are a couple of woofters (his word, not mine). And it was that which surprised me. Mark is both gay and my favourite brother with whom I get on, 99pc of the time, extremely well. I’m not gay (or at least not the last time I looked, but I do rather think these things are settled. I have never felt like a touch of rumpy-bumpy with a guy and I really do doubt that life has any surprised in store for me on that score). What surprised me was that Mark, who is now 54, should worry about such stuff. I should better add that the only member of my immediate family who reads this blog is my sister, who knows the score, and, as far as I know – with two exceptions – no one else who knows me reads it, either, and both of them – one a former colleague and friend, the other a guy who went to my school but who I have so far never met (hello, both) has never met Mark. So there is little chance that by writing what I am I am in in danger of embarrassing him, which I wouldn’t want to do, anway. The odd thing is that he makes loads of camp, gay jokes, yet doesn’t seem keen on anyone thinking he is gay. Any suggestions as to why?

LATER: Actually, perhaps I can make my own suggestion: I fell asleep last night with the radio on and woke at about 3.15 our time to a documentary about how gays are simply being murdered in Iraq. It was quite horrific. One guy told of being held at a checkpoint, then raped by nine policemen before being set free again. Sounds contradictory, but according to Iraqis interviewed, the blame for being gay attaches wholly to what they regarded as the ‘feminine’ partner. The police do nothing because, according to the documentary, many of them are in the various religious militias when they are off-duty. Generally  speaking , life for gay men and women in Iraq is utterly miserable from the point of view of the state. Ironically, gays were freer and less hassled in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and in Syria Assad dad and lad.

Things have progressed by several centuries in Britain and Western Europe, but it was only 50 years ago (these timespans don’t seem quite as large when you are, as I am, 102) when any kind of sexual relations between men were illegal. So maybe I should accept my brother’s point of view on this one and not see things quite so much through my own eyes. And my apologies to anyone reading what I originally wrote who felt offended. At first, I was going to remove it, but then I thought that not doing so and adding these few paragraphs might have more point, especially as many will not know quite how nasty and brutish life can be in some parts of the world for gay men and women. Africa is especially intolerant of lesbians some believe a rape or two will help them see the error of their ways. I don’t mean to be po-faced, but perhaps we in the West should count our blessings just a little bit more.

.  .  .

Talking of any suggestions, I always look at the Google blog stats to see how often the most recent entry has been read and where they are. So here’s a request: why don’t you – that is those three (see above) who haven’t already done so – make yourselves known and tell me a bit about yourselves. That request goes out to several readers in the U.S., several in the UK, and as far afield as Australia, Indonesia, Chine, the Ukraines and Russia. Come on, lad and lasses, get in touch.
One last statistic for our American cousins: Mark told me yesterday that he came across an interesting statistic: Mitt Romney and his backers are keen to do well in Ohio in the coming presidential election. Well, it seems that a survey of Republican voters there established that almost one in five of those surveyed are astonished that Mitt isn’t getting the credit he deserves for the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

On that note, I’ll raise my glass of pastis and drink a toast to all those glorious folk keen on introducing democracy to the rest of the benighted, undemocratic world: we’re glad we are safe in your hands. Perhaps bin Laden will do you a favour and have himself resurrected so that Romney can have another shot and this time get the recognition he deserves. Bon nuit (as they say in the more pretentious parts of North London.)

PS A late plea for all and sundry to listen to Alexander O’Neal and his numerous cracking good tracks. OK, so I’m an 80s freak but... Hearsay, Criticise, A Broken Heart, Never Knew Love Like This - fucking classic. What first got me hooked? If You Were Here Tonight - 24-carat bollocks, lovers’ rock crap. I love it. And I’m really not joking. Yes, Beethoven's Ninth, Bach's St John Passion, squeaky gate music and If You Were Here Tonight. It all fits. Somehow. And don’t get me started on Freddie Jackson. Fuck the 90s.

. . .

I posted the above and then read it through and started amending it. And then I thought it really did need a little more: Freddie Jackson? Alexander O’Neal? Beethoven, Scarlatti – and, I might add, Hildegard von Bingen, Schuman, Schubert, Haydn (especially Haydn, who was born to early in an odd sort of way), Mozart, Steely Dan, Teleman, Purcell, Vaughan-Williams, Dave Fiuczynski, Kid Creole, Johnny Winter, Dylan, Elgar, Delius, Shostakovish Pink et al – is the guy serious? Well, of course I am: music is music is music is music. And if you disagree and start coming the cunt about ‘serious’ music or any such nonsense I hereby officially ban you and your kind from ever reading this blog again. Ever.

. . .

Finally, a public service announcement: Is your partner missing? Has your bed been cold these past few hours? If you recognize the character below, please get in touch and we might be able to re-unite you.

Do I know how to be a person? Well, yes, I do, but it’s not thanks to Radio 4

Caunes-Minervois, Langudoc
The great thing about the internet, quite apart from giving me the chance to bore people the world over and not just in my immediate surroundings and social circle, is that when you are abroad you are able to continue listening to Radio 4. Wherever there is a wifi signal, whether here in Caunes-Minervois or the back of beyond in the Australian outback – I’m assuming broadband has reached those parts because the reference is completely hypothetical – all I need do is fire up my internet radio app (I use Tunein Radio on both my smartphone and iPod touch, but, as they say with one eye on the lawsuit, other apps are available) and within half a minute I can listen to the News At One, Just A Minute, Great Lives or, if I’m really bored and really have nothing better to do, the fucking Archers.

Here comes the first bucket of cold water: there is a certain British type – it’s insisted that we are all ‘individuals’ and that there is no such thing as types, to which I say nonsense, the world is full of ‘types’ – who will describe – usually herself, but not exclusively – as ‘addicted to Radio 4’ or some such nonsense. In fact, it is part of their self-image, and for the aspirants among them listening to Radio 4 is de rigueur if they are to have any chance of being taken seriously by the social circle to which they would like to belong. Well, I am not ‘addicted to Radio 4’.

(A few months ago, Radio 4 ran a series of utterly nauseating ads along those lines with all kinds of celebrities informing the world just why they ‘loved’ Radio 4 and why it was ‘essential listening’ and such an ‘intricate part of their life’. I describe the ads as nauseating because I would want to vomit each time I heard one. In fact, I did once, although to be fair the ad wasn’t the cause of my bout of vomiting but merely the catalyst. The cause was far too much cheap red wine).

I listen to the programmes which interest me and avoid those which don’t, of which there is quite a long list, very prominent among the being The Write Stuff, which has middle-class smuggery oozing from its pores and Saving The Planet (of Costing The Earth as they insist on calling is). But why, I hear you all asking yourselves, from the West Coast of the U.S. to the East Coast of the former USSR and all points north and south, is today’s rant about Radio 4 when the chap is sitting in the Languedoc and surely has far more French aspects of life to rant about? Well, I shall tell you.

Yesterday, I was listening to one of the Radio 4 programmes I do like, Great Lives, and it was about the film director Karel Reisz. The host was Mathew Parris, everyone’s favourite public gay (or one of them, the list is now growing ever since the Western World was finally persuaded that gays aren’t (a late edit: aren’t instead of are. Thank Christ for late edits. I might well have ended up in court) necessarily the Devil Incarnate) and one of his guests was Stephen Frears, one of our very own British directors who might be known beyond North London and BBC White City. And Mr Frears came out with a line which ultimately led up to this rant. Karel Reisz, Mr Frears informed Radio 4 land and its people, had ‘taught him how to be a person’. Do you understand what he meant? No, I didn’t, either, so I’ll repeat it in case your attention wandered there for a moment: Karel Reisz taught Mr Frears ‘how to be a person’.

For the rather more slow-witted among you, of which there are surely one or two, I should point out that ‘taught him’ is not meant literally. It’s more along the lines of ‘Frears learnt how to be a person from Mr Reisz’. And I’ll repeat the question: what the fuck does it mean? What can it mean? Of course, there’s the possibility that I am simply too thick to understand what Frears was trying to say. And, to be honest, I can vaguely glimpse what he might be trying to say, but that doesn’t make it any the less pretentious. Yet Radio 4 in particular and our broadsheets and many folk in general are apt to applaud such sentiments as ‘so human’.

Well, not me, squire. Perhaps I’m lucky, perhaps I’m one of the saved, but when it comes to knowing ‘how to be a person’, I find I have no problems whatsoever and need no lessons from anyone. I might indeed need lessons in other respects, for example, in ‘knowing how to be a bit more tolerant’ and ‘knowing how to be a little less irascible’, but not knowing how to ‘be a person’. No, dear hearts, it’s rather like falling off a log, and anyone who needs to be taught ‘how to fall off a log’ really is in trouble. Tune into Radio 4 is my advice.

. . .

Yesterday it was off to the Chateau Lastours just down the road, which is rather spectacular. It is, in fact made up of three castles, all of which were built on top of rather steep hills in the

The Chateau Lastours in Languedoc. Jewson's had a terrible time getting all the necessary up there, but they managed it   11th century, although they were demolished a century or two later and rebuilt on more or less the same spot when Languedoc finally became part of the kingdom for France and they were used to guard the kindgom’s southern frontier. This is ‘Cathar’ country (as big signs everywhere inform us), and there are a great many castles hereabout, of which I intend to see a few more.

My brother is a little less enthusiastic – ‘is it another bloody castle? We’ve already seen one, they’re all the same!’ – but if necessary I shall take off on my own. There is one particularly spectacular one about 50 miles south of us. Then, of course, there’s still Carcassonne castle to investigate, except that the hordes of tourists does the tourist trap surrounding it, which is horribly reminiscent of a slightly – but only slightly – upmarket Disneyland. Once expects a giant Mickey Mouse to appear above the castles, waving frantically and urging us all to buy as much tourist tat as we are physically able to carry off.

Day Three at Caunes-Minervois and not yet much to report, except that the wife of a former German president is trying to cope with rumours that she once earned her living doing tricks in a brothel

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day three of our two weeks here in the tourist-infested back of southern French beyond. I say tourist-infested, but in fact now - children back at school and Jez and Jess plus the little and not so little ones back on the treadmill (Jez works in IT and Jess is a part-time counsellor and homemaker) - the only sign of tourists is when Brit and Australian voices drift into the house as they walk past in the narrow alleyway outside. In high season, late June, July and August, I’m certain Caunes-Minervois is a certain kind of hell (unless, of course, you like going abroad and mixing almost exclusively with your fellow countrymen discussing exchange rates and where to get the best). There is, surprisingly, quite a number of Aussies her, though, of course, they are invariably retired and, coming from so far off, are here for three or four months rather than the mere two weeks I can allow myself.

All that sounds rather dyspeptic and, if so, it gives the wrong impression. I find I can’t help but send up Brits abroad because they are so send-up-able, but all the time I have to remind myself that I am Specimen No One: The Brit Abroad. Maybe there is subcategory: The Brit Abroad, genus Smartarse, sub-genus Conceited. Along those lines four lines by Jonathan Swift might be appropriate:
‘Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.’

What I am trying to say might not be obvious, so I shall add that I also take it to mean that the purveyor of satire all too often thinks that he is one of the redeemed few, that as he is able to spot and send up the foibles of others, he is in some curious way never guilty of any of them. Well, if that’s your view, dream on: we are all, or can all be, equally ridiculous.

None of which has included a description of the house, the town and the area. As for the area, I haven’t a great deal to say as both of our excursions have been in search, first of an Intermarche (my brother and I both like mooching around hypermarkets, although why I really don’t know) and the following day in search of a Spar. I can say that Caunes-Minervois is on the edge of a range of hills and so a little more interesting than its sister town Peyrac-Minervois which is well and truly on the plain which stretches as far as Carcassonne and beyond, a good 70 miles probably, to the sea.

The town is more or less in two parts: our house is in the medieval part and then there is more to its, straight streets rather than narrow winding alleyways, which will have been built in the 19th century. The house was renovated by a Dutch-born German who has lived here in France since he was two. He and his wife, who is German and grew up near where my German relatives lived, are hoping to sell it and renovate another. She is very nice, has a 16-month-old son and another child is on the way.

The house is narrow but four three stories high, with the ground floor being on two levels and the second bedroom in a kind of attic alcove above the third storey. There is a lot of climbing up and down stairs so it is always good to think ahead and take with you what you want when you move between floors or else you are in for another trip up or down to fetch something else. That probably doesn’t sound particular onerous, but believe me it can be irritating when you climb and descend the narrow, steep stairs several times in just a few minutes merely because you are going senile and your memory, to use the quaint euphemistic phrase, ‘isn’t what it once was’.

(Actually, I’ve noticed it’s become some kind of strategy of mine to claim to be far more feeble and ancient than I am. I suspect it is a kind of superstitious device to outwit life and to stave off the inevitable process, perhaps to defeat it forever. Some hope, so on that note I shall come clean: I am not old and feeble, my memory is still what is was (whether good or bad is thus quite another matter), I am fitter than many my age, despite the increasing number of cigars I smoke, and an enviable bonus is that I am quite, quite charming. You doubt it? Well, if you are between 30 and 60 and a woman, get in touch and buy me lunch and I shall persuade you within minutes. Charm? I wrote the book.

Well, so far that is it. Mark (my brother) and I are planning a walk somewhere or other today

A terrine au poivre like the one some of which I just had as part of my lunch now that we have finished lunch for me a salad of raw, thinly sliced leek and apple and olive oil, terrine au poivre, brie and fromage de moulis - what ever that is, but it was nice) to get a little exercise. Be back later.
. . .

By chance I’ve just come across a rather mysterious story and claims. It is that a certain Bettina Wulff née Körner worked as a prostitute in a brothel in Osnabrück called Chateau-Club and earlier Chateau 71. Now I’m sure there are many respectable women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who when younger earned their daily crust by opening their legs and providing other services. What makes the claims about Bettina Wulff more interesting is that she is the First Lady of Germany (although the Germans don’t use that term), i.e. the wife of the former German president Christain Wullf. Frau Wulff, who is said to be taking legal action again Google to try to stop it conducting searches using the terms ‘Bettina Wulff’, ‘escort’ and ‘prostitute’, has a star tattooed on her right shoulder.

Although this doesn’t condemn her in any way, it is a tad unusual (and in my books tacky). Her hubby is also not without controversy. He was elected president at the end of June 2010, but had to resign in February 2012 after coming clean about a €500,000 loan from the wife of a millionaire businessman. Not only did he initially deny accepting the loan, but at one point he left a message on the answerphone of the editor of the Bild, the leading German tabloid (which is, confusingly, a broadsheet) threatening to wreck his career if he published any details. That didn’t go down at all well. Now there is all this business with his wife possible past as a paid whore.

My initial reaction was ‘leave the woman be’. None of us is kitchen clean, although my past is a pure as the driven snow compared to those who sold their bodies for money, but we all have done things in the past of which we are ashamed. Then I looked up the biography of Christian Wulff and noted that he had been married before, in 1988, and fathered a daughter in 1993. He divorced his wife in 2006 and married his second wife, Bettina, two years later (when she was seventh months pregnant with their child).

None of us is entitled to judge others, but we are entitled to have our thoughts, and mine is that I never respect fathers and mothers who more or less abandon children when they divorce their spouse. Naturally, there will be individual circumstances and doubtlessly life with the soon-to-be divorced spouse became impossible (and I mean objectively impossible). But divorcing a spouse is one thing, divorcing a child - which is what it amounts to - is quite another. Whatever we say - or in our guilt choose to believe - about ‘how resilient’ children are, in my book it is total cobblers. A child 15 will find it very hard to be rejected, which is what it will seem like to him or her, and one does have to ask just what role Bettina Wulff née Körner played in the disintegration of her husband’s first marriage.

Given Christian Wullf’s political background - at one point he was even about to be considered as a the Christian Democrat’s possible candidate to become Chancellor of Germany - it is also not unlikely that his political enemies are doing their damndest to fan the flame of rumour of his wife’s alleged murky past. What truth there is in the claims remains to be seen. 

We’re here, but with a couple of irritating hick-ups

Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc, South of France.
First news from the holiday front in Caunes-Minervois somewhere in the glorious French quarter of the European Union, where even the dogs in the street are more charming and have more chic than our mangy old British dogs. My brother and I arrived here rather later than expected, but the house we are renting is very pleasant. Newly-renovated with imagination, the only drawback is that it doesn’t have a terrace of any kind, but as it is narrow, but on five floors, sandwiched in a very old part of town, there isn’t very much room for a terrace.

The journey was, unfortunately, rather fraught, partly due to an excessively zealous ticket inspector on the train to Gatwick Airport from London, partly due to my brother playing a prank which rather went awry and partly due to my satnav proving to be totally bloody useless in this neck of the woods.

We climbed aboard the Gatwick train at Clapham Junction to find that it was jam-packed with bright young things on their way to the Isle of Wight festival, all with bulky backpacks. We happened to have entered the train in a first-class compartment and started to make our way through to second-class (also euphemistcally known as ‘standard class’ - do euphemism fool anyone? And if they don’t, and I suspect they don’t, why do we bother using them?).

The train was so packed that I suggested we sit down and wait for the passageway to clear, but we were barely out of the station when what appeared to be the ticket inspector appeared with a sidekick and when he discovered we had second-class (i.e. standard-class) tickets, he immediately told us we had to upgrade. I pointed out that we were on our way to find space in a second-class compartment and that at that point it was impossible to move but he was having none of it and insisted that we would have to pay up. I refused and he said in that case he would have to call the police. I told him I would look forward to meeting them. At that point my brother, who dislikes confrontation, caved in and agreed to pay for an upgrade.

Later, I the real ticket inspector turned up and revealed that the chap we had encountered was in fact a Southern Railways ‘revenue protection’ officer who are overzealous bastards. If he had had his way, he would have declared the train ‘class-free’ given the crowds in it everywhere. The fact that the first chap was not a ticket inspector but a ‘revenue protection’ officer clarified something which had earlier puzzled me: I told him what had happened was ridiculous and that I would be getting in touch with his commanding officer or whatever they call them in the railways. What, I asked him was his name. He told me willingly and helpfully pointed out that I should also have ‘his number’ which was printed on his name tag.

This struck me as a little odd because he hadn’t otherwise been overly keen to assist me, but when I told him I would write to Southern Railways to tell them what an officious little cunt he had been, he was eager to make it as easy for me as possible. Why? I’ll tell you why: because he wanted his commanding officer to know what an officious little cunt he had been and would probably be praised for so assiduously protecting Southern Railways revenue. Well, fuck that: I shall now make a point of not complaining to Southern Railways and not telling them what an officious bastard he was. See how he likes that! Thinks he can get clever with me!

When we got to Gatwick, I happened to be in the corridor between two coaches talking to the real ticket inspector. So my brother collected our bags and my laptop and got off without alerting me we had arrived. He thought it would be a wheeze for me to have to carry on to the next station, which I had to. The trouble was that once, 20 minutes later, I had got back to Gatwick, I could see no sign of him or our bags anywhere on the platform. Thinking he must already have gone into the South Terminal, I went there too, and could still see no sign of him. Up and down I walked, closely scrutinising the queue lining up to check in to their easyjet flight, back to the other end in case he was looking for me, off to the information desk to get them to give out a Mayday announcement asking the little creep to make himself known, but none of it was of any use, and time was running out before we were due to board our plance.

Finally, I realised he might still be somewhere in the station part of the terminal and went back and got the railway information desk to ask him to make himself known. Sure enough, he had been waiting we me on the platform all the time and we simply missed each other when arrived for the second time. He was all excuses and explanations, telling me this and that and why he hadn’t told me to get off at Gatwick, but it was all bollocks. He knew it, I knew it, he knew that I knew it, and I knew that he knew that I knew he knew it. I’m just glad we get along well, because for about ten minutes I was bloody furious.

My mood was not improved, either, when we eventually did get around to dropping off our bags. I had checked in online but - apparently - forgotten to check in our two bags. That would have cost £16 had I done so earlier. As it was easyjet took me for a cool £50.