Jeremy Clarke

The three of us — me, Catriona and her daughter Skye — were having a wash and brush-up before going out for a meal ata restaurant in the village, when we learnt that President Macron’s smooth dishonest face had just addressed the nation on TV and told it that he had ordered bars, cafés and restaurants and all places of entertainment to be closed until further notice. The news both exhilarated and disappointed: real life had begun in earnest but the bars were shut. Skye assembled a round of gin and tonics and we three settled down in a row with our feet on the coffee table to make our own evening’s entertainment, the first perhaps of many.

The greater the enervation, it is said, the greater the appreciation of a work of art. There was no place in Mme Benoit’s energetic life for art, if the austere interior of her huge consulting room was anything to go by. Human dynamos don’t need pretty pictures to look at. On a tiled floor the size of a tennis court were metal shelving racks filled with cartons of various sizes and loose piles of documents. The decorative theme of her workspace could be described as ‘warehouse’. The only nod to domesticity was a sink in one corner. This was my second visit to Mme Benoit in as many years to describe symptoms of a suspected urine infection. And once before that I had sat at her desk and told her that life had lost its savour and I felt cast among the flints.

On a hard chair next to the waiting-room door, I sat for an hour defusing thoughts of my own demise, if all else failed employing conscious untruths. As is the custom here in the hot sweet south, a person entering a room greets it. Being nearest to the door, and the first encountered face, I felt responsible for setting the tone of the waiting room’s responses. Interrupting my morbid sophistries, I returned each new entrant’s greeting in a spirited, democratic, welcoming manner. In this I failed as usual to sound that exact native demotic note and suspect I came across rather as a psychotic waiting for his monthly depot injection. There were five before me waiting to see the doctor.

Joyce Marriott of Pyrton, Oxford, has written a letter to the Times on the subject of how a person’s imagination can be unduly influenced by one particular film. The film Old Yeller, she says, had such a powerful effect that for the past 30 years she has devoted her life to animal welfare, dogs particularly. ‘Such is the power of movies,’ she concludes. Although I haven’t seen Old Yeller, I agree that a film can sow seeds in the imagination which prosper and flourish and eventually overrun it.

Seven round the table for dinner. Wild mushroom risotto. I was told to sit next to Michael. Good. Michael makes Palissey ware, which is to say ceramics made in the style of the 16th-century French potter Bernard Palissey. A typical piece of Palissey ware is a platter decorated with three-dimensional casts of snails, snakes, frogs, lizards and fish forming a glazed aquatic or reptilian menagerie. The casts are made by placing a mould around the freshly killed or expired creature. The realism achieved is startling, even slightly shocking. Michael is always on the lookout for undamaged reptile corpses. He also collects 18th-century champagne bottles and probably knows more about old glass than any living person. His knowledge is so comprehensive that I would say he probably needs help.

Last Tuesday a Mistral wind blowing across the Bay of Angels jerked the plane all over the shop as it circled to land. The French lady in the next seat but one to mine vomited raucously and copiously on the carpet and a speedy boarder sprinted for the toilet. A second before the wheels should have touched down on the runway at Nice, the pilot had second thoughts and accelerated the plane back up into the air. Afterwards he came on the loudspeaker to explain. Most surprising of all was the distinct tremolo in his voice. Five days later, flying in the other direction, our touchdown at Bristol in the gathering Storm Ciara was accomplished at the first attempt, but jarring buffets of wind on the approach made we adults secretly brace ourselves and the infants wail.

I’ve no interest in food. None. But for the three other journalists on our press trip, eating was a consuming interest. In one Bahamian restaurant after another, I sat while they examined each other on their knowledge of this or that London or Bangkok or New York restaurant or lovingly described memorable meals. Celebrated chefs’ careers were discussed with devotion. When a dish was placed in front of them they photographed it and posted the image on social media. (Their mobile phones were as integral to dining as knives and forks.) Between meals they described how uncomfortably empty their tummies felt; after meals how uncomfortably full. They were gluttons, but saw gluttony not as a sin but as a virtue and a mark of cultural sophistication.

There are no stairs or escalators to take you up to Terminal 4 from the underground Heathrow Express platform. Beyond the ticket barriers are four lifts, summoned by a single button. As lift buttons go it’s a big one, about three inches square. As I advanced, finger outstretched, I thought of the tens of thousands of forefingers from all over the world that have pressed that button since people started dying in China from what my Sun newspaper graphically calls ‘snake flu’. I withdrew my finger and stood aside: let someone else risk pressing this virus capital. Two seconds later a smartly dressed woman marched up and jabbed it without compunction with a scarlet fingernail. I stayed overnight at a hotel close to Terminal 4. On the television news: glad tidings.

For the last four years of her long life, this upstairs room and this magnificent sea view belonged to Mrs Lock. Mrs Lock never fully understood why she was living here and I’m not certain she knew who she was either. She had thick, strong legs and was prone to delightful auditory hallucinations, including pealing church bells, heavenly choirs and gentle rain. ‘Is it raining?’ she would ask with incredulity on clear days. After a long, hard-working life, Mrs Lock could never accept that she no longer had responsibilities. ‘Any duties?’ she’d enquire anxiously a dozen times a day. Evenings, I might glimpse her through her open door in her nighty, praying on her knees like a child. The room is unoccupied now, the furniture gone.

Last night I watched a boxed set. Parade’s End is a small box set as box sets go, and quite old, but my snobbish vow never to watch one is broken. The lead character, Christopher Tietjens, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is an old-fashioned Tory aristocrat. His wife and almost everyone else in the film takes against him, offended by his uprightness, his anachronistic virtues, his always being on parade. Everywhere he goes, he is subjected to calumny and abuse. Baseless gossip nearly ruins him. He weeps occasionally but refuses to lose his temper or defend himself. Apart from plucked staccato violins punctually underlining the lighter moments, I enjoyed every moment of it. I am one of three siblings. Our mother died in September. She prayed for us impartially all of our lives.