3 June 2022 I spent the first year or so at home and most of it in my underwear. I shuffled up and down the stairs a couple of times and we had breakfast in front of the telly. We watched people decked out in their flags and hats and…

We had popped in at the English Church on Saturday for coffee, and in the library I had spotted a little volume of Hemingway short stories that looked just right for the beach. But I’m not a member, and I’m not down in Menton often enough to join. One of…

12 April 2023 Weds. Some little repairs. Aside from the cleaning and clearing of the shit-strewn cacti, I spent a happy hour up in the big orange tree handing oranges to H atop Fabien’s stout ladder and, wielding his extendible loppers, thinning out the branches, creating a bit of light…

We have boiled eggs, carefully tupperwared away yesterday morning as I triaged the contents of the fridge; we have a rogue ski jacket in the process of repatriation, temporary victim to one of those odd Displacements of Things that crops up with enough travelling and too much scope for experiment—in…