A lament for the foreign correspondent’s house – and his hospitality

Until January the foreign correspondent lived in a late-18th-century house with a vineyard, olive grove and vegetable garden close to the village centre. You’d go through a gate, then another gate, and find yourself suddenly in the countryside and being yapped at by Mary, the most spoilt and spherical spaniel in Christendom, and then the foreign correspondent himself would appear in front of his lovely old house with arms open to welcome you.