Catriona’s accident has made of us minor celebrities in the village

Three weeks ago Catriona was going to the village shop when a building site security fence fell on her. Wire spikes ranged along the top gouged three chunks out of her right forearm, two of which were too capacious to sew up. She was taken to hospital by the village firemen in their fastest van, siren wailing, lights flashing. The fence had toppled over once before that day, but the mayor, with whom the legal responsibility ultimately lay (the building site was a public work) put the blame on Catriona for walking too close to the fence, or perhaps existing.

Within this small Provençal village society the incident and the already unpopular mayor’s hot denial of responsibility became a cause célèbre. I can only assume this is why the patron at the permanently packed local restaurant reserved us a table for three at such short notice for Sunday lunch. The best table, too; situated in an unfrequented corner well away from the long shouty party tables and backing on to a side street with a cooling breeze.

Our favourite restaurant is also the locals’ choice. It’s a family-run affair with a menu of unpretentious country fare unchanged for 20 years. My grandson was down for his annual ten days and we’d come straight from the pool with damp hair and silly shorts and the deaf old mongrel bitch. The waiter ceased his trousers-on-fire acrobatics and darted over elaborately to greet us in turn with double kisses. In these kisses there was more than politeness — there was definite solicitude. Catriona  showed him her bright pink scarring. The waiter’s glance was polite rather than prurient. I loyally repeated to him an apt phrase I had fortuitously found in a dictionary of French slang: ‘le maire me fait chier’, which means, apparently, ‘the mayor really pisses me off’.