Low life | 21 May 2015 | The Spectator

From somewhere in the tree canopy, a nightingale song. The virtuoso trilling and warbling, the underwater bubbling, the teetering on the brink before the tumbling cascade. I’m wearing turquoise Speedo swimming shorts and a panama hat and lying on a terrace lounger. In my hand, a tumbler of the local rosé, one ice cube. The glossy paperback covers of R.W. Southern’s The Making of the Middle Ages — now discarded — curl in the heat. Mr Southern says that in the Middle Ages personal freedom was seen as resulting from a constrained will rather than a free one. I’m looking at the view and thinking about that. A fitful wind is churning the trees further down the valley. I adjust my panama to ventilate my bonce and wipe the sweat from my eyebrows with the heel of my hand.

The sun is insanely hot, even for May. I’m too enervated to carry on with Mr Southern’s terrifyingly learned account of the medieval mind. He writes with such absolute certainty that one can’t help wondering if his book wasn’t a cry for help. I’ve read enough of the medieval mind, anyhow, to realise that mine’s rubbish. And now it needs to make a decision. Should I take shelter indoors and make myself a cheese sandwich, or should I stay outside and go a bit redder? I am paralysed with indecision. Erotic thoughts intervene. I pour myself another glass of rosé to assist my postmodern mind in deciding which appetite to satisfy next. Expat entropy, it’s called, I believe.