Low life | 28 March 2019

I’ve swapped my carer’s tray in Devon for a barrow and spade halfway up a cliff in the south of France. Right next door to the modernised, carpeted cave in which we live is a concealed cavern, home for hundreds of years to troglodytes (the ceiling is black with soot from their fires) and their domestic animals. The floor is feet-deep in accumulated manure and debris that has turned over the years to a fine black dust. I’ve dug down to rock and now I’m working forward towards the door with three electric fans at my back directing the rising dust out of the cavern entrance in a stream of smoke.

It’s a filthy business. I spade the black dust into a wheelbarrow, then tip it over the cliff. Occasionally my spade turns up edible snail shells or the delicate skull of a small bird or a knuckle bone that once belonged, I imagine, to an etiolated cow. Once I’ve cleaned out the cavern, I plan to put in a wooden floor, plaster the walls with lime and turn the place into a traditional laser-lit disco and gin bar. Sometimes, coated in dust, I jig about in my hole and throw some shapes to try and get a flavour of the opening night. I’ll be playing a lot of northern soul and French electro-swing. The acoustics will be amazing. You’re all welcome.

I enjoy digging and barrowing. Give me a pick and shovel and a wheelbarrow and say, ‘Right, Clarke, I want a trench from here to here this wide and this deep and I want the spoil put over there,’ and if the digging is relatively easy and it isn’t pelting with rain I’ll enjoy doing it for approximately the first four hours.