My oncologist has a new weapon in his arsenal

‘We’re at war!’ said the taxi man as I installed myself for the long drive to Marseille. I put a fist to my mouth and tooted my imaginary bugle. But world war three – as he saw it – was no joking matter. My tootling bugle irritated him and his voice rose by a querulous octave. Didn’t I realise? Everything has changed since this morning! European politics had changed! French politics had changed! Who was now going to vote for a political novice like Zemmour, for example?

Horizontal in its dashboard holder, his smartphone was showing a three-cornered TV debate on a rolling news channel. He turned up the volume. Everyone was yelling at once, including the presenter. He turned the pandemonium down a bit. And thus we sped down the outside lane of the A8 motorway, driver and back-seat passenger leaning forward, glued to the tiny television screen.

The presenter restored order and gave the floor to an old man who spoke gravely and in measured terms. The taxi driver flapped his fingers at me as if he’d burned them. In other words, the man now speaking had a reputation in France for a red-hot intellect. What this guy was saying I don’t know. On the telly or the radio – shame on me – I can’t follow it even when they are speaking gravely and in measured terms. But it’s no great loss. The French national conversation on the mainstream news channels is strangely much the same as the British one, and as pedagogical.

At Marseille the driver dropped me off at the usual hospital entrance and I took the usual lift to the first floor and gave my name to the same hard-faced woman and chose the same orange waiting-room chair.