O frabjous day! My new tumour is just my old prostate friend

The day British media commentators were christening Rishi’s coronation as Britain’s ‘Obama moment’, French ones were calling the particularly horrible murder of a 12- year-old French girl by an Algerian woman staying in the country illegally as France’s ‘Floyd moment’. Gilles turned his phone to ‘landscape’ and we watched the TV coverage as we sped down the motorway. Lola’s funeral, live, was shown on one half of the screen and various sonorous old geezers in dark suits queued up in the other to say that the psyche of France had been so grievously wounded by the horrific details of the case that she would never be the same again. I didn’t actually hear the word ‘guillotine’ mentioned but twice Gilles turned to me and swiftly decapitated himself with his fingertips.

We were cruising down the A8 to Marseille for number eight of nine consecutive turns under the radiotherapy machine. I haven’t yet had my head cut off as part of my cancer treatment.