Patsy would have just ignored Rishi’s cigarette ban

On Monday night, still shaken from the weekend’s news, I went to a small dinner in the basement of a charming restaurant in Chancery Lane, with fellow supporters of the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). The brave MSF doctors and nurses are rather like fire-watchers in their turrets, scanning the world for where they are needed next before diving into danger at a moment’s notice. No war zone is too perilous. They have been entrenched in Gaza for years and are used to functioning under the most difficult conditions. This week, they had to work out of tented operating theatres, erected between bombed-out ruins, because ambulances cannot be used because of the risk of aerial bombardment. The doctors report without fear or favour from their locations, which are often riddled with disease, short of water, in semi-darkness; they are impartial but not afraid of speaking out. I see these people as superheroes, marching unarmed straight into the black heart of battle to save lives.

In the back streets of south Lambeth, a mimosa tree is in full bloom. Walking to post a letter (which had missed the 7 a.m. collection time that day) the scent suddenly stopped me in my tracks. Mimosa was the spring smell of the south of France. Returning from a modelling trip in Cannes in 1966, I bought a huge bunch at Nice airport and carried it back to the fourth floor flat in Earl’s Court which I shared with three other girls. Back then, treasures like these could only be found in their place of origin: the sweet froth of mimosa meant you had been to Provence; rosewater, the Middle East; Mary Jane cigarettes showed you had returned from the States. In those days, you never smoked the cigarettes of your own country.