The joy of a children’s choir

All afternoon I had been horizontal next to an electric fan, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and sometimes halfway between those two states. By six o’clock the temperature had relented from 38 degrees to a comparatively easier 27 and I heard ice cubes tinkling into a glass. Catriona called up the stairs, offering gin. I said I’d rather a pot of tea and that His Lordship would rise and come downstairs for it.

So I put on my shorts, went down and joined her out on the terrace for the six o’clock shape-changer. For a pleasant change Catriona had no evening invitations or work commitments. We sat side by side sipping and looking out over the village rooftops and watched the wheeling acrobatics of the swifts and martins. The cliff face on which our house is perched was in deep shadow but the village rooftops and forested hills as far south as the Massif des Maures remained under the sun’s cosh. Showers of sand and small stones dislodged by squabbling sparrows higher up the cliff pittered down on our heads. Not often do we spend evenings quietly together like this and we said we must do it more often.

Catriona read her phone; I shopped on my iPad for T-shirts on which the company would print a word or slogan of your own choosing. After hearing on the radio of such a thing, I badly wanted one that said ‘Ethics Advisor’. The doubtful could just bowl up to me in the street for free but antiquated advice on how to conduct themselves and what to think.

The T-shirt firm with the simplest-to-use website offered a discount on three or more. After a bit of thought for the second one, I wrote in the box: ‘Diversity trainer’ – perhaps the most repugnant phrase in the English language today.