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During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets Bleus is a rectangular breeze-block bungalow perched on the side of a hill. In front of it is a tiled south-facing terrace resting on concrete pillars. The terrace looks over the tops of the trees that grow out of the valley floor, and further out over a commercial vineyard, and then to a distant line of oak-forested hills. Our nearest neighbours are a Dutch couple who live in a pretty old property a quarter of a mile away and high above us, currently on the market for €1.2 million. Kukor

The flight from Gatwick to France was cancelled and there was no prospect of another for three days. Paddington station was closed and the road to the south-west of England and home was impassable. Gatwick airport railway station was in chaos as train after train in both directions was cancelled due to snow. Then a friend came to the rescue and offered her flat in south London until I could book another flight. A train to Clapham Junction then a bus would get me there. The keys were in a key safe attached to the rear of the porter’s lodge. A rogue northbound train arrived and everyone jumped on irrespective

Earbuds in. Speed walking to Grant Lazlo’s ‘Heard It Through The Grapevine’. A corridor, a left fork, a moving walkway, a rack of free newspapers — from which I extracted an Evening Standard without stopping — and here, sooner than I’d imagined, was Gate 52. It was a quarter past five in the evening. The Gatwick to Nice easyJet flight was scheduled to take off at 17.40. Looking through the plate-glass windows, I could see that all vestiges of snow had disappeared from the runways, which were dry and lit by evening sunshine. The cross-country journey to Gatwick last Wednesday had begun at 9 a.m. in a blizzard in Devon.

Poperinghe, Bailleul, Wytschaete, Gheluvelt, Ploegsteert, Messines, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele. The other week I grandiosely claimed that I have been reading about the first world war, on and off, all my life. What I ought to have added was ‘with little or no understanding’. Because it wasn’t until a fortnight ago, when I bought a 1916 Ordnance Survey map of Belgium (Hazebrouck 5A), and consulted it while reading Anthony Farrar-Hockley’s account of the First Battle of Ypres, that I began to fix these blood-soaked villages in my mind. The Second and Third Battles of Ypres were disputed over a few square miles. Stated objectives might be a slight promontory or a smashed

My hangover was what the great Kingsley Amis describes in his Everyday Drinking guide as a ‘metaphysical’ hangover. Apart from the usual feeling of being unwell, stealing over me was that ‘ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future’. Amis’s remedy was to read the final scene of ‘Paradise Lost’, Book XII, lines 606 to the end, ‘which is probably the most poignant moment in all our literature’. Otherwise he recommends battle poems, such as Chesterton’s ‘Lepanto’. But now the random selection of images and scenes recollected from the previous evening paused on a new and particularly

I’m cooking almost full-time for my poor old Mum and learning on the job: shepherd’s pie, roast pork, cauliflower cheese. I’m slaving over the stove and recipe book for hours and she hardly touches any of it. ‘Come on. Eat up. Do you good,’ I say, not unconscious of the role reversal. The other day I tried a slow-cooked beef casserole. The BBC website advised browning the meat first. Sheer political correctness. I simply lobbed the ingredients in a pot, poured on the boiling water, shoved the pot in the oven, got in my car and drove to the pub. About once a week, I drive over to my petrolhead

I picked up my grandson from his mother’s flat and noticed the change in him the second I clapped eyes on him. He was taller than when I had said goodbye to him a month ago, and his spirit seemed more conscious of itself. I also noticed that my devotion to him (lately inviting criticism as being excessive) was as strong as ever. Alone with me in the car, he was reluctant to speak. The circumstances of his life have changed in the past few months — new home, new school, new friends, new town, a different parent — and I wondered if he was defeated by it all. We