In which we wear white gold and nearly miss a worldcup match

If Part 1 was arrival and Part 2 was Versailles doing its Versailles thing, Part 3 is where the plot thickens: a covert operation forty guests deep, a golden anniversary, a farm in the middle of nowhere with a postcode (78980 Longnes) that sounds like a satellite designation, and a back that chose the worst possible moment to stage a protest.

The Dress Code Was Not a Suggestion

Briefing: be at the farm by 6pm sharp, dressed in white and gold, tell no one, especially not the guest of honour. We treated this with the seriousness of a heist film. First stop, a hotel a quiet 15 minutes from Versailles, for the essential pre-op checklist: check in, shower, put on the white and gold, try not to look like you’re about to renew wedding vows yourself when you’re just there for the paella.

Down in the lobby, it turned out we weren’t the only operatives. An entire hotel’s worth of guests, some faces unseen in years, all doing the same slightly self-conscious white-and-gold shuffle, nodding at each other like a very well-dressed cult. We convoyed to a parking spot a couple of minutes from the farm, because forty cars pulling up outside a “surprise” party is the kind of subtlety that ruins surprises.

The Surprise, Successfully Sprung

All forty of us made it on time, which for any gathering of humans is itself a small miracle. Barely enough time for handshakes and the “you haven’t changed a bit” lies before the signal went out: she’s arriving, and she still has absolutely no idea. Total success. Full credit to the organisers, and especially to the children and grandchildren who apparently kept the secret better than most government agencies keep theirs.

What followed was a genuinely lovely afternoon of chaos in the best sense: a short theatre piece, some music, quizzes, general merriment, with the sun cooperating fully and turning the whole thing into the kind of warm, golden-hour scene you’d expect for an anniversary literally themed in gold. Paella for dinner, because apparently that’s the correct answer for feeding forty people who’ve just spent an afternoon performing amateur theatre in the heat.

The Back, the Painkillers, and Les Bleus

Then, at 11pm, the big screen TV emerged for the true main event as far as some guests were concerned: France v Paraguay, World Cup. I, however, had other plans, namely lying horizontally and not moving, courtesy of a back that had decided this particular evening was the moment to fully unionise and go on strike. Strong painkillers were deployed. We retired to the hotel while the football played on without us, which felt like a fair trade for a back that could bend again the next morning.

Brunch, Vows, and a Very Popular Tree

Sun still out, back much improved, we reconvened with fellow guests for coffee at 9am, and checkout was refreshingly painless — the hosts had quietly paid for every room, because apparently throwing a surprise party for forty isn’t generous enough on its own.

Back at the farm by 10:30 for round two: more activities, followed by a short walk through the fields to a specific cross, where the golden couple renewed their vows while the rest of us crowded, gratefully, into the shade of the one tree in the vicinity that seemed to understand assignment. There is something quietly moving about forty people willing to bake gently in a field just to watch two people promise, again, to keep doing what they’ve clearly been doing right for fifty years.

Back at the farm, oysters arrived courtesy of friends from Brittany, shucked and devoured alongside fresh salads and fruit, because nothing says “light lunch” quite like oysters that travelled further than some of the guests.

The Long Goodbye (In Stages)

From there, a 30km drive to my brother’s for some proper relaxing, a light dinner outside, and an early night that felt thoroughly earned. The next morning brought coffee, a croissant, and a run to CDG that went suspiciously smoothly — no traffic drama, no gate confusion, just a straightforward return of the hire car at Terminal 2D and the traditional long march to Terminal 2F, which felt less like a walk and more like a small pilgrimage. A spot of shopping (duty-free notably, and disappointingly, absent), then an on-time flight to Toulouse, an on-time landing, and the familiar hour’s drive home, delivering us through the front door just after 5pm, exactly as planned.

An excellent long weekend, in short: one surprise successfully executed, one back successfully sabotaged and then rescued, one set of vows renewed in the shade of a single generous tree, and one journey home that had the good manners to behave itself for once.

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Nostalgia, Charged by the Hour

In which a shopping mall proves more faithful than expected, a market delivers on old promises, and a rendez-vous looms at the edge of every sentence like a tide coming in.

A foreign bed is a test of character, and I am pleased to report I passed it — up at nine, coffee dispatched, and facing the particular luxury of an entire day with nowhere urgent to be until six that evening. The rendez-vous itself would have to wait its turn. First, there was time to kill, and killing time properly is an art I take seriously.

We pointed the Captur toward Parly 2, once the undisputed capital of my teenage shopping ambitions. It has aged the way old friends do — recognisably itself, though half the tenants have been quietly replaced while you weren’t looking. I navigated its corridors without a single wrong turn, which felt less like memory and more like muscle reflex refusing to let go of the past.

From one nostalgic landmark to the next: Versailles town centre requires no GPS from me, only the faint pull of habit. We tucked the car into the underground car park and surfaced into the market, where the food hall performed exactly as advertised by two decades of memory — still excellent, still populated by names I recognised the way you recognise handwriting.

The side streets behind the market remain thick with restaurants, and choosing lunch was less a decision than a formality.

We settled outside, in the sun, and the meal that followed earned every bit of its reputation. Our waiter managed the rare trick of being both efficient and genuinely good company, which brings me to a small provocation for my American friends: no tip was expected, none was factored into anyone’s calculations, and the service was better than plenty I’ve had where twenty percent was assumed before the menus even arrived. Make of that what you will.

Lunch concluded, the Captur pointed a few kilometres further west — toward the actual reason for this whole excursion into the Paris region. That part of the story I’m still not ready to tell. More to come, as promised, and sooner than you think.

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An Arrival in Three Acts

In which a small car becomes a medium car, a dry streak becomes a damp one, and a secret is guarded with the discretion of a man who has clearly never kept one before.

There is something almost suspicious about a smooth Air France flight. TLS to CDG came and went with the kind of quiet competence that makes a seasoned flyer nervous — no delays, no drama, nothing to complain about at all, which for a Frenchman is its own small crisis. I landed slightly disoriented by the absence of grievance.

The universe, ever balanced, corrected course almost immediately. Anyone who has passed through Charles de Gaulle knows that Terminal 2F and Terminal 2D exist in a kind of geographic estrangement, connected by a walk best described as aspirational. I arrived at the car rental counter having earned my rental car the old-fashioned way: on foot, with luggage, questioning several of my life choices.

We had reserved something small and sensible. We were handed the keys to a Renault Captur instead — a perfectly respectable upgrade that I accepted with the theatrical reluctance of a man being handed a larger dessert than he ordered. Who am I to argue with a rental agency’s generosity?

The Germans have a word for it — Stau — which sounds exactly like what it is: a low, grinding syllable stuck behind a truck on the périphérique.

The drive west to Orgeval delivered precisely the traffic one budgets for emotionally before even leaving the terminal — not a surprise, barely even an inconvenience anymore, just the toll booth every arrival in the Paris region insists on collecting. I paid it without complaint, mostly because I’d used up my complaint quota on the walk between terminals.

My brother’s dogs, unlike the traffic, were a genuine welcome — bounding out with the unwavering conviction that I exist primarily as a playing partner who occasionally travels internationally for the sole purpose of being tackled in a garden. I did not disappoint. Reputation, once earned with a dog, must be maintained.

Aperitif outside, dinner outside, and a small betrayal of my recent sobriety in the form of two glasses of wine — poured, I should note, with the specific gravity of a man not remotely trying to talk me out of it. Dinner itself was a homemade Thai affair, expertly done, and good enough to send my thoughts drifting several thousand kilometres east toward our own upcoming Asian holiday. A dangerous thing, a good curry — it makes you homesick for a trip you haven’t taken yet.

Bed came early. Coffee comes now, along with the planning of a day that I’m told, with some ceremony, involves a surprise. I’ve been sworn to a discretion I intend to honour for at least the length of this sentence — so for now, dear reader, that’s all you get. More once the secret has the decency to reveal itself.

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A Mediterranean Dispatch · June 2025

41.5° in the Shade
and Not a Drop to Drink

A tale of friendship, rosé (for others), excellent sausages, and the quiet heroism of the designated driver.

When the météo announces 40°C in Carcassonne, you don’t deliberate. You don’t ponder. You don’t make a pros-and-cons list. You simply look at your guests — Acky and Sylvia, freshly arrived from Germany where, presumably, weather still has manners — and say: “We’re going to the beach.” They agree with the enthusiasm of people who have just understood what they’ve walked into.

“The decision is made in roughly the time it takes a butter croissant to melt on a car bonnet. Which is fast.”

The Great Leucate Gamble

Destination: Port Leucate. Specifically, Biquet Plage — a place with history. A place with baggage. Our last visit, some 12 months ago, was, shall we say, underwhelming. The kind of experience that makes you question your own happy memories. Had it ever really been good? Or had we been younger and more easily pleased by warm rosé and ambient French chaos?

Fingers crossed. Reservations made. Loungers booked. We aim the car southwards at 10am with the air of a small expedition trusting in a compass that once lied to us.

“First beach trip of the year. There is something deliciously ceremonial about this, like the uncorking of summer itself.”

Arrival & The Miracle of Good Taste

We roll in just past 11:30am, claim our loungers like very relaxed conquistadors, and then — a miracle. The music. In years of beach club existence, I have suffered through enough reggaeton, aggressive house, and inexplicable accordion techno to last several lifetimes. But today? Pure 1970s gold. Something in me that has been quietly clenched since 2019 finally unclenches.

A chilled bottle of rosé is ordered. Glasses are filled. Feet meet sand. The Mediterranean glitters. Even the seagulls seem to be enjoying themselves.

“Not for me, of course. I am on a completely dry spell. Also: I am driving. My contribution to aperitif hour is being simultaneously virtuous and slightly smug about it.”

Lina, the Menu & the Return of Excellence

Lina the waitress materialises with charm and menu in hand, guides us through the options with the confident grace of someone who genuinely knows what’s good. And what’s good turns out to be: everything. The food is excellent. Not “beach club” excellent, which is a category that mostly means “acceptable given the sand situation.” Genuinely excellent. Pre-Covid Biquet Plage excellent.

Reader, it’s back. Whatever was lost, found. Whatever standard had slipped, restored. We eat well, we laugh, and then — as tradition demands — the post-lunch digestive nap is observed with great seriousness.

The others drift into the sea. I remain on my lounger, horizontal and philosophical, watching clouds that have the decency to be decorative rather than threatening.

🌊 · 🌊 · 🌊

The Drive Home: A Temperature Thriller

4pm arrives too soon, as beach afternoons always do. We pack up and head north. The car’s dashboard thermometer becomes, for the next 45 minutes, the most suspenseful reading instrument I’ve ever encountered.

28°C Leaving the beach

→ 35°C Approaching Narbonne

→ 41.5°C Near home

41.5°C. The car informs us of this with the same calm neutrality with which it might report that we need fuel. The digits sit there, cheerful and monstrous. Germany, as represented by Acky and Sylvia, goes very quiet.

Pool, Plancha & Rhum Arrangé

We pile through the front door, blast the air conditioning into operation, and throw ourselves into the pool — where the water, bless it, is hovering around 30°C. Refreshing the way a warm hug is refreshing. Comforting. Not exactly cool, but it beats standing on the terrace.

Aperitif hour follows naturally, as it does in the south of France because the south of France has decided that there shall always be aperitif hour, non-negotiable, on the books, constitutionally protected. I man the plancha. Sausages. Meat. The simplicity of a hot grill on a hot evening. And tomatoes — my own homegrown tomatoes, which I mention with the barely suppressed pride of a man who has watched something he planted actually survive.

“There is no tomato in the world that tastes as good as the one you grew yourself. This is a scientific fact. I will not be taking questions.”

The night winds down with night caps: Rhum Arrangé, home-made, built on rum from Guadeloupe and vanilla pods personally sourced on the island of Taha’a. This last detail is delivered with the precision of a man who wants it clearly understood that this rum has provenance. The guests are impressed. They should be.

By 11pm, everyone has retired. Satisfied. Slightly sun-dazed. Happy.

Except me. I am still awake at 3am, having found, as one does, that M*A*S*H is still one of the finest things ever put on television, and that several episodes in a row is not a problem but rather a perfectly rational life choice. Hawkeye would understand. He’d probably pour himself a martini about it.

Final Verdict

A good hot day. Great friends. Biquet Plage redeemed. Rosé enjoyed vicariously. Sober driving rewarded with the moral high ground and excellent tomatoes. And somewhere between the sand, the plancha smoke, and the Rhum Arrangé, the particular alchemy of southern French summer did its thing: it turned an ordinary Tuesday into something worth writing about.

Until the next heatwave. 🌞

Written with sunscreen in the eyes · Carcassonne & Surrounds

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Some people measure a life in milestones: first steps, first kiss, first job, first grey hair.

The Universe, apparently, prefers calendars.

I was born on Sunday, June 21st, 1953. It was the first day of Summer, Father’s Day in France, and, judging from family lore, the day my parents unknowingly signed up for a lifetime subscription to surprises.

One notable thing was missing: La Fête de la Musique.

Today, it is impossible to imagine June 21st in France without amateur saxophonists, enthusiastic drummers, and someone confidently murdering a Jacques Brel song in the town square. But in 1953, silence still had a fighting chance. The festival would only be invented almost thirty years later, proving that even traditions need to be born.

Now comes the delicious part.

Exactly seventy-three years later, the celestial bureaucracy has filed my birthday under “Same Configuration.” Once again, June 21st lands on a Sunday, on the first day of Summer, and on Father’s Day in France.

The cosmic alignment is back, like an old vinyl record finding the same groove.

Statisticians will quickly point out that this is not a miracle. Calendars are surprisingly repetitive creatures. Leap years shuffle the deck, Sundays keep returning, and every now and then everything lines up as if the Universe has excellent filing habits.

In fact, this particular combination has occurred twelve times during those seventy-three years.

Twelve! Which means the stars and the Gregorian calendar have been quietly rehearsing this performance while I was busy growing up, growing older, paying taxes, discovering good wine, misplacing reading glasses, and learning that “I’ll just rest my eyes” is now a legitimate afternoon activity.

There’s something oddly comforting about it.

The world has transformed beyond recognition since 1953. We went from black-and-white television to smartphones, from handwritten letters to instant messages, from maps that folded badly to satellites that know exactly where we are—even when we wish they didn’t.

Yet every so often the calendar whispers, “Remember where you started?”

And suddenly it is Sunday again.

Summer begins again.

Father’s Day arrives again.

The longest day stretches before us again.

Only this time, the soundtrack includes street musicians who didn’t exist when I was born and a little more wisdom than I possessed the first time around.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson of birthdays.

The Earth faithfully completes another lap around the Sun. The dates repeat, the seasons return, and the heavens patiently recreate old patterns. But we are never quite the same person standing beneath them.

The Universe may enjoy reruns.

Fortunately, humans keep writing new episodes.

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Qund l’univers appuie sur “Rejouer”

Il y a ceux qui mesurent une vie en années, en rides ou en souvenirs.

L’Univers, lui, semble préférer les calendriers.

Je suis né le dimanche 21 juin 1953. C’était le premier jour de l’été, la Fête des Pères en France et, si j’en crois les récits familiaux, le jour où mes parents ont signé, sans le savoir, un abonnement à vie aux surprises.

Il manquait pourtant un élément devenu aujourd’hui incontournable : la Fête de la Musique.

Il est désormais presque impossible d’imaginer un 21 juin sans un guitariste inspiré, une fanfare improvisée, un chanteur persuadé d’être le nouveau Brel ou un voisin convaincu que la cornemuse est un instrument d’ambiance. En 1953, le 21 juin avait encore le bon goût d’être relativement silencieux. Il faudra attendre près de trente ans pour que la musique envahisse les rues et fasse croire à tout un pays qu’il est né avec une guitare à la main.

Et c’est là que les choses deviennent amusantes.

Soixante-treize ans plus tard, le calendrier et les astres ont décidé de remettre exactement la même pièce à l’affiche. Nous sommes de nouveau un dimanche 21 juin, premier jour de l’été et Fête des Pères.

Comme si le cosmos avait appuyé sur le bouton « replay ».

Les mathématiciens vous expliqueront qu’il n’y a là rien de miraculeux. Les années bissextiles redistribuent les cartes, les jours de la semaine tournent en rond avec une régularité toute administrative et, de temps en temps, tous les engrenages s’alignent parfaitement.

Mieux encore : cette configuration s’est produite douze fois depuis ma naissance.

Douze occasions où l’Univers m’a discrètement envoyé un clin d’œil pendant que je m’occupais à grandir, travailler, voyager, aimer, élever des enfants, perdre mes clés, chercher mes lunettes alors qu’elles étaient sur ma tête et découvrir que « je ferme juste les yeux cinq minutes » est devenu un véritable projet d’après-midi.

Je trouve cette fidélité du calendrier assez rassurante.

Le monde, lui, a changé à une vitesse vertigineuse. Nous sommes passés de la télévision en noir et blanc aux écrans qui tiennent dans une poche, des lettres manuscrites aux messages instantanés, des cartes routières impossibles à replier aux satellites qui savent toujours où nous sommes, même lorsque nous préférerions l’ignorer.

Et pourtant, à intervalles réguliers, le calendrier semble nous murmurer :

« Tu te souviens d’où tout a commencé ? »

Alors c’est de nouveau un dimanche.

L’été recommence.

Les pères sont à l’honneur.

Le jour le plus long de l’année s’étire devant nous.

À une différence près : cette fois, il y a des concerts improvisés dans chaque rue, quelques cheveux blancs de plus, beaucoup plus d’histoires à raconter et, espérons-le, un peu plus de sagesse que le nourrisson qui ouvrait les yeux le 21 juin 1953.

Au fond, c’est peut-être cela, un anniversaire.

La Terre accomplit fidèlement un nouveau tour autour du Soleil. Les saisons reviennent, les dates se répètent et les étoiles rejouent parfois une vieille partition.

Mais celui qui les regarde n’est plus tout à fait le même.

L’Univers aime les rediffusions.

Heureusement, nous continuons d’écrire des épisodes inédits.

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Thirty Years, One Baby, and a Belt I Couldn’t Find

In which our correspondent drives two and a half hours to celebrate a marriage that has outlasted several monarchies, meets a granddaughter who has been on the premises for considerably less time, and discovers that losing weight is its own form of administrative paperwork.

Some weekends require elaborate logistics — connecting flights, currency conversions, the quiet dread of a rental car with a manual gearbox you haven’t touched since the Mitterrand era. This one required none of that. Carcassonne to Avignon is two and a half hours of motorway so uneventful it borders on meditation, the kind of drive where the only decision of consequence is whether to take the péage exit for a coffee that will taste exactly like every other péage coffee in the Republic.

The occasion: my brother-in-law’s thirty years of marriage, plus the very recent and considerably louder arrival of a new granddaughter — two milestones that, when celebrated together, produce the unique sensation of toasting both the beginning and the very long middle of a love story in the same breath.

Thirty years of marriage is, statistically speaking, longer than most empires last.

Avignon and I have history that predates this particular celebration. My father spent his last decade here, which means I arrive each time less like a tourist and more like a man checking whether the furniture has been moved. This trip came with the added comfort of staying in one of my brother-in-law’s four Airbnbs — the man apparently collects Avignon property the way other people collect stamps, or regrets — a fifteen-minute stroll from the party itself, which is precisely the correct distance for an evening that may, at some point, require a wobbly walk home.

And the party delivered exactly what family gatherings of this sort are contractually obligated to deliver: warmth, catching-up, and the gentle reacquaintance with a branch of the family I see roughly as often as a solar eclipse. Did I mention they’re all English? It matters less for the conversation — which manages perfectly well in either language — than for the sheer comedy of watching an English wedding-anniversary-cum-christening party unfold under a Provençal sky, somewhere between a vicarage fête and a Pagnol set piece.

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Saturday morning, as all proper Provençal mornings should, began at the market — ostensibly for a look around, but in truth on a mission: I needed a new belt. Not as a fashion statement, but as a matter of structural engineering. I’ve lost enough weight recently that several items of clothing have entered a kind of negotiated retirement, trousers included, and a man cannot hold up his dignity — or his trousers — on willpower alone.

The market, magnificent as it was in every other respect, failed me on the belt front. No matter. What the stalls of Avignon would not provide, a proper shop down the road happily did, and by early afternoon I was, structurally speaking, sorted. A small victory, but in a weekend built entirely around milestones — thirty years, one new granddaughter, one significantly smaller waistline — I’ll take it.

Late morning found us pointing the car towards Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with the vague and frankly optimistic intention that I might purchase some wine. As it turned out, the only purchase made — by my better half, naturally — was a dress. And lunch, of course. There is always lunch.

From there we set our sights on the looming presence of Mont Ventoux, which we ascended in considerable comfort, air conditioning humming, while dozens of cyclists toiled past us each convinced he was riding the final stage of the Tour de France. With temperatures north of 35 degrees and a gradient hovering around nine percent over twenty punishing kilometres, I can only call this an act of madness.

Madness, too, is the cyclist who overtook me on the descent at well over 80 km/h. I never caught him.

We rolled back into town with just enough time for a short rest before heading out again for the evening — the main event, the real reason for the weekend

After an hour’s nap back at base — a restorative, medically necessary nap, you understand, not a sign of advancing years — it was time to get into the car again and make the short drive to Carpentras, where my brother-in-law and his wife have their main residence, although they seem to spend rather more time in Avignon than in the house they actually own. Each to their own; I’m not one to judge a man’s relationship with his postcode.

Now, let me set the scene, and if some of you have seen the brilliant film A Good Year, it will help enormously, possibly more than anything I’m about to write. It’s a strikingly similar setting to the one in the film, which is understandable since the village of Gordes, where it was partly filmed, is only some 30km away as the crow flies (the crow, presumably, having had rather less trouble with French road signage than I did getting there). The newly renovated house sits in the middle of vineyards looking every bit the part, the old outbuildings are mid-resurrection, and the pool is fully finished and very much in use, mostly by people holding a glass of something in one hand.

Next to the house, under a large old tree doing its best impression of a postcard, a table for up to 40 had been set — the kind of table that makes you instinctively check you’re dressed well enough. Aperitif started around 19:30, followed by an excellent dinner prepared by a hired chef in the kitchen and served by two hired waiters, which is a sentence I do not get to write often enough. The food was good, the wine was excellent (more on that shortly, patience), and the champagne flowed with a generosity that suggested nobody present was driving home anytime soon, which, as it turned out, was optimistic of me. A couple of speeches were made, none of which I shall attempt to reconstruct here, partly out of discretion and partly because by that point the Clos Mirage had done its work.

I hadn’t seen my stepsister-in-law who was part of the celebrations for years, and although we have very little contact — the kind of family relationship best described as “fond but theoretical” — it was a genuine pleasure to see her. As it happens, she and her husband are the proud owners of the Clos Mirage vineyard in the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, and naturally the wine for this celebration came from there, which is either a lovely touch of family pride or the single best argument for owning a vineyard I’ve ever encountered.

We drove back at midnight, first bumping through the fields to reach the highway, which then whisked us swiftly back to Avignon some 30km away — far too swiftly for a car carrying that much champagne, in spirit if not in fact. I went straight to bed.

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