September 2022

September 2022

The whirlwind continues. I am beginning this update while waiting for Richard’s hernia surgery to be completed. In France, there is a massively complicated process that must first be completed before any procedure – appointments with the surgeon (Tarantino), cardiologist (Moreels), the blood test lab, the anaesthesiologist, the covid test, daily injections, etc. So it has been a full time back and forth from and to Draguignan. And Richard’s heart is not strong and regular. A pace maker has been suggested.

The August aioli with Tilly, Jessica, Iris, Edith, Douglas and Cameron was fun but meagre. The food used to be better. A couple of days later we enjoyed a delightful Zoom with Selena

& Dennis.

Cinema nights at Penny’s have included The Forgiven with Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (with Lesley Manville), and Morgan Matthews’ A Brilliant Young Mind with Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall and Sally Hawkins. Our most recent Saturday night dinners have included Penny, Guy & Caroline, Tilly and Joanne chez nous; Penny, James and Eamonn chez Penny; and just Penny chez nous. We have also had a dinner at Joanne’s with Penny, James & Eamonn, and another with just Joanne, Richard and me. House guests have included Robin; James and Eamonn; and Ralph & Francis. Gillie will be

next, and Bill and Lilan will arrive on the day we take Gillie back to the airport in Nice. And we will be off for Paris and Amsterdam two days later. With James & Eamonn and Robin, we did have a lovely swim in the Bresque by the Roman bridge in Salernes.

I have talked to Liz Green by phone to wish her a happy birthday. Robin as always was utterly delightful. Ralph and Francis were brief, fun and non-stop. Eamonn & James were for me a complete joy with whom I can relate over music and enjoy that magical dimension with them equally immensely. They are also easy to be with and are completely undemanding. The next Saturday dinner will be with Penny, Pierre and Catherine; the next one after will include Gillie, Penny and possibly Jessica. I do not know yet what I will be cooking but yesterday purchased a rice cooker. The big downside is Renaud’s declining health. We have not been able to see him, and Liliane phoned to say that the hospital has said there is nothing more they can do for him.

It was at Penny’s for the movie night that Eamonn announced just before we started with the film that Queen Elizabeth II had just died. I saw her once just a few feet away at the British Museum when she was there with the then Crown Prince of The Netherlands. I remember her legendary complexion being as stunning and flawless as I had previously heard. She will be deeply missed. I remain a royalist and wish for the successful best for our new monarch, Charles III.

I am reading Michio Kaku’s The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything (Einstein’s theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, Big Bang and its quantum afterglow, the Higgs boson, black holes, the runaway universe, inflation dealing with the Big Freeze & the Big Crunch & the Big Rip, the dark universe, string theory, etc.) Kaku is easy reading, and I have been doing some of it aloud to Richard. One thing that is fascinating is the possibility that “our universe is actually a single bubble in a bubble bath of universes.” The incomprehensible enormity of a multiverse of parallel universes makes our minuscule here-and-now awesomely

fascinating. Our uniqueness as persons and as far as we know is the emergence of our reflective minds that can look at it all, search for the very first origins of the incredible and appreciate the absolute wonder of this bewildering immensity. For the rest, on the much more personal level, we are still happily, even more than happy, ensconced in paradise. We ritualised yesterday for the Ides of September and walked through the nearby woods to which my mind had always recalled as a visiting memory during the London lockdowns. In my ongoing dialogue with Cometan, basically I feel that until we can clean up our own act at home, we have absolutely no right to spread our mess into the cosmos.