In the meantime, here’s what happened yesterday.

7.30am

Not me.

1.30pm.

9.30pm

In other news, I have almost finished a novel that I have decided to self-publish. You’ll buy it, won’t you? More soon.

Now I must go back into hiding for a bit. Then I think I’ll be off. Somewhere where it rains less and there are people with long black hair and welcoming arms and legs. And oranges. And guns.

Enchanté.

Aha, I thought. Swingers. I knew it was only a matter of time before I bumped and ground into the seedier side of rural France. Suddenly it appeared to be happening. Suddenly I was in the thick of it.

‘Um, I don’t really know,’ I said. ‘To be honest, I see myself as less of a sponge, and more of a stone. Although perhaps less so than I used to be, but you can get pills for that. I’ve heard.’

‘Eh? What are you on about?’

‘Well, what are you on about?’

‘Chickens.’

‘Oh.’

And so followed a weekend of the most top rank – although not remotely seedy – and on Monday morning I managed to start the week with my fingers wrapped tight around a lovely big cock.  A hen too. They gave me a wee hen. ‘No point slipping you a big cock without a hen,’ I was told. ‘A cock without a hen is like a single man in the middle of a forest watching soft-core pornography in slow-motion and writing up conversations that never really took place. It’s just sad.’

So I spent Monday building a new home for soon-to-be-christened Captain Cock and Wee Hen. I started with this…

And I ended up with this…

Isn’t it charming? Two weeks on and we are getting on very well. They follow me around the garden, at a distance. Wee Hen is brave and bold. Captain Cock is a self-aggrandising coward with no idea whatsoever about foreplay. Wee Hen eats out of my hand and gives me eggs. Captain Cock can be tricked into crowing by playing back his own crow on a digital recorder. I have little respect for him. Beautiful plumage though. I think he looks like Lord Byron. If Lord Byron had been a real hard core 70s pimp. And a chicken.

See him crow…

As a treat for their second week with me, I went to Barcelona for three days and left them to the mercy of foxes, pine martens and sick men. Really it was more a test than a treat. And I’m pleased to report, they passed with flightless colours. Now I need the sun to come back and Wee Hen to stop eating onions and think about making me a granddaddy.

Now they’re sitting in a circle of seemingly ritualistic intent as I wonder what to do with them.

Here they are…

What would you do with them?

Please don’t say ‘burn them’.

I’m not burning them.

On Wednesday morning at a quarter to ten, I set off for Chateuaponsac to lose the beard, which I had been growing since January 1st, and the hair, which I had been growing since … since like for ages.

On the way I stopped off at a bar in Roussac to buy some Orangina. I informed Marco, the proprietor, what my day had in store. ‘It’s the first day of Spring,’ I said. ‘It’s time for a new me.’

‘That was yesterday,’ he said.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Today is the first day of Spring.’ I knew this to be true because I had researched it meticulously in December, before deciding on my winter beard. March 21st. The first day of Spring.

‘Maybe in England it’s today. In France it was yesterday.’

‘No, no,’ I insisted. ‘I’m absolutely sure it’s today.’

At which point Marco disappeared into the room behind the bar, returning a minute later with a large one-page wall calendar. He held it up for me, ran his finger over the columns. January, February, March. 18th, 19th, 20th. PRINTEMPS. There it was. The First Day of Spring. I’d missed it.

So I continued on to Chateauponsac, a day late, corralled a small group of helping hands and welcomed in the Spring.

Here I am at the start of the day…

No, wait. That’s Hairpiece, who was also celebrating the start of the Spring.

Here I am…

The first cut…

Sporting a style known in certain circles as a ‘sub-turbine’…

Perfect camoflage. Where am I? Can you even see me?

This is a worrying one.

As is this one really…

Here I am doing an eerily accurate impersonation of Paul Daniels…

I used to sub-edit on a gay magazine. If they’d known I was capable of this kind of balls-out eroticism, I very much doubt they’d have fired me…

No idea…

I kept this Mohican for two days. I went to the pub for the first time in months and, after being cruelly mocked by a group of second-generation ex-pat farmers, I decided rural France wasn’t ready for a middle-aged man with an outrageous sense of style, so I conformed, using a pair of wallpaper scissors.

And this is Hairpiece…

I love the Spring.

Here they are, in no order, and not mentioning drugs:

• The sun thinks it’s May. I am writing this outdoors. It is spectacular.
• The first rockery is in place, snaking around the hawthorn saplings in the centre of the field out front. The space within has been planted with lots of different species of pretty coloured flower. I have not yet learned their names. This rockery, over time, will become the visible, pulsing heart of the retreat. The retreat will wear its heart on its sleeve. I’m building a retreat. Did I mention it?
  
• I have made a circle of apparently ritualistic intent from sections of an old tree.
• The cats have been modified. No more need I fear the enforced slaughter of perfect life forms.
• My sister and brother-in-law came out for a weekend. They brought a large amount of cheer and a relatively small amount of bickering, and they left in their wake: peanut butter, gravy granules, binoculars, a ‘kitchen dresser’, a giant lawn mower, a stinky gas fire, two boxes of grass seed, a large-capacity automatic pet-feeder and a vacuum cleaner
• I have been promised a sofa.
  
• Next week Spring begins officially. To celebrate, I shall shave off all my hair.
• Book’s going well.

Anon!

When I had filmed enough, I informed George that she was a sick little monster and pushed her off Maddie’s back where, disturbingly, she had left a little damp patch. Maddie was still eating biscuits. I picked George up and with my eyes rummaged between her legs just to make absolutely sure that she didn’t have testicles. But of course she didn’t. Just a perfectly ordinary, if ever so slightly large vagina.

A few days later, last Wednesday, I took them both in their new expensive cat boxes to the vet in Chateauponsac, then I went to wait at Sue and Ju’s place till they were done. Sue and Ju were also having a couple of cats unsexed, as were another couple we know. We had arranged a bulk deal. Twelve ovaries for the price of eleven, or some such.

Whilst processing the cats, I asked the vet – who was a woman – if the cats would have to have the piece of cardboard around their necks to stop them pulling out their stitches, like this…

…only I didn’t have a photo handy and wasn’t able to say that in French so I did a little mime. It was only when I was doing the mime – with my hands outstretched in front of my face, rising up and apart in a large V shape – that I realised it was the same mime that Larry David does in Curb Your Enthusiasm to indicate ladies with large vaginas.

Sue sniggered at my mime and for one horrible second I imagined that the vet might think I was casting aspersions on the size of her vagina. But she didn’t. Furthermore, she told me that no such apparatus would be required as the stitches – these days – are on the inside. This was good news.

About an hour after we’d left them, the vets phoned Sue and Ju’s house. I could only hear Sue’s side of the phone call. ‘George est mal?’ she was saying. Then she was unable to understand any more and became convinced that the vet had in fact been talking about a different cat – Splodge – who was stuck in her cage. ‘George and Splodge sound the same in French,’ she said.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Instinctively and immediately I had assumed that George had a giant tumour inside of her and was going to have to be put to sleep.

Julian popped back along to the vet to open Splodge’s cage. However, he returned with the news that there was in fact something wrong with George. My heart sank. I knew it. It was probably connected to the twitching in her back. That can’t be normal.

‘It’s not insurmountable,’ said Julian.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s a boy,’ he said.

I was shocked. I was also mocked, roundly, for not knowing the difference between testicles and a vagina.

‘But I checked just a few days ago!’ I protested. ‘I just thought George had … you know.’ I held my hands in front of my face, rising up and apart in a large V shape. ‘A huge vagina.’

But no. George does not have a huge vagina. George est mâle. Pas malade. Mâle. Boy George. He is now a little bald on the belly too as they shaved him when they thought he was a her, before they checked. But he doesn’t seem to mind.

So that’s that. The cats are done. Not only am I saved the horror of having to execute a litter of kittens, but also the jealousy of knowing my cats are having sex while I’m sitting at home eating biscuits and trying to remember what it feels like to touch another human being.

The writing’s going well though. 

Au revoir.

Here it is the next day, or maybe sometime after that…

Here are some more photographs with a wintery aspect… 

Nice huh? There was between 3 and 4 weeks of snow. Exactly the right amount. And now I think we’re going to have an early and really quite delirious Spring. I think it’s already started in fact. It has sprung. And I am very, very busy. 

I hope you are well and getting lots of fresh air and exercise.

Until soon.

Last night I slept with my forehead resting on a featureless soft toy on a cold metal table in a fleetingly half-deserted airport. I had between four and five hours like this. They weren’t bad hours.

This time last year I was homeless, scrabbling and leeching my way from Madrid to Krakow via Bologna, waiting for the King of Shaves to come good on his promise of paying me £250 a week for a column entitled Around the World in 80 Shaves. He never did. At the time I cursed him viciously. In truth I still do, when I remember, but really, if it hadn’t been for Will King being such a hopelessly untrustworthy shit of a man, I probably wouldn’t be here now, with a big dirty beard and a pair of kittens stretched out on and around me, drinking coffee made from boiled snow and feeling, for the time being at least, very much at home.

I got home around 2.30 this afternoon. The sun was up and cheering when I got off the train at Nantiat, making the snow that covers everything – apart from the occasional black ribbon of road – shine and twinkle like spilled stars. It took me an hour to walk home from the station. It wasn’t a bad hour. On the contrary. And when I waded through the virgin snow of the drive and was greeted by George and then Maddie, mewling like they were on fire, I was overwhelmed with gratitude. And I think they were too.

I don’t know when they finished the last of the week’s worth of biscuits I left out for them, but I suspect it may have been a few days ago and the bucket of water I’d left in the living room had frozen solid. Both cats have lost quite a bit of weight. Since I got back, they’ve been extremely affectionate, like they’re afraid I’ll disappear again if they let me out of their sight or stop purring for a second. Tonight I shared a tin of sardines with them. Apart from potatoes and two tins of peas, this was the last food in the house. Tomorrow I must ride the black ribbon in search of provisions.

Thursday 9th February. 00:30.

I stole some films from the internet at the weekend. I’m not proud but I’m very pleased. This morning in transit I watched Bridesmaids, which made me laugh a lot. Earlier this evening I watched Submarine, which made me mourn the wasteland of my teenage years a little. And a moment ago I finished watching Tyrannosaur, which made me wail and snot and howl and glory at the wicked violence and tender salvation of the world.

I think I found it particularly poignant after having seen my brother at the weekend. Joseph in Tyrannosaur reminds me of my brother. All that rage.

My brother is definitely on the way out. He is currently getting by on only half a liver. Also, he fell down some stairs 18 months ago and broke a hip. Then he failed to turn up for the physiotherapy so he hasn’t healed right. Now, as a result, his spine is all twisted and a source of some considerable pain. More recently – just a couple of weeks ago in fact – he fell down again, scabbed up his face and broke a few ribs. Now he can barely walk. His daily diet consists of a plethora of prescription pills washed down with lager. He is in constant pain as he shuffles, wincing, towards death. And weirdly, all this considered, he seems more cheerful than I can ever remember seeing him. Which is not to say that he’s happy, or even anywhere near, but the rage is now barely in evidence. Resolution it seems, has calmed him. And as a result, it was good to see him. Good, and, naturally, terribly terribly sad.

13:30.

The sun is bright as a burning button again today but the snow for now is not going anywhere. The shops open in an hour. On my return, after stuffing the cats with pâté, I need to get on with some work. I’ve got a lot to do, and I’m looking forward to it. Indeed, frozen pipes aside, it’s very, very good to be home.

‘Ah yes,’ I said. I noticed that the hand that I had shaken, which was now steadying the calendar in the harsh wind that shot up the lane like a frozen bomb blast, was badly scarred. I looked back to the man’s face and noticed only then that the lower part of his face and his neck was also covered in the puckered, slightly shiny scar tissue, which I assumed was the result of some major burning. I looked into the man’s eyes, lined with warm smiles, and I said: ‘I’m not very familiar with local French customs. Please let me know what I must do now.’

He continued to smile and to hold out the calendar. ‘I am a fireman,’ he repeated. ‘A local fireman, and at this time of year, I visit houses in the area and we deliver these calendars.’

‘For a donation?’ I queried, brightly.

‘Yes!’ he replied.

‘I have no money about my person,’ I explained, ‘so if you could wait here for a moment, I’ll go back to my house.’

‘Of course!’ smiled the fireman.

***

My friend Graham was here at the time and was just finishing up his toilet when I fell panting through the door and into the living room. ‘There is a fireman here!’ I shouted.

‘Whoa!’ said Graham. ‘Where’s the fire?’

I was still exhausted from running through the forest and up the hill to the house. I was breathing heavily, bending over, perhaps slightly melodramatically. ‘No fire,’  I said. ‘Just man. He wants some money for a calendar. Have you got any coins?’

Graham went through his pockets. ‘What kind of calendar is it?’ he wanted to know. ‘Is it saucy?’

‘I didn’t really get a look at it yet,’ I said.

He handed me a five-euro note. ‘How do you know he’s a real fireman? He might just be a Christmas conman who goes around saying he’s a fireman.’

‘He’s wearing a uniform,’ I said.

‘I could wear a fireman’s uniform,’ said Graham. ‘Wouldn’t make me a fireman. Ask to see some ID before you hand over the cash.’

***

I didn’t ask to see any ID, but I was just a tiny bit disappointed that my fireman friend wasn’t slightly more overawed by the sight of folding money. He never stopped smiling though, so it was OK. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He handed me the calendar and I thanked him back. ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?’ I asked. I hoped it didn’t sound like a sexual invitation because it certainly wasn’t meant that way. It was purely social. Convivial. Seasonal.

‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like to, but I have a lot of work to do.’ Then he said something that initially I didn’t understand, or imagined I must have misunderstood because it was quite unexpected. He looked me in the eye, still smiling, and he said, ‘In the end, everything is fine, OK? But it’s important to be gentle.’ He made to leave but I called him back and asked him to repeat what he had said more slowly.

He repeated it. Everything is fine. Important to be gentle. I had understood correctly.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘OK.’ I thought for a second. ‘Cool!’ I said.

He shook my hand a second time. Then we exchanged yuletide felicitations and parted.

***

I took the calendar back up to the house to show Graham what he’d bought. It was not saucy. It was artless and cheap and slightly tawdry, with only one photograph for each quarter. The production values dated the calendar before it was even out of the print-shop. But of course it was the gesture that mattered, and the opportunity it afforded for local residents to show their appreciation.

The photograph for the first three months was of all of the local fireman lined up in the traditional group picture style. I glanced through the faces looking for the fireman from whom Graham had purchased the calendar. At first I couldn’t find him. ’He’s not here,’ I said. ‘Maybe he was a Christmas conman after all. Like those paramedics that have Münchhausen’s in reverse. A rogue fireman.’

‘You didn’t ask for any ID?’ said Graham, faux exasperated. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? You think because you’re out in the country, everybody’s all straight and narrow and nice as pie, but I’m telling you, there are bad people everywhere. There is evil…’

‘Oh, no, here he is,’ I said. ‘He’s got hair here though.’

‘Here hair here,’ said Graham. ‘Which one?’

I pointed him out. ‘That one,’ I said. I looked for his name on the key. ‘Vincent Gaudy,’ I said. Then I said it again with a French accent. In the photograph, he had shoulder-length blonde hair and a short, pointy beard, but the eyes were wearing the same bright smile. It was definitely him. ‘He must have been burned quite recently then,’ I said. ‘He must have lost all his hair in a fire I guess.’

‘He was burned?’ said Graham. ‘You never said he was burned.’

‘Yeah, all over his hands and face and neck. It was like cold porridge. Not so that you’d turn away in horror, but…’ I shrugged.

‘Poor bugger,’ said Graham.

‘He was completely jolly though,’ I felt compelled to point out, ‘and he told me that everything’s fine – in the end – and that being gentle is important.’

‘What?’ Graham was dubious. ‘Being gentle? What did he actually say?’

‘Um…’ I said. I was becoming flustered. My French was being questioned. And rightly so. ‘OK, I think he said,’ I stammered. ‘“C’est très important être gentil”.’

Graham pulled a face. ‘You nonce,’ he said. ‘It’s “be kind”, not “be gentle”. I thought you said your French was coming on.’ He laughed cruelly. I was embarrassed. And annoyed. I knew that. It’s the same in Italian. Schoolboy error. Balls. I tried to take it on the chin. But I was miffed. 

***

Graham went back to England the next morning. ‘Take care,’ he said before disappearing onto the train, ‘and remember – be gentle.’ I laughed. Then muttered some cusses. Faux cusses. As I rode my bicycle back from the station, the sun was shining for only the third or fourth time in two weeks and it felt good on my face. I rode past the fire station. There were a bunch of firemen hosing down one of their trucks, the wheels of which were caked in thick mud. I slowed my bike and looked over to see if Vincent was with them.

One of them wished me a good day, which made me feel welcome enough to saunter over for a chat. I told them that I’d bought a calendar yesterday. They shook their heads and shrugged. They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. I thought for a moment I probably had the wrong word, then tried again, with the same word. ‘A calendar!’ I cried.

The shrugging continued, accompanied by slightly bewildered smiles. So I asked if Vincent was working this morning. Again, there was confusion.

‘Vincent who?’ asked one.

‘Vincent Gaudy,’ I said. ‘He’s the guy who sold me the calendar,’ I said.

‘What calendar?’ asked one.

‘The new year calendar,’ I said. ‘With all of you in it.’ I pointed at them.

‘We don’t have a calendar,’ one of them said.

I stood there for a moment or two, gaping, then I remembered that I was stopping them from getting on with their work and for no apparent reason. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s bizarre. Good day nevertheless! See you again!’ Then I was off on my bicycle and heading for home.

As I cycled, I tried to figure out what must have happened. It must have been something either criminal or supernatural I decided. Then another thought occurred to me. Might there not simply be more than one local fire station and Vincent works not at the one with the truck with the muddy wheels, but at the one with the calendar sales, which must be up the road at the next village? This was not unlikely. I felt foolish. I’d been reading too much Murakami.

***

Turning into the drive that snakes from the main road up along the bottom edge of my land, I was about to dismount and walk the bicycle up the track, tracing the same steps as my elusive fireman, when I heard a beeping from the road behind me. I dismounted and turned around to see a man gesturing to me from the car he had parked just a couple of metres away from me. I walked up to him as he got out of his car and began to speak. He started by wishing me good day and shaking my hand in the traditional manner. Then he said, ‘Excuse me for following you like this, but were you the man asking about Vincent Gaudy?’ I said that I was, yes. I was indeed. The man regarded me with a mixture of suspicion and disbelief. He was older than the fireman I’d spoken to at the station. He had dark, hooded eyes and stubble like charcoal. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘I was just passing, I thought I’d say hello if he was around. He sold me a calendar yesterday, you see.’ I pointed up the drive that rose ahead of us. ‘About 20 metres up there,’ I said.

The man shook his head, but said nothing. He was clearly distressed.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s happened to him?’

At length, the man said, ‘He was killed. He died. In  a fire.’

My right hand instinctively rose to my face. ‘Oh my God,’ I said, unconsciously reverting to English. ‘That’s terrible,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. When did he die? I only saw him yesterday morning.’

The man stared at me as I babbled, his eyes narrowing. I hoped I was making myself understood. He looked up the lane past me and blew out his cheeks. ‘He died in a barn fire in a house halfway up that lane,’ he said. He pointed past me. I turned and looked. That’s where I lived. I would have heard. ‘Part of the roof fell, burning, unexpectedly. It hit a piece of farm machinery which knocked Vincent over and pinned him to the ground. In the heart of the fire. It took us too long to get to him. We pulled him out but it was too late. He died on the way to hospital.’

I stood transfixed through all this, unable to believe that I hadn’t heard any noises. Surely there must have been sirens. ‘Was it in the middle of the night?’ I asked. ‘What barn?’

The man shook his head. ‘This was ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Ten years ago this New Year’s Eve in fact.’

I smiled. Then grimaced.

‘What was ten years ago?’ I asked. ‘I only met him yesterday. He was here, standing there.’ I pointed again.

The man shook his head, not in disbelief, but in wonder. ‘How was he?’ he asked.

‘He was very jolly,’ I said. ‘He told me that everything’s fine in the end.’

The man seemed cheered by this. ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ he said.

‘He also said that it was important to be kind,’ I said. As I repeated those words, a rush of something powerful rose in my chest and took my breath away.

‘Well, well, well,’ said the man, holding out his hand for me to shake. ‘If you see him again, say hello from Monsieur Moulin.’

I watched Monsieur Moulin walk back to his car, and was about to turn back up the drive when I found myself shouting, ‘Wait! Monsieur Moulin, one moment!’ He waited at his car as I skipped down the drive to ask him, ‘What kind of machinery was it? The machinery that knocked over Vincent Gaudy. Do you remember?’

He remembered. And when I didn’t understand the name he called it, Monsieur Moulin described the machine for me. He described the row of long curving blades, the giant wheels and shining steel saddle. He described, feature by feature, the same plough I’d found in the forest, and moved for the first time yesterday morning, shortly before Vincent made his appearance.

I thanked Monsieur Moulin. We shook hands for a final time and he drove back on to the road to his village.

***

Back in the house, I picked up the calendar. I looked at the photograph of Vincent, smiling out at me. I remembered his words. ‘It’s important to be kind.’ I knew it was. I knew it. But it was good to have it confirmed.

I folded the calendar closed and placed it on the table I write at. Only then did I notice that it was a calendar for 2002.

Now the calendar is fixed to the wall over my desk with the firemen line-up, and Vincent Gaudy’s smiling eyes, facing out into my room. Monsieur Moulin’s on there too of course, looking good for the removal of a decade.

The dates are all wrong of course, but that’s OK, because  in the end, everything’s fine. I know. 

Vincent Gaudy told me.

***

And that’s exactly how it happened.