To Montpellier.

I arrived and immediately felt oppressed by a warmth, a relaxed conviviality that neither my body nor mind could match, or even aspire to. A pipe of O, or even time itself would've  once eased me down into the rhythm, but I've forsworn them both. Still, there are other ways, and I'll come back to that.

Inevitably, Axel left a car for me at the airport. In a small gesture of self preservation, I made a point of not checking out the make or model of the vehicle. Suffice to say, the interior was so immaculate that I purred along the road to Nimes as if in slow motion. But it was this mammarian comfort that allowed my mind to wander and to consider why it was so necessary for me to be at Axel's incessant beck and call. Certainly, he'd published my book last month in Hamburg. But why had he decided to have the launch party in the South of France? He had muttered something in his native German, implying that there were geo-political reasons for the change of venue, reasons with which I need not concern myself.   At this point I sighed down the phone, loudly, because almost certainly we are in France for the convenience of the Boat Party. Yet he seems to want me on a very tight leash at the moment. He even suggested that I stay at the medieval chateaux of Robert, his American friend. I declined, politely, because, dear reader, I have every intention of being on my very worst behaviour.