With two new hands on the metaphorical deck, the sheer quantities of wine being drunk have reached biblical proportions. A veritable red sea of the stuff has been quaffed, every cup of potential water miraculously replaced by something more grape-based. We are told by a wine merchant fellow that Burgundy wines contain no sugar so they give no hangovers. However, we have strived keenly to prove the fellow wrong.

L’Aigle is, in his own, friendly manner, a mad wee bastard. He somehow manages to spend a good portion of his first day or two in the arctic waters of the pool. He is kind enough to retrieve my ice-clad testicles from the floor of said pool, but then only agrees to return them to me if I play umpteen-million hours of boules with him (pun not necessarily intended).

[FUN FACT: The game boules is sometimes called ‘pétanque’, but only when played using early-twentieth century tanks. This variation requires a great deal more space and heavy ordinance, so is more regularly played in this part of the world by the Germans.]

We find old Mungo’s golf clubs and invent a new game where you take a beach towel and lay it somewhere in the house’s (large) garden, and then attempt to fire golf balls onto it from increasingly improbable angles. L’Aigle, bless him, has limited control over his motor functions and regularly belts the balls into adjoining fields/the swimming ball/Moan of Arc. I, on the other hand, remain undefeated over the whole week. It seems that without my pendulous bollocks weighing me down I am quite the natural sportsman. I therefore decide to lob them back into the pool and live as a eunuch, planning to join the PGA tour upon my return.

*

We are somewhat less slothful this week and visit a few of the nearby towns. At one point we get a little carried away and purchase some very fancy Côte-d’Or wines. The Old Man seals his up in a box, which I offer to stash at my flat while he is back in China. He makes me promise not to drink them and I agree to this. (And who says that lying never works, my friends? Lying is fantastic. As soon as his airplane takes to the skies they are dead bottles walking.)

On one particularly balmy jour français, we drive cross-country for the best part of an hour to reach a town the Mansfield clan had not visited in two decades. Only when we get there does The Old Man remember that the place he was thinking of is actually in the Dordogne.

[FUN FACT: The Dordogne is the best part of 500km from, that is to say ‘nowhere-bloody-near’, Burgundy.]

If I was not already firm in my resolution to drink all The Old Man’s fine wine, this exercise in senility would certainly have pushed me across the line.

Just before we pack the car and head back to Albion we manage to catch not one, but two additional gerbil-rat thingies. We have neither the time nor the inclination to drive off into the deep wild to release them as before, so content ourselves by freeing them on the other side of the garden. As soon as the trap opens the little buggers peg it out of the cage, back across the lawn and up into the eaves of the house, rendering our great, final hunt somewhat pointless. We reflect, however, that this is now someone else’s (i.e. Mungo’s) problem – for it is time to race up to Calais and catch us a ferry.

*

Fortunately for us, all the widely-reported trouble at Dover is coming from north to south, as it were. Driving away from the port we sail past thousands of poor souls trapped in their automobiles as the gridlock extends up the A2 from Dover deep into Kent. It is certainly understandable that the French wish to up the rigour of their border security in the light of recent, tragic events. What is less understandable is why they decided, in order to do this, they should only send one solitary fellow over to check the cars, trucks and passports of innumerable holidaymakers and long-haulers. One imagines that it has something to do with Brexit. Everything seems to be, these days.

So, overall, a very pleasant fortnight indeed. A gentle medley of cheese and wine and relaxation, of wine and sunshine and wine, of rodents and bread and wine and wine and writing and wine. There was the occasional beer as well for good measure. And there was also wine.

Many thanks to those of you who read and enjoyed these incidental fripperies. Why not try rereading them and attempting to go drink for drink with us, in the manner of the potentially fatal ‘Withnail and I Drinking Game’? I suggest that you might first pop to Oddbins, however, for you shall, almost certainly, need to buy some wine.