Our Cars: A French affection

Begin at the beginning. I should listen more often to the advice I give others. I’ve sat staring at this screen for fully half an hour. Stabbed out a sentence or two, then done the digital equivalent of crumpling up the paper. But leaning on the backspace button lacks the cathartic release of chucking a sheet of A4 over your shoulder.

The beginning, then. Dinard airport, a 15-minute flight from Jersey where I live. It is, I guess, early 1983. David and I step off the Aurigny Air Services Trislander, as ever slightly surprised to have survived another flight on this weird, rickety but actually almost indestructible island-hopping bucket of bits. I mean aircraft.

David is my best friend. Indeed we are such good friends his mother is entirely convinced we are in a relationship, not least because we keep on disappearing together for weekends away. A very traditional lady, this causes her considerable discomfort. So of course not only do we do nothing to disabuse her of the notion, it is possible we may even at times have played up to it. Horrible people, teenagers. Forty years later, David is still my best friend.