Jon Stamford

Let me first explain to the non-British amongst you. Last night saw the broadcast of a supposed ‘documentary’ about Parkinson’s. So far so good. However this shed little light on the condition itself and rather more light on the presenter Jeremy Paxman, recently diagnosed with PD. Jeremy Paxman for those of you unaware of him, is a British news and current affairs sort of person renowned (if that is the word) for his aggressive combative interview style. Not everybody’s cup of tea then. Some of his interviews are legendary such as those in which he sought albeit unsuccessfully to bring then Home Secretary Michael Howard to account (https://youtu.be/Uwlsd8RAoqI?t=244). He has also hosted many episodes of University challenge (that’s Paxman not Howard) with a style as abrasive as Bamber Gascoigne was adulatory.

Paxman has of course, one imagines, rather cultivated this reputation and it’s probably the case that politicians generally deserve this kind of treatment more than in times of yore. Times change, politics change, our respect for them changes. In some ways we created Jeremy Paxman.

Okay enough of the preamble. Let’s get to the point. Parkinson’s is a cruel condition yet some people are somehow elevated by their Parkinson’s (Tom Isaacs springs to mind, Perry Cohen too), spurred on to great deeds, and able to somehow improve the lot of others not just themselves. Many others are, not surprisingly diminished by the condition, defeated even. Paxman is one of those, a man with little to say of the condition but an hour of prime-time television in which to do so.

Sure, complain about the condition and its many vicissitudes but to package a series of unrelated visual anecdotes into an hour ‘documentary’ about Paxman’s tribulations with Parkinson’s fell a little short of the mark. Did we really need to see him picking up faeces from his dog? And what was that entirely unprovoked outburst “Brian Blessed is a wanker” about? From what dark recess of Paxman’s mind did that emerge? More so, why was it left in by the editor? One moment we see Paxman surrounded by many books, a byword for scholarship, Renaissance man even. The next he is the pub bore, desperate for a laugh, or at least a reaction.

The program ultimately was a mishmash of separate little vignettes about Parkinson’s which ultimately did much less to illuminate the condition than one might have hoped. There were tantalising glimpses of a future both positive and negative punctuated largely by profanities from Paxman. I’m sorry Jeremy but I think you have diminished yourself in many people’s eyes. But at least the program wasn’t entirely irredeemable – we did get to hear about Joy Milne and her remarkable ability to detect Parkinson’s with her nose. Now there was real hope.

It is often enough said in the context of Parkinson’s that our past is gone, our future uncertain and therefore the only remaining reality upon which to cling is the present. We live for the moment, squeezing joy out of that toothpaste of misery.

That certainly applies to me. My friends and family often accuse me of wilful impulsivity. Accuse is perhaps too strong a word. But there is no doubt that my predilection for unusual and unexpected actions does sometimes wrongfoot them, leaving them wondering why and how. Take this morning for instance.

Actually let’s back up a bit to put everything in context. The pub in which I commonly imbibe, The Broken Arms, had a terrible week with barmaids falling like the casualties at Passchendaele. One by one they succumbed until, by Sunday, even Lady Eleanor and Amazing Grace had to concede defeat. This is not normally amongst my more successful or appropriate expressions to use with the fairer sex but it was the case that they “looked like death warmed up”. I suspect I’m no longer on either of their Christmas card lists because of this inappropriate transgression.

Eventually, more or less anyone who could pull a pint found themselves behind the bar. It was pretty much as I would imagine a World War I trench to be. Just step over the bodies. That sort of thing.

First thing Monday morning, I knew something was not right. A definite tickle at the back of the throat, my cheeks pink and my temperature rising sharply. By lunchtime, my temperature was now one of the reactor cores at Chernobyl, and my cheeks as red and inflamed as a baboon’s arse. Not pretty. I retired to bed.

Fortunately this particular bug, whatever the little blighter was but Covid it wasn’t, was one of those 48-hour types. I felt like death warmed up. My mouth and throat looked like one of the Lascaux cave paintings, only messier. Leaving aside the associated nausea and flatulence (I may have to destroy the mattress), the entire episode passed through my system like Hurricane Ian.

By this morning, the storm had passed and apart from a slight feeling of weakness and a sense that I had not really kept enough fluids down on the previous few days I felt fine. I woke early (around 4:30 AM as I recall), with an overwhelming and inexplicable hunger for croissants.

Under normal circumstances the ensuing chain of events would go something like this: awaken, yawn several times, be vaguely aware of pastry in some form, turn over and go back to sleep.

Occasionally a variant of this along the following lines might occur: awaken, a bit of yawning as before, stretch, extract myself from bedclothes and attempt to stand vertically, gingerly make my way downstairs, dazzled every few seconds by the newly installed motion sensitive lights. Find some of last night’s pasta on the side in the kitchen. Eat it, at the same time wondering why it tastes better now than it did when served six hours earlier. Continue to ponder this weighty matter as I head back upstairs and attempts to go back to sleep.

You will however notice that both of these activities involve waking up and going back to bed. None of them involve getting dressed, picking up money, car keys, a four pack of Red Bull and a McDonald’s sausage and egg muffin, and heading up to Maidstone to join the M20 to Folkestone, then the Channel Tunnel and France.

This one did.

And had it not been for my failure to pick up my passport would have ended even further from home. After a very brief flirtation with the idea of trying to see if my credit card served as a sufficient ID to get into France (it probably would have done pre-Brexit), I pulled over into a layby, switched off the engine and fell asleep. Couple of hours later and I was back at home, in bed and wondering if I had dreamt it.

The fast food wrapper and half drunk Red Bull proved otherwise. I have always been impulsive even before Parkinson’s but this was Royal impulsivity in velvet robes and ermine, encrusted with precious stones.

I spoke to Shel about it. She knows me better than practically anybody outside my family. I don’t think even she couldn’t quite believe it.

“You know” she said “you can get croissants in Britain”.

I have been a lucky man. Life has, thus far, been kind. Those may seem absurd sentences for someone who has had Parkinson’s for 16 years, type II diabetes and even a heart condition thrown in for good measure. A year ago I had neurosurgery to implant electrodes that would control my shaking hands and restless feet. Hardly the medical history of a lucky man you might think.

You would be wrong.

I often feel a fraud. I know many with Parkinson’s, crippled by the vicious tarantella of dyskinesias and the agony of dystonia. I know many whose nights are full of terrors, stalked by demons, prey to wild beasts. Or riding that ragged edge between sleep and dreams toward the gates of delirium. I know diabetics, models of compliance, entering their later years as amputees, their digits, one by one plucked from them by neuropathies, vascular insufficiencies too numerous to mention, and the blackening of sores and gangrene.

Were these afflictions to afflict me, I would doubtless rail against the injustice, the savagery and relentless onslaught of the condition. But instead the Almighty, by whatever pronouns you know him/her, has seen fit to give me more time to reflect.

Before L-dopa, life expectancy with Parkinson’s was six years from diagnosis. That would take me to 2012. I would not have seen my eldest musician daughter graduate from university let alone my younger children. No paediatric intensive care nurse. No skilled paramedic. I would have missed all of it, serving only as food for worms. And even within a life expectancy of six years, they would have been pretty grim. A slow waltz into darkness.

Worst of all, I would have missed the last series of Game of Thrones.

Primo Levi, in “The Drowned and the Saved” touched upon it in the apparently arbitrary murders in the WW2 concentration camps. The suicide rates amongst survivors of the death camps reflected their inability to reconcile their own survival against the extermination of many other similar individuals. This paradox drove many (the author included in all likelihood) to take their own lives, unable to understand their salvation in the context of the greater drowning.

Yet others, better patients than I, can write with authority about the screaming agonies of dystonia, the tarantella dance of dyskinesia and the many invisible symptoms of this sordid syndrome. Not me. I may preach from the same pulpit but my words if not my authority are carried away on the breeze.

I am not alone. I know of others who whether vocally or sotto voce, feel equally uncomfortable. Often in the aftermath of successful DBS, our bodies react to this liberation by making us feel guilty about advocacy. I can (but won’t) name friends who feel equally uncomfortable. So how do you speak to the “drowning” from the comparative security of the lifeboat.

If one of the central pillars of advocacy is the acknowledgement of experience, then we are muted. Yet I would argue that it is that transition from drowned to saved that is, in itself, informative.

So brothers and sisters, perhaps you should be the judge of this. Is my voice no longer relevant or meaningful. Do we press on in the hope of regaining our authority or do we, like Stonewall Jackson recognised the need to collect our thoughts once more and “cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees”.

The platform was longer than he remembered. And, some four decades on, he was no closer to understanding why the station name should be that of another village. One so small it hardly ever featured on maps. A hamlet really.

A scorching hot day, the track rippling with mirages. Even the songbirds and crickets were quiet. With a perfunctory tap of his cane he turned. At least they haven’t moved the pub he thought. From the outside it all looked familiar. The Broken Arms – beer garden, satellite and wifi. And the bar had moved. Jack thought “I have been away too long. Too much has changed”.

He clattered coins on the bar, turned and, with a little incontinent splash of ale on the carpet, sat down with a crumpled sigh.

Zara knew better than to ask. It was just one of his ‘moods’, one of the times at home when he seemed to withdraw to a different place. Maybe even with a different girl. She often wondered.

“It’s all different” he murmured. “It’s not how I remember it”. She placed her hand ever so gently on his. He looked up for a moment. “I wanted it to be the same”.

“It’s been forty years I’ve been away” he thought “that’s half a lifetime. More to some”.

Even the beer had changed. No longer the yeasty froth of yesteryear. “Bloody chemistry kit now” he said aloud.

“Come again” asked the barmaid, her jade green, almost orange, eyes, all buttons and bows, fancy ties.

“Nothing” said Jack “Nowt. Nowt of ‘owt”. Even the words sounded stupid and untrue in his voice. Pastiche. Phony Yorkshire.

He was a phony Yorkshireman. He knew it and it didn’t fool Zara for one minute.

Jack grew up in Yorkshire or at least he thought he did. His comical absentmindedness, and Zara’s gentle ribbing, had long since given way to dementia. He took tablets for it, when he could remember.

That tickled him. “When I can remember”. Without his noticing, she would count his tablets to be sure none were unaccounted for. It started as a kindness but the years had made it a necessity. Sometimes he muddled one tablet with another. Sometimes he forgot altogether. She could tell those days. He hardly recognised her, withdrawn to his private world.

Mostly she saw him on Thursdays. She did his washing, tidied the kitchen and read from the newspaper when he couldn’t find his glasses. “Down the side of the sofa?” she would ask, enjoying his childish look of surprise when there they were. They were always there. Along with biscuit crumbs, broken biros, postage stamps and torn scraps of paper with phone numbers.

“Penny for your thoughts” Zara would venture.

“They’ve gone up. They start at tuppence now. Inflation, you know” he sometimes replied. She rarely pressed him further. Sometimes he just talked gibberish. Once in awhile he mentioned names. She knew none of them.

Sometimes she would talk to Jack, remind him how they had met, replaying the narrative for him. Like Steinbeck’s Lenny, he never tired of hearing it. He was older than her but somehow, when she told the story, he was younger, stronger and braver. And, the bit he liked best, he was a Yorkshireman. One of the proud sons of God’s Country, as he never tired of calling Yorkshire .

“I come from tough northern stock” he would say, chest puffed with pride. Sometimes she would tease him, remembering the days when they traded one-liners, fast and furious, sharply sparring with each other. Those days were long since gone. He couldn’t think fast enough and she was too kind to hurt him.

He thought it was his idea but actually it was hers – to travel south, to visit the land of his exile one more time. He needed a change of scenery – she knew that. Something to close the gap between reality and his private distant world. Maybe she would find him again in Yorkshire, maybe the hidden places were real and she could share them. Maybe he was in “God’s country”.

Yorkshire belonged in those anguished dreams and false memories that overwhelmed reality as his mind crumbled. Outside of his demented reveries, he was a Kentish man, a man of apples and hops, his landscape punctuated by oast houses, fertile fields of fruit, of tractors and hay bales.

He hadn’t wanted to travel by train. Steam railways were in his blood, in the corners of his dissolving mind. He had no place for diesels. From the fragments of stories long lost in the eddies of time, generations of his family had built locomotives and carriages at the plant works in Doncaster. His grandfather had supped at the Black Bull, down by the marketplace. Supped too much, if truth were told. As his own memories of Kent faded, he replaced them with an imagined Yorkshire childhood.

But there were no more trains. So they travelled by car, ticking off the towns as they passed. They spoke little. Sometimes he slept, slumped forward against the seatbelt. Sometimes he seemed awake, but remote. Occasionally she would catch a tear. Sometimes she thought that the more he wandered, the more she loved him. “Isn’t that what love is” she thought.

He tried to show her some of the places he visited in his mind. The plots, overgrown with thistles and weeds, where his imagined grandparents lay. The bridge where he used to watch the great locomotives of the London North-Eastern Railway pass beneath on their way to Edinburgh. The houses where he had lived, the town fields and their rusting goalposts. They watched kestrels flutter above the motorway, past idle pit heads in Armthorpe and Askern. Where he conjured Rotherham, Barnsley and Sheffield from Ashford, Canterbury and Broadstairs, she could not follow.

Jack’s voice even changed. His accent drifted north with him. She hadn’t seen him smile in months as his decline had accelerated. But here, he positively beamed. At first. Gradually it became too much. His mind, filled with memories of a Yorkshire childhood, both real and imagined, confused him. Jack thought “I have been away too long. Too much has changed”.

Zara would take him each day to the Broken Arms where he would nurse a pint, maybe a sandwich to eat. The pub took him in, frail, distant and warm. Regulars listened to his incoherent ramblings about Yorkshire. Zara often left him snoozing in the sunlight. He talked about being “called home” as he put it.

It was a Tuesday when he died, quietly unnoticed by the fireside. No fuss or bother, his hand clenched around the price of his pint. Although in Kent, he was always now in Yorkshire.

Zara could hear him mouths the words – In. God’s. Country.

Okay, repeat after me “limited overs cricket is not cricket”. Again. “Limited overs cricket is not cricket”.

Cricket is a game of infinite subtleties, nuances and fluidity. When played at its best, the game is almost infinitely beautiful, composed of tiny, almost invisible elements, a cornucopia of tiny battles between batsman and bowler. Cricket is the sound of leather on willow, the scattering of stumps and the slap of leather on hand.

And this soundtrack is played out over the most elastic of timeframes. In a full test match, taken to its most extended form, the game incorporates five luncheons (not lunches) and five tea breaks. A further fifteen short breaks may be taken for drinks.

This is the way sport should be played. Cricket is tactical and strategic, skilful and subtle, strong and courageous. Whether or not we like it or concede it, cricket, in common with so many team sports, is a surrogate for warfare and all the better for that. Countries that compete with each other in team sports on the whole do not fight each other. That course of action is conducted on the cricket field.

Over the last several decades cricket has truncated somewhat. Increasingly we are offered “limited overs cricket”, a grotesque parody of the real game. The real game of cricket takes place over the course of 4 to 5 days at the professional level with two innings for each side. That said, my old school used to play an annual fixture at Lord’s against Harrow. Although only two days in duration, it nonetheless consisted of the magical two innings per school. It was therefore, by my definition, cricket. Also, if you were playing, it excused you from double geography.

Why?

Why was that cricket (not why were you excused double geography)? For two reasons. Firstly the game took place over two innings and, secondly, all three results (win, lose, or draw) were possible and therefore all shades in between. It taught the players all sorts of realities about life. It taught players of the injustices (there was no Hawkeye, ball tracking or snicko in those days). If the umpire raised his finger, you were out, plain and simple. Your protest, of which there should, in any case, be none, was, even when given by the most myopic umpire, limited to a brief raising of the eyebrow, lasting no more than a second before walking off. You did not offer your thoughts on the umpire’s parentage, eyesight, or intellect. Nor did you invite him to pistols at dawn, a ruckus in the car park or any one of a plethora of punishments. The truth is you were out for no greater reason than that you were given out.

At school we could not get our fill of cricket (which is more than can be said for geography). I listened, under my blankets, on a scratchy crackling radio to the test matches in Australia where, in those days, overs of eight balls were the norm. Whatever happened to that?

Let me get to the point (and there is no need for that language). “Limited overs cricket” is not cricket. It is a travesty of cricket, like a cricket cartoon. The kind of cricket that might be played by the seven dwarfs. Comedy cricket without any competitive edge. Limited overs cricket is not, I repeat not, cricket the For a variety of reasons. Here are some.

CRICKET IS NOT PLAYED IN PYJAMAS. Even when I’m asleep and dreaming of cricket, it is in whites, or technically more accurately creams. Playing cricket in pyjamas was, I suspect, the creation of someone without any background in the game. A marketing man perhaps. Kerry Packer incarnate. Personally I struggle to keep a straight face when I see otherwise respectable cricketing figures in pinks, fuchsias, oranges, and so on.

2. CRICKET IS NOT FOOTBALL AND THEREFORE DOES NOT REQUIRE NUMBERS. I can understand their usage in the hustle and bustle of a football match but the same does not apply in cricket, a largely static game. Does it really make it easier for commentators? Or is it just another way of milking the merch. I don’t have any problem with discrete numbers on a player’s cap, denoting his position in the pantheon of former and present players. That seems a genteel nod of respect. By the same token, we do not need their names on the back of their shirts either. Cricket calls for neither numbers, names or night attire. Cricket can trace its origins back as far as the 16th century with international cricket being recorded in the late 19th century. Nowhere does it say pyjamas are acceptable.

SHORTENING A GAME DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE EXCITING. This seems to have been a false premise from day one. 50 over cricket was conceived as a way of getting a meaningful match between two sides which could be completed in a day. In other words the game was fitted to the format rather than developing a format which suited the game. But the biggest problem and the most savage of indictments is the fact that it has stripped the game of that most valuable of commodities – patience. It was only a short step from there to even shorter forms.

THE HUNDRED AND T20 FORMS OF THE GAME HAVE SHIFTED THE EMPHASIS FROM QUALITY STROKEPLAY TO MERE SLOGGING, chasing wide deliveries and so on, lofting the ball to Cow Corner. In my opinion they are profoundly detrimental to the development of quality batsmen. Defensive strokes are practically unheard of. And in a T20 game, where the entire quota of wickets is rarely taken, the penalty for squandering one’s wicket is much less punitive – somebody else can get the runs.

LIMITED OVERS CRICKET IS KILLING THE ART OF BOWLING. Whereas test match bowling is a weapon of infinite subtlety and variation, in the limited overs game the emphasis is solely on dot balls and defensive field settings. We are losing the art of attacking cricket. Slips are a rarity, attacking fields equally improbable. Were it not for the imposition of a minimum number of fielders within a short distance of the wicket, captains would simply pack the boundary. The fact that such rules as power plays were introduced reflected this natural imbalance.

One can, and many do, cite the success of the IPL. Yes, it is successful. Yes it allows cricketers to be paid handsome sums of money for their services and yes, it owes its success to the relative failure of test match cricket as a spectator sport in the subcontinent. Fireworks, loud pop music, dancing, microphones, illuminated bails. Who knows where it will end. It bears no relation to any version of the game I’ve ever played. Why 20 overs? Why not reduce it to 10. Then the whole match will take no longer than a football game. Is this really the future we want for the game?

By now you will have realised that I resent any incursion into the test match structure as anathema. Pink balls, floodlights, even day-night games are a no-no as far as I’m concerned. They have no place in test match cricket. As Richie Benaud once famously said “limited overs cricket is an exhibition. Test match cricket is an examination”.

And long may it remain so. Throw away those pyjamas, shine up that red ball with spit and sweat, and stare into the batsmen’s eyes. Because that’s cricket.

For those tiny handful among you unaware of my passion for the game, I should probably give you some context. Since around 2008, on and off, I have had the pleasure of playing cricket for Bells Yew Green CC. This tiny village, invisible on most maps, somehow manages to field four competitive teams on a Saturday afternoon in the county league.

Having not played cricket since school (Marlborough, where cricket was in some form more or less mandatory), I initially chose to play the game on the flimsy pretext of being part of a “dads and lads” team, Ready to pass on the fruits of my wisdom to young Jacob. I don’t suppose I fooled anybody and, like many of the dads, we soon found that our own penchant for the game exceeded that of our offspring, despite the reverse being the case in terms of talent. My own scratchy efforts in the field, typically somewhere between slip and point, bore no comparison with my sons efforts with the ball, bowling beautiful late outswingers to the chagrin of senior batters throughout the league.

While he matured into a decent enough fast bowler, my own contributions to each game withered on the vine. Each season, my productivity, already marginal, diminished but never more so than this. I think I believed, following my recent neurosurgery, implanting electrodes deep into my brain, that I could turn back the clock and somehow be a productive member of the team. I was wrong.

Like ageing boxers, unable to accept the reality of events, and the slowing of their reactions, I thought I could make a contribution. I even went so far as to have a couple of net sessions. Vish gave me a bag of balls from the bowling machine. I should have taken note of the evidence but instead, optimistically asked Vish for his opinion. He was honest. And I thank and respect him for that. Whereas I ignored the evidence, when asked whether I would be able to bat properly, he told me that he was worried I would get hurt.

Needless to say, I felt otherwise. 2022 was going to be the season where I vindicated my own erroneous perception of my ability and rolled along on a wave of increasing scores, culminating in a 50 at the end of the season. Plain and simple.

But cricket has a way of finding you out, its own stark reality triumphing over your own delusions. Ultimately, there is nowhere to hide and the chances of the season panning out like that were negligible. This year, despite the long-suffering patience of my captain, Andy, and my teammates, cricket has (finally and correctly – let’s be honest) shown me the door. I am a liability in the field, stopping next to nothing and catching even less. My batting has reached a kind of nirvana, almost the sound of one hand clapping. I know I’ve said it before but this time really is for good. It’s time to go. The rest of my team can get on with the business of winning games instead of having to hide me somewhere in the field.

Cricket is difficult enough when played with 11. Playing with 10 is asking way too much. Cricket is a beautiful game and it will be all the more beautiful without my fumblings in the field.

Do I regret anything? Yes of course I do.. I regret every century I didn’t make, cut short achingly close on five. I regret every catch I dropped, every throw that trickled feebly to the wicket-keeper, every lumbering run in pursuit of the ball. But these are not cricket regrets so much as my ranting against my own health and the dying of the light.

In small mitigation, if I may, I offer this. I have had Parkinson’s for nearly 17 years, type II diabetes for five, a heart condition for three and neurosurgery to implant electrodes in my brain and battery packs in my chest. Now I can add cataracts to that list. None of it helps. I take more than 7000 tablets a year just to move. It’s mainly successful. I time my tablets to get the best benefits during the games. On a good day you would struggle to see my difficulties. But some days the drugs don’t work. And over the years, the number of bad days has begun to exceed the good. Perhaps you’ve noticed my foot dragging, return of my tremor or blank expressionless face. These are my bad days.

But Vish was right. The cataracts, minor in terms of day-to-day activities, have huge implication for cricket. I simply don’t see the ball quickly or early enough. I don’t see it leaving the bowlers hand or the batsmen’s bat. And if you see the ball late, your reaction will be late. More than once I have failed to see the ball until past me. If you can’t see it you can’t play it. Eyesight is everything and, although hesitating to draw parallels with the master blaster himself, even Vivian Richards struggled when his eyesight began to fail. And I’m sure as hell no Vivian Richards.

Cricket has always been a love affair for me. I’ve had the privilege of playing with pretty much everyone at this club. I’ve played with county level players, even on one occasion with internationals. I have memories and stories by the hatful. One day there will be a book. Who knows – maybe a TV series. Thank you all. It’s been a blast.

*For the record my last match was for BYG 4th XI against Isfield CC 2nd XI. They batted first and scored 239 for 9 off their 40 overs despite a spell of 4 for 26 off 6 by our skipper. Our reply faltered at 173 with only Andy (44) and Petrus (61) offering serious resistance. I scored 1, in doing so equalling my highest score of the season and taking my total to a whopping 2 at an average of 0.5.

Like I said, it’s time to go.

In the heart of Montmartre, it all came flooding back to me the moment I saw the restaurant. It hadn’t changed. Or perhaps, if it had, it was in no more than trivial detail. Le Relais de la Butte, a true staging point halfway up Rue Ravignan, where it opened out, since 1911 upon Place Émile Goudeau. Poulet a l’estragon, chicken breast,pan-fried with tarragon and served in its copper skillet. We ate as though the meal was our last. It was. Conversation was stilted. We thought it was love at the time. It wasn’t and because it wasn’t, I would never again recognise it’s like. In the tiny square, bounded on two of the sides by the restaurant and by the hotel in which we had stayed, love faltered.

The old man, coughing and spluttering periodically on his Gauloise, saw you twirl and my camera flash. Tres jolie he called out. You smiled, and although I could not see it in the dark, I know you blushed. The old man knew it. You looked a million dollars and if I remember nothing else of you any more, I shall never forget that image. Your silk dress, the colour of lobelia, hugging your body, achingly slim and pale. The old man knew it. And this young man, too stupid and gauche, let you slip through his fingers.

In these buildings, Le Bateau-Lavoir,a creaking artists garret, Picasso, Matisse, Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein had painted and written. A wooden clatter that echoed along the street, I threw back the shutters, letting in the moonlight. A dog barked. I can remember the sound of your dress as I stood behind you and loosened the clasp. It slid down in a crinoline cascade and I cupped your breasts in my hands as it fell away. You turned to me, shoulders curved into feline submission. Your pale body phosphorescent in the moonlight, shivering, each breath fast and shallow, nipples like thimbles.

Something passed between us that night. Or wrote, like a blunt red wax crayon, through our hopes. A fleeting moment I cannot forget.

It’s certainly been an interesting week. Interesting in the Confucian understanding of the word – you know, “May you live in interesting times” that is.

As many of you know I have recently indulged my penchant for big cats with the purchase of what I imagine to be my last Jaguar. And for the most part, pertinent since it is their inheritance that is being consumed, the kids have been supportive. Their reasoning, along the lines of a happy dad is a better dad, is sound.

In the light of my many recent vicissitudes with the DVLA, I am aware that my driving licence is no longer a given and, having stared into that licenceless abyss twice previously, I treasure it all the more. I will retain the Micra for more mundane driving and use the Jag for excursions. The Micra will go to Tesco, the Jag to the coast.

Like all my previous Jags (all two of them), the new one is not without its quirks. It drives beautifully but needs the airbag sensor, air conditioning, CD multi-changer and clock repairing. Nothing that affects the running of the car you understand, merely cosmetic matters. But that’s always been the way with Jags – if you want something that works all the time with ruthless German efficiency buy a Beemer, a marque of Teutonic engineering that never fails but, for me at least, feels rather like a combination of laptop and videogame. But Beemers fail in other areas. They do not become that throbbing, breathing embodiment of a living thing that is a Jaguar. William Lyons said the motorcar was as near as we can get to a living, breathing entity. He said “motorcar” but, as their principal designer, he meant Jaguars.

Driving a Jaguar is the building of a relationship, a love affair if you will. Whilst a BMW is a domestic robot, always obedient and well-behaved, a Jaguar is a wilful creature, untamed and passionate. And that passion never leaves you untouched. They constantly surprise, sometimes disappoint but never leave you untouched. The BMW is your wife/husband, the Jaguar is your lover.

And I have learned, as if I needed any further education, just how expensive Jaguar motoring can be. When I bought the car, it came with two keys. One did not work so I telephoned the local Jaguar dealership to ask about a replacement. Obviously these keys are slightly more complex than your average house key for instance, with separate blade and brain parts. So I was braced for what I thought might be perhaps £50. Maybe even £100? £200? Surely not? No, believe it or not, the final price for a key was, including the VAT (why do places quote the price and VAT separately when we all have to pay the VAT?) an eye watering £425. I just laughed and put the phone down. I thought it was a prank.

Stop and think about that for a moment. We are talking about a key for goodness sake. You could buy a car for that kind of money. Nor is the key made of gold and platinum, encrusted with precious stones and presented in a carrying case of Siberian ermine and Tuscan leather. It doesn’t play selections from Italian opera, offer lifestyle advice or fragrance the environment with sandalwood. No, it’s just a key.

So for the time being I will hope that my one key suffices. At the very least it will encourage me to remember where put the key rather than experience that almost routine feeling every morning trying to retrace my steps and where I might have put the keys the night before. That will have to wait until I have saved up the money and emptied my piggy bank. Yes, I know the key has to be programmed, personalised and paired to the specific car but that applies to many other cars. Frankly I think they are taking the piss. I shall look at alternatives.

If I was an unhappy Jaguar owner on Wednesday, I was doubly unhappy on Thursday when some vandal chose to exercise his creative talents and vandalise my car. That his chosen weapon was a car key seems particularly apt bearing in mind my rejection of the £425 key. I emerged from the local supermarket, having just briefly nipped out to get a four pack of yoghurt (peach as I remember but that’s not important), to see someone close to my car for no apparent reason. I had a bad feeling immediately and discreetly took down his registration number. As he drove off, I noticed the scrapes. A sinewave running more or less the length of the car with some parts deeper than others. Either way utterly gratuitous.

I am not going to waste time asking the usual “why do people do this?” Let’s not beat about the bush. The answer is simple enough. Because they are just nasty little petty minded a****holes, choking on their own envy and unable to channel that emotion into any action other than destruction.

Perhaps they had abusive parents. Maybe they had unsuccessful potty training. Or perhaps they had just been charged £425 for a blasted key and felt it necessary to express that disappointment.

I feel bad even mentioning it. There are so many other injustices in this currently timorous world. Children starve, crops fail, icecaps melt, forests burn. In the grand scheme of things, some scratches on the side of my car will not limit the amount of damage being vested on the planet by man and other high hominids. Mind you, these hominids would struggle to understand “no claims bonus”, “policy excess” and “limited liability”, all of which I shall find myself addressing in the next few weeks.

Okay, rant over. And breathe.