in view of the other was OK apparently, but not semi-broad daylight. Still I had my pleasure, handed out my address and phone number, as well as the customary Tunisian greenback, and fled to Hammamet, where I arrived v. late to a worried and slightly upset L.

The rest of the stay is of no great import, except that L and I went to try to find the family of one of my Arab bits in Bagnols, in a hamlet out in the vines, not very far from Hammamet. After several false starts, and once again very late in the day, we did find them, by showing a Polaroid of my Bagnols chum, another S, to a local youth. A car in that place was an event, I think, especially when it contained an ageing, ravaged and randy European.

But the welcome from the family was something else (surrounded by a crowd of neighbours). Someone was despatched to get Dad in from the vines, someone else to get their daughter who was married to the brother of one of my other bits in Bagnols. And then there was the 10ft tall, muscled, handsome policeman who (it turned out) was S’s eldest brother. Corrrr!!! The middle brother, with a shock of curly hair, just stood around looking sexy.

They could scarcely believe it when I said (L translating when their French failed them) that I had been with S (if only they had known that I‘d had his big fat dick up me!) only ten days earlier and that he was well and that he was getting some occasional work and that (lying through my teeth) he was behaving himself. I had photos to show and leave with them, and took other (Polaroids) to leave and to take, and ornery (pre-digital) to send later.

The crunch then came when I looked at my watch and I said that we must leave. Oh no!, they said, how could we. I felt like saying that being organised and punctual was why we now ran the world, not them, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Eventually we agreed to "call in" again, en route for lunch in Tunis on the Saturday, around midday.

Well, we did and we were fed a magnificent and huge couscous, while father and middle son looked on. To drink we had Coca-Cola, no doubt bought at great expense. Even though Dad worked daily in the vines, he was a believer in the Prophet and said his prayers, so no alcohol would pass his door. I beg leave to doubt what he did on the quiet, but I may be doing him an injustice. Anyway, we were once again very late, and I won’t bore you with events in Tunis.

S. went to Sweden and got married. The middle son came to Bagnols and refused to be seduced during the opening ceremony of the Barcelona Olympics. M or S wrote a letter a year or two later asking for money. They’d both been in prison, probably over drugs, if I read between the lines.

And the cute little barman who ran the circular bar in the middle (yes, in the middle) of the circular pool at the Hannibal Thing, suddenly phoned out of the blue about five years later. He was obviously illicitly using the phone in some pick-up’s flat in Tunis and wanted the money for an airline ticket to Geneva. It was very tempting (he cannot yet have been 20 by this time, and had a most winning smile) but