One of the fixtures of the golfing calendar at Les Dryades is a competition sponsored by the Chateau de Poinsouze, an upmarket caravan park popular with British and Dutch tourists. A number of happy campers come along with their clubs and join the regulars. The day culminates in an invitation to all participants to dinner at the chateau. For one reason or another I haven’t made it to the dinner in previous years. This year there was no reason why I shouldn’t go and since I happened to be playing with the son of the sponsor there was an extra incentive.

I’m very glad I did. Al fresco dining bowled me over when I made my first trip to the continent way back. I was used to Sunday school picnics in local parks, sandy sandwiches on the shores of Fife and chewing damper (a peculiarly indigestible mixture of flour and water) around boy scout campfires in Highland glens. These undeniably outdoor eating experiences had not prepared me for filling the afternoon with a leisurely lunch, a proper lunch, at a table, a proper table, in a sunny garden on the shores of Lake Geneva where apricots could be plucked from the branches above one’s head. A lunch at which our hosts, prelates of some persuasion or other, made sure that the wine flowed freely even in this impressionable sixteen year old’s direction.

No prelates at the chateau but buckets of wine and a very fine meal in a beautiful courtyard setting. I count myself as a local so once the preliminary socialising was over I left the Brits to their own devices and sat down with the French. At my table was Philipe. He’s a baker and pattissier and supplied the yummy fruit tart pudding. From time to time his wife minds the shop on a Sunday morning while he and his daughters play golf. There was Lucien, the dentist, and his wife Claudine who teaches maths. One of the topics of conversation was that worldwide dinner party favourite – the difference between men and women. According to Claudine boys tend to geometry whereas girls favour analysis and this illustrates some fundamental difference or other. It was generally agreed that women have no trouble understanding men but not vice versa. Lucien told a long but quite amusing joke in support of that thesis. Fortunately I understood the punch line. Claude, an insurance man and the organiser of our competitions harangued me about adding some Scottish flavour to a future competition but when I tried to pin down what he wanted a few days later it seemed that his idea had disappeared with the last of the evening’s wine. There was Kévin, our hefty young golf pro who tells a story well and delights in recounting the wonders and oddities of his golfing experiences including a trip to Scotland. Then Jacques, a retired oil something or other and his wife Claudine. She took up golf because she was fed up being a golf widow and turned out to a slightly better player than him. She’s not currently playing because she’s undergoing chemotherapy. I don’t know what particular cancer she has. From her behaviour in social situations you wouldn’t dream there was a cloud in her sky. Jean, my particular golfing buddy was there. He’s a retired digital imaging fundi. He spent some time in Beith in his teens improving his English and has been a Scotophile ever since. He can manage a quite convincing “haw jimmy”. Hugues, the lad I had played with in the competition and his mum Claudine joined us intermittently. Could this be a record for the number of Claudines at one dinner table? She enjoined me to speak only English whenever I have occasion to play with Hugues, a request I will act on only when feeling particularly unselfish. I’m sure there were others because it was a big table but that damned wine seems to have dimmed my memory. Maybe Pierre and his fourth wife?