Bokelskere.no

Jeg begynte å kjenne meg uvel av en dårlig samvittighet av den typen man bare kan oppleve hvis man har bodd blant engelskmenn - en fryktelig følelse av at all nytelse som innbefatter mer enn en kopp te med melk og en sjokoladekjeks, er en form for blasfemisk mangel på måtehold.

[Paris, Place de la Bastille]: Problemet består i at trafikklysene ved fotgjengerovergangene er konstruert med det åpenbare formål å forvirre utenlandske tilreisende, ydmyke dem og - hvis alt går etter planen - ta livet av dem..

Jeg hadde tilfeldigvis sett en spørreundersøkelse i en britisk avis der næringslivsledere var blitt bedt om å liste opp hva de avskydde mest i universet, og de tre øverste punktene var følgende: hagenisser, pelskledde terninger - og franskmenn. Det moret meg enormt. Av alle ting man kan avsky - pest, fattigdom, tyranniske regimer, Michael Fish - valgte de hagenisser, pelskledde terninger og franskmenn.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

The one truly unbearable thing in the city is the Turkish pop music. It is inescapable. It assaults you from every restaurant doorway, from every lemonade stand, from every passing cab. If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anaestetic to a background accompaniment of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like

Somebody did own that view, could sit there every morning with his muesli and orange juice, in his Yves St Laurent bathrobe and Gucci slippers, and look out on this sweep of Mediterranean heaven. It occurred to me that it probably was owned by Donald Trump, or the Italian equivalent, some guy who only uses it for about two minutes a decade and then is too busy making deals and screwing people by telephone to notice the view. Isn't it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?

I shall call him Edward, since that was his name.

It seemed odd and sad that mankind could for centuries have so effortlessly graced the landscape with structures that seemed made for it - little arched bridges and stone farmhouses, churches, windmills, winding roads, hedgerows - and now appeared quite unable to do anything to the countyside that wasn't like a slap in the face.