So while Sandra was off in Italy for two weeks painting clouds, I was painting the barge in a town in Champagne called Sillery. One day an attractive young woman came by and, I guessed, asked if she could speak with me. We chatted, all in French. Twenty minutes later, without a word of English having entered the conversation, she asked if she could take my picture. Sure, I said. I handed her a boat card with my email address. With my pidgin French, in which if I don’t know a French word I say it in English with an Inspector Clouseau Peter Sellers fake French accent, who knows what I actually had told her. I’ll confess that there was a stage in my life when a newly met young woman would be told I was an astronaut. Or a brain surgeon.

But I did find out some of what I’d said. I received an email from Clémence today, containing this newspaper article.