Macron plays down row with his winning smile.

THE first boy who ever called to take me out turned up at my door when I was 14 and home from school. I’d met him at a friend’s house and we’d chatted and he seemed quite nice. End.

And here he was, asking my mother if he could take me out. Peering through a window, for I’d seen him come up the drive and feeling a sinking horror at what was to come, I hid. I scrutinised him from head to toe.

Yes, he was good-looking but just a bit too preened for a trainee Mod comme moi. He was carrying a raincoat – a raincoat! – over his arm and, horror of horrors, he had lace-up shoes.

As he spoke to my mortified mother, who was lying for me, he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose.

A boy blew his nose. From then on he had no chance with me, for I still viewed the male as an exotic, frightening animal who had none of the habits and mannerisms of girls.

It was understandable. I knew no men or boys on any level. My father died when I was 18 months old, I’d entered convent school at two-and-a-half years old and it was only now I was meeting girls’ brothers and fathers.

My mother, forced into a role she did not want, told him I was too young and he should not call again.

I watched that – in hindsight – kind and thoughtful boy walk away, dejected, rejected; and was sadly happy for him when rain fell and he could use that manly raincoat.

It took many, many years before I didn’t flinch and run when a boy/man did something well… human. Many, many years before it finally hit me that we are all the same in our frailties, our fears, our foibles.

(It goes without saying, though, that the female has that little extra.)

Of course age and experience smooth away all those preconceptions, those requirements and those childish demands. But they’re still there – deep in the pool of all we are, were, become – and occasionally they swim up and blindside us.

To be honest, I’m a touch like that 14-year-old at the moment in the discovery that my president, Emmanuel Macron, has turned out to be just another compromised politician. I had cast aside most, though not all, of my journalistic cynicism on seeing him walk on to the podium to accept his installation.

Even accepting that staged performance of destiny, I had hope that this was the kind of man I believed in – a good man with good intent.

His intellectual approach, his quotations of the French greats of literature and philosophy; his youthful, fit, domination of the world stage; his linguistic skills – all made me rather proud of him. And he wasn’t bad looking either.

So I am at a loss to understand how he has allowed himself to become embroiled in a scandal involving his top security aide – handing ammunition to his many enemies on the far right and the far left.

Alexandre Benalla was caught on video during the May demos wearing a policeman’s visor, beating up protesters. Until video surfaced, Macron had dealt with it privately, merely suspending him with pay.

Once it did and police were involved, he was fired. Far too late.

Scurrilous rumours abounded about the relationship between Macron and his right-hand strongman. They are not the first of this kind.

They broke after other revelations seemed to confirm the young King’s Sun Court with an extraordinary make-up bill of €26,000 in three months; the couple’s hairdressing accounts and their order of €500,000 worth of plates for the Elysee Palace.

Macron has played all this down with his winning smile and a dare to his critics to come and get him.

It is no longer enough. His ratings stand at their lowest ever. It matters little that his stupid errors of judgment over Benalla give grist to the mill of those who would bring down one of the few leaders left holding against Putin and Trump.

There is a vile movement growing all over the world that seeks to drown those in the centre and those on the moderate left.

But Macron, unpopular with vast sections of the public as he seeks to drag France into the 21st century with work and social reforms, should have known better.

He should have been as sharp as he seemed to be. Should have been as clever as his elite education and government training taught him to be. When I first wrote about him in glowing terms I also wrote of my fears for him and hubris.

Arrogance can be an attractive attribute if it comes with mocking self-knowledge – a contradiction in terms, I know. But these days, more than ever, it needs to be backed with the strength of conviction and a purity of thought and action.

God knows there are few politicians about these days who could be said to have purity of thought and conviction. A part of me – a big part – still believes Macron is one. I just wish he hadn’t blown his nose.

cookfidelma@hotmail.com Twitter: @fidelmacook

PHOTOGRAPH: 3 FATES MEDIA