WILFRED DE’ATH

Once a week, usually on a Saturday, I give myself a morning off from the monks’ daily offices (seven in number) and walk into the little local town, Sablé sur Sarthe. It takes me about half an hour, but now that I have two dodgy knees and a bad hip, it’s going to be longer.

Sablé, for my money, is the perfect little French town I have been seeking for sixty years. Three or four bars, numerous bridges across the Sarthe, a magnificent parish church. I visit all the bars in turn; the owners are getting to know me now and sometimes feed me free brioche and croissants to eat with my coffee.

First stop, the Maison de la Presse, where the owner, Christine, sells the Guardian (the only British paper she takes) rather apologetically because it costs ¤4 and is usually minus its inner section. The Guardian is a newspaper I have never been able to get along with. Is it my fancy or is there very little hard news coming out of Britain these days? And if I have to read one more article for or against Jeremy Corbyn, I shall throw myself into the Sarthe.

I always visit a clothes shop which specialises in bankrupt stock and where you can pick up a brand-new M&S shirt or pair of trousers for ¤3 or ¤4. Consequently, I am now looking smarter than I ever have.

Next stop, the very up-to-date bookshop, which features translations of famous English poets and writers into French. At present, I am struggling with Keats, Dylan Thomas and W B Yeats. The translations are banal, confirming my long-held contention that English is actually a far richer language than French.