Somewhere, between Australia and western England, Godiva wakes up, thirsty. It’s already time for wine, but there’s nowhere to find it—or so Don, the narrator, thinks. Godiva knows better, and Don knows better than to resist. No sooner inside the camper, however, than an unexpected peril appears: a large yellow wild dog is on the roof. Normally Ivan deals with tricky situations like this, but he’s away near Chichester pretending to be a university teacher. Dino and Gavin can’t, or won’t, be found, so the only resort is Ninian, a feckless but gifted character, of whom Don seems to be fond despite a clinical evaluation of his dubious qualities.

Ninian, even with Vi to help, needs persuading. His weak spot, deny it as he try, is a cocktail, and Don—not without a glancing reference to the literature of constraints and the title of a prospective translation of a novel by Georges Perec—plays on this faiblesse with results which might be considered extravagant, though Ninian prefers to mix his gin and Italian with wine rather than vermouth.

The pub is reached, but is not a great success: it seems somehow unEnglish, and there’s a foreign body in the wine. Carried away by his earlier success in winning round Ninian, and remembering that it was the twentieth centenary of an event in the life of the Roman poet Ovid, author of the Metamorphoses—and that the most sought-after juniper berries grow in northern Italy—Don proposes gin; but Gavin is in the pub too, and Gavin’s categorically no classicist, and Gavin vetoes gin. Refusing to be discouraged, Don changes the subject to food and asks Ninian, with a bit of chaff about being a couch potato, if he would like eggs for supper. Ninian, with his irritating penchant for dropping into French, declines but with a bit of prompting dreamily goes for filet mignon with shallot confit. Don however is a stickler, reminding Ninian that he’s just suggested the favourite dish of Boris Vian and Anaïs Nin—neither a writer, it turns out, of whom Ninian is much fond—not to mention that earthy lyrical novelist Jean Giono, which inescapably entails ordering wine; as Don duly and loudly, casting caution to the winds, does.

Alas, with a terrible clashing of glasses the landlord, an Afro-Indian tyrant, marches in bearing the only wine available, an unspeakable brew from a Portuguese ex-colony stuffed with additives provided gratis by the EC, which is greeted with strangulated cries from the assembled diners—none more so than Don and Io, a Greek girl who here makes her first and only appearance in the story and seems if anything more in tune with Don than was Godiva, whose fault it is that they all ended up in this shifty joint anyway… Whether because emboldened by this sympathy, or because his patience just snaps, Don, as he finally rules out any wine-drinking, signs off with a frankly xenophobic, not to say indiscriminate, tirade linking Buddhism, Judo/Karate and the entire sub-continent in intransigent opprobrium.

We join Ivan, it’s unclear if still in West Sussex, but adopting an unusual line in popular scholarship. Using the doorbell-and-bright-cry technique beloved of generations of cosmetic salespersons, he is peddling Italian operas. There’s a gimmick, of course: as a novelty, he’s transposing them into peoples’ favourite keys. At least one member of the public is thrilled to receive Don Giovanni a 4th higher—or, maybe, a 5th lower—and falls swooning into Ivan’s arms.

Everything’s got to be new, Ivan reflects with a weary cynicism, and he’s as fickle as the rest, for now we find him in Glasgow, appreciatively eying, as she cleaves the blue sky at the deep end, the rounded curves of Ann—which so filled with jealous pain the breast of Ivonn (whose parents had a good ear but rather shaky spelling). Curves brought on, it must be said, not only by natural curviness but by serious eating, especially at night which as we know is the worst time. But still, there are nymphs in them thar Glasgow hills…, thinks Ivan, reflecting also, “Am I worthy? Is this search for beauty just personal vanity? I could be worse, at least I don’t go on armed incursions to places where they cultivate mussels, and above all I don’t let the silver ball roll unchecked down the field and between the uselessly flicking flippers, if you understand my reference.‟ *

And who should understand the reference, if not the heterodox party gathered round a pinball machine in the south of France, consisting of an Italian wide-boy, an English architect and his American girlfriend, always at each other’s throat, a superannuated balladeer, who insists on ordering sickly, gassy soft drinks, and his aging roadie with such a nose as one suspects would shine in the dark, a Ukrainian ballet dancer, Gavin D. Onion—how did he get here? Perhaps we underrated him on the grounds of his lack of Latin (and disapproval of gin, quite apart from his still unexplained failure to rise to the challenge of the dingo—but I note that Dino, equally and signally absent at the hour of need, is here too, so one can assume they’re in cahoots)—and an imperious if flawed character with an eye-patch and broad-brimmed hat, who asks disquieting questions and likes to be known, three-quarters of the way through the session at least, as “the Wanderer‟ –

– and where are they, then? Why, the city of the anti-popes, Durrell’s Gnostic capital, a short drive from the Marquis de Sade’s country estate (or the Deller Consort’s, if you prefer), perhaps dropping in to the cool calm space of La Poésie dans un Jardin, to visit (as I did) the Perec exposition in the ’88 Festival; and I hope still congregating on pinball tables whenever they can, escaping the sun, seeking a Lazarus, ** dwelling always on the words of the Wanderer, that the only one who can break the chain of fire and bring freedom must be freer than the god, but he (or she) then has the power to remake the word, sorry, world.