Cortège

One of the privileges, worth all the work, worry and hassle, of having decided to make our home in the old port of Antibes is the possibility of having an after dinner stroll along the quays, with the moonlit Mediterranean lapping almost oilily against the hulls of the hundreds of yachts, mega-yachts and private aircraft carriers.

Last night, we had ambled past the Octopus, replete with sinister looking, black garbed security detail on the hydraulic gangplank, and were heading towards the super-kitsch three-masted schooner (the Maltese Falcon: if you appreciate truly heroic interior kitsch, look up her website), when we saw that there were an awful lot of big Mercedes people carriers, with beady eyed, ear-wired chappies in mohair silvery suits, suspicious bulges under their armpits, and occasionally, as a touch of fantasy, the tiniest ponytail trailing over their collars.

On the gin palaces, there was a lot of glad handing and people speaking into one or more mobile phones at once. The crew, in pressed, starched uniforms, were hovering around waiting for orders.

As we turned to go, lights started up, and all the people carriers, which we now saw had CD numberplates and darkened windows, hurtled past us in a convoy. Inside each, alongside the aforementioned security gents, were rows of Yasser Arafat lookalikes. What deal, over what commodity, in which part of the world, had been done in Port Vauban, Antibes, on Tuesday, 5th May, 2009?