I won’t dwell on my father’s birthday dinner, which was held the evening I arrived and was of little interest in itself. What happened next, however, proved to be the starting point of this entire affair.

Dinner was rapidly polished off. Granny Soize had prepared some fried potatoes with mackerel in mustard and a simple Savoy teacake that my father had put away with not so much as a word of thanks to her or any attempt to get off his backside to lend her a hand, all the while boring us to tears with his conspiracy theories along the lines of: we’re being lied to – they’re all rotten to the core – I know somebody who . . . And I sat there nodding along with the customary tolerance of a woman who knows she’s about to split, which I wasted no time in doing the minute the table had been cleared.

I headed out to see who was around.

Two sleeping sheep swayed backwards and forwards on their hooves in the darkness and a few cats on the hunt for scraps were making a bit of a commotion, but otherwise there was no sign of life in the village centre, apart from the Kastel, with its illuminated front window casting a rectangle of light onto the footpath. It has to be said: there’s such a mournful atmosphere on the island in the off season that there’d really have to be a good reason not to flee back to the mainland. You might think that tourists would be discouraged by the feel of the place; on the contrary, it’s what attracts them. In fact, it’s the season of choice for those depressed souls who come looking for some authenticity, seeking to recharge their batteries by exposing themselves to the rocky outcrops, the wild seas and the endless rain.

The Kastel Bar is more than two hundred years old and people say the island’s general state of contentment or unhappiness can be measured by the volume of alcohol consumed there. Regardless, it is definitely worth a visit, if only to admire its décor.

The owner – whom everybody knows by the classy moniker the Boche’s son, after his father, the Boche, conceived under the Occupation – has covered his walls with hideous posters of the Breton version of the Paris-Roubaix road cycle race – the Tro-Bro-Léon – each featuring a muddy cyclist in different positions . . . with a pig. You’ll also see lots of models of little pigs scattered about here and there, which must form part of some more extensive collection.

I greeted everybody there and plonked myself in a corner with a glass of cider as I interrogated the Boche’s grandson – fifteen years old and already one elbow on the zinc bar – about the general state of despondency: the Stade Brestois football club had just suffered yet another humiliation.