As for the faces, they were always the same. There was Brieg, who fancied himself as a great skipper, with his traditional cotton tagelmust scarf wrapped around his neck. They’ll be coming to get him soon. Who? To go where? Nobody’s ever known! And Roger Orion, with a face the colour of raw steak, grumbling about . . . That particular night it was the fish-guzzling seals that he dreamt of picking off (and which he did, by the way, pick off) with his shotgun; bugger the marine park! And then there was Lebivic, the local reporter from the Ouest-France, whose most recent feat had been to print the list of losers as the winners of the local elections. And the heron, who used to be a DJ at the island’s old nightclub, which closed in the ’90s after repeated instances of people falling into alcohol-induced comas under their asbestos ceiling.

Obviously, the three Parisians had also made an appearance and were enjoying their big moment of fraternising with the natives – especially the depressed one with glasses, who was in full catharsis mode. Completely hammered, he was busy describing to a handful of louts in revolting, explicit detail how his girlfriend, Alice, had died when a stone stupa had collapsed on her.

Brieg, engaging in diversionary tactics, was insisting that when they come to get him he would be stopping over in Kathmandu – it was all planned – and he’d help those poor people dig a well. He’d already dug one in his garden, which meant he’d been able to water his potatoes the previous summer when the local council had implemented water restrictions. Roger Orion made the very pertinent observation that Kathmandu was 700 kilometres away from the sea and that furthermore it wasn’t water they lacked, given they were at the foot of the Himalayas: ‘The Nepalese couldn’t give a shit about your well,’ he’d added, unkindly. The widower was explaining to them in a thick voice that his girlfriend had completely rejected all the fuckwits in her family – and they had returned the sentiment, calling her a leftie who didn’t know how to maintain her social rank and who was letting the side down. They’re the reason she’s dead, he was wailing; because she’d had to flee to the other side of the world in order to escape them.

The drunks commiserated, nodding their heads in furious agreement, on this dire day – if ever there was one – when Brest still wasn’t going to make the first division.