Antibes

My scientist friend was resting under the pergola in his back garden, eating parsnip chips, myriad cheeses on bread and draining a two Euro bottle of wine. There was another glass and a clean plate laid on the table.

"I knew someone would come, he said. "Eat later. You must see this.

The dining room was full of instruments. Needles straining against their limits, counters spinning like football rattles, machines building nests of ticker tape around themselves. Fractal maps rotated, pulsated on various laptop screens, and dozens of red circles hooped date after date on the Captain Scarlet wall calendar.

"Unbelievable, my friend intoned. "I've checked and rechecked, taken things apart and put them together again - there's no doubt about it. In a matter of days, every b-movie eventuality is going to hit the earth at once.

I couldn't get much sense out of him for the rest of my stay. I tried shaking him by the shoulders, tried, "Come on, man! but he parried with, "This is no time for games.

He made dessert. The chocolate ice cream had an almost powder-like texture, even when soaked in coffee. We revolted against sickness and tiredness to be underwhelmed by a Mediterranean sunrise. I tried a drunken slumber on the shore. We climbed up to the lighthouse for the view, and came back down because black trees muffled the horizon. I half-slept, bent backwards over porous rocks that ate my hips, under a net of mosquitoes.

Early the next morning, he suggested we go to Nice. We drank lemon and mint tea from a tin pot, and shared a shisha. "I love French more when it's lit up on street signs I can't translate, he said.

Then he burrowed down under the covers of his bed, and said he wasn't coming out until it was all over.