It seemed fitting that a French doctor should ask me to provide a urine sample in a wine glass, this was Bordeaux after all.
Being teetotal I was a philistine when it came to wine. I’d not visited a single vineyard during my stay, despite taking a break from the city centre and crossing the Garonne. Bordeaux was the latest of many solo trips too numerous to list, taken over many years. The downside of travelling alone is illness. When you wake in the early hours with a searing pain in your side that becomes unbearable. There is no one to comfort you or to complain to; no one to convince of how severe the crisis; no one to inject the morphine or insert the suppository. The pain started earlier in the day. I was returning to Bordeaux after a break in the Dordogne. I slept throughout the train journey from Périgueux, and attributed a growing ache to the discomfort of the position I was seated in. It was Sunday and there were no buses between these t…