The previous night, the sky, unlit by street-lights, was so clear that you felt able to see all the stars in the universe. This though was the morning and a white mist was covering the valley as I walked out of the house. It was early October and the leaves were starting to change from their normal green to reds and browns. Some were already on the ground. The house next door was still empty following the death of our neighbour more than a year ago and as I walked along the lane the mist-obscured timbers of the frame of a new house being built on the other side of us came more clearly into view.

I walked down the road towards the town and once again passed the front of a shop which combines the selling of gifts and the repair of clocks and watches. Or at least it used to. For the items displayed in the window have not changed in years. Some of the wine glasses have been moved from time to time: you can see this from the rings in the dust on the tray where they used to be - three different sets of rings. There are nine tiny glasses for digestives on a chequer board, each with either an X or an O on them. There is a model of the sort of German second world war car used by Hitler but with a clock on the side and a model of a ‘Casablanca’ style twin prop plane, again with a clock inset. There is the movement of a grandfather clock on the counter behind and there are watches and alarm clocks on one of the glass shelves. Mysteriously, all of the five alarm clocks, apart from just one, tell the same time and the group of seven watches all tell the same time apart from one of them which, strangely, since yesterday, has started working. Clearly, all of these things represent in the mind of the shop-owner a code which provides a sinister message to passing spies.

Further into the village, there is a funeral at the church. Large black cars are outside. A group of six substantial pall-bearers look uncomfortable in their dark blue suits and ties. One is talking intently on his mobile phone. Have they brought the wrong body? Or is there no priest? The old priest, with a beard copied from those of the saints in the stained glass windows, himself died in the Spring, leaving his lay (female) assistant to officiate in the Church. He is said, I am sure quite scurrilously, to have bestowed his blessing on her many times in his old white camping car.

The bar on the other side of the road is open and a yellowish mist of cigarette smoke is wafting out of the half-open door, although none of the chilly plastic seats outside is taken. I continue towards the newsagent and pass on my right the now deserted butchers shop. For as many years as anyone could remember it was run by the Legout brothers, then one day they closed it, but left the top half of the front door permanently open, albeit with the grill covering the entrance. Through the dusty windows and the grill, can be seen the half-open doors to the fridges, the chopping blocks, display cabinets, scales and, hanging from the ceiling, their old certificates proclaiming their many triumphs in the ‘Triperie d’Or’ annual competition. People came from far and wide to buy their ‘Tripe à la mode de Caen’.

Amongst the magazines detailing the lives, loves and divorces of the stars, the newsagent also sells yesterday’s Times and Daily Mail, but today’s Guardian - Normandy is after all a largely Socialist area. I buy the Times, the Guardian and Le Figaro. Le Monde, the more left wing paper, is very worthy, but very dull.

As I come out of the shop, the sun finally emerges. Retracing my route, I see the owner of the Bar de l’Isle extending the sun-awning and customers starting to sit at the outside tables, whilst behind them the yellow smoke still snakes out through the front door. The other butcher’s shop, a few doors away, has just gone back to normal opening hours following the interruption brought about by the birth of their first child. The black cars are driving away from the Church and I take an alternative route, walking back through the now sun-lit park in order to avoid feeling the pressure once more to wear dark glasses, turn up my collar in true spy style and crack the code in the watchmakers shop. Instead, I briefly watch a game of boules played by portly Normandy-moustachio’d men and then go home and, over a cup of tea, read about what has been going on in the world which exists outside the village.