Another twenty-four hours and the nightmare continues. Yesterday we played the exquisite Royal Mougins course, apparently the favourite of Colin Montgomery. It is certainly picturesque, challenging and beautifully maintained – or it was until we began ploughing up the fairways in our inimitable fashion. Perhaps inspired by the majesty of the scenery, my play improved from that in the first round of our 72 hole tournament and I posted a gross score three shots better (123), losing only between fifteen and seventeen balls ( I wasn’t quite sure which), but I definitely sprayed an entire new box of twelve Taylor Made balls into the undergrowth, along with several others from the depths of my bag, and – had we played been scheduled to complete twenty-seven rather than the regulation eighteen holes - might have run out of ammunition. Such was the garishness of our shirts and the standard & snail-like progress of our play that for two consecutive holes we were followed & observed from a buggy by a course marshal. Well it was either that, or possibly he had come across us by accident, couldn’t believe what he was watching and was simply gathering anecdotes with which to regale his pals in the bar afterwards. Whichever, we felt his interest was marginally unfair – there’s little more likely to cause stress & anxiety in golf than scrutiny by the authorities … at any moment we were expecting to have our collars felt & be told to exit the course via the back gate.

At the halfway mark in the tournament I have now taken 48 shots more than the leader and, on the 3-2-1 points scoring system by which we decide the destiny of the trophy, am some 30.5 points behind. A measure of the task facing me is that, by my calculations, if I am to come up on the rail and pip him at the finishing line, I am now within three or four holes of having to finish ahead of him in our group of three on every one of the remaining thirty-six holes. It’s just not going to happen, is it? Not when I’m losing an average of between fifteen and nineteen balls a round, anyway.

Last night we went to our second restaurant in Mougins for what was by general consensus our best meal so far in terms of both quality & presentation. I opened with potato soup with truffle slices – delightfully creamy & flavoursome – followed by filet of turbot & seasonable vegetables. I don’t choose fish as often as I should but this was truly outstanding. We washed everything down with a couple of bottles of a particular rosé wine [I want to say ‘Bandol’ but I may have got this wrong] that one of our number recommended, drawing attention to its pale, near-apricot colour contrasting with usual vivid pink of most examples. We then walked around the tiny village – almost like a lively, buzzing, French version of a set from the Sixties cult television series The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan – before ambling back down the hill to our hotel.

Last thing before retiring - in the harsh, unforgiving mirror and stark lighting of the bathroom - I noticed once again the naked figure of an obese old man with whom I had been forced to share my room, apparently seeking to extricate any fluff there might be secreted within my - sorry, his - belly button. It wasn’t so much that the task of finding said item was complicated by copious overflowing folds of flesh as the discovery that, when finally located, it was pointing at the floor.