'Your chair's over here, Gaston. Sure you're not in a draught?'

'I hope you'll find my wife's cooking to your taste.'

'The roast beef's not overdone?'

'Anything special you fancy to eat, do please let us know.'

'Horseradish?' asked Mrs Wattle.

Later we had crumpets for tea and finnan haddock for supper, and in the evening we all three sat round the fire making light conversation.

'Mr Palethorpe revealed you had quite a roguish wit,' said Mrs Wattle, playfully shaking her finger.

So I told them the story about the bishop and the parrot, though of course altering the anatomical details a bit.

'How pleasant to hear a young voice in the house,' murmured her husband.

'We've so missed company in the evenings!'

'Ever since the dog died,' agreed Dr Wattle.

After years of living on tins of baked beans and packets of potato crisps, and mending my own socks by pulling a purse string suture round the hiatus, it did my physiology no end of good to have regular meals and all the buttons on my shirts. There wasn't even much work to do, old Wattle himself handling all the posher patients and leaving me with a succession of kids in the usual epidemic of mumps. After surgery and supper we all three gathered for the evening in the sitting-room. Sometimes we watched the telly. Sometimes we played three-handed whist. Sometimes they asked me to tell the story of the bishop and the parrot all over again. I was glad to see the Wattles had quite a sense of humour.

But even the Prodigal Son, once they'd used up all the fatted calf, must have hankered to waste just a bit more of his substance on riotous living. As the local amenities ran largely to municipal parks and museums, and so on, and as I couldn't go to any of the pubs because I was a respectable GP, or to any of the pictures because I'd seen them all months ago in the West End, I longed for one final glimpse of the lively lights of London.