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‘Bart!’ He got up to shake hands and thump me on the shoulders. ‘Bart, man! A great pleasure to see you here again. This town is a rootless place when you’re not here. When are you coming back for good? Life would gain enormously in quality! Why don’t you set up here as a writer; that would also be very good for the fame of the town.’

David’s words of welcome were lectures, spoken in an Eastern dialect doused with vague memories of Paramaribo, which he laid on extra thick because he knew that it gave me great pleasure.

‘Friend David!’ I said, true to habit. ‘Cycling legend, in what exclusive eatery do we have the pleasure of dining this evening? Do you come here often?’

‘Only three or four times a week,’ he said, beckoning the waiter. ‘Today happens to be my thousandth visit, so I think we shall be lavishly fêted by the owner, who has made a packet off me.’

He ordered a bottle of white house wine. ‘Stick with what you like, is my motto. What do you think?’

‘You’re right.’

He asked me if I had already read Roland Barthes on the Tour de France. I said I had Mythologies on the to-read pile.