IS IT VERVEINE OR CHAMPAGNE?

Verveine! Or, as it's sometimes called here, Verbena, is a most unprepossesing little weed which I first met on a 'herbal walk' conducted by that eminent herbalist, Zoe Hawes. It was growing in a sandy car park, I remember, and had little purpley-pink flowers.

Now I can't live without it, for made into a tisane - a type of herbal tea - and drunk at bedtime it ensures that even insomniacs like me will have a good night's rest. There are two problems, however: first it tastes like cat's pee and secondly you can't easily buy it inexpensively in Britain.

As to the first, well it is amazing what you learn to put up with for a good night's sleep but an admixture of orange or peppermint improves the draught. And as to the second, the answer is just to buy the stuff in France where the supermarket shelves bulge with rack after rack of tisanes of every description, including half a dozen different preparations of Verveine. The cost is minimal - about €1.30 for 25 sachets.

Knowing my weaknesses, my neighbour, Annie, who is French, came back from a trip home this week not only with several boxes of Verveine tisane but a winebox as well. I suggested that an aperitif was due over an above a monetary settlement. She agreed but insisted we came to her.

There's an upside to that, for Annie always serves champagne and not only any champagne but a champagne - Denis Salomon Brut Reserve - that is not sold in shops but which she acquires mysteriously by the cellarfull. It has a wonderfully, dry biscuity taste that is so much friendlier than many similar concoctions. Anyway, in no time at all we had managed to put away two bottles and reeled home to supper full of that especial bonhomie which only champagne can bring on.

The following day we were on Theo duty - looking after our grandson of two and a quarter whose diversion of the moment is painting rather than champagne. We covered the kitchen floor with blank paper, mixed a pot of blue paint, put a brush in his hand and in no time had some thoughtful abstracts, vortexes of blue against the swirling white for which a gallery might have proposed the name 'Parental Anguish.'

We tried some hand painting, and then some foot painting; bold prints tracked across the paper.

"Why, Theo," I asked, "don't you try painting a head?" I was wondering whether he might attempt John the Baptist or whether that might be a step too far.

He contemplated the problem, stroking his cheek with the business end of the paintbrush. Then his face half-blue, he lay down on the paper and pressed cheek to canvas. A broad blue spludge resulted. Well, I had suggested head painting.

On Thursday we flipped the phone through to the mobile and headed up in the late afternoon for our first visit to the Hay Festival where Russell, an old friend and colleague and now a Professor in Cardiff, was delivering the Richard Livsey Memorial Lecture.

As it happened our host - who was also introducing the talk - had been delayed and so we were sitting there in the tent, a small but select gathering, wondering what to do. For a moment I thought that I might have to make the introduction, which indeed I was to learn later I was well placed to do. But then our host arrived, the introduction was made, and we heard a most interesting exposition on the History of the Welsh Liberal Party.

But it made me wonder whether I should perhaps be writing some of this history; certainly of the anecdotes and stories of the local and national figures that I had worked with during the eighties and nineties. I mentioned this to Russell in the sponsors' tent afterwards as we sipped an obligatory glass of Cava. "But it's all in my book," he said. "We did a two hour interview, you gave me a great deal of material. Do you not remember?"

That must have been three or four years ago, but all memory of it is wiped! Gone! Now that he had reminded me I recalled a dim trace that he was preparing something or other. So now I have to wait until September when the book comes out to see what is and what isn't in print already.

Oh dear, I am getting old. Or maybe a side effect of drinking Verveine is memory loss. One never knows quite what these innocuous herbs do - and it must be doing something to send me to sleep as it does. Then again it could be the champagne!