It’s just struck 1pm, and John Fox has ordered a Prosecco. Which makes perfect sense — when you’ve written a newspaper column for 34 years, you’ve earned the right to drink bubbles before lunch. We are with his friend M, who has a head of bouncy hair from a TV commercial.
We’ve been talking for an hour, mostly about my new book, which really means we’ve been talking about life. Because all books — even the bad ones — are about lives.
We sit under an umbrella as music thuds lazily from a speaker. The sun presses gently on our shoulders. I last saw Fox 15 years ago. He hasn’t changed much, though time has rearranged things around us with its long, meddlesome hands.
It’s two days before my birthday, so it feels perfectly proper to start early. Never mind that in a few hours I’ll be picking my son up from school and he’ll say, “Papa, you smell funny.” And I’ll tell him, “That’s the smell of birthdays.”
I’ve passed Kalamata countless times but never gone in. So, this feels like a small celebration — or at least a justified detour. It’s an outdoorsy sort of place, the kind people dress up for even if they pretend they didn’t. A lady in a blue dress walks in and claims her spot in the sun. She knows she looks good.
We order fish — something buttery with vegetables. It comes a little soggy, but that’s fine. The ambience wins. The chatter around us hums with energy, and the Prosecco sparkles in Fox’s glass like it’s auditioning for joy.
He tells me stories — about writing, about travel, about staying curious. The kind of wisdom that sounds light but sits heavy later.
When we finally leave, I feel older — not because of the birthday coming, but because time suddenly feels visible. Still, it’s been a good afternoon: prosecco, talk, sunlight, and the sense that growing older is a treasure, if Fox is anything to go by.
