stone

A school friend was a mountain climber. He was good at it; he never did anything else in holidays. The school friend was tall and so strong that he could pull himself up by one finger. On the first day after the autumn holidays, he told me that another climber in his group had fallen to his death before his eyes. If I remember correctly, he still lived a little after the fall, but there was no saving him. On the next holiday, my friend went climbing again. 'Why on earth do you want to go up a mountain like that again?' I asked. He grinned, shrugged and said, 'I'm sold.'

That was a great and good answer to a silly question. Our desires are unknowable to others and usually to ourselves. You either give in to it or you are consumed by it. You are sold. Why do you want to go up a mountain? Because-it's there.

On a warm spring day in 1879, postman Ferdinand Cheval tripped over a stone near the small town of Hauterives. The stone became the first of his Palais Idéal, a building he built single-handedly over 33 years from stones found on his postal rounds. It is now a historical monument, the only example of naive architecture in the world.

I know a lot about the palace. I have written about it, I have studied it, I have delved into the long, tragic life of the postman who built it. I've just never been there, nor do I want to go.

My wife asked: 'You are so obsessed with that strange building. Why don't you want to see it in real life once in your life? Are you afraid it will be more beautiful than you thought, or just disappointing?'

I was seventeen again and saw how my schoolmate could pull himself up with one finger on a window frame in the school like someone else inflates a tyre - not completely effortless, but without visible effort.

I said: 'I'm afraid it's there.'