Shock sighting of 'The Real World' quite near Fa

Delightful as life is in the leafy idyll that is deepest Fa, I do suffer the periodic need to avert brain death, even if that is, in my case, something of a lost cause.

This probably explains why Claire and I like to drop in on the International Festival of Photojournalism at Perpignan, or Visa Pour L'Image as it's known in these parts.

Ironically, I forgot my own camera and have had to make do with this lash-up of the prog cover. I hope one Issouf Sanogo of Agence France-Presse won't mind me lifting his pic, as after all it is a plug for the event.

The show is held in a dazzling multiplicity of crumbly old buildings all over Perpignan. The pix are world class and it's all free to look around, so v. good value.

The biggest snag is that the city centre has been developed over many centuries, using nothing more complicated than Chaos Theory, a Ouija board and some pieces of string.

This means you can do a lot of walking in the wrong direction on a very hot day. Fortunately, it was our second visit so Claire and I achieved maximum images for minimum trudge, and retired for a pleasant lunch before overkill set in.

I must admit that I have a fairly low threshold for the traditional staples of hard news; war, drug crime and poverty, when exhibited in bulk. In the days when I used to lay out news pages, it was always a case of identifying the handful of images that best summed up a situation.

When a photographer displays maybe a hundred unremittingly gruesome images at once, it can lead to an unpleasant sense of voyeurism, even if life and limb were risked to take them.

But the show had its sublime moments like Brian Skerry's Ocean Soul; stunningly beautiful photos of marine life, brilliantly calculated to appeal to The Last House's notoriously devout sense of feeshness. More importantly, Skerry alerts us to how many of the pictured species are at risk.

And then there was Peter Dench's hilarious England, the Uncensored Version; wonderful images of the English in plonker and slapper mode, their unrivalled dress sense and legendary ability to hold their booze without throwing up and looking stupid (not). This set was a massive hit with French viewers . . .

Why am I not surprised about this?