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Coming out of Wytheville the other morning, I knew I was in for what the French call a jour sans.

The day starts badly because your body hasn't caught up the energy it churned out the day before. It's rarely physical: your muscles don't hurt, your back doesn't ache. You're just running on paraffin rather than four-star.

Fortunately, it doesn't take Nobel-winning medicine; coffee and sticky buns are the solution, and as quickly as possible.

I found them in what I have learned to call a gas station, where I shared a table with old boys talking of times past. Their story was of a mayor who all his life had waved at everyone he saw. He spotted a half-recognised face, he waved. He saw a stranger, he waved. A friend he waved. He became known as The Waving Man and, because it is hard to dislike a man like that, he was loved by supporters and political opponents alike.

When he died, the police turned out to line the path into the cemetery at his burial. Normally, said one of the old boys, 'them police, they'da snapped t'attention as the coffin passed, an' they'da saluted. But this time, you remember?'

The others laughed to show that they did, but they wanted to hear the end of the story just the same. So did I.

'So normally, they'd all come t'attention and when that coffin passed, they'd salute. But this time they all came t'attention but they didn't salute, they waited until the coffin was right in front of them and then they all just lifted their hats an' they jus' waved and waved. You remember that?'

They did and they all laughed as though they'd just heard the story for the first time. Which I had, of course, so I laughed more than the rest of them.

I heard that morning that it was 31 degrees at home, in May. It wasn't in the mountains. At some time, I wore every item of warm clothing that I'd brought, with the exception of ear muffs. And twice I slept fully clothed in my sleeping bag. It wasn't freezing. But at times it was only a handful of degrees above that, and wet with it, and when people said it had been a cold spring and that by rights we should all have been in shorts and T-shirts, I believed them and waited for news that it was going to change. Which didn't look like happening for a while yet.