What I hadn’t imagined when I made that promise all those years ago was going away with a voracious 15-year old who, after a supper of steak and fish and potatoes and ice creams could eat his way through an entire mini-bar fridge full of hams, cheeses, biscuits, a baguette, half a packet of marshmallows and a new gift jar of apricot jam. I noticed also that they tended to look more at the men who ignored them completely, something which Stanley will have to work on.After eating outdoors we would return to the hotel late in the evening and I would be ready for bed. So we sat by the sea, me with my liquorice and sherbert twirls and him with his Bud.”Girls look at us, too, you know,” I said on the second night, “they’re just more subtle about it. Sort of, sneakier.” And, for the rest of that evening, we tested my theory and found it to be 70 per cent correct. I don’t mean that girls were looking at us in particular, you understand, just looking at men in general and, more specifically, at the Brad Pitt variety.

Stanley wanted a beer and I let him have one since forbidding might make it all the more attractive. Hence “diesel guitars crash into a rainbow of piano chords like a horde of weasels on heat”.In the interval there were pick’n'mix sweets to guzzle, a very French custom apparently. Since it is virtually impossible to capture in words the abstract experience of listening to music, they have to resort to bizarre metaphor and inappropriate adjectives. Being a music critic must be the most frustrating form of journalism there is.

It was pretty cool, although Stan was, as far as I could see, the only person under 40.Why are there so many bearded men in open sandals and linen suits at jazz concerts? And why do an unacceptably high percentage of them wear Moroccan hats with their thinning hair tied in ponytails? Why didn’t I bring some normal shoes and a pair of jeans? Was it really because the linen suit was easier to pack, or was there some primitive herding instinct at work? Thank goodness my hair was cropped short, because I probably would have felt an inescapable urge to tie it into a ponytail. Is there possibly an ageing-jazzer gene? If so I must possess it, and it would appear to be dominant, because Stan was wearing a headband by the end of the week and looking longingly at cheesecloth shirts in fashionable shop windows.I won’t attempt to describe the music itself, other than to say it was all, especially Joe Zawinul, extremely good. Then we’d sit all evening in rather uncomfortable chairs to watch and listen to the likes of Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock (pictured) and Keith Jarrett – for the uninitiated, or uninterested in jazz, believe me this is a pretty top-drawer roll-call.The open, breezy stage was placed amid large windswept Mediterranean pines with a stunning backdrop of sky and sea which darkened as the sun set behind the musicians. Unfortunately, since neither Stanley nor I have any sisters, females remain, for us both, rather strange chaps. And, as Stanley was anxious for advice about approaching these weird, yet impossible-to-ignore creatures, I found myself on several occasions saying: “You’re asking the wrong guy, chum.”At night we’d amble along to the open-air jazz concerts through busy streets with pavement shops which sell things one might actually want to buy – like clothes and beautiful Italian ice cream – not just lilos and sun oil like so many seaside resorts. We didn’t learn to tie up boats, nor windsurf into dangerous waters together, as fathers and sons do in endless Hollywood movies. Nor did I challenge him to a waterskiing contest, bullying him to the point where he found his inner warrior We did talk a lot, mostly about women.

The hotel we stayed in had its own beach, so you could recline on a sun lounger and order drinks and food and put them on your room bill. And the food was not the usual childish beach fare, but proper, manly fish soups with rouille followed by melon in reduced raspberry sauces.The sea, although crowded, was really warm and calm with a clean sand bottom. Stylish but snooty girls sauntered past with their bikinis slung low and their noses in the air And that was it for the daytimes, really. Promise.Juan les Pins is a classic French Riviera town, between Cannes and Nice. It is not as upmarket and blatant as St Tropez, but is a heap more tasteful than, say, southern Spain or the Canaries, while only being a bit more expensive.