Just when you thought that every imaginable etiquette question had been posed and answered, suddenly, from nowhere, just when you’re on holiday in the South of France and at least 1,000 miles from the nearest Debrett’s or glossy-mag advice page, a real rip-snorter leaps up and leaves you foundering, to wit: is it rude to stare at a disabled dog?

My girlfriend and I, weary of the endless pool-lunch-pool-dinner-pool- breakfast-pool cycle of life in these parts, were climbing the long hill up to the Fondation Maeght in St Paul de Vence for a bit of culture (I visit this Modernist mecca every year to see if Joan Miró has done anything new, remember that he’s dead, and walk home again), when I saw, in the vast open window of a house, a dog with two back wheels where its hind legs ought to have been.

I stopped dead and stared at it. Noting my interest, and no doubt taking me for a potential intruder, the back-axled hound raced to the window, skidded to an impressive handbrake stop like a wet-nosed, waggle-eared teenage joyrider, and began barking.

“Look!” I cried, pointing at the little fellow.

“What at?” asked Esther (who would not have ended her sentence with a preposition if she had been writing this herself).

“At the dog on wheels,” I sang. “Over in that window.” “What, the dachshund?” she said, like the specific breed of its front end was the first thing about the barking wheelbarrow that struck her as noteworthy.

“No, darling, the pomeranian crapping on the pavement over there ... yes, of course the dachshund. Look, it’s got wheels!” “So it has,” she said. “But it’s rude to stare.” And I felt suddenly awful. And looked away. And then I thought, hang and blast it, it’s just a bloody dog. And only half a dog at that.

“Sorry,” I said. “But it’s not rude. It’s just not. I would never dream of staring at a disabled human in the street. I have never considered human incapacity, physical or mental, as an entertaining or comical thing. My respect for my fellow man, on an individual basis, has nothing to do with his conformity to conventions of personal ability, and everything to do with whether he loves cricket and/or has read Moby-Dick. I am the most politically correct person you will ever, ever meet.

“But that is not a disabled person. That is a dog on wheels. It is a carpet-sweeper with an arse and long ears. I have never seen one before, and I intend to gawp.”

“It probably had an awful accident,” said Esther.

“It probably did,” I said. “And that’s a shame. And I do have a certain amount of sympathy for it. But it is the first injured dog in history not to have been simply put out of its misery with a blow from a large rock, and it is thus a very lucky dog. And the skill of the veterinary surgeon in bolting an axle on to its bum and giving it wheels is to be celebrated. But the final result, this soi disant wheelie-dog that you see before you, is undeniably comical, and so I intend to gawp — because I am offending no one with a soul — and to wonder aloud if it is not some sort of guard trolley, and perhaps even to sing: “How much is that doggy in the window? The one with the waggly wheels . . .”

“It’s still rude.”

“Not rude, no victim,” I said. “Disability is not a sacred cow, per se. Leglessness in itself is not a thing over which we must cast a discreet veil. It is specifically my disabled fellow man that I respect as an equal and treat as such. This is a mere dog. This is a craven poo-machine bred by lonely humans for a toy, which happens to have been crossed with a skateboard. It has no sense of self or shame. Physical cruelty to it I would never condone, but I will not be condemned for hurting its non-existent feelings.”

“You wouldn’t stare if its owner were with it,” she said.

And she was right. That would be discrimination by proxy. A true Berkeleyan paradox. Can a dog be the victim of prejudice only if its owner is there to witness it? Perhaps so. But, surely, if a thing has feelings to hurt, a soul to mortify, then it is even worse to “own” it than merely to stare at it?

And so I watched it for a while longer, mulling over these treacly philosophical issues, and also wondering if, by holding a dog biscuit above its nose, one could train it to do wheelies. And wondering which wheel it lifted to pee.

And then we climbed on up the hill to look (stare, even) at Miró’s Jeune fille s’évadant (1968), the famous disembodied dancer’s legs in bright red beneath a blue egg-carton bra and yellow dinner-plate face. But, to be honest, after the real-life dog-rollerskate, it seemed rather unambitious.

• Funny thing, not unrelated: flew into Nice airport, hellish navette transfer to the hire car zone at Terminal 2, hour-long queue to get to counter in broiling Avis Portakabin while moron Froggie bureaucrats photocopy everybody’s birth certificates 84 times; then wait half an hour for delivery of car that never comes, so scream and shout and threaten (in earnest, for I have a temper) to smash windows and hurl computers, until terrified woman hands me keys nearest to her on rack.

Turns out to be giant leather-seated Citroën Picasso Scénic Espace Zara Megablob Breedermobile but better, after nearly two hours on the hot forecourt, than nothing.

Weirdly, no handbrake. Really, none. Looked everywhere. No cunning concealed button or lever. Nothing. Rien. But having caused such a scene, too embarrassed to go back into Portakabin. So just drove off.

Slight humpy feeling as if riding over handbrake, but then fine. Got to destination, rolled gently into wall, phoned Avis. Turns out car has “automatic” handbrake. Bizarre. It sort of comes on when it feels like it. But by no means predictably. Executing three-point turn in steep and heavily parked street results in dents all round. Valet parkers at posh restaurants utterly flabbergasted. Comes back from car park of Hotel du Cap looking like an old collander.

Why in the world would anyone try to disinvent the handbrake? Who ever got in a car and thought: “The thing that really infuriates me is this stupid stick that stops me rolling backwards down hills”?

It’s just damn fool cheese-eaters in the design department pratting about for the sake of it.

The car is outside the house as I write. Possibly. Or possibly several miles down the hill, rolling towards the sea at Antibes.

It occurs to me, this being the week after Moon week, how odd it is that a race of men can put wheels on a dog but can’t put a parking brake on a Citroën.

• While visiting my mother up the road in Tourrettes-sur-Loup I read a review of Roger Moore’s autobiography in a local rag called The Riviera Reporter (if old Rog’s memoir is not going to get reviewed there, then, frankly, where?) and was fascinated by an off-hand reference to my favourite Bond’s circumcision at the age of 8.

“Gosh,” I said. “I had no idea Roger Moore was circumcised.” “Well, you wouldn’t,” said my mum. “He didn’t make those sort of movies.”

Times Recommends

• Caesar & Cicero: Balls & Mandelson
• The anti-sex brigade are the worst
• Small act of charity won’t change the world