We don't need it distributed in the sdist

Unfortunately PQcancel blocks, so it's not better than PQgetResult.
It has been suggested to use PQreset in non-blocking way but this would give
the Python program the burden of handling a connection done but not configured
in an unexpected place.

Otherwise the connection won't be usable in case we manage
to put it back on track (libpq reports "another command is
already in progress")

If the network is down, trying to read blocking will hang the process hard
(ctrl-c not working). Send a cancel signal instead (as suggested in
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2012-07/msg00903.php) and go
back into a green polling: this should allow a further error (e.g. another
ctrl-c) to break the loop. In this case we cannot assume anything about
the state of the connection, so we close it.