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Local knowledge

Brittany is also France’s premier agricultural and fishing region ,but seems to have something against keeping sheep.

Home cooking

Ingredients:

4 ounces of wheat flour

1 lb of buckwheat flour

3 eggs

5 oz salted, melted butter

Half a bottle of dry cider

Some cold water and fresh or packet yeast..

Method:

Put the flour into a mixing bowl and break the eggs into a well in the centre. Start mixing the batter with a wooden spoon ( or your fist if you want to be faithful to the original recipe) and gradually add the milk and cider. Finish off by adding some water and the yeast but beware of making the batter too runny.

Find a suitable flat stone, or failing that, gently heat a small frying pan which has been greased with some cooking oil. When the pan is really hot, ladle enough batter in to cover the surface of the pan. Leave for a couple of minutes or until the surface starts to bubble, then turn over and lavish some butter on it.

You are now ready to experiment with fillings, which should be enclosed in the galette so that the finished article resembles a deflated Cornish pasty.

Sporting note:

Thankfully for the maintenance of world peace, the record for galette throwing is held by a Breton. Along with apricot stone spitting and beret tossing, new attempts on crepe-chucking record take place at the small town of Mahalon each July, but so far no-one has come near to equalling the tally of 7.45 metres established in 2000 by local hero Fabien Le Coz.

Dietary note:

A common Breton recipe for long life and good health comes out as debri mad, kousel mad, kaohad mad. In keeping with their view of the important things in life (after art and drinking), the maxim translates as ‘eating well, sleeping well, shitting well ...’

Stand by for more samples from George's new book. In the meantime, here's his blog from the middle of last year: 

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Thursday 10 July:

Summer is now surely on the wane, as the foxgloves lining the track up to the moors are dying. People usually think of August as the hottest month and so the height of summer, but the solstice took place a couple of weeks ago and those of us on this bit of the planet are spinning inexorably towards winter.

This morning, I saw a confused-looking bumble bee buzzing erratically around the single remaining flower on a foxglove stalk by the old stone calvaire.

It was clearly wasting its time, and appeared to be as behind with its work as I am with my book on Brittany. The Breton name for foxgloves is Our Lady's Thimbles, and I think it a much better description of the digitalis purpurea, as the delicate tubular blooms would fit on the paws of no fox I know. Other unsuitable British folk names include Bloody Fingers and Dead Mens' Bells. Curiously, the foxglove is prolific nearly everywhere in Europe, but will not grow in Shetland or some eastern counties of England.

I was visiting the calvaire to mark out an unusual plant before the remaining thimbles drop off. It is the first pure white foxglove I have seen, and when I found it yesterday I thought it might be a valuable oddity. Looking it up on the internet, I saw that white foxgloves are not particularly uncommon, though some seeds are being auctioned off on e-bay.

As I tied a piece of all-purpose farmer's twine around the stalk, I felt a presence and turned to see our nearest neighbour watching me. He was wearing that peculiarly Gallic expression which manages to convey bemusement, faint horror and concern to the point of trepidation all at the same time. It is an expression which will be familiar to any Briton who has asked a rural Frenchman for directions in his own language. Think of a Victorian explorer coming across a group of natives building a fire under a very large cooking pot and you will get the idea.

Virtually all the French countrymen I know believe Britons who come to live amongst them are very rich, and completely ignorant when it comes to living in rural France and everything to do with growing things, tending to animals, cooking and eating them, and what is a fair price for the installation of a septic tank. Alain LeGoff is no exception to this rule, though he has, as far as I know, no relations who fit septic tanks. He is also convinced that I am quite mad, and as my wife says, he has some basis in reason for this belief.

Alain lives directly across the lane from us in the hamlet of Lesmenez, and he and I met shortly after we arrived at Little Paradise and I saw a gnome-like figure lurking in the shrubbery. It is an interesting fact that there is no Breton word or words of greeting, which may account for Alain's hobby of creeping up on me unannounced, and generally as I am doing something he thinks either pointless or completely bizarre.

On his first visit, he appeared in the kitchen like a pantomime genie as my wife and I were treating an egg-bound chicken. In the approved manner, we were holding an understandably unhappy Blanche above a large saucepan of boiling water as we tried to free the egg. This is an old country remedy in Hampshire, but apparently not in Brittany. After assuming the Victorian explorer expression, Alain dryly informed us that it was normal in France to kill and pluck chickens before cooking them.

Last month, he stole up on me as I was talking to my tomato plants. When I explained it was supposed to encourage plants to grow and I had picked up the idea from Prince Charles, he sniffed and said he had heard about our Royal family and he imagined I would get on well with them.

One of the younger residents of our hamlet, Alain is over eighty. He looks twenty years younger, and is obviously as fit as a man half his age. Like most French countrymen I have met, he is close to the ground; unlike many French countryman I have met, he is spare in build and almost frugal in his consumption of food and drink. With a face the colour and apparent consistency of leather, he has the typical Breton dark colouring and periwinkle blue eyes. His everyday wear includes one of the few Breton caps I have seen in the region, and a pair of outsized wooden sabot on his be-slippered feet. Another accessory he is never without is his multi-functional walking cane. Apart from helping him up a steep slope, the cane will be used to swat cows who come to close, and to examine and test to destruction anything that I am in the process of working on. So far he has disabled a power saw, taken out a row of broad beans, and destroyed a bird table. But he is a good man and has taught us much about the history of the region and the Breton race.

More mouths to feed. This morning I was attacked by a kamikaze house martin as I entered the barn, then realised we have new lodgers. High up on the stone wall is an incredibly well-made nest of mud pellets and straw, and peering down from it were four chicks.

They will stay there for around three weeks, then take their first flight, but continue to roost in the nest and be dependent on their parents for food for another week. They are a short lived species, though there are records of survival into their teens. We are privileged to be chosen as home territory, but the downside is that I will now be barred from the barn until the birds have flown the nest for good.

Monday 14th:

An interesting day house-hunting. It is more than a year since we arrived to start our search for the perfect house in the perfect location in rural France. Obviously if we want to cover more regions and make the book into a series rather than a one-off it would not be a good idea to settle straightaway for a property here. But we have found in the past that whatever plans we make, the determining factor will be that magic moment when you draw up outside a house and know it is going to be the one. Unfortunately, the more properties we look at, the more we want to see in case there is an even better bargain up the road.

It is a funny time for property prices in Brittany at the moment, and they can vary wildly as to what you get for your money. The situation may have been brought about by the tidal wave of British buyers arriving around five years ago. Property prices in the UK appeared guaranteed to soar every year, so Britons leapt in to buy up second homes or even third homes at what seemed buy-one-get-one free valuations. Some sold up on what they thought was the crest of a prices wave in Briton and moved over to France, where they could swap their three-bed semi in the UK for a manor house with no mortgage. It reached a stage where some Brits were using French properties as some sort of quick turnover commodity, and buying and selling on to other Britons within months. Then the unthinkable happened, and a modest house in the United Kingdom stopped having the value of a black tulip in 19th-century Amsterdam. Suddenly, a whole generation of house owners learned that what goes up can go down in property terms. So l'invasion seems over, at least for the moment.

To further complicate matters, a lot of French owners decided to get into the act before the bubble burst, so a rapidly stagnating market has been further depressed. Once upon a time a For Sale sign was a rare sight in the French countryside. Nowadays, a Martian would be forgiven that A Vendre was a very common house name .

So, there is a lot of property for sale in rural France, and agents are having a hard time. This might account for some of the increasingly creative property details we have seen. Any house with more than four bedrooms may be called a manor-house, any more than four trees in a garden may constitute a private wood, while a pond can become transformed into a lake.

Wednesday16th:

As we drove back from a property hunt yesterday, I became aware of a car in front of me on my side of the road. The problem was that it was coming towards me. As I stamped on the brakes, steered towards the verge and thought of all the things I hadn't done and always wanted to, the approaching car managed to fight its way back into the stream of traffic on the right side of the road. What was really chilling was that not one of the line of cars on the other side of the road made any effort to let the madman in.

It has become fashionable in recent years for our chattering classes to believe- or at least say- that everything about France is better than anything about England. This is of course entirely illogical as well as untrue. There is something particularly irritating about the sort of British trendy who mocks British expats for confessing that they miss brown sauce and proper baked beans. Would that snotty snob deride a Frenchman living in France for seeking out baguettes and soft cheese? I think not.

Personally, I take the view that the French do some things better than us (like ignoring petty rules they do not like or agree with), while we are a bit better at other aspects of rubbing along with each other (like queuing). One aspect of Gallic endeavour we must all be able to agree on, however, is just how absolutely crap French drivers are. And I do not mean thoughtless, stupid or reckless. Just totally incompetent.

I have driven motor bikes, cars, lorries and brewers' drays professionally in Britain for the same distance as to the moon and back, and about half that in my thirty years of motoring in France. In that time I have seen a lot of thoughtless, bad and dangerous driving...and a unique display of mad and bad driving on this side of the Channel. The roads of Britain may be filled with boy and girl racers and dithering oldies, but over here you are as likely to see a white-haired granny overtaking you on a hump-back bridge at top speed.

Proof of the pudding can be found by observing the following inarguable facts:

1.France is almost seven times bigger than England
2.There is roughly the same polulation in both countries, and the same number of motor vehicles on the roads.
3.The safety spec of French cars is, if anything, more stringent than the British requirements, and the driving test and rules of the road as similar as to make no real difference.
4. We kill 3000 fellow drivers every year. The French kill more than twice that number.
5.End of argument, I think..?

Monday 21st July:

A serious house-hunting week in prospect, and we began our quest for the perfect home in France by visiting a B&B establishment that seemed suspiciously cheap. As there seem to be more places for people to stay in France than there are visitors, we have no serious intention of going into the hospitality business. But the asking price for the eight-bedroomed, four-bathroomed house is less than the going rate for a property with half its accommodations.

When we got there, we understood why. The rooms had clearly been designed for or by Harry Potter's house-elf Dobby, and the conversion and ‘improvements' work was obviously DIY…or Destroy-it-Yourself, as world-weary property agents say. This phenomenon occurs surprisingly often, and always when a Briton whose sole experience in building matters is limited to putting up the odd shelf decides he can single-handedly restore and transform a dilapidated property in another country.

A further drawback for potential buyers who actually want to make some sort of living out of letting out rooms by the night is that this house lies at the bottom of an almost tractor-only track, surrounded by rusting farm buildings.

The golden rule for letting accommodation in France is that gites should be in the countryside, and bed and breakfast establishments in town..or on a busy road with lots of passing trade. The locational problem with the place we are viewing is that the only passing trade comes in the form of cows and tractors, and the inevitably unfriendly former owners of the property. Another invariable rule of French property exchange is that if a farmer sells a piece of property that has been in his family for generations, he and his famille will soon forget it no longer belongs to him…and naturally begin to resent their foreign squatter.

Another strangely unaccountable rule is that many of the British couples who opt for a Bed and Breakfast establishment in the hinterland of France seem to have a taste in décor and furnishings which suggests a marriage of minds between Laura Ashley and Dexie's Midnight Runners.

Walls, architraves, clothes, furniture and even somnolent family pets will have been rag-rolled to near-death, and darkly coloured drapes, scatter cushions and somehow sinister-looking brass ornaments will add a hint of Turkish brothel. Pink will be adjacent to lime green and tangerine, terra cotta and Bovril as colours of proximity and choice, and every flat vertical surface will boast those curious plastic stick-on crescent moons and stars. Sometimes a display will appear to have been fixed to the ceiling, but they will usually be the real thing, showing through a hole left or more likely created by the ardent DIY-er.

Wednesday 23nd:

I am finding the Nantes-Brest canal increasingly beguiling.

Of all the places we have lived, I feel there is something very special about the meandering ribbon which bisects this region. This happy confluence of natural rivers and artificial cuts is a living conduit, joining together all the people who live or pass along its length; perhaps this is the reason I so like walking it. The simple connectivity without involvement suits me to perfection. When you live in isolation at the bottom of a mill track you are alone and unconnected, and the only way to see other people and places is to visit a village or town. Here, there is something I find enchanting about the idea that I could walk or cycle nearly three hundred miles and meet with people and places and experiences without let or hindrance- or traffic. This promise of opportunity of escape is perhaps part of the reason people have always liked to live beside water. It is also, after all, mostly what we are made of.

Another delight of this waterway is how little it is used. In Britain, there are now more vessels and pleasure-seekers using the canal system than in the days when the network was the main highway for commercial traffic. Here, the towpath and water stretch unoccupied for miles. Across the Channel, the logjams mean there will be a raft of regulations for using the waterways and operating the lock gates. Here, the only rule is that the ecluse must be left as the user finds it, which is invariably empty.

Of all the hours I have walked beside the canal, I have never seen a boat using one of the hundreds of locks that level off the combination of rivers and artificial channels making up the Nantes to Brest canal. The odd kayak will risk the plunge down the white water race which is no more than apiece of oversized guttering alongside the lock gates, but generally the waterway is left to its natural inhabitants.

Although (or perhaps because) it has a serenity and sometimes haunting beauty, the canal is a favoured spot for suicides. I recently met a British couple who said they saw a young girl floating towards the weir as she repeatedly ducked her head beneath the water to try and overcome her natural instincts of self-preservation. The couple watching in horror from the bank were not strong swimmers and did not feel they could help as she was swept to her death. I hope I will never have to make that choice.

Although I have enjoyed walking for hours in solitude alongside the canal, it is usually a pleasure to meet fellow travellers. Walkers are unfailingly courteous and engaging, and it is rare one meets an unfriendly fishermen. But on the downside, there are the occasional cyclists to be taken on. I do not know why so many clearly rude, ignorant, superior, selfish and oafish people choose to cycle, or if cycling makes them so. And if British cyclists have read the bad manners rule book, it must have been a French cyclist who wrote it.

In decades of using shared country ways. I have had no more than a handful of confrontations with horse riders. In general, I keep my dog from under their animals' hooves, and they will thank me for it as they pass. Those on smaller saddles usually have a different mind set. Cyclists seem to specialise in either ignoring or terrorising walkers, and the more ludicrously dressed the more offensive they are. As my wife says, anyone who will go out in daylight dressed as ridiculously as they do must be insensitive to basic good manners as well as colour-coordination.

But this is a minor lycra-clad irritation. Along any stretch of the towpath , one also encounters some very interesting people and places. One characterful house has a commune or retired hippies living in and around it; at another you can hire, sponsor even sleep with a donkey. Outside another, a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig grazes contentedly alongside a llama, and I already know of two clairvoyants and a water diviner living beside the water course. His claims of mystical divination when seeking out water weaken a little when you point out he is living next to a canal, but he is an entertaining fellow.

Yesterday I met an interesting Scotsman who believes he is a reincarnation of an ancient Breton king with magical powers, though to me he looks more like a reincarnation of Rab C Nesbit on a particularly bad hair and teeth day. Riothamus (or Dougal to his former friends in East Kilbride) lives in an impressively distressed caravan, carefully hidden from official view alongside an as yet untarted-up stretch of canal, and when I was passing his hideaway he stopped me to say he recognized me from a past life. Steeling myself for the inevitable touch, I accepted his invitation to take a cup of tea, and was fascinated to learn that apart from his other talents, he is a skilled windmaker. With the right incantation and frame of mind, he says he can raise anything from a zephyr to a full-blown hurricane. Unfortunately, when I asked for a demonstration he said it did not work when there were other humans around to interfere with the temporal forces. I said I could raise quite a significant wind with a can of beans and a pint or two of Guinness and witnesses did not spoil the magic, but he did not see my poor joke. Riothamus says that the canal was deliberately built along a really strong leyline and always attracted unusual people, and I believe him. After I slipped him a few euros to keep him going until he secures his next windmaking commission, we parted and promised to look each other up in another thousand years.

Friday 25th:

We have come our closest to finding the perfect place to live in France.

Today we were in the hands of new agents, who are an interesting double act of an Englishman and a Breton. In the way of these things, Mike Wadham is a musician who came to Brittany, bought a house and moved over when he fell for the region, its people and culture. Now he works with Patrick Serbil finding homes for other Britons and is one half of Alioth Properties. I am usually suspicious when getting two agents for the price of one, as they may have heard that I write about French property and want strength in numbers, or decided to gang up on me by employing the nice/nasty policeman routine. In this case, though, they both seem affable men who genuinely enjoy what they do and each other's company.

We met at the nearest town of Le Moustoir, then tailed Patrick down a narrow land which became an even narrower track. At the bottom was the canal and a barrier to which the owner held the only key, Two hundred yards further along the towpath was the picture-postcard cottage, with roses around the windows as well as door. The former lock-keeper's cottage is the only building in sight, and across the canal and behind the house are miles of fields filled with wheat or incurious cows. All is silent apart from the therapeutic sound of the weir, and the pretty little cottage would be the ultimate fantasy for millions of town dwellers in search of temporary or permanent escape.

Built to accommodate the lock keeper and his family, the cottage has just one room downstairs and two small bedrooms above. A hundred years ago it would have been the setting for a sometimes hard but secure life. Now it is the holiday home for a wealthy Parisienne. The owner is a pleasant woman but seems to carry an air of sadness. There is a Breton cap hanging beside the fireplace, and I make a clumsy joke about it being included in the sale, then see a shadow pass across the woman's face. After we leave, the agents tell me that the woman's husband died a month ago at the cottage, and that is why she is selling.

To cover my embarrassment, I suggest lunch. It is nearly noon and I can see that the Gallic half of the partnership is looking uncomfortable; he is also giving out silent signals in the way only a French man can contrive when midday approaches and no arrangements have been made for eating.

At first sight, Paule seems a pleasant place. Some villages leave you cold, or you may dislike them for no more reason than an ugly building or a surly stare. Others, like this one, seem to emanate comfortable well-being, as if the collection of buildings and those who live in them are at ease with their situation. Close to the canal and within easy reach of the ancient Roman habitation of Carhaix -Plougier, Paule has some interesting and lived-in buildings, a tabac, a basic grocery store, and a bar-restaurant run by a Welsh magician. David Owen used to earn his living by entertaining passengers on Brittany Ferry crossings in between sets by an Abba tribute band. Now he performs tricks for his customers in the bar, and puts his magic into a very good value plat du jour.

As we enjoy pork chops in a creamy Bordelaise sauce I tell Mike that the lock cottage is not for us because of its size, though its location is perfect. It is also one of the few French-owned properties we have seen which was decorated to our taste. While his partner is absorbed by the wine list, Mike says that, although the French are such paragons of good taste in other matters, it would definitely help him sell properties if they could be barred from choosing their own wallpaper; it would also help if all use of pinewood tongue-and-groove cladding were to be declared illegal.

Owners found guilty of trying to make their homes look like saunas could be sentenced to eating Marmite sandwiches for six months, while the painting of interior doors in multi- colours with floral wallpaper as a centre piece could in extreme cases warrant a justified recall of the guillotine.

I agree, and say it has always seemed strange to me how a country which is acknowledged as the top arbitrator of fashion in haute couture can be so colour and taste blind when it comes to home décor. I am all for people having what they want on their walls and floors, but there should be limits.

floral wallpaper on doors justifyng the recall of ..

Madame Guillotine!

About a dozen people are eating at the Cheval de Fer , and the owner seems one of the few Britons I know to have taken a bar in France and made a success of it: he also clearly enjoys being there, which is probably the most important qualification for a would be restaurateur or bar owner.

On the day we were there, the customer profile was a pleasing mix of local and foreign trade, and I was able to add another amiable eccentric to the day's tally. While I paid the bill, Donella struck up a conversation with an elderly man from Hastings. Showing her his wooden leg, he said he and his wife had picked a cottage close to the canal as it was obviously very flat and easy to walk. He also figured that the leg would help him float if he fell off the tow path on the way home after a long session in the bar.

Monday August 4th:

To Plouescat, a trendy resort town on the north-western coast. Brittany has more than a thousand kilometers of varied and often stunning coastline, but this is not a favourite stretch of ours. There are some pleasant walks along the dunes, but the area is too flat and busy for our tastes. There is a saying that the French will always pay for a view, and pay through the nose if the view is of the sea. That seems particularly true in Brittany, where properties on or close to the shore will fetch almost UK prices. Quaint if pokey fishermens' cottages will sell for more than the original occupant would could have earned in several lifetimes, and it appeals to French snobbery ( and they can outsnob even the English) to pay a fortune to live in the former home of someone they would normally have crossed the road to avoid.

Going by a bit of recent history, It seems the town authorites are unusually prudish. In the suitably named Guandong province of China, a major tourist attraction is a huge rock which looks exactly like an erect penis. In 1987 it was pointed out that a rock off the coast of Plouscat also looked like a rampant if more modestly sized willy. Determined not to embarrass themselves or future visitors, the town council had it dynamited. To be fair, since then a lot of local people have said what a cock-up the act of vandalism was, but it is of course too late for the limp remains of the Plouescat prick.

Tuesday 5th:

Brittany is known for its prehistoric standing stones or menhir; and, like elsewhere in France, this region seems to have its fair share of standing men.

I walked across the moors and past the illicit cheese-making factory to town this morning, and saw a figure standing by the traffic lights at the crossroads. As I got closer I thought the man was trying to hitch a lift, then recognized him and realized he was waiting for Marin's bar to open.

Although of middle age, he is a child in his mind , and lives alone in an apartment paid for by the commune. He had a forlorn air as he stood on the edge of the pavement watching a steady stream of euro lorries roaring on their way to Roscoff. Their slipstream tugged at his clothing, and it looked as if he might step off the kerb; some drivers were sounding their klaxons in warning as they thundered by. At each blast the man would hold his arms straight out from his body and sway even closer to the road, and it seemed almost as if he was trying to find recognition or even companionship through his dangerous proximity to the passing traffic. I have seen men like him throughout rural France, and though they are well looked after by the communes it is sad to see their loneliness.

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At just a couple of miles along the mountain pass road, Plouneour – Menez is our local town and has three bars, a betting shop, a pharmacie,bakery and tobacconist; for more frivolous shopping needs, one must travel to Pleyber-Christ.

Straddling the main route from the deep south to Roscoff's ferry port, Pleyber -Christ is for some reason twinned with Lostwithiel in Cornwall. I have known of sleepy fishing ports in the south of France being matched with sprawling coal mining towns in the midlands, and always wondered what criteria is used when the jumelage committees decide on who they wish to link with, and why. In the case of Pleyber Christ and Lostwithiel, however, I would say the committees got it just about right. Both are unremarkable and even, in places, pug-ugly small burghs with a population of around three thousand, and both get in the way of a constant stream of heavy traffic which wishes to be elsewhere. Lostwithiel claims to be Cornwall's hidden treasure, which is the sort of line that desperate tourist bosses come up with when they can think of nothing nice to say about a place, and Pleyber Christ -as far as I know- has no slogan at all. But, as with some people, if you ignore first impressions there is more of value to be found beneath the indifferent facade. Pleyber is a pleasant enough place in which to live or do business. It also evinces and nurtures all the traditional virtues, attitudes and characters of small town France that I hold dear.

Breaking the haft of my felling-axe recently, I took the bits to a shop in the village where my friend Patrice repairs everything from chainless chain saws to broken china and marriages. I had seen a brand spanking new state-of-the-art hache in the local farmers' store for 35 euros, so dropped in to offer Patrice the head of my old chopper in case it might be of use to him in future times.

As I should have predicted, there was a sharp intake of breath at the thought of my splashing out money when it would be such a simple, quick and cheap task to fix the old one. Despite my protests, I was despatched to the store for a new haft, and a wedge to hold it in place.

Already twenty euros poorer, I arrived back to see that Patrice had - surprise, surprise- encountered un petit problem. The previous owner had virtually welded the old shaft into the axehead with a rock-solid paste of fibreglass.

After an hour of fruitless labour, Patrice pointed at the clock; it was approaching mid-day, so time to down tools for lunch. It was also Wednesday, so he would of course not be re-opening that day. But if I would like to stop by tomorrow afternoon..?

I did, and now I have a refurbished old axe which cost considerably more than the swish new one I could have picked up and used the same day. But Patrice is happy he has solved my problem, and has enjoyed telling everyone in the village about the mad English custom of glueing their axeheads into the shafts.

As I often say to my wife (defensively), I think a few extra euros is a small price to pay to help maintain the old ways of doing things in rural France…

Wednesday 6th:

Another classic example of the ineffable but inarguable differences between our cultures at the weekly shop this morning. We had to hurry, as like some restaurants in the area, the Super U at Pleyber-Christ shuts for lunch. The management ensures that there will be no check-out queues inconveniencing the staff at noon by stationing bouncers on the doors a quarter of an hour before the deadline. Across the Channel they would be doing their best to persuade customers to come on to the premises; here they physically turn them away as the holy lunchtime break approaches.

Another vagary of the French supermarket system is how the check-outs are staffed in inverse proportion to customer levels. This is not my imagination, and I have made a study of the subject over my years in France. The general rule at our branch is to start each day with all six check-outs fully functional, then close one for every hundred customers arriving. But there are obviously variations on this theme, depending upon the type of supermarket and the individual creative flair of the management team. In our local, there is a sort of goon tower with an office at its top next door to the wet fish counter; from this eyrie the manager can monitor the car park and aisle density levels, then make fine tuning and adjustments to casue havoc at the check-out. The busier it becomes, the more staff are withdrawn, and one occasionally hears a muffled cheer from the tower when there is a complete logjam. In England this would be the cause of unrestrained violence, but here I think it is actually part of a drive towards increased customer satisfaction.

Whereas there is no word for ‘queue' in the French vocabulary and most drivers would die rather than stay in line (especially when approaching a hump-back bridge or dangerous bend), I have found that the average French customer is never averse to waiting in a shop, garage or post office. This is a paradox of the highest order and one for which I can find no explanation. In Britain the slightest delay at the front of a queue leads to exasperated sighs and pantomimes of frustration. Here , the shoppers waiting their turn actually seem to enjoy watching the action, particularly if there is a chance of a small drama developing.

Thursday 7th:

A frustrating day in our search for a new home. In general, I am much in sympathy with those who help us find and buy our French properties. It is a thankless job, and a lot of agents have to endure sometimes breathtaking rudeness and inconsideration from their British customers. But as the market slows and more properties are begininning to chase fewer customers, there has been a noticeably increase in hyperbole. Or in some cases, of downright dissembling.

To me, ponds stop and lakes start somewhere above an acre of water. Copses are increasingly growing overnight into woods according to some property details, and we arrived at a house recently to find an alleged forest which was actually made up of six fir trees and an overgrown shrubbery. Going by the number of allegedly stately homes on sale in our region, every commune seemed to have contained at least a dozen manoirs, and there must have been more former presbyteries, convents and nunneries in our region than religious orders to fill them.

Another new ploy is the over-indulgent use of the ‘could-be' scenario, where the vendor paints romantic word pictures of what could be done with any building to unlock its potential. Thus a rotting barn ‘could be' a covered swimming pool, or a chicken elevage could transmogrify into a twenty room chateau with no more than a million or two euro spent on the makeover. Having said that, the codebreaking can be fun, and I suppose I am the least-placed of people to complain about a little creative writing.

*

This morning we were looking at what was described as a ‘whole village', when it was in fact a dishevelled farmhouse surrounded by a handful of even more dilapidated outbuildings. Because the property had a name and stood in isolation, villagehood has been bestowed upon it by the agency.

It is a shame that the old farmhouse did not live up to its description, as it stands in a cracking location and is far away from any busy roads and within a genuine stroll of the Nantes –Brest canal.

This most unusual collection of waterways takes more than 360 kilometres to get from the old capital of Brittany at the bottom right of the region to the north-western seaport of Brest, though the distance must be less than half that if it were to follow the straight line canals usually adopt.

Work on joining these two important towns started at the beginning of the 19 th century after, in a very French way, the authorities had been talking about it for around four hundred years. Problems with bad or non-existent roads and latterly the British raids on Breton ports were spurs to come up with a way of moving goods more efficiently and safely across the region. What makes this canal so unusual and attractive- if you are in no particular hurry- is that only around a fifth of the distance is made up of man-made cuts; the rest of the journey meanders alongside eight rivers on their eccentric way from the Edre at Nantes to the Aulne estuary at Brest. Because of the undulating countryside, it took more than 200 locks to even-out the watery highway, and what would be a formidable engineering task in any era was forty years in the making.

The towns of Chateaulin and Port Launay sit cheek-by-jowl on the Aulne at the Finistere end of the canal, each has its own discrete attractions.

Port Launay is the smaller of the two towns with a population of less than five hundred, and has thoughtfully scrubbed itself up to become every tourist's picture of how a quaint former fishing village should look. But unlike with such trendy and horrifyingly expensive and exclusive watery places across the Channel, posh yachts rub shoulders with battered old scows, and the owners working on their boats reflect this agreeable diversity. So do the properties lining the quayside, and it is good to see the odd neglected building standing out like a bad tooth in an otherwise gleaming smile. After wending its way past the frontages of chambers d'hotes, restaurants and former fishing cottages, the Nantes-Brest canal ceases to be at lock number 237. Beyond the last ecluse, the Aulne widens and drifts lazily past wooded hillsides and vast maize fields on its way to the sea.

Going against the flow from Port Launay, one passes immediately into Chateaulin - or Kastellin as Bretons would call their home town. Where Port Launay is a picture-postcard setting, Chateaulin is more of a getting-on-with-it place. Although a historic settlement dating back to at least the 10th century, the town is obviously a busy modern place of work and leisure. Cars stream on sither side of the river and over the ancient bridge, and many will be on their way to the giant Leclerc hypermarket which –in a very French way- sits unashamedly amongst a row of quality houses overlooking the waterway. Deeper into the town are some satisfying small steeets sporting a jumble of restaurants and bars. There is a thriving market and overall we and thousands of tourists find Chateaulin a good starting point to explore nearby Crozon Peninsula, where an alleged extinct volcano called Menez Hom offers panoramic views of the west coast area.

There are 5000-odd Châteaulinoi, and one of the town's famous sons is emblem of the resistance, Jean Moulin, for whom one will see a street, fountain or public building ( if not all three) named in just about every town in France. Naturally, there is a Rue Jean Moulin in the ancient Roman town of Carhaix-Pluoguer, and the next steet is named for the IRA hunger–striker Bobby Sands. As far as I know, there are no streets in Brittany named for Protestant martyrs, but that is perhaps not surprising.

*

As arranged, we met today's agent on the bridge at Chateaulin. She recognized me because I was fairly honest in describing myself, and I recognized her because she is typical of the modern female French property agent. Young and smartly dressed, she displays a clipboard as if it were a fashion accessory, walks very quickly and with determined tread, is obviously very self-assured and displays none of the unctuous oiliness or badly disguised selling aggression of the British equivalent. Also and as we discovered to our complete unsurprise, Martine also drives like a complete lunatic.

Before leaving I made the mistake of asking her to remember we were following and did not know the area, and she clearly either took that as a challenge- or what we took as her mad and often suicidal progress was actually more restrained than normal to allow for her being pursued by two of farts who were also foreign.

Sunday 10th:

This morning I heard from a reader who lives in the Limousin and is still recovering from a function at the town hall which took place last month. Officially, the soireé is thrown by the mayor at this time every year for those Britons who have chosen to make their home in the commune. Unofficially amongst the expat community, the bash is known as the yearly meeting of the Still Here Club. After an informal but telling survey in the bar, my friend reports that the several dozen Brits being honoured had between them scored two deaths (one natural and the other from drink), just one birth (the average age of the club is chasing sixty), a brace of affairs, a divorce (consequential to one of the affairs) and no less than nine failed business ventures in the previous twelve months. My correspondent does not know how this would stack up with a survey of a comparable sample of Britons still living in their home country, but thinks it a reasonable result. As he says-and fellow members of the Still Here Club all agree- the rewards of living in rural France far outweigh the casualty rates.

Wednesday 3 rd September:

It was Donella's birthday on Sunday. When I asked her what she would like as a present, she said a divorce. I replied that I had not been thinking of spending that much. It is an old joke, but one we wheel out every year. Sometimes I think she may be only half-joking. Her big present this year was a new wheelbarrow, but I will also treat her to lunch at a workers' restaurant.

It is not just that I am a cheapskate, but Donella would not appreciate any meal charged out at ten times the cost of the ingredients because you are eating it off a posh tablecloth and under the long noses of snotty waiters.

We shall be spoiled for choice as to a venue, as there are many hundreds of bars and even proper restaurants specialising in bargain lunches in Finistere alone. The word 'restaurant' is said to come from the old French verb 'to restore' and refers to how food was re-constituted and served to customers - which is why you still see Resto outside more modest eating houses which specialise in quick (if never fast) food. It is thought that the first restaurant to bear the name was opened in Paris around 1765. Before that, a 'restaurant' was a broth which, quite literally, was meant to restore the health and good spirits of the drinker. Relais Routiers and Ouvrier eating houses can be found in any part of France, and are the equivalent of transport cafes in Britain, though not a lot of people either side of the Channel would agree with that comparison. There is in fact a similarity , as like the old lorry drivers' roadside caffs in Britain, these unpretentious pearls exist to supply big portions of no-nonsense regional and traditional food to working men. Of course it is not just blue-collar people who appreciate great food at a price guaranteed to enhance digestion, and though all relais routiers are primarily aimed at truckers, and ouvrier means 'worker', you are just as likely to find bank managers and other high-flyers in suits sharing a plastic tablecloth with people they would never lend money to.

It is a vital part of my research into Brittany's culture and cuisine that we try as many different lunchtime restaurants as we can fit in and afford. The problem with the gruelling schedule of eating our way around the region and cooking and trying recipes at home is that I now have a problem fitting through some restaurant doors.

For the sake of my art I have put on at least two stone since coming here, and I now stand out in any crowd... unless it is a crowd of very heavily-pregnant women.

It is curious that, in rural France, men seem either very slim, sturdy or very fat. But as a woman friend pointed out while surveying the male talent in a local bar, French men are fat in a different way from the typical British male fatso. She did not add 'like you' but I knew what she meant. In France the obese male seems to be more evenly larded, as if by an expert Gallic chef; in the UK, we fat blokes like to carry most of our excess weight in front of us. There is, as far as I know, no physiogical explanation for this difference. It has nothing to do with what and how much we drink, as I know lifelong tee-totallers who have bigger beer-bellies than me. My lady friend's theory is that it is what and when each race eats which makes the difference, and not how much of it. In general, French men do not snack, she rightly points out, and particularly not on crap food. When, she likes to ask, did you last see a French man of any class noshing a Mars bar while walking down the road- or navigating a steak pie at the wheel of his car?

Regardless of the precise reasons why I now waddle rather than walk, my wife is insisting I go on a diet. I have agreed, but only as long as I eat my slimming meals after our regular blow-outs. There are still at least 1346 local luncheon clubs in Brittany we have not tried out, and I am not one to skimp on research.

Friday 5 th:

I am making my unsteady way home after feeding our fox. She lives with her young family in a copse near the ancient stone cross at the start of the track leading to the mountains, and we have a deal. Or rather I like to think we have a deal. Each night I leave any leftovers from dinner which I think will appeal to vulpine taste, and in return she will leave our hens alone. This purely verbal (on my side) contract has so far been honoured, but we still lock the door to the henhouse each night at dusk.

The reason for my meandering gait is that I have been involved in a friendly neighbourly ambush. One of my favourite local bars is called l'embuscade , and it is a very suitable name for a pub which specialises in lock-ins.

Apart from Alain Le Goff and the Parisian holiday- home owner, our only other neighbour at the end of the lane leading to the Calvaire is Jean-Yves Madec, and it is he who is responsible for my condition. Or that is what I shall tell my wife.

Like Alain, Jean-Yves has lived in Lesmenez since almost before the handful of cottages became an official hamlet. At eighty-four, he is the senior member of our community, but only by a couple of years. I am not far away from my pension, but we are very much the young kids on the block here.

Jean-Yves has a round and friendly face and a countryman's roseate complexion, and he looks as fit and sturdily built as a man thirty years younger. These attributes he puts down to a lifetime of hard work on the land, and regular infusions of good food and red wine. Nowadays, he needs a stick to get about and is profoundly deaf, but bears his handicaps with dignity and fortitude. Jean's wife is restricted to her bed, and although his children and grandchildren visit reglarly, I feel he is sometimes lonely. I see him at the window every time I take Milly for a walk on the moors, and I know he had a much-loved collie dog until a few years ago. His quiet fortitude is good for me, as whenever we meet and I complain of a twinge or inconvenience, he just looks at me steadily with his faded blue eyes and I am reminded of how comparatively healthy and lucky I am.

The cause of my downfall this evening has been an introduction to the Breton version of moonshine apple brandy. In Normandy, where they claim to have invented it, the legal distillation is called Calvados, and the far rougher and much, much cheaper bootleg variety is known as calva or simply goutte , as in 'taste'. This is either a complete misnomer or an in-joke, as a few glasses of really fresh goutte completely removes all sense of taste and feeling. Think how your jaw feels (or rather doesn't feel) when the dentist has numbed your gums and you will get the idea.

I believe it is no coincidence that Normandy registers the lowest sales of toothbrushes in all France. Those who regularly augment their breakfasts with a cafe-calva or two claim that the spirit cleans the teeth better than any fancy-dan toothpaste, but I have noticed that most of the people who say this are usually very low on tooth-count.

Here in Brittany, lambig is one of the names given to brandy made from apples, and is, allegedly, more used for cooking than drinking. It takes a full barrel of cider at 225 litres to make just twenty bottles of brandy, and I suspect most Bretons would prefer to go for quantity over head-banging quality.

Apart from doing dentists out of work, another magical quality of goutte is its ability to bestow upon the drinker total fluency in any known language, and some tongues unknown to humanity. In the same way that science fiction films always have a magic little box which enables Venusians, Martians and Altarians to converse freely, after my first encounter with apple brandy I instantly found myself able to speak fluent Norman patois. Tonight, I discovered that the same trick works with lambig . For the past three hours I have been chatting to my neighbour in not only Breton, but the local version of Breton. Or at least I think I have, as Jean-Yves made no response, and was merely nodding and smiling regularly as I told him about our past lives in Normandy and plans for the future. I did notice his hearing aid was on the hall stand as I left, but think it was a spare...

*

As the earth turns through space, it is time to make preparations for another long and hard mountain winter. Our summer visitors of the skies are heading south, and the air is filled with the keening sound of hungry chainsaws. In this department, pine trees grow like weeds, and most are destined to become furniture, floorboarding and the ghastly tongue-and-groove cladding boards with which the French are so obsessed. Pine is full of resin, burns too fast and spits like a premier division footballer, but is mostly free. Especially if you do your firewood collecting after dark.

Alain's massive pile...

Our neighbour Alain is predicting a four-cord winter, which means we must lay in for a prolonged siege of cold. In firewood terms, a cord is, broadly speaking, the amount of split logs which would fit into an imaginary box of nine cubic metres. The mutual word comes from the Middle English, which itself comes from old French, so for once we are in agreement on meaning and spelling and size. It gets complicated when you bring in the purely French dimension of a stere , four of which are said to make up a cord. Do not ask me who said this was to be so, but history is full of these strange agreements. The dimensions of the virtual box can vary considerably dependent on the honesty of the vendor and the cupidity of the buyer. The quality of the wood and its condition can also vary, and generally speaking you get what you pay for. Round here a man is known for the quality and size of his woodpile, and how he shows it off. Our obsessively tidy Parisian neighbour Mr Vitre has not gone as far as whitewashing his perfectly formed stack of logs, but each one is uniformly cut to length, and even the knots point the same way. Jean Yves's winter supply is workmanlike in size and shape, and modestly stacked behind his house. Surprisingly for a single man who lives mostly in one room, Alain Le Goff's wood pile fills the hangar barn which is literally bigger than his house. I think he is making some sort of point about size, and he definitely enjoys visiting our woodshed to look at my pathetic and tiny attempt to store up heat for winter.

My pathetic woodpile...

Monday 8th:

We spent the day in the neighbouring Cotes d'Armor department, looking at a combined home-and-income possibility. We have now ruled out the prospect of adding to the glut of bed and breakfast establishments and gite complexes, and my wife thinks I would not make a good host. Like all Britons who move to France before retirement, we need to earn a living, and in our case to bring in a considerable supplement to the royalties on my books. Having learned a severe French lesson by trying to run a pub in Normandy and now that there are more British-run gite 'complexes' than British visitors to fill them, we have been looking at other ways of bringing home the bacon.

The idea of anything town-based or where one has to deal with humans all day does not appeal to my wife, but she is clearly taken by my idea of turning her hobby into a profession.

Brittany is big on meat production, and provides more than half the pork eaten in France. Cattle rearing in the region supplies fifteen percent of the whole country's needs, and poultry farming takes place on an epic scale in Brittany. From the agent's details, the place we are viewing today is typical of the chicken ranches one sees across the region, where thousands of birds are fairly free to roam inside barns the size of aircraft hangers as they are fattened up to killing weight. It seems a win-win situation to me, as my wife would be doing all the work, the ranch comes complete with what looks like a very comfortable and well-appointed house, and at worst we would never have to buy another frozen chicken again.

*

My idea for an ideal home and income business has not been received well by Donella.

Not only was she horrified to see tens of thousands of chickens milling around in the permanently darkened barns, but she also said it would anyway be impossible for her to remember the individual names she would naturally wish to give to every one of her charges...

Wednesday 10th:

My wife has prepared a flask of coffee and a packed lunch, and is airing a sleeping bag. This is because I need to visit our nearest computer shop. The preparations are not because I have a long way to go; they are because I will certainly have a long time to wait when I get there.

In the United Kingdom, people camp outside stores before sales days to be sure of getting a bargain. In our part of France, people need to set up camp inside some stores to be sure of surviving until they get served. The waiting time is bad enough in computer shops in England, and here even more so, as the French have a special flair for these things. Young men can become pensioners while waiting to buy a new gadget, which will anyway be severely out of date by the time they are allowed to buy it.

There is a clue to the level of customer response speed in the name of the shop I am bound for, as it is called Info-Tech-Rapide. In this respect, weasel words tell the tale on both sides of the Channel. In the UK, any bank that claims to be listening is sure to be deaf to your plea that they don't take the umbrella away just as it begins to rain in your life. Similarly any institution that claims to care will clearly not give a toss when the chips are down and you ask for a lifeline. The irony is that in France, the companies with rapide, vite or toutes suite in their names or slogans actually believe they offer a faster-than-usual service

Checking my rucksack for iron rations, my copy of War and Peace and at least one change of underwear, I kiss my wife and bid a damp-eyed farewell to the cat, dog and chickens. If they are not around when I return, I will hopefully be able to get to know their descendants.

*

Unsurprisingly, there are no sales personnel are on show when I enter the premises, but at least there are no other customers, or at least ones who are breathing. I see what looks like a mummified corpse of in a corner, but then realise it is a life-sized manikin advertising a new sort of virtual reality game.

After a brief but stimulating conversation with the dummy, I hear distant voices and follow the sound. In a recess on the other side of a pair of curtains, the proprietor sits at his desk, facing a customer. Between them is a computer screen, and my heart sinks. Buying a box of screen wipes here can involve a lengthy bureaucratic transaction. From this conversation, I know that the customer is enquiring about buying a new computer. And a printer and all sorts of other gizmos to go with it. I sigh theatrically,smile ingratiatingly at the proprietor and withdraw to set up camp.

*

An hour later and another dozen would-be customers have joined me at base camp. The most recent arrivals are a couple who are obviously old hands at computer shop shopping. They struggled in with two camping chairs, an ingenious collapsible table, an enormous picnic hamper, and quite a large portable television. I have been watching the TV and sharing a coffee with them, and there was an absorbing round-up of the highlights from all the regional magazine programmes. From the south we hear that it has been a hot summer, and in Normandy a mysterious hole has appeared outside the town hall at Hootville. Without a trace of irony, the presenter says the police are looking into it, and an accompanying clip shows a burly gendarme doing just that.

Meanwhile, back in the Morlaix branch of Info-Tech-Rapide , telephone numbers have been exchanged and new friendships forged, and we have all sworn that we will keep in touch if we ever get out of the shop alive.

Just as we start the tenth consecutive game of Charades, the curtains twitch and the proprietor and his first and only customer of the morning emerge. In England there would have been at least a verbal punch-up as the cause of the mammoth hold-up was tarred and feathered and we struggled to stake our claim to the owner's attention. Here, everyone gathers round to hear which model and accessories the customer is thinking about thinking about ordering, and he is given much advice on better and more reliable buys.

At last it is my turn to be served, but by now I have forgotten that I came in for a memory card for my new digital camera. When I manage to recall what I am here for, the owner smiles apologetically and explains he does not keep memory cards, but can tell me where to get one. It is of course coming up for mid-day by now so the other shop will be closed by the time I get there, and it being Wednesday, it will not be business as usual until tomorrow morning.

I thank him, shake hands all round and strike camp. Driving home I muse on how differently things are done here in rural France. Some people would say it is annoying to waste so much time not buying something, but there are advantages. Only another half a dozen visits to Info-Tech-Rapide and I will have achieved something that many people spend a life time not doing, and that is reading War and Peace from cover to cover.

Friday 15 th August:

It is the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so another excuse for time off from work for everyone in the national work force, regardless of whether they follow the Catholic religion. Even the dedicated Pagans in our area will feel it their duty to skive off, and the local chapter of the Satanists will probably spend the day on specially organised picnic-outings to desecrate remote chapels and other places of worship .

Officially, France has only eleven public holidays, but that does not include local, regional, informal and totally contrived arrangements like The Feast of A Month Since We Had The Last One. I have a French friend who says that the reason so many public holidays are sanctioned by the state is because it confuses strike committees and disguises the true figures of how many working days are lost to industrial action.

Today, though, is an important national fete day, and family members will be travelling from across France to spend the weekend together. There will also be any number of fairs and festivities, and those restaurants whose owners are not themselves on holiday will have a field day.

In the southern Brittany town of Quimper, the big event is the Feast of the Soul, which is a day when young couples ask Mary for her blessing on their future. An image of The Virgin will be placed in church doorways, and at dusk carried to the village or town centre for a night of feasting and fun with bonfires and bagpipes calling the tune.

Here in the less sophisticated moors and mountain tracts of north Finistere, the main event for hundreds of locals will be the Pardon at Le Relec.

Just down the road from us, Le Relec (or Ar Releg if you are Breton. As in Wales and to keep the natives happy, most road and place signs are in Breton and French.) is a regionally famous mostly ruined abbey, founded by Cistercian monks in 1132. Our neighbor Alain Le Goff claims that the name comes from the abbey being built to house the body parts of an ancient Breton leader slain in a great battle at Lesmenez, but there seems to be no evidence for or of saintly fingers such as the one kept in the north coastal church at the aptly named St John de Doight.

Wisely, given the prevailing weather patterns in the Arree Mountains, the monks specialised in making use of the mountain streams and rivers flowing past and often through their front door. Locally they were known as The Brothers of The Water, and some of their technical achievements would do credit to a team of modern engineers. Next to a lake near the abbey are the remains of a mill which appears to have been run by turbo power, and a very early lock system controlling the flow of water from the lake cunningly irrigated a huge area of what would have been either vegetable gardens or perhaps even paddy fields. If I seem to be unsure about exact historical detail, it is because everyone in our area seems to have their own version of the past, and there is little documented evidence.

In the way I so admire about how the French treat and use their ancient monuments, Le Relec is satisfyingly unrestored and obviously not over-maintained, and seems more the realer for it. There are no notices warning of the danger from crumbling stonework, collapsing archways and unguarded pits, and visitors are welcome to poke around in the cavernous interior and explore places which would be very strictly off limits in any British place of worship.

The last time I arrived, a young man was playing a flute in the pulpit. It was a haunting air, and suited the surroundings exactly. A dog with a scarf around its neck was sitting guard over an old beret at the bottom of the stairs to the pulpit, and I dropped a few euros in as we tiptoed past. The beret was empty, so I hope he was a busker and not a famous musician in the middle of a paid-for gig.

The abbey is also very much a working place of worship, and apart from regular masses, classical music concerts and readings and dramas all make use of the acoustics throughout the summer months.

But today is one of the really big days of the religious clalendar, when all local Catholics can expunge their sins of the past year and start again with a clean slate.

After a suitably long service in the morning, the faithful gather at the door of Le Relec to atone for their sins by taking a short walk in a nearby woods before eating and drinking and dancing a lot at a typical Breton knees-up.

The daytime version of this sort of tea dance meets punk pogo-and acid rave is called a fest diez . The night-time version is a fest-noz, and generally far more alcoholic and licentious.

Nobody is really sure of the origins of these moveable feasts, but every village and town will have at least one a year. I suppose the best way to describe the main activity is a sort of barn dance without the barn. Or the carefully choreographed dancing. The tradition is said to date back to at least the middle ages, and its origins and purpose are unclear. Given the amount of drink that is consumed, I find that unsurprising. The most popular version is that the event marked the completion of a new house, and at the same time helped finish the job. The owners would invite their neighbours to a shindig as a thank-you for their help on the building, and also to act as a sort of mass human steamroller. When everyone had suppressed their inhibitions with the local firewater, it was time for the dancing to kick off. This was quite literally a knees-up, with no formal steps or intentions other than jumping up and down a lot on the spot. The crafty part was that as well as being good fun, the repeated impact of several dozen pairs of sabot-clad feet on the earth floor made it instantly fit for purpose.

To spur the guests on to(literally) greater heights ,everyone was supplied with unlimited quantities of chouchenn , which is an innocuous–sounding infusion of fermented honey in water. In the old days the mead-like mix was often livened up with cider, and sometimes with the bees themselves to add to the texture and taste. The result was an interesting concoction which weighed in at (at least) 14 percent alcohol by volume. When you think that the average beer or cider today is around a quarter that strength, you can see how a pint or two would encourage the guests to jump about with some abandon. Having taken a glass, I reckon it also had another valuable function, and any leftovers could be thinned down a bit and used as glue to re-sole worn-down shoes or waterproof the roof.

*

The priest stands on the steps of the abbey, and looks a little tetchy as the faithful gather to follow him for a walk in the woods. Perhaps he is unhappy because for once he has been upstaged by his parishioners in the fancy-dress stakes. At least a dozen of the older men and women in the crowd are wearing traditional Breton costumes, and it is interesting to speculate on how and why the styles and design came about. Like morris dancers, the wearers look self-conscious, apologetic, defiant or quite pleased with themselves, but only the padre looks really at ease; perhaps that is because he is the only one in his working clothes.

There seem to be several styles of male costume, and all look strangely like a collection of national dress from other cultures and countries. One of the men appears particularly embarrassed, and perhaps that is because he looks like the lead character in a very amateur theatrical production of The Mask of Zorro. His outfit is all black, and topped off with a broad brimmed and be-ribboned hat which is a hybrid of a sombrero and the sort of homburg favoured by Sephardic Jews. The heavily embroidered bum-freezer bolero jacket looks like the sort of thing worn by the support acts at a bullfight, but the trousers are wide and baggy and completely spoil what could have otherwise been a quite dashing appearance.

Another version of Breton Sunday best clothing in olden days is worn with obvious bum-clinching embarrassment by a tall young man. He constantly looks across at an older woman who has also dressed up for the day, and the way he glares and she smiles back encouragingly, I would guess she is his mum. She is also entitled to look relaxed as her costume is relatively unsilly, consisting of a voluminous floor length skirt, a crocheted shawl and sort of skull cap made of fine lace. Her presumed son's outfit has the same sort of waistcoat as the older man, but below the belt he is entitledly mortified to be wearing a really voluminous pair of what a golfer would call plus eights. They are also heavily embroidered, and swell out hugely from the waist before being pinioned at the knees like a pair of joke jodphurs as favoured by the late great Eric Morcombe for any aviator or white hunter sketches. The outfit is finished off with a pair of red woollen tights and oversized sabots. I see that the young man is holding a mobile phone as if to keep in touch with reality, and when it starts to ring the priest shoots him a venomous look. Having silenced the laughing frog ringtone, the fiery-faced youth joins the procession which has now assembled behind a man with a banner as over- embroidered as the waistcoats, and they set off to atone for their commune's sins across the past year. As the cameras click and flash in the dull light, the young man keeps his chin tucked into his chest and stares straight ahead, and it appears to me at least that he is paying enough penance today to make up for his whole village's misdemeanours.

*

The penitents have disappeared in the direction of the woods surrounding the lake and abbey, and it is time for the fun and feasting to begin; from the sound of it, the chief guest at the pig roast has just realised his place in the scheme of things.

In the corner of the abbey courtyard is a large box-trailer hitched to a vintage tractor. Going by the noise coming from behind the plastic curtains shrouding the trailer, it seems that someone is slaughtering a pig for the barbecue at the last minute to ensure optimum freshness. It also sounds as if the slaughtering is being done very clumsily. Then the side curtain is pulled back by an unseen stage hand, and I see that the noise is in fact coming from a musical trio, who are tuning up their instruments and seeing who can make the most painful sounds and thus draw the most attention. After a while, I realise that the band is in fact not tuning-up, but has launched into its set for the performance.

Like the costumes, traditional Breton music seems to owe much of its origins to cultures beyond the boundaries of France. If you think about what it might sound like if a full-on Irish ceilidh band joined forces with a square dance caller and a tone-deaf snake charmer, you will get some appreciation of the overall effect. The group consists of acoustic guitar, violin and the chanter pipe from a Breton bagpipe or veuze . This is known as a bombarde and when played directly by mouth, it requires a prodigious amount of breath and so can only be played for short bursts at a time. To many peoples' way of thinking, this is no bad thing.

Making up the ensemble is a severe-looking lady of indeterminate years, whose job is obviously to keep ahead of the boys in the band, and punish the audience with her vocals. Like country and western music, the individual tunes are very similar, although I cannot comment on the words as they are Breton. I suspect that most of what we are hearing are former work songs or land shanties, as they are very rhythmically repetitive, insistent and thankfully short.

While all this is going on upon the stage, a number of older and thus less resistant members of the audience have been press ganged into joining in the fun by the dominatrix on stage. I do not know what type of dance they are performing or if it is a local variation on a theme, but basically the result is very much like a hokey cokey, or what used to happen when the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve in streets all over the United Kingdom. The dancers form a circle with hands linked, and spend their time hopping from one foot to another before sweeping inwards and outwards in rough time with the music. To be fair, they seem to be enjoying the exercise, and each time the music stops they raise their hands and clap and call out in Breton. Perhaps they are asking for more, or perhaps they are begging the band to give it a rest, but the result is always the same.

As the lady on the stage calls the band and dancers to order and takes a deep breath before launching into the next number, I look at my wife and we head for the temporary bar, which has been set up by the lake and at least a quarter mile from the musical action. Having heard the enterntainment and knowing that it will go on until dark, I can now see why the penitents and priest are hiding out in the woods, why the beer tent is so distant and so busy, and why the audience at these traditional functions drinks so much…

Saturday 16th:

If I were thinking of setting up in business in Brittany, it would not be a choice between a bar or restaurant or even an English teashop and grocery store. Based on the principle of supply and demand and probable business levels, I would launch a mobile wing mirror replacement service.

Whether by coincidence or design, all the country roads in our part of the region work out at the width of two standard-sized cars, plus about a metre breathing space.As the average Breton likes to drive at least a half metre away from the verge and refuses to chicken out and pull over when meeting an oncoming car, It does not take much of a head for figures to work out that something has to give, and what it will be.

This morning we came down from the mountain road pursued by a car from the Aude as if our bumpers had become entangled. As per standard behaviour, the driver zoomed by as we pulled up at a junction, sheered across our bonnet and made for the hump-back bridge by the lake as if pursued by demons. Coming the other way was a local car, and it was obviously going to be a race to see who could get there first and take right of passage. As it happened, both arrived at the same time, and both refused to give way. The two cars somehow squeezed past each other with no more than a coat of paint to spare, but both left wing mirrors as well as curses and interesting hand signals behind as they roared off.

It says much about French attitudes to driving that neither bothered to stop and at least discuss who was in the wrong and therefore who should pay for the damage.

Monday 17th:

To the secret cheese factory for our weekly supply of illicit but delicious Mont d'Aree grand chevre . Perhaps because it is being made without the knowledge of the Health and Safety bureaucrats and ( particularly) the tax robbers that adds to the flavour, but it is certainly popular in our area. It is also our gesture to Breton cheese recognition.

France famously has a cheese for every day of the year, although virtually all are soft and a lot of them look and taste the same. But every region has its own-brand cheeses of which the denizens are ferociously and sometimes justly proud. Normandy, for instance, has 27 types of cheese, including the world-famous stereotypical smelly French cheese, camembert ( the bacteria of which is identical to that found between the toes, thus creating the concept of someone having ‘cheesy' feet). But how many cheeses does Brittany claim as its own?

None, zero, zilch. What I mean is no truly cross-border ‘national' cheese.

At this point some Bretonised Brit or Francophile bore will start banging on about the wonderful little cheese the abbey in his area makes, but that is exactly my point. In England there is Cheddar and Wensleydale and Double Gloucester, in Wales its Caerphilly...and even Scotland has Dunlop ( which some would say tastes a bit like it sounds it should). Here, there are ten thousand small producers doing their own thing, but absolutely no named Breton cheese marque. I find it very hard to believe that in hundreds of years, not a single enterprising Breton dairy farmer has woken up one morning and said to his wife: ‘Here's a bloody good wheeze. We'll knock up some cheese, do something different with it like leave it hanging around a good while and then stir in some toenail parings, refuse to reveal its secret ingredients and say the recipe was handed down through our family for the past thousand years. We'll call it some fancy-dan name like Myrrdin and claim it was a favourite of the first king of Brittany. The way things are going with the cultural revival thingy, we might even get a grant to make it '

And, remember, this shortcoming of a cheese to call its own is in a region with nearly a million cows eating their heads off and producing almost five billion litres of milk a year, which is twelve percent of the national total. There is a lot of Breton butter churned out each year ( 80,000 tons) but the only cheese that a patriotic Breton would claim as home-grown in any great amount is- wait for it- pasteurised emmental . Brittany knocks out more than half of the nation's yearly and inexplicable demand for a cheese which is even more bland and boring than the Dutch variety. And as anyone with a sense of taste who has tried it will bear witness, calling emmental a cheese is a bit like calling Liverpool a city of culture.

And how's this for an excuse? According to some renowned cheeseologists it is possible that the Black Death in the Middle Ages wiped out all Bretons with the knowedge of how to produce cheese...and the secret was lost for eternity. Yeah, right.

To be absolutely clear about this, there are many local cheeses produced in Brittany

( mostly in Trappist abbeys for some reason), but none have the necessary MOT certificate in the shape of an Appelation d' origine controlée.

. So, those are the hard cheese facts. Whatever anyone tells you, there is no ‘national' Breton brand. As with sheep and tomatoes, the Brets obviously just don't do cheese. Or perhaps they don't want outsiders- especially government officials- knowing they do cheese...

Saturday22 nd:

I think the whole hamlet must now believe me to be mad, or at least a savage when it comes to matters culinary. This evening I chatted to Alain and our other neighbor Jean-Yves as they effortlessly trimmed the couch grass-infested verge with sickle and scythe. It is an education to watch two men in their eighties clear a patch that would challenge my industrial class strimmer. And it is a lot quieter and neater process. As they showed me how to get to grips with and use a scythe without removing my legs as well as the grass, Mr. Lettuce roared by on his ancient tractor. In passing, the bucket clipped the elderberry tree that guards the entrance to the short cut from the lane to the kitchen door, and I shouted a caution. While gathering up the fallen berries, I explained to my two neighbours that they would make some fine wine come autumn. When I offered to reserve a couple of bottles of Chateau Lesmenez elderberry champagne-style wine for them and perhaps put on a tasting with some English cheese, Alain turned as green as the berries, and Jean-Yves had to sit down to recover from the shock.

Link to local cheese and produce (in french) http://www.broanare.com/gaec_penn_ar_menez.htm

Sunday 14 th September:

To Callac in our neighbouring department of Cotes d'Armor for an Autumn Fayre, staged by a magazine aimed at British expats. The Central Brittany Journal is an excellent and very informative though informal organ it is hugely popular with Brits living here, planning to, or just interested in this part of France and finding out what it would be like to become a resident foreigner here.

Sunday was a good day for putting on the commercial Harvest Festival celebration of chutneys, jams and home-made wine and the results of other peculiarly British activities at this time of year as it guaranteed a huge turnout of bored Brits. Callac was also a shrewd choice for the venue because of its location at this end of the region, and the high local Brit headcount. It is still, however, a very Breton place as many farmers choose to retire here and at the weekly market the lingua franca reigns. Attractions include a Roman bridge and a renowned boulangerie and tea rooms, but Callac was one of those places we disliked on sight... and with absolutely no justification.

It is surprising how often we (and perhaps others) arrive in a quite inoffensive town and immediately find it unappetising. Perhaps it is something ethereally malignant in the air, or an off-putting juxtaposition of architectural features or street layout. Or It might be because of a bad experience on the road in to the town, or indigestion.. or just because one is in a bad and unresponsive mood. As with a restaurant at which we have had a rotten meal, I find the fairest thing to do before condemning any town is make a repeat visit. I have now apologised to Callac for judging it unfairly, and it has grown on us.

The rather grubby outskirts display its railway town history, but the centre is a pleasant place to be. There is an interesting and unusual use of brick on many of the chimney stacks around the town hall, and the church looks like it was built in stages from the Perpendicular through Norman to Victorian Neo-Gothic. But it strikes me as an honest sort of place, and somewhere one could become fond of in spite of its blemishes , just as a parent with an ugly child.

As the Brits flooded in and followed the traditional custom of filing past all the tables and looking but not buying, I reflected on how many of them were happy to have come here to live, and how many of the newer arrivals would stay. There are, as far as I know, no precise statistics for how long on average British expatriates remain in France till death or return to the UK or redeployment elsewhere. Generally, it is reckoned that the first two years is the crucial period; as with the make or break point with new business and lethal fevers, if you get past the critical stage it is probable that you will survive and stay on. Of course, some Brits arrive afire with enthusiasm and excitement and depart with disillusionment and debt in a very short time. Others stay on because they cannot afford to go home, or even because they do not want to admit they made the wrong choice by coming here to live. Many, though, adapt and survive and even prosper, though surprisingly often not for the reasons they thought they would.

Wednesday 17th:

We have been staging our own harvest festival, and it has been a very subdued affair. All round, our attempt to live to a degree off the land has been a disaster. Had we been real country people and relying on the fruits of our vegetable patch for survival, we would now be looking down the barrel at a long and very lean winter. Nowadays, the most rural Bretons only have to nip out to the nearest Super U or LeClerc to stock up on the miserable range of vegetables that the French think suitable to put on one's plate, but it would have been almost a life and death affair for the people who lived in Lesmenez a couple of centuries ago.

For us newcomers, the combination of the rainy and mostly sunless summer and the X factor of living at this height on unfamiliar soil has combined to make my wife look a complete amateur at growing food. It has in the process given our nearest neighbour another reason to set his wizened features into that familiar told-you-so expression.

When Alain Le Goff said it was impossible to grow tomatoes in this bit of Finistere, I thought we had him. For years my wife has been coaxing the biggest, baddest love apples from some really unyielding earth and strange situations. To give her a real edge, I spent hours constructing a luxury home for the dozen plants we had specially imported from England. My purpose-built tomato nursery was constructed of the finest materials, and cunningly built to be not only portable, but on a turning platform to catch every available blink of sun. If Richard Rogers had designed it, my construction would have won a prize for architectural excellence. Though perhaps not, as it was also very functional as well as weird -looking. But the sprites of the mountains were not in agreement that nature should take its course. Last week I sent an e-mail to our closest friends announcing the arrival of the singular East tomato; it was accompanied by a photograph of the sickly child to explain why my super-strength green tomato chilli chutney would come out in a limited edition only this autumn.

Elsewhere, it has been just as feeble a reward for hundreds of hours of work. Our corn on the cob plants are not as high as even a midget elephant's eye, and the strawberries have failed to show. We planted hundreds of seed potatoes, and the earth has given up no more than a plateful.

Meanwhile, our neighbour Alain has used his insider knowledge and experience to grow only the most suitable vegetables in his huge plot, and is now relishing the fruits of his summer labours by acting like a lady bountiful. For weeks he has been arriving with wheelbarrow-loads of leeks or spring onions to swap for our eggs, and now he has gone into overdrive.

Giant pumpkins materialise Tardis - like outside our kitchen door alongside monster marrows that our neighbour claims are just Breton-sized courgettes, and it has got to a point that we have had to resort to subterfuge to keep our end up. As with the usual arrangements between vegetable gardening neighbours, the deal was that we would avoid growing too many of the same varieties, and exchange our unduplicated surpluses. As our first year of living off of Finistere soil has been such a disaster, we have been reduced to buying our half of the bartering deals just to keep our pride and not admit that Brits cannot grow vegetables in any but the most benign conditions.

So our carrots are actually counterfeit, and the giant and full-blooded beetroots I have been casually adding to our exchange food parcels come from supermarket shelf and not our soil . My face-saving scheme worked all the time I kept Alain from seeing the true state of our veg garden by telling him that it was off limits due to a nasty case of wire worm in our English strawberries. Unfortunately, I got too carried away with the satisfaction of appearing to be a better gardener than him when it came to making the most of the local soil and weather conditions, and the three coconuts and giant pineapple I tried to claim as home-grown gave the game away. Especially as they still wore the Super U special offer sticker and price tag.

Friday 19th:

A strange encounter this morning as I gave the hens their breakfast. At first I thought the whole gable end of the barn was on the move, then saw hundreds of what looked like wasps working their way through the thick covering of ivy. When Alain came over for his daily eggs and I told him about the invasion, he laughed and said my visitors were bees, not wasps. What's more, I should feel honoured that our home had been chosen by the best Breton bee dancer. Sensing another leg-pull, I demanded more information and he said that bees actually send out scouts to look for the best sources of nectar. Each outrider returns to the main party and reports on his findings, performing a little jig to demonstrate the quality and quantity of the potential happy hunting ground. The bee who performs the most impressive dance is the winner of the X factor-style vote, and the rest of the swarm follow him to the promised land of plenty.

Saturday 20th:

I have been talking to the owner of our local honey farm, and it seems Alain has not been shooting me a line. What I thought to be pure guff about the dancing bees is true, and encouraged by my purchase of an eye-wateringly expensive and very small pot of his finest produce, the apiarist filled me in on some further fascinating facts about bees. For a start, they do not create honey, but merely work on nectar to make it fit for purpose. In the manner of so many supermarkets serving up pre -digested food in the UK, bees repeatedly regurgitate nectar to come up with what we choose to call honey. In the course of a lifetime, a worker bee will produce no more than a tenth of a teaspoonful of the golden gloop, and the end result of just a pound of honey will have taken 50,000 air miles and the tapping of two million flowers.

And there's more.

The variety of males who have been working our grounds will sport black moustaches for collecting plant fragrances , and though females are generally faithful to one partner, the randy Breton bee may put it about with many partners during his shorter but much more active lifespan. Once again, we see humanity in nature...although I do know a number of Breton ladies who also sport fine black moustaches.

*

Monday 22nd:

Another close encounter with Farmer Grumpy and his even more snappy dog this morning. Walking down to the Calvaire t o give the fox his breakfast, I saw that all the entrances to fields alongside the lane had been sealed off with lengths of blue string. This happens when a major transfer of cows is about to take place, and the string is to make sure the half-ton creatures do not stray from the planned course. Some of the entrances and gaps in hedges were double-stringed, so there was probably going to be a particularly bad-tempered bull with the herd.

To those not in the know, it might seem a tad optimistic to expect a length of baling twine to deter a rampaging bull, but they do not know that this innocuous-looking blue string has magic properties beyond science, and forms a more impenetrable force field than that around the Star Ship Enterprise under full Romulan attack. Apart from this mystical power, baling twine really is a multi-purpose and indispensable tool for any farmer. Apart from making fields and gardens no-go areas, it can hold trousers up and buttonlesss coats together, and provide a quick and sometimes permanent fix for the most severely traumatised pieces of agricultural machinery. I know of a pre-War tractor in Normandy which has been kept alive with baling twine transplants since the first anniversary of D-Day.

Also held together by baling twine are some of the severely dented and damaged parts of Farmer Grumpy's old Renault, which stands with its radiator dripping on to the base of the stone cross. I have seen some decrepit cars still on the road, but this one is a real pearler. The unusual thing is that the author of the life-threatening injuries to the car is its owner, and I believe few of them to be accidental. If there were a law against the abuse and maltreatment of motor cars, Farmer Grumpy would now be doing a life sentence without the option. There is not an inch of the surface of the Renault which has not been kicked, beaten or otherwise damaged by being driven into a suitably immoveable object. I do not think for a moment Mr. Grincheux mistreats his animals, and he certainly seems to think more of his cows than the rest of humanity. I suspect that, like a Gallic Basil Fawlty, he takes out his dissatisfaction with his life in general on the car.

Alongside the road leading down to our hamlet is a very big and rusty water tank, upon which Farmer Grumpy has painted some not very complimentary comments about British beef. When we first passed his cottage and waved, he turned his back on us. When I walked by with Milly a week later, his dog rushed out and attacked her. If anything, the cross-collie appeared more unsociable than its master, and is one of the very few dogs to have growled and barked and snarled at me as if he really meant it. It was not until I mentioned these incidents to Alain that I realised Mr.Gricheux and his dog are misanthropes rather than xenophobes. It is not that they do not like foreigners and especially British foreigners; they just do not like anyone.

*

In all my years of travelling around and living in France, I have only knowingly been the subject of deliberate anti-British sentiment twice. In each case, the aggressor was obviously the worse for drink and took exception to me talking English when in his presence, even though I was in the company of non French-speaking Britons. In each case I told the complainant that my friends were merely visiting his beautiful country and spending lots of money in it, and asked if he would learn and speak Chinese if visiting China. When this did not appeal to the logic of either, I told them that my father had given his life for France in World War II, though I had only given a leg. Neither of these two statements were true, but it made me feel a lot better to hear utter silence fall as I limped melodramatically out.

Sunday 28th:

This morning I drove past a field in which a huge man dressed like a pirate was serenading a pile of burning leaves with an alto saxophone. I could have pulled over and asked him why, but that would have risked spoiling the moment if there were a perfectly mundane explanation...

Monday 29th:

Doing my sums this morning, I realized I have now not rolled and inhaled around 8,247 cigarettes since I gave up smoking a little more than seven months ago. In my darkest moments of desire for the weed, it helps to crunch the numbers and work out what that growing mountain of cyber-tobacco would have cost me in cash and lung tissue had I not stopped, and also to picture what that number of fag-ends would have looked like in a long line of overflowing ashtrays.

I still miss the thought of smoking if not the coughing fits, but, if I were honest, I think the pastime gave me up rather than the other way round. I could put up with all the aggro and demonization during my brief visits to Britain, but just couldn't stand the thought of standing outside a French bar like a particularly contagious leper after the ban arrived here in January.

Since I kicked my habit, I no longer have to seek out bars where the anti-smoking laws has been either completely ignored or misinterpreted, but it is good to see the French at their egalitarian and illogical best in this matter. In our favourite local, customers who wish to smoke are primly reminded of the strict interdiction now in place, then invited to sit in the huge inglenook fireplace and direct their illicit fumes up the chimney. As our hostess says, if it is still legal for the chimney in her bar to smoke, it must be okay for her customers to so do…

Wednesday October 1st:

Woken by the sound of gunshots, I looked at the bedside clock and remembered there is a seven ‘o' clock in the morning as well as the evening. Feeling obliged to investigate, I stumbled to the window and took in a bucolic panorama which would have made a fine illustration for Keats's salute to Autumn.

A fire-red dawn approached, and the coming light revealed a coverlet of mist resting gently on the craggy peaks of the moors above. Another cloud drifted like woodsmoke through the forest far beyond the rooftops of the cottages across the lane. All in all, it was almost striking enough to make me want to get up and go out.

Leaning from the window, I saw two cars parked by the old stone cross which marks the start of the track up to the moors and mountains. The hunting season has obviously begun, and it looked as if the owner of one of the vehicles has been keeping a record of his successes in the manner of a wartime fighter pilot. Even at this distance I could see two boars' heads and at least a dozen pheasants had been painted on the driver's side. Dressing hurriedly, I set out to discover who was shooting at what, and to ensure that our, dog, chickens, cat and fox were safely out of the line of fire.

*

At the calvaire , I saw that rather than listing all the wild animals the driver has slaughtered, the car was actually a mobile mural. The driver's side carried skilfully drawn profiles of a host of wild creatures, while the whole of the nearside (including most of the windows) was devoted the representation of a sylvan glen, with the principal animals dancing in joyful harmony to the pipes of the great god Pan. As another fusillade echoed around the moors, I reflected on how this sort of ambivalent attitude could happen only in Brittany.

In Normandy I know of villages where there are more members of the hunting club than male adults. In some communes, old women and babes in arms are on the list. At fishing lakes, participants would laugh at the idea of using a fly and skill and patience to lure a trout. They prefer multi-hooked rigs alive with dozens of maggots, and would shoot fish in barrels if they could.

Here in Brittany it is more about the art of the hunt than the easiest and speediest way to kill wild creatures. On a recent visit during the hunting season, we went for a walk in a forest and thought we had stumbled on to the set of a Gallic film version of the Robin Hood legend. A continuous fanfare of horns blared out , and we saw one man swinging from a branch as he tootled away. The added noise of dozens of figures in picturesque outfits obviously chosen more for dashing sartorial effect than camouflage crashing through the undergrowth and bew-hallewing for all they were worth had obviously frightened every living creature bigger than a mouse from the area. But did they care? The boys were obviously there to literally make a song and dance of the day, and not concerned about going home laden down with evidence of nature red in tooth and claw.

The climax of our walk in the woods came when we emerged into a clearing and saw a giant boar looking benignly at us from a cottage garden. The great beast was surrounded by a menagerie of goats, ducks, dogs and other domestic animals, and all seemed at ease with their giant companion. When an elderly lady came out of the house and we asked about the situation, she explained that the boar had taken refuge in her garden some years ago after being frightened by the hunters' hullabaloo, and was now one of her pets. Sometimes, she said, the hunters would stop off and feed Gaston, and they had become as fond of the beast as she had. Mind you, she added, having a wild boar as a pet had not put her off the delights of roast pork...

Thursday 2nd:

A significant advance in anglo-franco culinary detente .

Last week our neighbour Alain Le Goff ran out of bread, and actually agreed to accept one of Donella's home-baked loaves. I also told our other neighbour Jean-Yves that I was making some celery soup, and he asked if he could try a bowl. Unlike Alain, Jean is a well-travelled man and obviously not frightened by the idea of experimenting with exotic foreign foods.

Friday 3rd:

Our attempt to bridge the chasm between our two nations visavis attitudes to food and cooking has not been a complete success. When delivering Alain's daily egg, Donella found a pile of familiar-looking breadcrumbs along the top of his garden wall. Even at this time of year they had been left strictly alone by the hundreds of local wild birds, which proves that the distrust of British cuisine goes beyond even the human population of France.

Saturday 4th:

A classic example of the triumph of hope and ambition over logic and any shred of common sense this morning when we learned someone had bought an old bar and restaurant in a village near ours. The locals say it has not been open for a decade, and closed because of lack of available custom.

As we drove past I saw a couple standing by a pile of rubble inside the bar. They were holding small paintbrushes and large tins of paint, and had the look of Hansel and Gretel before they found the gingerbread house. When I climbed over the piles of old plaster and wood and stone and asked them in French if and when the bar was re-opening, the faces of both took on that rabbits-in-the-headlights look which meant they had to be Brits. As they seemed happy to tell me in English, they had no idea of the re-opening date as there had been a dispute with the builders. They were also having a problem doing a deal with any local breweries and suppliers but their plan was to create a ‘fusion' pub, which would attract British and French customers from far and wide. Apart from not speaking French, neither had a shred of experience in any business, let alone the hospitality business, but both said they liked having people to dinner back in Surrey. The menu would be an artful blend of French and British delicacies, and they hoped it would prove a popular addition to the recreational facilities in the area.

As we drove away and I reported to my wife about the project, I thought about the irony that in spite of all the doom-laden auguries, the new pub might just be a raging success. The paradoxical thing I have found about British-run businesses in France is that those which seem sound often fail, and those which would seem to stand as much chance of being a hit as a bacon factory in Haifa often survive - and even prosper. It may be that the gods look after those who seem most in need of help, or maybe it is the equivalent of Sodd's Law in action.

French Factoid: Many thousands of Britons try to start up businesses in Brittany and other parts of France each year. The failure rate is said to be around 98 percent, and the longevity of the average affair around two years.

Sunday 5th :

A full moon tonight, and it was eerily like broad daylight when I walked up the track to give the fox his supper. A blackbird was working the ground, and when it took off it almost collided with a bat. High above, a buzzard was circling over a field in which a trio of beef cattle were grazing as if it were mid-day. It is said that hunters' moon derived from the clear skies and full moons of October, when migrating birds present an easy target for the men with guns below. As if on cue as I thought about this, a steady flapping signalled the approach of a skein of at least a dozen geese heading south for warmer climes. Earthlocked, I stood and watched in envy as I wondered where they were going... and how many would get there.

Monday 6 th:

Reason 4,679 for living in rural France, particularly if you are an ageing male with a touch of prostate problems.

Walking Milly deep in the woods surrounding the ancient ruined Abbey at Le Relecq, I was relieving myself with no small relief when a huge Labrador came bounding around a bend in the track. He was followed shortly after by a stunningly attractive middle-aged woman. For a moment I stood frozen in the embarrassing ( for me) tableau, then turned away and did myself some agonising damage with a hastily pulled-up zip. The woman stood calmly watching and waiting till I had stopped groaning, then asked if I was okay and if there was anything she could do. When I assured her that I was no longer hung up, we chatted for several minutes about our dogs and the weather and the global credit crisis, then parted on good terms. Madame said she hoped my little thing would get better ( by which I hope she meant the wound from my zip) , and even offered to give me a herbal remedy for prostate peculiarities if I called at her cottage in the next village.

In Britain and despite our let-it-all-hang-out society, I do not think the proceedings would have taken the same civilised form.

Tuesday 7th:

Another non-paying guest has heard about the quality of handouts at Madame East's takeaway. When I went outside for a final look around, the biggest hedgehog I have seen was munching its way contentedly through a dish of dried dog food that Donella leaves out for any passing or resident creatures who fancy a midnight snack. The hedgehog looked at me as if to ask what my business was, then calmly continued with its supper. When I told her about the new lodger, Donella was thrilled, but I can see what is coming.

Wednesday 8th :

As I expected, Little Paradise is living up to its name as far as our new boarder is concerned. Virtually as soon as dawn broke, I was put to work on building special quarters for the hedgehog, and he or she now has a purpose-built feeding station, crafted by me from what was a perfectly good washing-up bowl. I was also despatched to Super U with a long list of special foodstuffs, including a whole hand of bananas, a bag of best raisins, two packets of butter biscuits and a family- sized box of Le Kellog's Fruit et Fibre.

Thursday 9th:

Donella has gone to England to help our eldest grandson celebrate his tenth birthday, and I am toutes seul , as the locals say. Obviously concerned that I would starve if left alone, Alain arrived this morning to present me with a freshly-cooked beetroot. After instructing me in the arts and crafts of peeling, slicing and eating it, he noticed Hedgehog Hall and asked what it was for. When I explained that it held dishes of fresh fruit intended to attract our new guest, he said that he had heard hedgehogs made very good eating if fed on grain and then purged before baking in a mud ball over an open fire. He offered to give Donella a demonstration on how to skin the hérrison , but I said I knew she was not that keen on little pricks.

*

The third visit of the day from our nosey neighbour. To be fair, I do not think he is as much nosey as lonely, and the antics of the weird foreigners across the lane offer him endless fascination. And with Donella not around, I suppose he thought my activities would reach even greater levels of madness. After he had gone through the now traditional ceremony of looking at whatever I am doing while pushing his cap to the back of his head, blowing out his cheeks and doing a very good impression of a very bad mime artist registering complete and utter astonishment with his body as well as face, he asked why I might be taking leaves from a wheelbarrow and spreading them on top of the millions already in residence on the ground. Was the carpet of leaves not thick enough for my liking so that I had to import extras? After trying to decide whether or not he was joking, I explained that I was merely conducting a hands-on survey to establish parameters for a competition with my wife.

When he managed to look even more perplexed, I said that I did not wish to appear anally retentive, but I needed to do some research as to how many leaves would fairly fit into a wheelbarrow. As a result of the experiment he had just witnessed, I now knew that a decent-sized armful amounted to around four hundred large leaves. With five armfuls to the barrow, that meant we would be wheeling two thousand leaves on each trip to one of the compost heaps dotted around the grounds. As with sea shanties and work songs for workers on the land, my wife and I would make lighter work of clearing the carpet of fallen leaves if we set up a little contest. I have pinned a large sheet of paper to the kitchen wall, and each of us will make an entry of the barrow loads we have shifted each day. At the end of the competition, we would merely have to do a simple multiplication sum to learn the total number of leaves cleared up from the two acres of deciduous trees surrounding the driveway. Obviously, Donella had shorter arms and smaller hands than me and also the smaller of the two wheelbarrows. Thus she would be collecting fewer leaves than me, but I would not be so petty as to point her advantage out to her.

Having explained the rules and regulations of the Great Leaf Gathering Contest , I invited our neighbour in for a cup of coffee. He said if it was all the same to me, he would rather have a glass of my home made apple brandy to help him absorb ( I think he meant make sense of) all I had said.

Sunday 12th:

The leaf gathering competition is on hold. I came out of the house this morning to see we had had an overnight fall. It had been snowing leaves, which means the area I had cleared yesterday looked exactly the same as before I started. I have now revised my estimate of how many hundreds of barrow loads it would take to clear the grounds, and we may just decide to leave the golden carpet where it is until next year.

*

Donella is back from her visit to England, and came staggering down the gangplank of the ferry towing the big suitcase on wheels that had been empty on her outward journey. Like all expatriates, we miss certain delicacies that are either too expensive or too rare in our new homeland. So, like an ambassador bearing exotic gifts from a faraway land, my wife is laden down with jars of Marmite, packets of custard, tins of proper baked beans and bars of real milk chocolate. Of course, many middle-class ( or as we would say snotty ) Britons who have never lived in a foreign land would mock us and our expatriate friends for missing these British culinary delights.

What I find irritating is that those same people would have nothing but sympathy and even admiration for French people living in England who yearn for a fresh baguette or a round of ripe Camembert. Of course, any French expatriate would find these home favourites with ease anywhere in Britain, as we are anything but unadventurous as to what we eat and sell. We are also not afraid of competition, whereas in twenty years of living in and travelling around France I have never ever seen a foreign cheese of note in any supermarket. The exceptions are Edam and Emmental ( the French-made variety, naturally), and when one thinks of the lack of taste in either of those two brands, I think my point is neatly made.

*

Our drive back to Finistere from St Malo was made less enjoyable after being buzzed by a number of groups of lunatic motorcyclists. They are an increasing menace on the roads of France, as, if that is possible, the members of these packs have even less road sense and skills than the average French car driver. They delight in roaring past cars in columns, and weaving in and out of traffic at the most dangerous times. They also have their own sign language and supposedly secret signals for when groups meet, and obviously like to think of themselves as the sort of non-conformist free spirits seen in American road movies.

In fact, they will all work in boring jobs during the week, and, being French, are actually well mannered and deferential when you meet them off their bikes. We recently stopped off at the picture-postcard town of Josselin, and headed for the restaurant and bar area. On the corner of the square was a 1950s American theme bar with the juke box blaring and huge photo-montages on the wall of Marlon Brando as the rebel biker in The Wild Ones . Although there were a couple of dozen heavily-customised motorbikes lined up in the street outside, the bar was empty and we found all the bikers sitting down for a long lunch in the posh restaurant next door.

Although they look the business, I think from a British or American perspective, the members of this new fashion would be seen as not so much Hell's Angels as Hell's Nancy Boys.

*

An early evening visit from Alain, who was with an equally aged friend from another village. Alain said they had come to welcome Donella back to Paradise, but I suspect he had brought his friend to prove that Alain has not been making up the stories about his mad English neighbour. The pair arrived in the copse to find me photographing a fine example of a stinkhorn mushroom.

I explained that the pahallus impudicus could shoot up to as much as ten inches in length in just a few hours and was given its name by a Frenchman with a sense of humour, and that the country name in my part of Hampshire was Old Man's Dick. After looking at the huge erection wistfully for a few moments, Alain's elderly friend said he did not know about England, but in this part of France any old man would be proud to have something that size and rigidity named after his own wedding equipment.

Monday 27th October:

To the ancient capital of Brittany for a look at what could be our new home.

Having inspected more than a hundred farms, shops, castles, former cowsheds and other potential homes and found them all wanting, it seems to me we must think about other ways of living in France. Or even all over France.

Perhaps the reason we are not seeing any properties which appeal to us is because in our hearts we do not want to settle in one spot. There is so much of this big and diverse country we need to see before it is too late; paradoxically and as the months flash by, we seem to be becoming less interested in finding somewhere permanent to live. Rather than growing old in one secure setting, I increasingly like the idea of going on the run. I know we can't escape the Pale Rider by keeping on the move, but the thought of having a good go at escaping his clutches is appealing.

What I like about a transient life is the idea of having to pay no commune taxes or habitation fees, water rates or electricity bills. I particularly like the idea of living a life off the radar, and being able to up anchor and move on when I get bored with the view from the window or porthole. I come from a long line of seafaring folk, and ‘First turn of the screw pays all debts' was an expression often heard in my family circles. I know Donella is not so keen on the idea of a life afloat, but I have assured her that we can take the cat, dog and hens with us, and the birds of the air and all other freeloaders will be sure to zero in on us wherever we heave-to. Another bonus is that I will never be short of material for future travel books. I know that every British ex-accountant or schoolteacher who owns a Breton fisherman's smock and cap and plays with a canal boat for a hobby and has travelled a bit of the waterways of France has written a book about his uneventful journeying, but I am a professional and reckon I could make a much better job of recording my impressions as we saunter down the Loire on our way to overwinter in the sunny south.

Another real bonus is that the boat we are to look at is already moored on the Nantes-Brest canal in the department of Ile-et-vilaine, so there would be no huge costs involved in shipping it by road to Finistere. We would simply steam up and moor at the nearest canal town to our mountain home, then make plans for casting off and disappearing into the sunset whenever the mood takes us. The trip to inspect the Vivienne will also allow us to see what Rennes has to offer, though I suspect I already know what we will find there.

Tuesday 28th:

As seems to be the norm nowadays, things have not turned out as I had hoped .

When I spotted the advertisement for the 32-foot riverboat, the asking price of 18,000 Euros appeared a bargain. The photographs showed a gleaming and spacious craft with rakish lines and in apparent mint condition. The owner is living in Spain and seems a nice chap. He said he was selling the boat as his children had grown up and didn't want to go on family boating holidays anymore. I suppose that should have given me a clue as to the boat's age, as some of the photographs showed young children messing around on board. In spite of their severe haircuts, big shorts and lack of tattoos or other body decoration, it had not occurred to me that the snaps were reminders of a long-ago holiday.

Like the children, the boat has grown older, and now looks more like an elderly lady who had had a hard life than a smart and attractive young woman the photographs showed her to be. There was grass growing from some of the joints on the deck, and most of the fittings on the superstructure seemed to be held together by gaffer tape. Down below, all the fixtures were of 1970s vintage, and there was an almost Mary Celeste air of desolation and abandonment, with a single can of baked beans on the table top and the door to the bathroom creakily swinging to and fro

When we arrived at the marina office, the severe-looking woman at the desk said that the alleged keyholder had retired two years previously, and that she had no record of where the boat was or even that it existed.

Rennes was also a disappointment, though, like the boat, it could hardly have lived up to my expectations. In spite of all my travelling and a fair understanding of history and the development of major centres of habitation, I always irrationally hope that the ancient towns we are to visit will have somehow remained, well, ancient. It is as if in some childish way I expect anywhere with a bit of history to have it on show, like one of those battles fought on bank holidays by men dressed as Roman Centurians called Gais Pudicus, but who in the week answer to Trevor and work in insurance.

No dancing nowadays on the Bridge at Avignon..

When we visited Avignon, I did not expect to see lots of people dancing around on a quaint old bridge; neither, though, did I expect to have to fight our way to the old walled town through miles of sprawling and sometimes obscenely ugly outskirts of tower blocks and tawdry shopping centres and those tragic commercial estates where the businesses have names as tritely jolly as the products they sell are tawdry and sad.

Arles as Vincent saw it when in a good mood...

When we arrived at Arles, I did not really expect to see the odd farm cart rumble slowly by as a man with a straw hat, ginger beard and a big bandage where his right ear should have been strolled to the nearest bar. But our visits to all these historic towns inevitably destroy any hope that somehow, they would still keep an echo of what they were famous for. I did not see or smell a single wedge of Rochefort cheese when we toured that town, not everyone in Nimes was wearing denim, and Chantilly seemed to have no more than its fair share of lace on show. Though to be fair, most Chantilly lace was made in Bayeux in Normandy.

Rennes, Ancient...

Because of the tourist brochures and in spite of previous disappointments, I expected to see my first half-timbered and gaily-coloured medieval building as we bumped down quaintly cobbled streets towards the river at the heart of Rennes. In fact, we sat for half an hour in a three-lane traffic jam outside a soaring selection of cathedrals to shopping, with the biggest and most intimidating topped with a massive C&A sign.

With a population of coming up for a quarter of a million and another half a million living around the town, I suppose we should have expected Rennes to be busy. I am sure it is a nice town to live or work in for the young or business-minded, but not for a couple of ageing travellers looking for a trace of history and the feel of what the town was once like and why and how it became the capital. Of course, Rennes and any historic and significant French town will be riddled with reminders of its past in the shape of preserved buildings and an adequacy of museums and galleries. But to get to them, one inevitably has to plough through a reminder of the worst aspects of how we live now.

..and Modern.

Perhaps in the future there will be holograms or Disney-like facsimiles near all historic towns and sites so people can get a proper feel of what they were truly like; until then, I prefer and choose to visit and write about the more modest French towns.

In the Carmargue last year, when we turned our backs on the distant derricks and rusting coasters, we looked across a haunting marshland that was basically unchanged for millennia. And it did just what is said on the tin...or what the tourist brochures would have you believe. There were white horses running free across the boundless flatlands, and the morning sky did turn pink when a thousand flamingoes flapped lazily away as a fisherman poled his punt across the shallow silver waters. The horses and the pink birds and even the aged fisherman with his characterful craft may well have been supplied by the regional tourist board, but it seemed the area was at one with itself and how it always had been ....and that just by standing there in dumb wonder, we had become part of that magical place and its past.

Wednesday 29th:

The idea of setting up home on a boat has not been soured by our visit to view the Vivienne .

On our way home from Rennes, we stopped off to explore the bay of St. Brieuc. This is the principal or at least the biggest town in the Cotes d'Armor department, named for a Welsh monk who evangelised the region in the sixth Century and established an oratory there. Understandably given its origins, St. Brieuc is twinned with Aberystwyth, and, more un-understandably, with Aghia Paraskevi in Greece. The last head count of Briochins claimed a population of nearly 50,0000, which is normally enough to put the town in the stay-away category for us. But St. Brieuc sits at ease with itself overlooking an estuary in which two rivers combine before entering the English Channel. The vast Bay of St. Brieuc is freckled with interesting and secluded villages on cliffs, headlands or abutting sandy beaches, and we spent the night at the confluence of a posh marina and a very not-posh commercial docks.

What we liked about the port of le Légué was the way the million-euro yachts bobbed disdainfully alongside unconcerned and very rusty old scows, and the trendy eateries rubbed shoulders with derelict warehouses at the business end of the port. One day those warehouses will have become flash apartments, each costing more than the value of the port a couple of hundred years ago, but for the moment they lie empty and unvalued. Mountains of gravel and walls of cement bags line the dockside, and smack between them and the expensive yachts is our idea of the perfect waterside pub.

The Seagulls is a PMU/tabac, which means you can buy your fags and have a drink while laying a bet on the next race at Longchamp. The nicely distressed bar overlooks the water and is staffed by the sort of seen-it-all and no-nonsense but good-hearted barmaids that cannot be beaten for crisp service with a smile anywhere in the world that we have travelled. Outside we found that satisfying contradiction of smarty yachties and weatherbeaten deckhands and wharf rats you find in waterfront bars of a certain type.

As we sat with a drink and dusk fell, the terns obeyed their job and name description and wheeled and turned overhead, while a solemn line of cormorants pumped through the air on their way home after a day's work. These big and serious –minded birds fly in a very straight line, and I have often wondered why we say ‘as the crow flies' rather than ‘as the cormorant flies'. Most crows I see do not fly in any thing like a straight line for long.

Not wanting to go to bed, we took an after- dark drive up the hill and through the old quarter of St. Brieuc. The inviting lights of satisfyingly seedy-looking bars drew us through the empty streets as a police car pulled up to move on Dixie's Midnight Runners and their assorted dogs. It is only in provincial France that you see this sort of grungey and somehow old-fashioned wanderer who wears his mismatching assortment of old clothing with such panache. Bib and brace overalls with beret and neckerchief are the permanent fashion, and the hair is braided or cropped or even violently coloured and groomed 1970s punk vintage. The wearers generally cause no harm and add colour to the streetscene, and their dogs always look well fed and amiable. They also have the great appeal of not trying to sell you a copy of the Big Issue, and can generally play the musical instruments with which they solicit your spare change.

As we settled down outside a bar with a coffee and calva nightcap, a sign-written van pulled up and solved a dispute which has been going on for two thousand years between opposing French and British forces. The name of the carpenter owner of the van was writ large on the side panelling, and showed that, contrary to long-held English conviction,

(Eric) God is a Frenchman.

Thursday 30th:

Refreshed after our overnight at an excellent quayside hotel, we returned home to the mountains. What they like to call nowadays the hotel Experience is important if you travel often and can't get a freebie because the manager has never heard of you or cannot be persuaded that you have arrived as an anonymous reviewer for a prestigious guide.

On our personal rating system of one to ten, the Grenier à Sel must rate about eight or a bit more. The thing about hotels is that though basic facilities like glass in the windows and a bed in your room must be a given, the sort you like to stay in should be your business and a matter of individual taste. As with restaurants, you can really only compare like with like, and make judgments based on what you think makes a good one. Some travellers like a modern and anonymous hotel with all the facilities and no character. Others like a more relaxed and even louche establishment, and will put up with minor inconveniences like a non-working lift in return for a feeling of place and presence that marks a hotel that, like an experienced older woman, knows its stuff.

As to facilities, some people will pay through the nose for drinks from a mini-bar, with the Mark IV Corby trouser press and a soft porn channel to hand. We like a hotel with a roomy room and hopefully a pleasant view, a sensibly priced restaurant and a late-serving bar. A comfortable full-sized bed (i.e. not a single masquerading as a double) is or should be in place, but apart from the basics and for me, just about the most important thing is the shower cubicle rating; even more so, the shower head manoeuvrability tog level.

I have been in- or tried to get into- shower cubicles which would make a veteran coalminer claustrophobic. I have been in shower cubicles that have rat trap doors which threaten to part a man from his most vital appendages just for the fun of it. But the thing most likely to goad me into a raving fury is a dodgy shower head. A proper shower head can be slid up and down to the right level for any height of guest, or any part of the body or head he or she wishes to shower. A proper shower head can also be adjusted to spray at any angle. A fixed and non-negotiable shower head is a curse on humanity, and unless you are able to perform a legs-akimbo hand-stand in a very limited space, it is also a threat to health and safety of yourself and those near to you. The Grenier à Sel was comfortable and clean, with a corking waitress, good food, a decent -sized bed, and a fully rotatable and adjustable shower head, so passed our test with flying colours.

*

An almost surreal -even for us- experience on the road out of St. Brieuc.

Realising I had fallen for a typical French road authority trap and taken a wrong turning by actually following the directions on the sign, I pulled into a driveway to do a three point turn. Then I realised I was at the end of a queue, and another car entering the drive blocked my escape route. Five minutes later and after three decades of messing around in France, we were sitting at a hatchway and about to undergo our first Drive-In-Bakery experience. Purists would be outraged, but it was somehow heartening to see France taking an American invention and French-ising rather than, as with MacDonald's, franchising it.

As we watched in fascination, the driver in front stuck his hand out and took delivery of an obviously oven-fresh baguette and sped off. Shuffling up to the window to ask directions to get us back on the road home, we thought it only polite to buy a brace of giant almond croissants....

Editor's note: In October 1888, Vincent van Gogh persuaded his friend Paul Gauguin to join him for an artistic collaboration in the now-famous yellow house at Arles. A stormy two months later, and van Gogh had sliced off part of his ear and shot himself. Gauguin had fled to the South Seas and fame and fortune. In November 2008, a fellow writer and friend came to stay at George's Breton farmhouse, Ar Bihan Baradoz (The Little Paradise) Their collaborative relationship lasted just three days. This is our bloggist's totally one-sided report on the time when De' Ath came to Paradise:

November 1st:

Although the season of unwanted visitors is over, we are to receive a visit from an infamous non-paying guest.

Officially, Wilfred De'Ath wants me to be Boswell to his Johnson. He has already written an autobiography, but thinks the subject of himself is well worth recording for posterity in the third person as well as the first. His proposal is that he comes to stay with us to discuss the best way to record the milestones of his eventful life. I suspect that he will also be looking for a long-term and free billet in France. From what Wilf said on the ‘phone, his intended host – an elderly American living in Limoges- has been thoughtless enough to get himself run over and killed in Paris just before the great man's arrival. From what I know about our impending visitor, it is possible that the American chose death before De'Ath.

A university contemporary and friend of such media hotshots as Richard Ingrams and Melyvn Bragg, Wilf had a glittering career in prospect when he left Oxford. In the good years, he was very successful within the BBC, interviewing, working and rubbing shoulders with the luminary likes of Brendan Behan, TS Elliot and JB Priestley. He also alleges that he bedded an equally impressive if highly improbable listing of female film stars and TV celebs, reference to whom would put any biography on very delicate ground. Wilfred walked out on his wife and children at the height of his success, and a long downward spiral saw him rubbing shoulders with thieves and vagabonds as a guest at a number of Her Majesty's Prisons.

For the past decade, Wilf has made something of a living by writing about his murky past as he travels around France jumping trains and bilking hotels, restaurants and bars. He is an excellent if lazy writer, and searingly honest about his faults. This has endeared him to me as well as many readers of his column in the Oldie Magazine ; it has also earned him the contempt of some of the more delicate and prissy readers, usually women of a certain age.

We met six years ago after being introduced by the owner of a second-hand bookshop in Avignon, and have corresponded regularly since. Although he likes to portray himself as an unscrupulous scoundrel, I think Wilfred is a sensitive and decent man, and I am looking forward to his stay with us.

Sunday 2nd:

Wilf is installed in the guest room, and has been telling us of his recent adventures. He is obviously shaken by the death of his American friend. He has written a very moving piece for his next column in The Oldie magazine, and read it to us over dinner. Strangely, he says that the recent demise of acquaintances Alan Coren and Miles Kington did not touch him as much as the sudden loss of his American friend. He thinks the reason may be that his famous friends were hugely successful and had made their lives complete, while the American died alone and unfulfilled, having been a failure in life. Perhaps that is also how Wilf sees himself, and I must try to be even more understanding and tolerant of some of his less attractive traits.

Monday 3rd:

I am beginning to find some of Wilf's habits more than a little irritating. He obviously does not think it is the non-paying guest's duty to offer to help with the daily processes of keeping the house warm and clean and its inmates fed.

When I suggested he might like to help me wheel a barrow or so of cut logs up from the woods yesterday evening, he looked positively grey and retreated to his room complaining of a headache. Early this morning, I heard him moving noisily around in the passageway outside our bedroom signalling that it was time for me to get up. When I had cleared out the ashes, laid and started the fire in the lounge and the wood burner in the kitchen and got the breakfast things ready, he came down the stairs and looked around like a Victorian gentleman inspecting a skivvy's progress After I had stoked up the fire and served his coffee, he asked if I could ‘bear' to make him some toast. As I had shown him where everything was and laid out a plate and knife and butter and several slices of bread in the kitchen the night before, I suggested he might like to do it himself. After a shocked silence, he slouched off, then called back to ask if toast was made by putting the bread into the ‘red machine thing'.

*

An almost surreal evening as we took Wilf to what is claimed to be the highest village in Brittany.

I would not want to live in a place which I cannot pronounce (which I accept is another apparently odd criteria when picking the perfect place to call home), but Le Feuillee is a pretty enough village. There is the usual impressive church which seems too big and ornate for the size and religious requirements of the commune, a couple of restaurants, and a small general store and bakery which makes excellent raisin bread.

As well as boasting the highest altitude, Le Feuillee has always seemed to us to have the most unfriendly attitude of any of the small communes in our area. In the half dozen times we had previously stopped off at the village, we had felt a certain frisson of disapproval. Going in to the bar was a bit like the scene in High Noon where Gary Cooper arrives in the saloon. The music and conversation did not suddenly stop on our entry, but our arrival was obviously of note.

Now it seems, according to Wilf, that the reaction of the people in the bar was not because we are English, but because we are straight. Our friend believes that La Feuillee is not only the highest village in all Brittany, but perhaps the gayest village in all Brittany.

The problem with hearing suggestions of this sort is that things one had not noticed before can take on a new significance when pointed out. Plush red upholstery and flashing fairy lights are not normal decor in a rural Breton bar, but we had put them down to the owner's idea of sophisticated taste and how a chic bar in Paris might look. The way the male customers sat in couples with their heads close together had previously registered as nothing but after-work camaraderie to us. We had assumed the woman with the cropped hair, denim outfit and hob-nailed boots was glaring at us because we were foreigners. Whether or not Wilf was right, he enjoyed our discomfit that we might have got things wrong. In fact, he enjoyed the visit so much that he suggested we go back the following evening and leave Donella in the car while we posed as a couple inside.

Tuesday 4th:

Wilfred is really getting on my nerves. Not only do all conversations have to be about him and his feelings, they are not even conversations. His idea of an interesting discussion is for us to listen while he talks about his life. He is also a notorious name-dropper, and clearly completely wrapped up in himself. If I change the subject or mention any of my thoughts, he gives a brusque nod in acknowledgement then continues talking about himself without missing a beat. We sat for four hours in a bar at Chateuneuf-du-Faou this morning while he ran through what he called his Shagging Years. I lost count of the starlets and female celebrities he says he slept with, while Donella got bored and took the dog for a walk and the owner of the bar kept looking meaningfully at our empty coffee cups.

*

We saw another side of our guest this afternoon. I showed him the old ruined abbey in the forest near us, and he was obviously very affected by the atmosphere of a thousand years of worship. He stood with head bowed for a long time in front of the altar, and lit several candles. As far as I could see, he put money in the offertory rather than taking any coins out, so he must have been profoundly moved by the experience. Afterwards he said he wanted to believe, and found it spiritually satisfying if improbable to hope there could be a meaning and purpose to our lives.

Wednesday 5th :

Wilf has gone. It all came to a head this afternoon when he called me a bully. In an article after we met, he said that I had something of the pub bruiser about me, and I had not forgotten that. Outraged that he saw me as some common thug, I tried to grab him by the throat but Donella intervened. After a sullen evening, we dropped him at the ferry port at St Malo. In the terminal, he pushed his way to the front of the queue and disappeared without a word or glance back.

It irritates me when I am told that someone is ‘complex', as if that makes them different or special or excuses bad behaviour. It seems to me that everyone has a complex character, and it is formed by a combination of inherited dispositions and life experiences. It just depends on how much people show their complexities as to whether they are seen as complicated and contrary or straightforward, predictable and simple to understand. But I do think that, as well as being a cantankerous old bugger Wilf is the possessor of a very convoluted character. I think he wants to be punished for being who he is, and that nobody else could dislike Wilfred De'Ath as much as himself. I have been accused of wanting people to like me. Wilfred seems to want nobody to like him, and works hard to achieve his ambition.

*

Sometimes it is the small and apparently unimportant things which enhance or detract from choosing to live abroad. This morning I clocked up Good Reason 985 for being in France at this time. On this side of the Channel we have not had to endure a month of immensely irritating and mindless nightly whizzes and bangs frightening our animals and disturbing our peace. I would lay a bet that most of the morons literally sending their money up in smoke and upsetting other people do not know who Guy Fawkes was. My wife is particularly incensed by this anti-social activity, and thinks a really good idea would be to round up the oafs who put fireworks through old people's letterboxes and take pleasure in maiming cats and dogs, then invite them to be the guests of honour at bonfires across the land. Inside a Wicker Man bonfire, that is.

*

I am in Huelgoat to pick up a month's worth of British newspapers from a friend's pub. Apart from a good country pub and curry house (and of course our friends and some of our relatives) the thing I miss most from my past life is a daily British newspaper. We can watch and listen to the news from Britain, but it is not the same as being able to read the story behind the headlines.

Turning into the square I have to swerve to avoid running into Eddie Izzard. He has just emerged from the pork butcher's shop and favours me with a nihilistic stare before flouncing off in the direction of the post office. It is of course not Eddie Izzard, but a local lady doing an unintentional but impressive impression of the comic and enthusiastic wearer of women's clothing.

Brittany seems to be the European capital of lookalikes, and Huelgoat its headquarters. The owner of the creperie down the road is a spitting image of Robbie Williams, while a pocket-sized version of Clint Eastwood drinks regularly in the bar across the square in company with Rasputin the mad monk and Margaret Thatcher - had she become a bag lady instead of one of our greatest Prime Ministers.

The picture-postcard town of Huelgoat is one of the premier tourist attractions in Finistere, and not only because of its collection of celebrity doubles.

The name means ‘High Woods' and the town is surrounded by thousands of hectares of ancient woodland, riven with well-maintained walks alongside streams and gorges and huge boulders. Huelgoat is yet another place claiming that King Arthur was a homeboy, and another local legend claims that the giant Pantagruel stubbed his toe in the forest and in a fit of temper threw the great rocks wide and far. I prefer to think the vandalism on a monstrous scale came about because he was on the way home from a pub crawl in the town. Apart from the forest, a lake on its doorstep and the host of lookalikes, Huelgoat is marked out by having probably the most bars and drinking outlets in ratio to the population in all Brittany, if not all France. The thousand or so Huelgoatians have no less than seventeen licensed premises to patronise, from standard bars and restaurants to a drinking den in the back room of a camping gaz shop. Even the two bakeries have bars for those who become overtaken by a savage thirst while queueing for the daily baguette. Although it is claimed that the number of bars and drinking haunts is to accommodate the thousands of visitors who come to explore the forest and try their hand at making the Trembling Rock do just that, it seems to me that a lot of the locals like to drink...and drink a lot.

Other claims to fame for Huelgoat are that actress Jane Fonda once cooked a galette for her then husband Roger Vadim in a creperie in the square, and just opposite lived the ancestors of American Beat Generation poet, novelist and artist, Jack Kerouac. The artist Paul Gauguin is said to have painted the lake from the attic of a shop just off the square, but as the shop sells painting and art materials, that could be a marketing ploy.

Some say that the town sits on a confluence of ley lines, giving it a mystical significance and special appeal to those of a spiritual nature. This may be true, but I think it might just be the number of bars on tap which attracts so many unusual people.

*

It is good to have a licensed outlet to suit whatever mood one is in, and today I am definitely in the mood for a visit to the Homme au Chapeau . The pub is named for its owner Roger Jennings, who I have seen in every state of dress and undress except without his cap. Once a dealer in London's Paddington Green, Roger bought the defunct hotel some years ago, and set about filling it with his eclectic collection of antiques and bric-a-brac. I think he could be a really successful dealer if it were not for his reluctance to sell anything he has bought. Now every room and corner of the hotel is full with his stock, and it is difficult to move around the place for fear of barking your shin on a heavily gilded Louis Quinze table, or risk worse injury from a thoughtlessly placed chain saw.

The premises have become ever more chaotic since the departure of Roger's wife Cherie. She is an American who ran the bar before they split up, though she wisely pretended to be Canadian during the height of the Cheese-Eating-Surrender-Monkeys Franco-American dispute over the invasion of Iraq.

I find the range of customers as interesting as the patron, and it is the only pub I know where so many of the customers are former members of the Special Air Services. One claims to have been a half-Colonel at the Hereford HQ of the SAS, and I suppose this is possible as he is certainly no taller than five feet six inches. If he was indeed such a high ranking officer that would explain why he is so bad at unarmed combat. The last time he tried to demonstrate how he could kill me with one finger, he missed and fell through the door into the street. It is peculiar how Brittany appears to attract people with a mysterious past, and according to the British landlord of a pub in nearby Carhaix-Plouguer, the majority of his French clients claim to have seen service in either the Foreign Legion or some other elite fighting force. Another extraordinary statistic is that the parents of every one of his customers were in the Resistance.

Ordering a beer and flicking through the entertainment pages of the Daily Mail I see that there is to be yet another television drama series about the life of Henry VIII. The essential difference in this one is that Bluff King Hal will not gain weight as he ages during the course of the series, as the woman director fear that would deter female viewers from watching until the end. Although he weighed in at 22 stones and had a 54 inch waist and had to be winched on to his horse towards the end of his life, the lady in charge says she wanted the king to be an appealing character so an exact portrait ( i.e. the truth) is not important. This statement says a lot about the way we regard historical accuracy and emphasis in Britain nowadays. However, I still find it strange that the producers of the series have not decided to omit the fact that Henry had a couple of his wives executed, which I would have thought likely to cause women viewers to find him less appealing...

Wednesday 17th December:

Almost midwinter. Bretons call December the black month, and the weather is doing its best to help the general air of gloom.

An optimist would say that after the solstice it will be all downhill as the days grow longer and we head towards spring. A pessimist might say that the date merely signals at least another three months of lousy weather.

Few people who live in towns and work indoors seem to understand the importance of the weather to people who live in and with it. Having lived in several rural French homes which have changed little since they were built in a few hundred years ago, I can see exactly why the ancients made such a fuss about the end of the winter and the coming of better times. All that jumping about with hobby horses, Morris dancing and sacrificing the odd flaxen-haired virgin was in a very good cause as far as they saw things. For modern man and woman, it is glorious to live in the depths of the countryside in the winter when you have a fully-insulated and double glazed draught-free home and the faux-period wood burning stove is just for fun. When it is colder inside than out and the only form of heating is whatever you can scavenge to burn on an open fire, one can see how having the domestic animals as house mates and portable heating units seemed a great idea not so long ago in the countryside.

Not many foreigners realise or understand why the regions of this great country are as varied in their climates and weather patterns as in their cultures, traditions, speciality foods and home-brew tooth enamel stripper. Lots of Brits believe that that the further south one goes in France, the warmer it will be. That may be true in the summer, but thirty degrees above in August can change to twenty below in January when you are far from the mediating influence of the sea.

Here at the end of the world we are in a very particular situation, weather-wise. North Finistere is known for its picture-postcard green sward and lush grass and dairy production, which inevitably means the county gets lots and lots of rain. As we are also a bit of a step from the sea and our home is half way up a mountain yet in a dent in the landscape towards which all water naturally gravitates, the hamlet of Lesmenez has its own micro-climate within a micro-climate.

Basically, that means that the short summer is welded almost directly on to a seven-month very damp and cold winter, with spring and autumn passing in a blink. And change is the watchword. In Normandy they say that the region can experience all four seasons in a day. In our village I reckon that can happen in an hour. By the time you have said good day to a neighbour, it isn't, even if it was before you opened your mouth.

Perversely if predictably, the locals seen to take a pride in our singular climatological circumstances. If any foreigners ( ie us or anyone else not born and raised in the village) dares to mention extreme weather conditions elsewhere, it will be taken as a challenge. When I told our neighbour old Alain about severe flooding in the westcountry earlier this year, he sniffed and said he bet it was nothing like the Great Lesmenez Deluge. When I asked him how there could be flooding in a village half way up a mountain he gave me a withering look and said I had a lot to learn about how things happened in the French countryside.

*

As the mercury drops, so soars the cost of feeding my wife's ever-growing army of hangers-on. Being France, word spreads quickly about a new top-quality restaurant, and this one is free for all. There has been a huge increase in local wildlife and we now seem to be spending more on food for our non-paying guests as for our ourselves. I dare not query the weekly tariff as I know Donella would rather cut back on our grocery bill than theirs, but it is common knowledge that the owners of the local feed store have booked a cruise for the Christmas holidays on the strength of our custom. Yesterday I came in from the words to find a beautifully aromatic chicken pot au feu bubbling happily in the fireplace. When I asked what time we were eating, my wife said it was for the fox family, not us. As she said while adding another clove of garlic, they are French foxes so will have much higher expectations of their evening meal than the British variety....

*

Thursday 18th:

It is curious how not being able to have something makes it so much more attractive, and also mask its blemishes.

Within a month of arriving in Brittany we were sent the details of a presbytery which had just come on the market. It was in a picture-postcard village in the heart of Finistere. The church, chapel and the village are named for St. Herbot. Though sounding like a suitable patron for dyslexics, Herbot is actually the patron saint for cattle. There is a fete to celebrate butter and the church is the starting point for one of the most famous pardons in the region . The man himself is said to have lived originally in the village of Berrien, from where he was expelled by the womenfolk as his interminable sermons were destracting the men from their work in the fields. Herbot got his revenge by cursing the village to be forever a place of stone. This was actually a safe bet, as Berrien is in the heart of the Arrée mountains and made of stone, anyway.

We loved the photographs and description of the presbytery, but on the day we were to view it, the agent phoned to say that the place had been sold that morning . Foolishly, we went to look at the house we could not have, and the village in which we would not be living. It was all, of course, perfect.

The 18th-century presbytery sits on a rise alongside the church, which has a square, Norman-looking rather than Breton square tower. The church overlooks a small green and is surrounded by a gaggle of characteful cottages. Because of this and these dispositions, the village looks more home counties than Breton. The impression is strengthened by the local pub, which operates from a building that looks exactly like -if we were in Berkshire rather than Brittany - a church hall. Inside the high-roofed building the decor and theme is curiously English country pub. On one wall is a collection of what appear to be very long-handled baker's paddles and other reminders of times gone by. Lining the walls is a selection of other memorabilia, including weighing scales and even a Singer treadle sewing machine.

After sulking for a couple of days, we got on with our search for the perfect property in the perfect rural setting. Then last week we heard that another property was on sale at St Herbot.

Rushing over to see it, we found that the village had changed quite dramatically since our last visit. Before, I had not noticed the tumbledown agricultural buildings and corrugated iron-roofed wrecks amongst the twee cottages. Nor had I noticed that the road leading through the village joined two noisy and very fast highways, and was obviously a handy short-cut. I had also not been aware of the family of noisy dogs living opposite the bar.

Disappointed, we retired to the bar for a consolation drink and found it closed for the winter.

We have now looked at hundreds of houses and businesses and have yet to experience that knee-trembling moment when you know you have found the perfect place to live. Or think you have. Perhaps it is because we have made mistakes in the past and ended up living next to a motorway or a dog kennels that we have become so picky and fearful about any potential drawbacks to any property we view.

Sometimes I think that what we are looking for does not exist, so this evening I drew up a complete specification for our idea of a perfect village, which will naturally be called Paradise.

Baradoz sits at the end of a lane which leads to nowhere but to itself. Our house is the furthest from the road, and behind it is a wide canal with a landing stage which we own. Boats may pass our domain, but crews attempting to land who are not approved of by the Committee ( me) will be repelled and in extreme cases have their boats boarded and sunk. The population of the village is no more than a hundred, and nobody under the age of forty lives there. Adults from outside the village are allowed to visit their parents and relatives, but any small children and ( especially) adolescents must remain in the detention centre outside the village.

Although small, the population is made up of writers and artists and sculptors, so easily able to maintain a thriving bar. Most importantly, the bar has a genuine zinc-covered counter and is busy each night with customers arguing passionately about the greatest works of art, the meaning of Life..and whose round it is. Smoking is encouraged if not compulsory , and the speciality of the house is absinthe served over a lump of sugar in the traditional way. Finally, the barmaid is speedy, sympathetic and engaging, and has a truly enormous pair of tits.

I realise that it is not likely that we will ever find such a place, and indeed my wife does not agree with me on some of the qualifications, especially the one about the barmaid with the big tits.

Saturday December 20th:

To market at Morlaix . This historic estuary town stages one of the biggest weekly markets in the area, but is putting on a special effort as it is the weekend before Christmas. This means that there will be even more stalls and goods on offer, and prices will be even higher. This market factor represents another of the basic and - to us - perplexing differences between our cultures. In general, Britons go to street markets expecting to pay less for the things they can buy there; in rural France, shoppers go to market to pay more than they would or could elsewhere. This might seem a swingeing generality, but one which holds true when tested by investigation and evidence.

At centre stage at Morlaix market is a huge fruit and veg display. All the items on sale there could be bought cheaper at any of the local supermarkets. Being not entirely without sentiment or romance in my soul, I can understand why people would pay a little more to pore over and select their spuds in a market setting, but why would they want to pay thirty Euros for a pair of shoes which would be half that price in the nearest branch of Distri-Centre? At the nearby hat stall, a simple felt beret is priced at 35 Euros. It is true I have never seen anyone buy a hat or pair of shoes from these stalls, but the owners must find it worthwhile to set up shop here every week. But why would the French wish to pay more than the going rate for these things? The average citizen would not dream of paying more than the lowest price for filling their petrol tank, which is why so many small garages have gone out of business. But, in general, the urban French seem to find some sort of snob value or status attached to paying a high price for some things, and, most importantly, being seen to pay that high price. I once told a hard-up French friend about a special bargain we had picked up at the local supermarket, and when I showed him the family sized lasagne at just one euro, his lip literally curled and he shrank away from the foil container as if it might be infectious.

Elsewhere it is hard to judge the value-for-money ratio of some of the stalls, as I do not know an alternative source of African bongo drums or paintings which have been done not by numbers but a production line of artists. Allegedly, the artistic cartel is made up of tree, grass and sky specialists who each do their bit before passing the canvas on down the line. The finished paintings are finished in minutes and are very attractive in a chocolate box type way, but, perhaps surprisingly, a bit samey. There is no name at the bottom right hand corner of any of the landscapes on display, but I suppose that is because if all the artists involved took the credit there would be little room left for the painting itself.

Beyond the temporary shopping mall of purveyors of meat, cheeses, poultry, seafood, Vietnamese and Italian and Breton speciality cuisine, clog and holistic honey products is a cobbled alleyway where we feel much more at home. It is here that the bargains are to be had by those brazen enough to show they do not think it stylish or necessary to pay through the nose for the clothes they wear. A series of trestle tables line one side of the alleyway, and each is always under siege from enthusiastic bargain hunters. Like crows vying for the best bits of a road kill, they push their way in to the melee, then emerge holding a garment triumphantly aloft. It might not be exactly the garment they were looking for or even the right size, but everything on the tables is priced at just two Euros...so must be a bargain. Buying by price is something that my wife and I suffer from, and we emerge from the scrum five minutes later to make for the nearby PMU bar to examine our haul. This time it seems we have had mixed fortunes with the lucky dip. Donella has won a superb quilted and hooded anorak bearing the logo of the national railway network; apart from the knockdown price, the bonus is that it actually fits her, and there is an unused railway warrant in one of the pockets. I have not done so well, though having hooked a real bargain price-wise. New, the gaily coloured one-piece ski suit would have cost a hundred times what I have paid for it. The problem is that I have no plans for a ski-ing holiday, and would have to lose at least half my body weight and six inches of height just to get in to the garment.

On our way back to the car, I spot and nominate a middle-aged woman for our Tart of the Month competition. This is another Gallic paradox which must have occurred to any fairly observant foreigner who has spent time in small-town France. Why is it that so many women in a country acknowledged as world-leader in haute couture dress like colour-blind hookers?

This month's short – odds contender for the title is a lady who will not see forty again; I am sure she is a perfectly decent and upright woman, but she is undeniably dressed like a teenager who wants to send her parents into cardiac arrest. The white plastic floor -length and fur - trimmed overcoat has been left open to reveal a micro-skirt a long way above a pair of black, thigh length shiny boots with huge platform soles. The lady is also more adorned with baubles and shiny things than the Christmas tree across the square, although at least none of them is actually flashing. The sheer number of rings on each finger makes it hard for her to hold the two mobile ‘phones to her ears. Somehow she is having a conversation with two people at the same time, and possibly wants all passers-by that she has more than one friend.

As if to act as an antidote to this visual assault, a young woman passes us on her way to the bar. She is wearing an army greatcoat over denim trousers rolled carelessly up to mid-calf above highly polished hiking boots. On her head is a blue beret worn at a coquettish angle, and the bobbled ends of a matching scarf trail in her wake. From a shoulder hangs a voluminous and obviously elderly Gladstone bag. Her entire ensemble could have been bought for a handful of Euros from the cheap stall we have just left, but she makes it and herself look a million dollars.

Tuesday December 23rd:

An early Christmas present with the arrival of some courtesy copies of a book I wrote ten years ago. It has been republished but I don't know how well it has been edited, as my Czech goes no further than ‘Hello' and ‘ Can you tell me the way to the nearest bar?' (halo! nazdar! Pocínovat yu oznámit mne ?len ur?itý cesta až k ?len ur?itý nejblížší pís?ina?)

The rights to the book were bought last year by a Prague -based company founded in Paris in the last century to specialise in erotic literature. As the title of the book of mine they have brought out was French Letters , they may have thought the contents spicier than they are.

To a whole new readership, I am Georgy Eastovi, and I wonder how well the translation into Czech has been done and how my humour travels beyond what was once known as the iron curtain. It would be ironic if the book is my first bestseller and we become famous in Eastern Europe. As one Czech koruna is worth only 0.3 of a pound even in the current hard times for Stirling, it is just possible that we could be millionaires in Czechoslovakia this time next year

December 24th:

The day before Christmas, and not a soul is stirring. This is not much different from any other day in our tiny hamlet, but the utter stillness lends a seasonal air to the occasion. It is raining rather than snowing outside, but the local weather shaman has said there is a chance of a fall. Or, he said, it may be warm and sunny or wet and blowy, with an outside chance of a typhoon or even a downpour of toads and frogs. As he said we should by now know, anything can happen in the mountains of Finistere.

While my wife sits surrounded by wrapping paper, sealing wax and string, I am standing on a chair to deck the boughs with mistletoe and holly. This is not so much because I want to re-enact the traditions of the distant past, but because we cannot find the paper chains and baubles which have travelled around France with us for the past decade. Mistletoe is regarded as weed in France and holly sprouts everywhere along the track to the mountain so I have no shortage of materials for my eco-friendly seasonal dressing. When he arrives for a Christmas drink, our neighbour Alain will think that nailing plants to the ceiling beams is more evidence of British eccentricity, though I am sure he will approve of the chance of kissing my wife under the mistletoe.

Our gifts for friends and family in England have long been dispatched across the Channel, and my wife is wrapping the last of the presents for our pets and local wildlife. Milly the dog and Toots the ageing werecat will, as tradition and my wife demands, open their presents beneath the tree tomorrow morning; the other animals will have their gifts al fresco situation. It is the first time I have seen a Christmas stocking for a chicken, and I hope the hens appreciate the effort to which Donella has gone. I also appreciate her struggles to keep the local creatures of the wild in good shape through the winter, but I think she sometimes goes a little far. Our fox family will no doubt appreciate the special Christmas Day lunch of turkey and all the trims, but I can't see them appreciating the flavour of the fine old brandy in which she soaked the six mini-Christmas puddings. I also do not see why she is bothering to wrap the dozens of fat balls, suet bars and nut stockings with expensive Christmas paper.

After a week of feasting, I think the local bird population will have a job taking off and staying aloft. They are anyway at their sleekest at this time of year, which is why our ancestors ate everything with feathers as a Christmas treat. A few centuries ago, the countryside would be eirily silent throughout January because Man had eaten every flying thing from wren to magpie, blackbird and heron.

As I nail the last piece of holly above the fireplace , a tapping at the window reminds me I have not laid the bird table for breakfast. The impatient diner is our robin, who is unsurprisingly known as Robbie . A year ago we managed to untangle a robin from a length of netting in the barn just before our cat arrived, and Donella believes it is the same bird who comes calling every morning. She says he knows her and comes when she calls, and when I laugh at her fancifulness she shrugs and says he makes better conversation and company than me.

It is true that, of all races, the English have long enjoyed a special relationship with the robin. Even ornithologists agree that the bird is attracted to human company, is very territorial, and does not get on well others of its species. Insecurity is a trait in robins, which is why they can be so aggressive to their own kind and explains why you will only ever see one robin in your garden. Much more than most garden birds, the robin also seem to demonstrate curiosity and a special affinity for humans. Robins appear in Chaucer's works, and are said to be the only bird which will enter a church. They are also harbingers of approaching life or death depending which country lore you choose, and even said to cover the faces of dead humans with leaves as a sign or respect and compassion. I have not come across any dead bodies in suitable circumstances to test the claim, but it is a lovely thought. The robin's red breast is said to come from scorching when the brave bird tried to quench the fires of Hell out of mercy for Man, and the penalty for killing a robin is that your cows will give milk laced with blood. Though seen as a very seasonal bird, robins are around all year; it is just that we notice them more at Christmas, and see more of them because they are hungry and seeking food for free. As with other small birds, the robin seems to hold little interest for the French, unless cooked and served properly.

*

The day is dying and we are ready for the festive celebrations. In the morning we will take cards and Christmas puddings and good wishes to our neighbours, and try and persuade Alain to eat with us. I will argue that it is the season of goodwill to all men, and he should be prepared to make the supreme effort and not only eat food cooked by a foreigner but even pretend to enjoy it. As I will explain, millions of British men have to do this every year when spending Christmas with their in-laws.

We are walking up to the moors as dusk settles over our small part of Brittany, and the pinprick lights of distant hamlets across the terrain echo modestly the vast and glittering display above. Looking down on Lesmenez, I reflect on how reassuring and enticing a lit window always looks to the passing traveller. Even in town it always seems that inside any house would be a better place to be.

As we stop to take in the enchanting panorama, my wife gives a little cry of delight and points up at the vast ocean of stars. The moon is at its leanest and looks like an illustration from a fairy-story picture book . Then I see what has entranced my wife. Beneath the tip of the waning moon two stars appear to hang like Christmas baubles. I know that the brighter one is Venus and that it is a little more than twenty five million miles from the moon, but the appearance that the master of all creation has also been putting up His decorations is pleasing on this special evening.

Thursday December 25th:

Christmas morning finds us foraging in the woods surrounding the ruined abbey at Le Relec. I have stripped the hedgerows at Lesmenez of holly, and need more to completely dress the house. A bonus to doing our Christmas decoration shopping here is the amount of firewood lying around for those brave enough to risk displeasing the Celtic sprites said to live here. So far we have only run into a pair of hunters with a dog which looked considerably more intelligent than them, and unless woodland spirits have started wearing camouflage tops and Rambo-style headbands, they were human enough.

Labouring up a steep slope, I see through a break in the trees towards the old abbey, and, in the far distance, Little Paradise. It is a view I have not seen before and the newness of it delights me. I am a traveller who dislikes travelling, and always looking for new routes through the woods and across the moors so that I can come upon our home as if for the first time.

That is why I like towns with many roads to and from them, and feel trapped when living on the coast with only one way to go to escape and see new things. While out walking, I often award myself the power to move the houses of our hamlet around as easily as properties on a Monopoly board. I can also shift or create whole forests and even change the undulation of the landscape as easily as ruckling up a counterpane. This way I can continually sculpt refreshingly new and aesthetically pleasing sights and sites, though all in the same place . The familiar is comforting, but can become over-familiar, and I still long to see something new around every corner.

*

A convivial late morning with neighbours, to whom I introduced the English Christmas Day tradition of calling on friends without notice, accepting their hospitality and then arriving home late for dinner but in good time for a row.

My first call was at the top end of the hamlet , where live our oldest married couple. Mr and Mrs Leclerc are well into their eighties, but he and she still roar past on their ancient tractor in the summer months. They were the first couple I met in Lesmenez, when I warned them that their horses had escaped and they rewarded me with a slab of cold porage the size, shape, colour, consistency and, for all I know, the taste of a gold ingot. This morning I presented them with miniature Christmas puddings and mince pies in exchange for a glass or two of moonshine apple brandy. The porage slab cake was on offer, but I turned it down on the grounds of Scottish tradition and a religion which forbids me to eat grain on this special day.

A busy Christmas Day at Lesmenez...

Feeling much warmer after the dose of lambig , I and my musical Father Christmas hat arrived at the holiday home of Mr Vitre and demanded a kiss under my mobile mistletoe spray from his bemused wife. Having sampled some very fine old Napoleon brandy, it was on to our nearest neighbour. Alain was not in, and I found him next door at Jean-Yves. I was surprised to that the femme de ménage who looks after both their households answered the door . When I asked if it was normal for her to work on Christmas Day she shrugged and said that every day is the same for old and sick people. She was not officially working, but had dropped in to see that Mrs Jean-Yves' was comfortable. One of the very best things about France is how it treats its old people, and all over the country the elderly are looked after in their own homes by these mobile housekeepers. They will see that the place and their charge is tidy and clean, that the larder is full, and that there is a good hot meal on the stove. As Alain says, the relationship has all the advantages of a marriage and none of the drawbacks.

I followed Josiane to the bedroom, where Jean-Yves sat, holding his wife's withered hand and talking softly of past Christmases. They have been together for more than sixty years, but she has not known him for ten. Talking off my musical Father Christmas hat, I whispered a goodbye and went home to my own wife, feeling very lucky and somehow a little guilty at the same time.

*

Yet another mouth to feed, although it should have been the other way around. As I walked back from Jean-Yves's house for my late lunch and row, I noticed a large container outside our next-door neighbour's front door. The young couple who rent there are away for the holiday, so I was instructed to bring the crate indoors and leave a note to say we were looking after the contents. Unfortunately for my plans for a peaceful Christmas, the contents comprised a surprisingly large and assertive rabbit.

It was my intention to put it in the barn till our neighbours returned, but humanity and my wife demanded it be installed in the warmth of the kitchen. Ten minutes later, the creature had picked the lock and appeared in the sitting room. Unsurprisingly, it made straight for my wife, hopped on to her lap and staked its claim on her heart. So now the beast lies stretched out in front of the fire, being hand fed an artful salad of lettuce leaves and various thinly sliced vegetables and fruit and nuts. I had always thought of rabbits as being timid and fearful, but clearly nobody has told this one how it should behave.

Unlike hares, rabbits are born blind and underground. A byword for timidity, rabbits are right at the bottom of the food chain as they are herbivores and predate on no creatures, but are predated upon by large birds, foxes, stoats, dogs and man. This is probably why they breed so prolifically, and are able to produce their own young just three months after their own birth. Our new and hopefully very temporary lodger is a monster, so is either a particularly large buck or even a hare. Before going to bed, I returned it to its cage on the grounds that it otherwise might attack and savage the dog, cat or us in our sleep. Within an hour it had joined us in the bedroom, so I shall call it Houdini. Or perhaps I should name it in honour of Steve Mcqueen's cooler king Hilts in The Great Escape . As tradition demands, the film was on TV this evening, and I noticed our new inmate watching with particular interest.

*

Boxing Day:

A phone call this morning has suggested another and much more apt name our new guest. Our neighbours called from their ski hotel in the Aude to ask if we had taken receipt of a package for them, and I reassured them that their pet was safe and well and eating its head off by the fire. After a puzzled silence, our neighbour explained that the rabbit was not for petting, but eating. To us he might be a cuddly furry creature, to them he was simply Lunch.

*

We walk our dinner down by venturing on to the territory of our neighbouring hamlet ,and, while there, pay our respects to the resident elephant.

When we arrived, the fibre- glass creation was pink, and was accompanied by a giant frog and life-sized giraffe. The other animals, like their creator, have gone, but the elephant has survived. The harsh winter has stripped it of its colour and it is now a dazzling ivory white. The expression for any unwanted gift derived from South-east Asia , where white elephants were sacred and thus could not be used for any practical purposes. So, the gift of such a holy and expensive beast to maintain and keep in top nick was seen as a curse rather than a blessing. In this case, the sculptor gave the elephant to the owners of the gite next door, and it has proved very popular with visiting children as well as a conversation piece for passing hikers and cyclists...especially if they are travelling at dusk and after having taken wine.

February Ist:

A new month and a dramatic change to the weather. No snow, sleet, rain, frogs, toads or tempests for at least two days, and it is almost springlike compared with what went before. When I asked Alain if it was going to be a good summer, he sniffed and said it was bound to be a disaster as there would be thirteen full moons this year. When I asked how that could affect the weather, he said there were thirteen moons last year and it had rained all through June, July and August. I could have reminded me that he told me when we first met that it rains every June, July and August in Finistere, but thought it best to let it pass.

Apart from our neighbour, the better weather seems to have put everyone in a more agreeable mood. The pair of ducks on the big pond no longer squawk angrily and fly off in a huff as I approach, and the Lady of the Manor nodded stiffly as she thundered by on the track this morning. In an odd echo of her counterparts in the Home Counties, she drives a Range Rover, but unlike those belonging to all the haughty headscarved pretend countrywomen on the other side of the Channel, Madame's batterered motor often carries a bale of hay or a poorly calf as she goes about her business on the moorlands above Lesmenez. I can see how, because her ancestors started farming here centuries ago, she feels the hamlet belongs to her and her family, and regards us as transient intruders, but her condescending attitude still annoys me. When she passes me on the track I whip off my hat and make an exaggerated courtly bow, but I think she misses the irony and believes I am paying her due respect. Once I contrived to be peeing in a hedge as she passed so I could turn around and wave my todger at her, but the almost sympathetic look she gave made me feel very small. I had forgotten they keep a bull and have a Breton cob stallion in the top field.

*

Despite his life of luxury, the good weather does not seem to have mellowed our psychotic rabbit. Lunch is still trying to dig his way out of his new quarters, and throws himself at the bars in fury when I arrive to feed him. As I enter the cage, he leaps up as if trying to get at my throat, then stands on his back legs and takes wild swings at me with his paws while grunting like a boxer trying to intimidate his opponent. When I told my wife about his aggressive behaviour she suggested I emulate lion tamers and take a chair in to the cage with me.

The rabbit we saved from the neighbour's oven has been in solitary confinement since we found Brunhilde cowering in the corner of the henhouse, her breast completely plucked bare. The sight reminded me uncomfortably of what I see on a supermarket shelf each week, and was almost enough to put me off eating chickens, even those to whom I have not been introduced.

The culprit was obviously Lunch and explained why the hens went off lay when we put him in with them. We thought they might enjoy his company, but had not realised how aggressive he can be. Since the attack on Brunhilde he has been confined to a cage which to him must be the size of the Albert Hall, but still seeks complete freedom. I do not think he is unhappy there, but obviously enjoys having an excuse to be in a permanently aggressive mood. In the past we have given a home and life to goldfish who acted like pirhanas, a werewolf disguised as a tabby cat and the murderous Reggie and Ronnie crayfish twins, but I never thought I would have to walk in fear of a rabbit.

Some morning s I sneak up to the cage and find him sitting looking contentedly up at the tent of blue that prisoners like the rest of us call the sky. His attacks on me may be because he is frustrated, and I have suggested that we find Lunch what is nowadays called a life partner. The problem is that we do not know what gender he or she is, and a same- sex relationship may not suit him or her and could lead to bloodshed. Also, the obvious drawback with providing Lunch with a mate is that rabbits breed like, well, rabbits. There is a lady who lives some distance from Lesmenez who specialises in sexing rabbits and has offered to talk me through the operation over the phone. Somehow I do not find this appealing.

February 7 th:

Yesterday we went to have a look at a piece of woodland which allegedly once housed a thriving watercress bed. If it is as secluded and bucolic as it sounds, we could perhaps get to know the mayor and gain permission to put a small building on it. The usual way is to claim that, as the new owner, you intending cleaning the area up and will need a shed to keep tools in. The next stage is to bolt on other small sheds like a giant game of Lego so that none of them is individually bigger than the modest maximum allowed. I know of people who have built substantial properties by stealth in this way. Sometimes over ambitious owners will be ordered to demolish their private shanty towns if their activities become too obvious; putting a post box and a sing with the French equivalent of Dunroaming on it is seen to be pushing the envelope too far.

We met the owner outside the church at his local village, and had no trouble spotting him as he was wearing the classic English country gentleman's outfit of waxed jacket , checked shirt and hairy tie and plus- four trousers above shiny brown leather brogues. He took us to his water mill before viewing the woodland, and the place looked like a cover feature for a swanky homes and gardens magazine. The immaculately restored mill and outbuildings were surrounded by acres of landscaped gardens, and his wife was a distant figure toiling uphill behind a lawn mower. All the time we were there she continued her work , and somehow her body language made it look like forced labour or at best duty rather than enjoyable pottering. Sometimes a home can reverse the intended arrangement and take charge of the owners, and I think the lady must spend most of her waking hours making sure the place would impress all the people who will never see it.

The woodland was a pretty place, but a long-term project , in sight of a road and very wet; when I lost a boot we decided it was not what we were looking for.

February 10 th:

The hens are back on lay. My wife is almost ecstatic on any day when Blanche, Brunhilde and Whitney all do their duty, and looks at me as if I am mad when I point out that their eggs would not cost any more to produce if they were made of solid gold. She took the first egg over to Alain while it was still warm, but what she and he do not know is that it was cold when I found it in the nesting box this morning and I used the gas stove to achieve a suitable just-laid effect. I hope I did not heat it for too long , or Alain will be eating the first ever egg to be delivered from the hen already hard-boiled.

February 14 th:

To the seaside to look at a potential bed and breakfast enterprise. It is a large house and said to be no more than a stroll to the beach. If this is true and not a stroll as in a short walk in the Hindu Kush, the property seems to be a good price, but there will probably be a reason.

St Anne la Palud is no more than half a village on the western coast of Finistere. The sweeping bays and sandy beaches and rolling dunes can be heart-achingly beautiful, and the area is suitably remote and offers little off-season for anyone who wants more than a picnic or long walk by the sea. Typical of Brittany, this part of the department is a paradise for hikers, but not much fun if you are after a cup of tea or a bag of chips. St Anne is a special place for those with an interest in religious buildings, and the eponymous chapel sits in the dunes a little way beyond the village of a dozen mostly holiday homes. There are regular pilgrimages to the chapel and the lady even has a song dedicated to her, asking for protection for Bretons on land or sea.

The house we had come to view was, as advertised, no more than a couple of minutes brisk walk to the start of the dunes, but had only a tiny garden and stood alone in a large area of uncultivated ground. This apartness might seem like an attractive feature until you saw the signs for building plots for sale in the immediate area. Far above this consideration as an off-putter, however, was a notice by the chapel that dogs were not allowed on the beach at any time of year.

We drove away from St Anne in a low mood. Perhaps it is because we are looking too hard or being too fussy, but sometimes it seems we will never find our next and probably final home in France.

*

At last, and after almost two years, I think our search is over. And this place is not a demi-paradise , but a full-crème coup de coeur . A future conversation-stopper is that the letter box is more than a mile from the front door.

An agent who we thought had understandably been avoiding us called this morning to say she had a very unusual place she thought we ought to look at. The house has only just become available and not yet been advertised for sale, and she advised an early viewing. It will not stay on the market for long, and we might regret it if we did not move quickly.

Amanda is a lady not given to the usual estate agent' superlatives, so within an hour we had arrived to meet her in a village directly on the Nantes to Brest canal.

Pont Coblant is one of the few canalside habitations we have seen with moored boats on show. The two old river cruisers do not seem to have moved or been used or worked on since we first saw them, so perhaps they are just for window dressing. Of all the villages and small towns on the canal, Pont Coblant is one of the few which appears to at least make an effort to look like a tourist attraction. It's take-it-or-leave-it attitude and reliance on its natural attractions is what we love so much about this region. And there is so much on offer away from the coastthat nowhere is ever busy. In the best part of a year we have spent hundreds of hours on the towpath in the Finistere and Cotes d'Armor departments, we have encountered thousands of snooty cyclists and the occasional walker, but never seen a lock gate being used.

One of the things that makes this lock cottage unusual is that it has no access track. It is more than a mile wither way from the nearest road, so the owner would have to drive along the tow path. In some areas, owners are given permits to take their car along the halage . In other areas, even the owners are not allowed to drive on the tow path. As Amanda said, this is an important consideration but can be sorted out with the notaire later; the important thing was to see if we liked the setting and the house itself.

As we rounded a long lazy curve in the canal, heard Donella let out a little sigh. It is the first lock cottage we have seen to be painted snow white, and it is as pretty as a picture. It is also bigger than the usual two-bedroomed ecluserie , and there is a large wooden cabin in the grounds. But there is another bonus. As we park, Amanda casually points out that there is an island in the middle of the canal..and it goes with the cottage.

At that moment and without going inside, my wife and I exchanged The Look. Unless something goes very wrong, we have found the place where we will spend the rest of our lives in France.

Tuesday December 30th:

We are at a Not-New-Year's-Eve-Yet party. This excuse for an extra year-end knees-up has become a tradition for a Scots couple who say they want to celebrate Hogmany on their own, but need a rehearsal the night before. The warm-up bash, they say, also provides the pleasure of watching all their expatriate Sassenach friends telling lies about how much they are enjoying themselves in their adopted country. Our hosts come from Glasgow and spent their working lives in England, so say they know what it is really like to be foreigners in a strange land.

The occasion also provides an ideal opportunity for me to observe different categories of British expatriates in herd mode. There are a handful of local Bretons who have been persuaded to attend, but they are huddled in a corner looking at the other guests like a group of gazelles sharing a watering hole with a lion family. I have found it a truism that no matter how much of an anglophile any Frenchman may be, exposure to large groups of Britons on his home soil will make him feel ill-at-ease. Given our relationship and activities over the centuries, I would say this discomfort was quite justified.

Another distress-causer for the Bretons is the proximity of classic British party food. Egged on by their hosts, the French guests occasionally make fleeting sallies to the buffet, looking in barely-disguised horror at the plates of veal and ham pie and pickled onions. The centre piece is a display of ironic deep-fried Mars bars that our mischievious hosts have told their Breton guests is the chief national delicacy of Scotland. I also know that several Gallic guests will leave the party thinking that the Scotch eggs emerged fully- formed with their sausage meat and breadcrumb coating from the rear end of an ancient species of Hibernian hen.

To warm up, I do a swift tour of all guests and deliberately introduce the story about the rabbit which turned up on our doorstep on Christmas Day. Without exception, the expat women imitate excited pigeons before asking me how the little chap is settling in. All the French women show immediate interest and ask me how we cooked it and what it tasted like.

Reassured by this confirmation of such a basic but telling difference in our cultures, I move on to categorising the different groups of British guests.

The first gathering I approach stands closest to the buffet table, almost as if the sheer proximity of a sausage roll makes them feel at home. One man is actually sliding cubes of Cheddar cheese off their cocktail stick holders and surreptitiously secreting them around his person, assumedly for later consumption. Their actions indicate that the members of this group are reluctant settlers, still in France because they cannot afford to go back home and live in the sort of property and surroundings which drew them here in the first place. All will probably have loved visiting France before they found out that living somewhere is not the same as going there on holiday. It is surprising how few of us notice that the natives who reside in the most attractive and exotic tourist destinations do not seem any more delighted and excited to live there than do the citizens of Wigan in their home town.

Though they are of different ages and situations and may have different reasons for being unhappy in France, all these reluctant settlers are bound together by an unspoken but agreed code of conduct which is as seriously observed as the Mafia vow of omerta . The one thing reluctant settlers will never do is come clean and admit they are unhappy in their adopted country and would rather be living in what they unfailingly call the UK. The same sort of people who would make no secret of a marriage failure after making the wrong choice of spouse will never own up to the simple truth that they chose the wrong place in which to live.

The classic behavioural pattern of the unhappy settler at these gatherings is how his or her dissatisfaction with the way things are done in France will increase with the amount of alcohol taken. The standard procedure is that all the people in this group will start the evening by saying how wonderful life is here in all respects, then progress to complaining bitterly about how badly designed and awkward to use are French electrical plugs.

Moving on to escape an impassioned monologue about how rubbish and wrongly-named are French fries (although that is of course a totally correct observation) I arrive alongside a knot of Britons who I find the most difficult to understand. They are the anti-British Britons, and are drawn up in a circular wagon train formation as if to deter attack by or even exposure to their fellow countrymen. What seems particularly bizarre to me is that the only way members of this group can express and demonstrate their dislike of meeting with other Britons in France is by saying so to other Britons who they meet in France. The classic comment from this type is that they did not come to France to mix with other Britons; yet here they are doing just that. Curiously, I have observed that this aberration is found most commonly in Britons who do not actually live in France. Usually they have kept a home in Britain as an escape pod, and own another one in France. Self-conscious about their own lack of commitment, they attempt to become more French then the French and shun other Brits like the spawn of Satan. Even more curiously to the uninformed observer, this British anti- Brit group have made no attempt to integrate with the French guests. This is usually because for all their avowed love of all things French, they have not bothered to learn to speak the language.

Finally, I move on to a larger and far more boisterous group, and one in whose company I shall feel the most at home. These are the British couples who have made their lives in Brittany, and by and large made a go of the adventure. They come in various ages, sizes, political shades and classes, but all have something in common. They have decided that, all things considered, living here is better than living in Britain. Or they have accepted that they have made their choice and must now make the best of things. Like the reluctant settlers, the members of this group will be unhappy with some aspects of the way things are done in France; the difference is that they will openly admit to missing some aspects of life in Britain, even when sober.

Another thing this sample group has in common with itself is that the wives or female partners are very definitely wearing the metaphorical trousers. After meeting hundreds of couples who have made their lives here, it does appear to me that those who seem the most content are those where the female is the dominant partner. A common cause of unhappiness here and a return to Britain either together or apart seems to be when the female settler is not the outgoing half of the partnership. Sitting at home alone and fearful of any engagement with the locals and their language is not a good start for settling in a new country. I know that all the well-settled couples here this evening have arrived in cars driven and chosen by the distaff side of the partnership. I also know that it was the wife or female partner who chose the house in which they live..and who was the driving force in the decision to move over to live here. Even though it is a small sample, I find this commonality too much of a coincidence not to be a significant factor in any couple's likelihood of settling successfully in France. Also and as one of the trouser-wearing wives said to me recently, as long as a man is fed and kept in order and given plenty of work to do, he will generally be happy wherever he is.

*

We are heading home having completed our rehearsal for tomorrow night's festivities. A few curtains twitched as we formed a circle outside our friends' home and sung Auld Lang Syne , but nobody came out to join in the premature celebrations.

As we left, I was taken to one side by our host, who asked if I wanted to take part in his settlers' sweepstake for 2009. When asked for further explanation, he said he kept a book on which of the invitees would have gone back to Britain by the next year's party. Having met the field, I could select my nominations for departure in the coming year, but he warned me that the ones who had spoken loudest about how happy they were to be here would obviously carry the shortest odds.

Wednesday 31st:

A welcome arrival this morning in the form of a letter from the Public Lending Rights Society. It informs me that in the first six months of 2008, more than ten thousand people borrowed one of my books from the relatively few public libraries which stock them. This means we are now £599.69 better off. It is an irony that mega-selling and therefore sometimes fabulously wealthy authors make many hundreds of thousands of pounds from lending library payments, but I am pleased that so many readers have chosen one of my books from the millions on display. There is also the chance that those who have borrowed one of my titles from a library for free might go on to pay to read another one. However and as my wife points out, reading an example of my work for free might also dissuade a great many people from paying out good money for more of the same.

*

Thursday January 1st, 2009:

It is a little after two in the morning of the first day of a new year, and we are sitting by the signpost at the top of the track leading to the thousands of acres of moorland above our home. It seems a very suitable place to watch the new year dawn, though I do not know if we will last that long. We have brought a couple of blankets and a Thermos flask of black coffee laced with lambig , but even the virtually limitless powers of moonshine apple brandy may not be enough to keep us awake and away from our bed.

It has been an unusual New Year's Eve, especially after the practice party the night before. We repeated our Christmas Day tour of the hamlet, and though our neighbours mostly seemed pleased to see us, none seemed to quite grasp the concept of the First Foot In ceremony. This is a Scottish custom where a tall dark and male member of the community is invited to cross his neighbours' thresholds while carrying a lump of coal. This will ensure a comfortable year ahead for the householder, and a drink for every threshold crossed for the First Footer. I learned the routine from my Scots father, but lacking the coal I tried to make do with a piece of firelighter. Each of our neighbours politely accepted my gift, but I do not think they appreciated the mystical significance and power of a ragged square of polystyrene soaked in paraffin.

Now we sit beneath the signpost, discussing which new year resolutions we are going to make, and how long it will be before we break them. I promise to turn over a new leaf, but point out that there are no new leaves about for me to turn over. As my dear wife says, as long as we do our best to do our best in 2009, we shall have done our best. Having thought that one through, I open the bottle of firewater and start a discussion on how I can't believe that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not butter.

January 2nd:

The new year is barely aired and we have had our first life-threatening encounter on the roads of France.

Driving through a small town this morning, I had to take to the pavement to avoid a vehicle charging out from a minor side road. It was coming from the right, so I was, however unbelievably, in the wrong. Had there been a Stop sign or white line, the driver would have been required to stop and wait till the main road was clear before entering it. As the minor road was little more than an alleyway, had no cautionary markings and was virtually concealed by a Christmas tree obviously put there for camouflage purposes, the driver was entirely in his rights to charge out and dare me to collide with him.

In the land of Descartes, Simone de Beauvoir and a host of other big-hitting philosophers, there exists an ancient yet un-repealed driving law so bizarre that even French drivers generally ignore it unless they are in a really bloody I've-Got-a-Fuzz-Box-And- I'm-Gonna- Use- It mood.

Broadly, this law requires any 40 tonnes euro-lorry barrelling down a main road to not only spot in time but give way to a tractor (or any other vehicle) emerging from any minor passageway to the right. As if the old Priorite a Droite code was not crazy enough, it also applies to some roundabouts. Not all, but some. In effect, that means that you have to give way to traffic joining one of these roundabouts rather than vehicles already on it. The situation is further complicated by most French drivers ignoring the law, but some not, depending on the situation, local custom and habit, and the driver's mood at that moment.

Once upon a time there were yellow diamond-shaped signs at regular intervals along most main roads to indicate priority over all side roads, but they have gradually disappeared. Or been stolen by those who prefer the old ways and rules.

Officially, the advice for foreign drivers is to be prepared to respect the law when on a main road, but not to expect others to respect it when coming out of a side road. In the case of this morning's incident, the attacking vehicle was an ambulance. It could be that the driver was a stickler for tradition, that the mayor of this town has decided to observe the old law on alternate weekdays, or that the ambulance was merely touting for trade.

Sunday January 4th:

A bracing encounter with a couple of hopeless hunters. This morning I saw something very large lumbering across the track and thought our genetically modified rabbit had escaped. Then I saw it was a hare on the run. In the distance I could hear a regular tinkling and realised why the animal was on the move. Hunters hang bells from the necks of their dogs so they will know where they are, but seem too dim to realise this will also tell the game where their pursuers are. The giant hare did not seem to be panicking, just loping determinedly but quite calmly across our land and away from the copse. It either sensed it was in no danger from us, or knew from experience just how rubbish French hunters are. The bells had also alerted a far greater danger to the hunters than I or a wild boar could pose. The posse of inevitably vertically challenged men dressed to kill came blundering through our copse after their Breton spaniels to find Donella waiting, and I felt almost sorry for them. Normally my wife is not one to criticise or judge others for their tastes or hobbies, but she makes an exception for hunters and can be very inventive with her language when meeting them. Especially on her own land. Having been suitably humiliated, the men were sent off in the opposite direction to the hare, and my only worry now is that it will instinctively return to our land and be welcomed to join Lunch in the barn, becoming yet another mouth to feed.

January 6th:

According to at least one of the seventeen goodwill calendars given us by local grocers, chemists, chainsaw repairers and (mostly) bar owners, it is Epiphany, and we have been invited to attend a Gallettes des Rois party.

These excuses for a celebration of food and drink parallel our find-the-tanner-in-the Christmas-pudding tradition, and are held to mark the Feast of Epiphany, which in itself is a bit of a moveable feast. For western Christians, the epiphany (which is Ancient Greek for ‘manifestation') of Christ took place when the three kings arrived to see the baby Jesus on what was to become Twelfth Night. In France, the event is marked in millions of homes as a fair enough reason to get together with a few friends for a nice meal with a glass of wine and a bit of fun for the children.

Every cake shop and supermarket in France will have the special gallette cakes on offer throughout   December and January, and   inside each will be a tiny trinket.  In harder times, the prize would have been a broad bean (feve), but is now usually a porcelain figurine.  Whoever discovers it and does not choke to death is declared King or Queen and duly crowned with a cardboard crown supplied with the cake. Being a French tradition, a further twist and reason to make merry at the table is that the person who finds the feve is then traditionally obliged to stage his or her own hunt-the-bean party and invite the same guests... and so on. Thus the celebration can last throughout the month of January, and in extreme cases has been known to go right through the year.

January 7th:

Seven degrees below this morning, so my wife has gone into hyper drive with food supplies for the local wildlife. We already have the fattest and clearly unfittest birds in the region, and one blackbird is so round that he is unable to take off and spends his entire time waddling around on the ground and hovering up seed.

Another issue with cost implications is that our hens have gone off-lay. Donella believes that Lunch the psycho rabbit may have traumatised Whitney, Blanche and Brunhilde with his constant assaults on their feeding station. I am trying to persuade her he is not the problem, as otherwise she will insist that I build him a costly luxury home of his own, or, worse, will move him into the house to live with us. She has read that rabbits can be house-trained, and the last thing I want is another animal taking priority above me in the feeding and pecking order indoors.

Since arriving on our doorstep, the oversized French Harlequin has made himself more and more at home. When he was put in the barn with his own quarters and feed bowl he sulked for several days. Now, he attacks me when I enter unless I immediately offer him a treat. He also upsets the chickens by making raids on their feed bowls and spends most of the day swaggering around the barn in the manner of the cock we do not have.

Whatever the cause of the problem, we will now have to suffer the indignity of actually buying eggs, which is like keeping a dog and doing all the barking yourself. There is the loss of face I will suffer when our neighbour arrives to pick up his daily egg. Alain Le Goff already considers us to be completely incompetent in all matters to do with living in the countryside, and our eggless chickens will be his opportunity to give me another long lecture in animal husbandry.

January 8th:

I counted nearly a hundred birds of fourteen varieties waiting in and around the trees by the kitchen door this morning. I was a little later than usual, and though there were no heavy sighs or tapping of claws on branches, I could see they were not pleased at being kept waiting for their breakfasts. Even our jay was on show and keeping a beady eye on proceedings. One of the shyest breeds, the jay is also a prodigious natural planter, and one bird can bury as many as three thousand acorns in a single month.

I started the breakfast ceremony with the daily half a loaf of bread broken up into exactly the specified size and then strewn around in the precise pattern dictated by my wife. This is followed by a double handful of seed, another of sunflower seeds, then a re-filling of the three hanging feeders and the six fat balls which had been reduced to empty net bags since yesterday. My final job every morning of the winter is to refill the plastic tub on the doorstep with dried dog food. This is not for any passing or destitute dogs, but for the extended family of magpies which has moved into the tree above the compost heap. I do not know if they take the pellets away to eat or mend their nests with, but I have often watched them waddle over brazenly past our now elderly cat en route to the tub. Toots is now of an age when she is no longer interested in the kill, but likes to sit and watch the feeding proves and perhaps think of past days of blood and feathers like an old sailor sitting looking out to sea and remembering past adventures.

Our feathered freeloaders having been fed, I decided I would follow long-standing tradition and use them to predict our best actions for the day. ‘Augur' has Latin roots and comes from the words for ‘bird' and ‘talking', ‘Inauguration' actually means the confirmation of a favourable prediction. In ancient times, the augury or soothsayer would select an area of the sky, then confer with the gods. The appearance of a bird or birds in that part of the heavens would augur good or ill. I thoughtfully chose a patch of blue directly above the feeding station tree and predicted that a coal tit will settle on the third fat ball from the left within the next minute. I had already settled with the Breton gods of the air that if my prediction was accurate, it would be propitious to go out for a slap-up relais routier meal today. Within moments a tiny tit descended on the ball, and I went indoors to tell my wife that is the Breton gods and not I who suggested we should be out for lunch...

January 13th:

Waking up this morning and groping for the bedside table, I momentarily panicked before remembering I would not find my tobacco pouch and lighter there. It isa year since I gave up smoking, which means that I have not bought the makings for, rolled and smoked something like 16,239 cigarettes. In moments of weakness, it helps to imagine a thousand ashtrays overflowing with the fag-ends I would have got through since packing it in.

To be fair, I think it would be better to say that smoking packed me in. Although not a real factor in our decision to return to live in France a couple of years ago, it was nice to know that, unlike in England, we would be able to smoke while having a drink. When we started our foreign adventuring in Normandy twenty years ago, smoking in public was almost compulsory. Not lighting up in any bar could be regarded as anti-social, and non-smoking men were often regarded as slightly untrustworthy. Not many people know that smoking in restaurants and bars was first barred fifteen years ago, but nobody took any notice that time round.

But this time it was clear that the French government would at least have to be seen to be following the rules as agreed with the rest of Europe. An amnesty was given for the first day of 2008, and is it would be understandably difficult for bar owners to whip the fags out of their clients' mouths as the last stroke of New Year chimes faded. But after that it would be hefty fines and even loss of licence for those patrons who broke the rules.. and even displayed ashtrays. To most observers' astonishment, the law was broadly observed, and the sight of disgruntled customers sullenly smoking in the rain seemed somehow very un-French. But the classic French application of logic has come into play in the year since the ban. This is a perfect example of the Gallic thought process in action, and manifests itself in different ways with the same result. In some bars, coffee cup saucers have replaced ashtrays, so the proprietors are, in their view, observing the law. Elsewhere, smokers are encouraged to group around the fireplace. The golden thread of reasoning is that the smoke from the fire goes up the chimney, so no law is being broken if it is joined by cigarette smoke. This approach has worked well except in the case where other customers have objected to the smokers hogging the fire, and in some cases has resulted in non-smokers taking up the habit to ensure their fair share of free warmth.

Saturday January 17th:

A totally bizarre evening when we visited our first pantomime in France. Jack and the Beanstalk is being staged by a group of elderly male expats under the direction of a very theatrical former actor who lives with his boyfriend in a village not far from Morlaix. According to his admirers, Boofy Ashton was very big in the West End after the War, and ended his career on a high with the starring role as the walking fingers in a series of television advertisements for Yellow Pages. He still has, his friend and long-time partner tells me, very expressive and supple hands.

Every member of the local commune had been invited to bring their family to the opening night, but the invitations must have either been translated badly or the villagers did not wish to expose their children to Boofy and his bunch. Consequently, the audience of adults-only sat stony-faced through the performance, with me trying to explain the plot and traditions of English pantomime to my Breton neighbours. It was easy enough for them to understand the idea of men playing the part of the dames, but as Boofy had sequestered the role of Principal Boy, it was beyond their reasoning to see why a man should play a woman pretending to be a man.

The buffet afterwards was a joint project, and that was the cause of more embarrassment as the Breton guests attacked their provisions and ignored Boofy's partner's rather camp offerings with names like Suggestive Sausages and Fairy Cakes. The evening ended in a near punch-up when a giant farmer got carried away with constantly sampling his own home-brew cider and goosed Jack's widowed mother.

Monday 19 th :

The second irritating call of the morning, and both from people trying to sell me something I do not want.

Until recently, a small bonus for Britons moving to France was to escape from the relentless assault of what are officially known as telephone cold-callers. I feel sorry for anyone who has to resort to tele-sales to try and make a living, but my compassion evaporates when some nasal twerp wanting to double-glaze my already double-glazed house calls when I am in the shower or trying construct a decent sentence in my study. When in England, I would sometimes enjoy pretending to be a Polish handyman or burglar expecting a call from an accomplice. If I wanted to get rid of the caller in a hurry I would become a Jehova's Witness in search of recruits, or a befuddled and elderly householder. Once I went too far with a spectacular on-line heart attack, and had to explain myself to the emergency services. At least the incident proved that my would-be provider of funeral cover insurance was socially responsible enough to report my collapse.

Now the tele-sales disease has spread to France, but as yet is being conducted in a very French way. Perversely, it is also much harder to get rid of the caller, though it should be easier. The usual routine is for someone who sounds like Jane Birkin doing her heavy breathing stuff in Je t'aime...moin non plus to introduce herself and strike up a conversation before asking if she can run you through a few of the finer points of the Legrande Aquasonique holistic foot massager and spa. Claiming ignorance of French is no help as your caller will switch immediately to an even-sexier accented English, and may even offer to stop by and give you some lessons in her native tongue if you buy the foot spa. It is just as well I am a fairly happily married man of advanced years or my bathroom would be too crowded with accessories to get in and use any of them.

Tuesday 27th:

We have been to England for a second Christmas with our grandsons. Their parents said George IV and Oscar were quite prepared to go through the routine again for our benefit, but would expect another set of presents to properly recreate the situation.

The ferry boat to Portsmouth was busy, and I was spotted a couple of times by readers. The first asked if I had been ill, and the second asked if he could have the contact details of my photographer. When I reported these comments to my wife and said it was rare for me to be recognised on the ferry crossings nowadays, she pointed out that the photograph on the back of all my books was taken at least ten years and three stones ago.

As we shuffled on to one of the lifts after being called down to the car deck, a man shoved his way past my wife and I was reminded of another reason we choose to live in France. When I grabbed his arm and pointed out that there was a queue and his place was at the back of it, his retarded monkey face went puce with rage and I thought he was going to take a swing at me. Instead, he spent the rest of the descent loudly telling me, his wife and the other passengers what a rude man I was. As a parting shot, he pushed past us again, then turned to wait for his wife, glaring at me while saying loudly ‘ You can certainly tell we're back in Britain, can't you?' For once, I was too speechless to respond.

Saturday 31st:

My birthday, so I have been treated to a day out in Finistere's main town. When I get too old for messing around in the countryside, I would like to go and spend my dotage somewhere very much like Quimper. It would be good shuffling across the square and reminding all those fresh-faced young students of the horrors to come, and sitting dribbling outside a cafe while accosting passers-by with coarse remarks and insults safe in the knowledge that, unlike in the UK, nobody will attack me for it.

Quimper is in the trendier and generally more upmarket southern part of the department, and is an arrondissment or administrative division as well as a big town by Breton standards. Made up of seventeen cantons and eighty two communes, it looks and feels exactly like the university town it is, and is generally an unassuming centre of culture with some some medieval buildings which are very easy and somehow reassuring on the eye. All these things combine to give the centre of Quimper a very civilised ambience and that easy air of a town which knows its worth. The name comes from the Breton Kemper , which means confluence, as the town sits on three major rivers. It is famous for its keenly-collected faience pottery, and also for leather and woollen goods. Quimper is also regionally famous as a centre of excellence for macaroon-making, and we saw at least three premises owned by artisan artistes claiming to be the best macaroniers in all Brittany, if not all France.

Another not so sophisticated culinary establishment in Quimper is a branch of the whimsically-named Flunch cafeteria chain.

Like the chain of Buffalo Grill steak houses, the pun should not work in French but Flunch ( short for French Lunch) has become a verb in slang favoured by young people. The 200 outlets claim to serve sixty million customers a year, and I find that worrying evidence of the McDonaldisation of French eating habits.

I am very much not a food snob, but thought that the Flunch at Quimper combined all the worst aspects of French fast food preparation and service without the slickness of American outlets used to and skilled at dealing with a lot of people eating not very special food at the same time.

The system basically works by customers queuing up at the cash register, then choosing and paying for their main course, which they collect from a short-order chef before helping themselves to vegetables. I chose A Texan Special, which turned out to be a pale imitation of a bacon and eggburger, and the only indication I was in a French eating establishment came when cook asked me how I wanted the meat cooked. Or rather he asked if I wanted it bloody, and posed it as a statement rather than a question. He used the same technique on those waiting in line behind me, and I think there would have been fireworks had anyone asked for their Texan Special well done.

Shuffling on, I was confronted by a huge vat of French chips at their skinniest and soggiest worst, and a selection of vegetables which had been perversely overcooked and then underheated. Least attractive of all was how the dozens of French diners around me ate their food quickly and efficiently as if disposing of a duty rather than relishing a sacred daily occasion. I understand about progress and change and how some people like or need to eat on the run, but I can't help feeling that Flunch is a sign of things to come, and France will be the worse because of it.

February Ist:

A new month and a dramatic change to the weather. No snow, sleet, rain, frogs, toads or tempests for at least two days, and it is almost springlike compared with what went before. When I asked Alain if it was going to be a good summer, he sniffed and said it was bound to be a disaster as there would be thirteen full moons this year. When I asked how that could affect the weather, he said there were thirteen moons last year and it had rained all through June, July and August. I could have reminded me that he told me when we first met that it rains every June, July and August in Finistere, but thought it best to let it pass.

Apart from our neighbour, the better weather seems to have put everyone in a more agreeable mood. The pair of ducks on the big pond no longer squawk angrily and fly off in a huff as I approach, and the Lady of the Manor nodded stiffly as she thundered by on the track this morning. In an odd echo of her counterparts in the Home Counties, she drives a Range Rover, but unlike those belonging to all the haughty headscarved pretend countrywomen on the other side of the Channel, Madame's batterered motor often carries a bale of hay or a poorly calf as she goes about her business on the moorlands above Lesmenez. I can see how, because her ancestors started farming here centuries ago, she feels the hamlet belongs to her and her family, and regards us as transient intruders, but her condescending attitude still annoys me. When she passes me on the track I whip off my hat and make an exaggerated courtly bow, but I think she misses the irony and believes I am paying her due respect. Once I contrived to be peeing in a hedge as she passed so I could turn around and wave my todger at her, but the almost sympathetic look she gave made me feel very small. I had forgotten they keep a bull and have a Breton cob stallion in the top field.

*

Despite his life of luxury, the good weather does not seem to have mellowed our psychotic rabbit. Lunch is still trying to dig his way out of his new quarters, and throws himself at the bars in fury when I arrive to feed him. As I enter the cage, he leaps up as if trying to get at my throat, then stands on his back legs and takes wild swings at me with his paws while grunting like a boxer trying to intimidate his opponent. When I told my wife about his aggressive behaviour she suggested I emulate lion tamers and take a chair in to the cage with me.

The rabbit we saved from the neighbour's oven has been in solitary confinement since we found Brunhilde cowering in the corner of the henhouse, her breast completely plucked bare. The sight reminded me uncomfortably of what I see on a supermarket shelf each week, and was almost enough to put me off eating chickens, even those to whom I have not been introduced.

The culprit was obviously Lunch and explained why the hens went off lay when we put him in with them. We thought they might enjoy his company, but had not realised how aggressive he can be. Since the attack on Brunhilde he has been confined to a cage which to him must be the size of the Albert Hall, but still seeks complete freedom. I do not think he is unhappy there, but obviously enjoys having an excuse to be in a permanently aggressive mood. In the past we have given a home and life to goldfish who acted like pirhanas, a werewolf disguised as a tabby cat and the murderous Reggie and Ronnie crayfish twins, but I never thought I would have to walk in fear of a rabbit.

Some morning s I sneak up to the cage and find him sitting looking contentedly up at the tent of blue that prisoners like the rest of us call the sky. His attacks on me may be because he is frustrated, and I have suggested that we find Lunch what is nowadays called a life partner. The problem is that we do not know what gender he or she is, and a same- sex relationship may not suit him or her and could lead to bloodshed. Also, the obvious drawback with providing Lunch with a mate is that rabbits breed like, well, rabbits. There is a lady who lives some distance from Lesmenez who specialises in sexing rabbits and has offered to talk me through the operation over the phone. Somehow I do not find this appealing.

February 7 th:

Yesterday we went to have a look at a piece of woodland which allegedly once housed a thriving watercress bed. If it is as secluded and bucolic as it sounds, we could perhaps get to know the mayor and gain permission to put a small building on it. The usual way is to claim that, as the new owner, you intending cleaning the area up and will need a shed to keep tools in. The next stage is to bolt on other small sheds like a giant game of Lego so that none of them is individually bigger than the modest maximum allowed. I know of people who have built substantial properties by stealth in this way. Sometimes over ambitious owners will be ordered to demolish their private shanty towns if their activities become too obvious; putting a post box and a sing with the French equivalent of Dunroaming on it is seen to be pushing the envelope too far.

We met the owner outside the church at his local village, and had no trouble spotting him as he was wearing the classic English country gentleman's outfit of waxed jacket , checked shirt and hairy tie and plus- four trousers above shiny brown leather brogues. He took us to his water mill before viewing the woodland, and the place looked like a cover feature for a swanky homes and gardens magazine. The immaculately restored mill and outbuildings were surrounded by acres of landscaped gardens, and his wife was a distant figure toiling uphill behind a lawn mower. All the time we were there she continued her work , and somehow her body language made it look like forced labour or at best duty rather than enjoyable pottering. Sometimes a home can reverse the intended arrangement and take charge of the owners, and I think the lady must spend most of her waking hours making sure the place would impress all the people who will never see it.

The woodland was a pretty place, but a long-term project , in sight of a road and very wet; when I lost a boot we decided it was not what we were looking for.

February 10 th:

The hens are back on lay. My wife is almost ecstatic on any day when Blanche, Brunhilde and Whitney all do their duty, and looks at me as if I am mad when I point out that their eggs would not cost any more to produce if they were made of solid gold. She took the first egg over to Alain while it was still warm, but what she and he do not know is that it was cold when I found it in the nesting box this morning and I used the gas stove to achieve a suitable just-laid effect. I hope I did not heat it for too long , or Alain will be eating the first ever egg to be delivered from the hen already hard-boiled.

February 14 th:

To the seaside to look at a potential bed and breakfast enterprise. It is a large house and said to be no more than a stroll to the beach. If this is true and not a stroll as in a short walk in the Hindu Kush, the property seems to be a good price, but there will probably be a reason.

St Anne la Palud is no more than half a village on the western coast of Finistere. The sweeping bays and sandy beaches and rolling dunes can be heart-achingly beautiful, and the area is suitably remote and offers little off-season for anyone who wants more than a picnic or long walk by the sea. Typical of Brittany, this part of the department is a paradise for hikers, but not much fun if you are after a cup of tea or a bag of chips. St Anne is a special place for those with an interest in religious buildings, and the eponymous chapel sits in the dunes a little way beyond the village of a dozen mostly holiday homes. There are regular pilgrimages to the chapel and the lady even has a song dedicated to her, asking for protection for Bretons on land or sea.

The house we had come to view was, as advertised, no more than a couple of minutes brisk walk to the start of the dunes, but had only a tiny garden and stood alone in a large area of uncultivated ground. This apartness might seem like an attractive feature until you saw the signs for building plots for sale in the immediate area. Far above this consideration as an off-putter, however, was a notice by the chapel that dogs were not allowed on the beach at any time of year.

We drove away from St Anne in a low mood. Perhaps it is because we are looking too hard or being too fussy, but sometimes it seems we will never find our next and probably final home in France.

*

At last, and after almost two years, I think our search is over. And this place is not a demi-paradise , but a full-crème coup de coeur . A future conversation-stopper is that the letter box is more than a mile from the front door.

An agent who we thought had understandably been avoiding us called this morning to say she had a very unusual place she thought we ought to look at. The house has only just become available and not yet been advertised for sale, and she advised an early viewing. It will not stay on the market for long, and we might regret it if we did not move quickly.

Amanda is a lady not given to the usual estate agent' superlatives, so within an hour we had arrived to meet her in a village directly on the Nantes to Brest canal.

Pont Coblant is one of the few canalside habitations we have seen with moored boats on show. The two old river cruisers do not seem to have moved or been used or worked on since we first saw them, so perhaps they are just for window dressing. Of all the villages and small towns on the canal, Pont Coblant is one of the few which appears to at least make an effort to look like a tourist attraction. It's take-it-or-leave-it attitude and reliance on its natural attractions is what we love so much about this region. And there is so much on offer away from the coast that nowhere is ever busy. In the best part of a year we have spent hundreds of hours on the towpath in the Finistere and Cotes d'Armor departments, we have encountered thousands of snooty cyclists and the occasional walker, but never seen a lock gate being used.

One of the things that makes this lock cottage unusual is that it has no access track. It is more than a mile wither way from the nearest road, so the owner would have to drive along the tow path. In some areas, owners are given permits to take their car along the halage . In other areas, even the owners are not allowed to drive on the tow path. As Amanda said, this is an important consideration but can be sorted out with the notaire later; the important thing was to see if we liked the setting and the house itself.

As we rounded a long lazy curve in the canal, heard Donella let out a little sigh. It is the first lock cottage we have seen to be painted snow white, and it is as pretty as a picture. It is also bigger than the usual two-bedroomed ecluserie , and there is a large wooden cabin in the grounds. But there is another bonus. As we park, Amanda casually points out that there is an island in the middle of the canal..and it goes with the cottage.

At that moment and without going inside, my wife and I exchanged The Look. Unless something goes very wrong, we have found the place where we will spend the rest of our lives in France.

February 15th:

I had my first really close brush with death this morning, and I am feeling, well, glad to be alive.

At the end of the feeding round, I took a couple of bread slices to the big pond for the ducks' breakfast . The couple are a proper pair of mallard drake and drab brown hen, which satisfies my wife's sense of marital propriety. Anyone who has seen a female duck being raped and drowned by a gang of drakes will understand her apparent sentimentalism. We hope they are the same pair who nested in the long grass on the far side of the big pond last year, and that they will again be bringing new life to Little Paradise. No matter how many times we see it happen, there is something about a mother duck with a line of chicks in her wake which moves the heart.

Whether or not they are the same pair as last year, they have only just began taking the slices of bread I leave for them each morning, and it has been a long process to win their confidence. Now, they seem to wait for my arrival, and the routine is invariable. As I walk down from the house, they will swim sedately to the far side of the pond and clamber out of the water. Until recently, they would fly off at my approach, but I think they now realise I pose no threat, and perhaps that I am connected to the food which appears when I do. Even so, they still wait until I have returned to the house before taking to the water. Then, they will both circle the bread slice warily before, as the male watches out, the female uses her breast to steer it to the bank and, hopefully, from there to the nest. When I mentioned this arrangement to my wife, she snorted and said I was the last person who should be surprised that it is the female who did all the work and acted as the breadwinner while the male looked on self-importantly and did nothing.

Because the ducks seem to becoming less nervous, my plan this morning was to sit on the bank and keep very still and watch to see if they would still take the food.

As I cast my bread on the waters, settled down to think about the meaning of life and knocking up a corned beef hash for dinner, there came the sound of a giant groaning in deep agony. This was followed by a great tearing and rending and swishing, and I looked up to see one of the seventy-foot pine tree which line the far side of pond toppling over.

It did not take me long to work out that it was toppling my way, and that I was more than probably less than seventy feet from its base. When my legs could be persuaded to move, I staggered up, turned and started to climb the bank, then slipped and fell, slithering down to nearer the water than when I had started. Rolling over on to my back , I saw that I and the tree were still on a collision course, and I had now managed to placed myself in exactly the spot where the tree would land.

There seemed an awful inevitability as the drama reached its conclusion. I had read that things seem to happen slowly in these cases, and it is true. In a gesture even more futile than asking a Parisian taxi driver for directions, I held up my hands and shut my eyes. I have to say that my past life did not flash before them, but perhaps that only applies to drowning, though so far nobody has come back to tell us if it is true.

Atfer what seemed a long few seconds, I became aware that the rending and swooshing and groaning had stopped, and that the ducks were demanding their breakfast. Opening my eyes, I saw that the top of the fallen pine was suspended a couple of metres directly above me, swaying hypnotically from side to side, almost as if it were being held off by a force field emanating from my shaking hands. Eventually rolling over and getting up, I tottered around to the far side of the lake. There I saw that the giant pine had uprooted from the eroded bank of the river running past the pond, and then snagged itself in a conifer between it and the water. Had the conifer been less sturdy or not been there, I would certainly be dead.

My problem is that all this happened while my wife is in England, and there were no witnesses apart from the ducks, chickens and Milly. Many readers accuse me of exaggerating or even inventing a lot of the stories in my books, and it is ironic that nobody will believe this one is completely true.

After I had changed my muddy clothes and equally soiled underpants, I phoned my wife to tell her about my great escape, how it had probably changed my life and how I would now become a new person, more appreciative of life, and determined to make the most of the extra time I had been granted. As I finished my dramatic story, Donella absent-mindedly told me to be sure to put my underpants in a separate laundry bag, but not before she had asked if I thought the ducks had been traumatised by the event.

Thinking about it later, I had to wonder if the event was an act of malicious intent by the tree in revenge for my cutting down so many of its dead relations, or a gift from the Breton gods of firewood. The corpse of the fallen pine will provide at least a month's worth of warmth, and I will certainly never be rude to a conifer bush again.

*

A government department has made a mistake, and we are to be the lifetime beneficiaries. When my wife calls from England to ensure I am properly following the feeding instructions for her menagerie, I tell her the news. A letter has arrived informing me that a little under ? 500 will be credited to our bank account in England every month, and this will continue till I die. It is nowhere near enough to live on, but a welcome bonus. I say we should obviously tell the department abut their mistake, but it is very tempting to keep silent. There is a pause, then a heavy sigh, and Donella reminds me that at the end of last month I became a senior citizen, or as she prefers to call my new status, an old age pensioner. My trick of telling people I am fifty-fourteen will no longer cut the mustard. It is time for me to accept my age if not grow up. But, she says, not quite yet as we have many a mile to travel and a lot of France to see and report on before I can call it a day and start acting my real rather than my mental age.

*

A golden primevere has appeared on the compost heap, and its delicate presence amongst the surrounding ordure makes an interesting contrast . Thinking about the French name and our interpretation, I suddenly realise why we called the primrose the rose of spring. It is the sort of sudden revelation of what should be the obvious which often happens to me, as when I saw a duck bobbing for fish a few years ago and it only then dawned on me where we got the verb from.

February 16th:

We have spent the afternoon at our lock cottage... or what must surely be our lock cottage in a short while. We put an offer in the morning after we saw the little peach of a property, and are waiting for the owner's reply. Even though we have bought and sold four homes in France, the years have been been swept away and I feel exactly the same mix of the excitement and trepidation as when we saw our little one-bedroomed cottage in Normandy.

Our agent Amanda has put the offer to the owners, and if it is accepted we will have got a very good bargain. Lock cottages are rare enough, but one with its own island in the middle of the canal is probably unique. It is not that we are trying to get a cheap deal, but all the money left from our ever-shrinking pot can then be used to enhance the cottage and its surroundings. Another unusual feature about the ecluserie are the two staircases and three bedrooms, which will give Donella an office at one end of the house. My study will be on Treasure island. Without the need for planning permission, I will be able to put up a twenty square metre cabin, on the jetty alongside the weir. As well as being my workplace, the addition of a simple truckle bed, wood-burning stove and a cooker will make it an unusual guest house, or somewhere for me to stay after a row with my wife.

As well as a guest house, we will also have a guest boat when I can persuade Donella to let me by an old engine-less vessel like the ones at nearby Pont Coblant. We will also need a small open boat with an outboard for messing around on the river, and there is already a kayak tied up to the island. There is a grocery store in the village, and I have already found a bar on the bridge run by a very friendly lady. It is just far enough for a pleasant bike ride. Or, of course, we will be able to go by water in my runaround boat.

Another very unusual feature is that there is not a single track or access road to the cottage, so there will be no unwanted visits from strangers or even friends. All motor vehicles are banned from the towpaths, but lock cottage owners have permission to drive

on them if there is no alternative passage. But I have already thought how we can use the canal for the purpose it was originally created. Next to the road bridge a mile away to the west, an old barge has been put on display. It is a very simple craft, and one of many thousands which would have taken all manner of materials across the region. If I can build or find and restore one, we could literally ship all the paint and building materials we need from the bridge to treasure island. We could of course use the trailer and bring them along the towpath, but that would not be half as much fun.

Other plans are to make use of our unique facility by setting up the Treasure Island Tea Gardens for the summer season. Hundreds of cyclists and walkers will be passing between the island and the cottage, and although the French are traditionally averse to snacking or paying for a drink or piece of cake while on a journey, we think we can change the culture. With a small menagerie and a play area on the island, we should be able to attract the passing family trade.

The more I think about it, the more excited I become and the more I am convinced that fate has brought us here. It explains all the frustrations and disappointments of the past year as we have traipsed around a succession of depressingly badly converted pig styes, cattle byres and failed bars and shops and businesses.

It was also mean that once again, and as my Irish grandfather used to say, I will own the ground I pee on. Talking it through rationally, there is no doubt that renting can be the best option in France. Reflecting lower property prices, rents are a fraction of what they would be in Britain. There are no rates to pay and no maintenance costs. If the wind takes a slate off the roof, it is someone else's job to fix it or pay for it to be fixed. Best of all, renting gives the renter total freedom to move on when it suits or needs. That is why seventy percent of French adults traditionally rented their homes. Even with the cultural changes brought about by time and British example, sixty percent of French people still rent the properties they live in, and it is easy to see the attractions of the system. As landlords and agents often ruefully say, in France, the tenant is king.

But in spite of all that, there must be a property- owning gene in all Britons, and we are agog with excitement at the prospect of owning our own home in France again. And what a home it will be to own...

February 17th:

Now we have found Treasure Island, all visits to view properties and businesses have been cancelled. Today we were due to look at a holistic mind and body wellbeing centre in Morbihan, but as the owners claim they are selling for health reasons it does not sound like a very effective business.

With time on our hands, we are off on a joy ride along the coast. It will divert us as we wait to hear if our opening offer for the lock cottage and island in the canal has been accepted. If the owners turn us down then we will increase our bid to the full asking price, and, if necessary, more than the asking price. I cannot remember when we saw a property that so instantly won our hearts, and we are not going to lose it for the sake of a few thousand euros.

Today we will travel through the neighbouring department of Cotes d'Armor and then up to and along a singularly diverse stretch of coastline. With so many different geological features in such a small area, I am developing a theory that God used this region as a practice range. Our journey will begin at a pass over a mini-mountain and across a brooding moor pierced with moonlike crags, then past giant lakes and through pine forests and alongside undulating pocket-handkerchief fields ringed with bocage to finally arrive at a place of towering cliffs and miniature fjords, sweeping sand bays and estuaries peppered with islands. And we still be home in time for tea.

Having the longest coastline in France, the Bretons had to come up with ways of making the most of it and upsetting all less privileged areas, so the Committee for Inventing Exotic Names for Bits of Coastline really got into their stride. Although it looks the same rock-like colour as the rest, we shall be travelling along what they decided would be called the Pink Granite Coast, and then on to the Emerald, Cornouaille, Megalith and Love coasts. In its spare time, the committee also came up with some pretty nifty legends and metaphors, and being French, most of them are to do with sex. Along the Goelo coastline, it is said (by the committee) that back in the dawn of time (i.e. before the committee took lunch on naming day) the sea signed a love pact with the land, which is why the waves penetrate the coastline so deeply and rhythmically, crashing on the rocks in a climax of....well, you get the picture. Having set the scene, the possibilities for purple descriptive prose and clunkingly obvious metaphor in the tourist literature are endless; so when it is a bit blowy along the coast, the lovers have had a spat, and when there is a wild storm there has obviously been a really passionate falling-out over whose turn it was to clean the bath.

What we particularly like about the Brittany coastline and this part of it is the number of small bays and inlets which lay undiscovered, or at least largely untouched by the usual requirements and impositions of tourism. In other words, the places where the residents do not welcome or want people like us poking around. The major coastal towns and designated beauty spots are increasingly littered with white boxes and caravan sites and formulaic hotels and expensive and generally predictable if not crap creperies , but there are still hundreds of undeclared and thus commercially unexploited places where sea meets shore. Sometimes it is made very obvious that the locals want to keep a good thing to themselves, and have taken steps to do so. While there are no obvious booby-traps or notices that trespassers will be shot, lanes which appear to lead towards the coast will come to a blatantly dead end; signs which might have indicated where the sea lies will either have been removed, or point back the way the driver has just come. In extreme cases, I have even seen hand-written signs which would lead the unwary traveller into areas of quicksand or marsh, or even over an unguarded cliff edge. Of course, all this misdirection may not be aimed at anyone in particular but justt an extreme example of the way the Bretons ( and the French in general) like to use signage to confuse rather than inform.

We have been working our way along this stretch of the ultra-crinkly coastline, and on our last visit found an apparently un-named inlet and community of less than a dozen houses scattered on the cliff top. There is also a hotel on the shore which seems to take a contrary delight in being closed when others would be open. The mayor or whoever is in charge of this tiny commune (or it may even be the owner of the hotel) is obviously not keen on visitors, and the speed bumps on the road appear higher than the average Breton policeman, sleeping or sometimes even standing.

On the beach is a very large sign strictly forbidding the use of motors of any form on any boats which wish to use the bay. Being locals, the fishermen plying their trade in the bay clearly take no notice of this notice, which also forbids sailing boats or any craft of more than three metres in length. Visitors are also warned how treacherous the tides can be

( which justifies the total ban on swimming) and there is a long list of other potential dangers, including stubbing your toe on underwater obstacles, or as they are known more usually, rocks. This concern for health and safety issues is so un-French that I think it must be another device to deter the few strangers who have managed to get to the water's edge.

For us, it is a perfect place to walk the dog without the fear of a busybody telling us that animals are not allowed on the beach. This is an increasingly common fetish France seems to have caught from Britain, but in the normal way or rules and regulations with which they are not in accord, the French totally ignore any ban. After a pleasant stroll around the bay, we find the hotel restaurant is closed for lunch so head regretfully off to civilisation.

*

Wedged between the Pink Granite Coast and the Côtes des Bruyères , Lannion is a high-ranking entry on the growing list of our favourite Breton towns. There seem an inordinate number of attractive and individualistic towns in this region, which we have not always found elsewhere in France.

Lannion is a place obviously much as ease with itself, and I find that a significant ingredient of a French town which is good to visit or live in. Another common factor is that it is big enough to offer all the necessary facilities, but small enough for the local people to at least look as if they know each other. It also has a refreshingly low graffiti count, a disease which has become an unfortunate feature of all large-ish French towns. I find it curious that the authorities tolerate the defacing of their fine buildings, but perhaps they regard the practice as a creative pastime. If that is so, I bet the shopkeepers and householders with day-glo tags on their shutters, walls and windows do not agree.

An ancient dwelling place with a genuine Templar's church, Lannion is a sous-prefecture ( lesser administrative town) of Cotes d' Armor and the capital of the Tregor part of the region. Sixty thousand people live around the town, and eighteen thousand of them in the direct ubran area. This makes it quite a big and busy place by Breton standards. Lannion is also a classic example of how twinning authorites go out of their way to find the most unsuitable match, and is paired with Caerphilly.

Arranged around the Léguer river a few miles from the stunningly beautiful estuary at Le Yaudet, the oldest part of the town has a high headcount of half-timbered buildings, some with an even higher improbability factor of how they have managed to stay fairly upright for so many centuries. Probably the only town in the region with a shop dedicated to Hungarian goods, Lannion's relaxed mixture of established history and sometimes quirky modernity reminds me of Brighton without the sea, or, as far as I know, the large gay community.

Our last visit to Lannion was unexpectedly expensive, and this is a good time to post a warning to all new travellers to France. When a toilet bowl motion is required, be sure to check the paper dispenser. In my experience, France comes second only to The Pink Leopard pub in Darby for never having any toilet paper to hand. Nowadays , spotting the problem and avoiding the grim consequences is harder, as the lack of papier hygienique is usually disguised by a large metal dispenser. Perhaps worse than total emptiness is the end of the paper emerging from the container, promising much but in fact giving far too little for the job in hand .

Lulled by a good lunch, I neglected to check the continuity situation in the dispenser, and was left holding a piece of paper the size of a postage stamp. This was a real dilemma, as the toilet was two flights up from the the bar. Unable to call for assistance, I was faced with the prospect of tottering into the eating area holding my trousers and underpants around my thighs. My notepad was on the table in the bar, and a quick self-frisk revealed the only paper in my pockets came in the form of three, five euro notes

Faced with the choice of a long and uncomfortable ride home or using the paper money, I completed what was my most expensive visit to a toilet anywhere in the world.

*

The longer I live in France, the more foreign the French seem. In theory it should be the other way around, and all the books on the subject say the most important consideration for to feel at home in a foreign country is to learn the language. In practice, I find the opposite is true. The more my French improves, the more I understand how different we two races are. Earlier, I walked past two men digging a hole in the road, and asked if they were looking for treasure. After a long pause, one man rested on his pick axe and said they were actually looking for a broken drain, but finding some treasure would be nice. As I walked away, I heard the man with the shovel telling his mate how drole I was, especially for a foreigner. It is these little moments when I am clearly on a wavelength with my hosts that actually underline the normal situation of ununderstanding and differentness between us. We are who we are and cannot be otherwise. I assume it would be the same for a Briton living anywhere else in the world, or for that matter a French person living in Britain. It therefore has to be more than a language which divides and makes us different. I truly believe that any expatriate who says he feels more at home in a foreign country and with foreign people is either lying or, like Lawrence of Arabia, a complete nutter.

February 18th:

Today is the big day. Amanda has been speaking with the owners of what will be our next home in France, and we are on our way for a final look at the lock cottage, and then on to the notary to arrange an appointment to sign the compromise de vente . Unlike the last time we bought a home in France, we will be very pleased to be compromised into buying the picture-postcard ecluserie . I should be beyond all this now, but it will be pleasant to airily tell people who ask where we live that we own a small island on the Nantes-Brest canal.

I become aware of a mild palpitating under my shirt and wonder if I am having a heart attack, then realise it is actually an unaccustomed excitement at the prospect of what is to come. As I think about the next year of making the lock cottage and Treasure island pitch-perfect, the phone rings. I look at the illuminated screen, and see the call is from our property agent.

Thursday February 19 th:

Although it would rate hardly a blip on any scale of reasons for real unhappiness, we are mourning a loss.

The phone call from Amanda was to tell us that Treasure Island has been sold...but not to us. Before our offer to the owner could be increased, the notary dealing with the sale had taken the keys back from the agency and found another buyer. Working more speedily than any other French notaire I have known, he had also drawn up the compromise de vente and got his client to sign it. Or apparently got his client to sign it, as when we made a telephone call and enquired about the lock cottage under another name, there was a lot of buttom-pushing and off-air conversations before the receptionist put us on to the negotiator who said it was ‘reserved'. As Amanda says, you can never win an argument with a French notary, so, whatever the true facts, Treasure Island is now in effect sold, and no increased offers can be made. The compromise commits the signer to buy after a week's cooling-off period, but may also contain any number of suspensive or, in less technical language, get-out clauses. In effect, the notary has blocked anyone else from buying the place until the putative owner decides to complete or use a relevant clause as a reason for not completing. The sale may be dependent on the would-be buyer being able to raise the finance, or any bad news about the structure of the building or use of the towpath to get to and from the cottage as there is no other access route. I have even heard of suspensive clauses which allow the buyer to not complete the sale if the weather is bad on the day of signing, though I think this is a bit fanciful, even for France. I hope the notary did not rush things through because he rather than our agent would be getting the ‘negotiation' fee of several thousand euros, but the government allowing their local legal representative this perk inevitably encourages self-interest and sharp practice, even in France.

I think the big, big reason we are both so unhappy about losing the property is not whether we have been victims of any dodgy dealings, but that it really did seem that the lock cottage and island had our name on it. Also and perhaps curiously, of all the homes we have bought on both sides of the Channel, Treasure Island is the first property we have made a bid for and then lost.

Even worse, we made the classic mistake of making detailed plans for what we were going to do with the cottage and island for the rest of our lives there. In our minds, the walls of the cottage had already been painted a dazzling white inside and out, and my characterful and snug writer's log cabin built on the island next to the weir. In our imaginings, the old engine-less boat which would serve as guest quarters had been found, bought and towed and moored in place, and we had even reached the stage of drawing up a menu for the passing trade.

But it is not to be. Nobody has died or been hurt, and the bar owner at Pont Coblant will be the biggest loser as I will not now become a regular. We shall just have to get on with our lives and start the search for Paradise again.

A sobering thought resulting from the disappointment is how dramatically lives can changed by small events. Had the notary not had another preferred customer up his sleeve, we would be living in the lock cottage in a month's time, and that apparently inconsequential move across the countryside would have caused an unimaginable number of molecular reactions that will now not occur. As I said to my wife, It could be that living on the canal would have inspired me to write a great novel, or we could have bought a lottery ticket at the local bar at Pont Coblant and won millions of euros. As my wife replied, the move might just as easily have caused all sorts of not good things to happen. By not buying a lottery ticket in our local bar because we had moved to the lock cottage could mean that we would have not won the lottery that we might win by staying here. And there could have been much darker consequences of living on the brink of the canal. She had learned yesterday from a local that several people were drowned right alongside Treasure Island a few years ago. Perhaps, as she says, it is just as well that fate or circumstance has intervened and we will never live there, and our family and grandchildren never visit us there.

As usual with these small aggravations and disappointments, my wife is right and we must move on. But I cannot forget or undo the past, and would sooner never have seen the property. Now I will always wonder how it would have been to have lived with the canal and been Master of Treasure Island.

Friday 20th:

The days grow longer than the nights, and nature continues to register the change of season.

Hosts of miniature daffodils have appeared alongside the winding driveway, and with the primroses, winter aconites and dandelions, yellow is the floral colour of choice as I walk through the gardens of Little Paradise. The bird population of Lesmenez also seems aware of spring approaching and are in training for their future responsibilities. This morning I watched a greenfinch struggling to take off with a piece of bread that was almost bigger than itself. Each time it laboured upwards, it would open its beak as if gasping for breath and the bread would fall back to earth. After a dozen Sisyphusian and equally doomed attempts, the finch sat glumly on the ground as a jay swooped down and effortlessly picked up and flew off with the booty. Reflecting on how the big and powerful always seem to get the most bread, I went to find a more manageable breakfast for the smaller bird.

Sunday 21st:

For the past week we have been leaving a dish of Coco Pops, biscuits, mixed fruit and best Cheddar cheese on the kitchen step before retiring, and yesterday morning it was empty. Knowing that the local cats are not keen on banana and, being French, would not dream of touching the Cheddar, we stayed up late and were rewarded with a sighting of Harriet . I know all hedgehogs look much the same and that it is overly sentimental to name wild creatures, but it is good to think that the one we fattened up in Autumn has made it through the long, hard and perilous Finistere winter.

Monday 23rd:

With Treasure Island lost, we are back on the road looking for a home and top-up income. Despite my wife's misgivings, this morning we looked at a pub. It is in a village remote even by rural Brittany standards, and came complete with spacious accommodation, a large garden, several spectacularly distressed barns, and a grocery shop, garage and service station alongside. Behind the workshop was a former ballroom still equipped with mirrored ball, and allegedly used by the French Resistance for covert meetings during the War. Another intriguing piece of information not included in the property information details is that a number of German officers went out of the back door of the ballroom with pretty local girls, and never returned. The all-in asking price for all the properties and potential businesses is less than a hundred thousand euros, and when we talked to the owner we found out why. A down-to-earth Scot who had run successful country pubs in England and had wanted a semi-retirement business, he told us candidly that when he took the place over he could just about get by on the twenty regular customers the bar attracted. In the last three years, several of his thirstiest regulars had died, and with it his bar business. All the motorists in the village go to Geant for cheap petrol, and as his wife refused to learn how to be a motor mechanic at 68, he could offer no other services at the service station.

After thanking him for his honesty, we went on a tiny house belonging to an artist and environmental campaigner. It is too small for our us, but we could not resist a visit as it was apparently made entirely of Cannabis. When we got there, it was disappointing to discover that what the agent had actually said was that the walls of the property are lined with chanvre , or Indian Hemp. According to the resident, it makes an excellent insulator and you would have to smoke several kilos of the fibrous substance to get any effect. But, as he shrugged and said, if there were a fire and the whole house went up in smoke, it would be interesting to see what effect the fumes would have on the neighbours and firemen.

On the way back to the mountains we stopped at a Breton friend's restaurant for lunch and found the lane behind his business blocked with steamrollers, bulldozers and other heavy plant. Notices inform any would-be users that the lane is undergoing significant repairs and improvements and work could continue for several weeks. I note that the anticipated date of completion has been changed four times. Council workers are given luncheon vouchers, and our friend's restaurant accepts vouchers and has a very good and deserved reputation. This may explain why a total of ten men have spent five weeks installing a small concrete channel alongside the lane for a distance of less than twenty yards. In the view of those involved, the job requires the presence of stop-go swing sign holders at both ends of the site, though the two men can and do reach out to exchange cigarettes while waiting for the odd tractor to appear. There is also an official clip board holder and several high-visibility jacket-wearing observers, and a timekeeper to ensure that the men down tools from one minute after noon till well after 2pm. The site is apparently one of the most supervised in the region, with a delegation of officials from the regional Highways and Byways Authority arriving every week. As our friend says, the dedication of these officials is evidenced by the fact that they come to check on progress in their own time, and give a whole new meaning to the term working lunch.

Wednesday 25th:

I have been taking revenge on the giant pine that tried to kill me. The physical exercise and mental demands in dismantling the fallen tree without drowning myself, cutting off a limb of my own rather than one belonging to the tree has also helped me forget about the loss of Treasure Island.

In spite of its attempt on my life, it is always sad to see a tree which still lives measuring its length, and I think the sight reminds us of our own mortality. Oaks and yews last centuries; pines, like us, mere decades.

Two of my favourite leisure pastimes are working with woodland and water, and the turning of the downed tree into a month's worth of split logs involved both activities. It also involved a basic working knowledge of mechanical engineering, especially in the form of fulcrums, transference of weight by balance, and the generally accepted principals of gravity. The near-on ton of pine tree was laying almost horizontally over the pond, with only the base and tip over dry land. Counterbalanced by the heaviest end, the tree sloped gently upwards to where the tip hung some fifteen foot above the far bank. Obviously, the way to move it with minimal damage and danger to the infrastructure and myself was to work my way along the trunk from the thin end, lopping off the branches and then cutting the body into manageable lengths which would fall into the pond to be dragged out and sliced up later. At least, that was the theory. There was always going to be the minor problem of resting and securing the top of the ladder on to the trunk.

The problem of resting and securing the bottom of the ladder on to the surface of the pond was always going to be a bigger one. I had already done some stability tests by lowering the base of the ladder into the pond while standing on the bank, then pushing it upright till the top rested against the tree trunk. The weakness of my plan was highlighted when I waded out and started to climb the rungs, and my weight caused the bottom of the ladder to sink into the ooze. In the race to mount the ladder and tie it off before the top rung sunk below the part of the trunk against which it had been propped, I was the loser. I clung to the top of the ladder for a long moment before joining it flat out at the bottom of the pond, and realised another approach was needed. Recalling how lorries and even tanks had been moved across big stretches of water then circumstances required invention and resourcefulness, I headed for the loft and my 1954 copy of Every Boy's Engineering Wonders of World War II.

A couple of hours later, I had mugged up on the science, and, using available materials, had built my floating bridge. It was a simple but robust construction of scaffold planking and empty petrol and catering size olive oil cans, and easily took the combined weight of the ladder, me and my chain saw. It was a moment's work to climb the ladder and tie the top rung firmly to the trunk, then fire up the saw. Remembering all those Laurel and Hardy films, I was sure to make cut on the side of the horizontal tree trunk not supporting the ladder. Another minute and the saw blade had ripped through the bole and the top ten feet of the tree had fallen obediently into the water. All had gone to plan, except my failure to allow for how the sudden removal of a considerable weight from the top end of the tree would encourage the thick end and roots to settle back into the hole from where they had come. Inevitably and moving in apparent slow motion for the second time in the month, my end of the tree sprang upwards, taking the ladder and me with it. The top of the ladder being tied to the tree meant it stopped moving at the same time as the tree, while I carried on.

Coming out with a cup of coffee and to investigate what all the screaming and splashing was about, my wife late said she was fascinated to see a hand holding a chain saw emerging from the muddy waters of the pond. I did not appreciate her asking me to hold still while she went for the camera, nor if I was trying to create a modern version of the Lady of the Lake scene from Arthurian legend.

Wednesday, April Ist:

As the days grow warmer, the nights seem colder. In fact, they are. We are enjoying a false spring, and it is tempting to believe summer is just around the corner. I met Alain in the lane this morning and he warned me about walking around in shirtsleeves, as the Devil has his best harvest of old people at this time of year. Like most country people of his age, our neighbour believes in conserving body heat rather than wasting money on unnecessary heating. Saving fuel for Alain and his competitors also means maintaining the awesome proportions of their show-off walls of firewood, and dress codes or fashion dictates come well below the considerations of comfort and practicality. At this time of year Alain wears enough coats, shirts and cardigans in multi-layers to stock a small charity shop, and often debates the most comfortable and effective types of woollen tights with my wife.

April 5th:

Another bout of minor mourning. This time it is not a house we have lost but a chicken, and we do not know if the villain has two or four legs, or perhaps even wings. .

Yesterday we returned from a trip to market to find Paradise strangely silent. There was no birdsong nor sight of the hens, and the ducks had flown from the big pond. Even Lunch the rabbit had retired to his straw bunker. We were not concerned, as though the hens like to greet us and see what treats we may have brought them, they also like to wander off up the lane and visitor our neighbours. Then we heard a low keening in the barn, and found Brunhilde and Whitney cowering in a corner. Of our big Sussex White Blanche there was no sign.

We spent the next hour walking around the hamlet, across the surrounding fields, through the forest and even up to the moors. When we told Alain that Blanche was missing, he said the fox had obviously broken our verbal agreement that it would leave our hens alone if I fed it. Seeing how upset Donella was, he went off to look around the grounds, and came back minutes later with a sad handful of white feathers. He had found them, he said, by the roots of the big tree that had tried to kill me. But he had changed his mind about who or what might have taken Blanche. Even a fully-grown dog fox would not have been able to drag our big hen across two rivers and through the swamplands and thicket to its den. And there would have been blood or some other signs of an earthbound struggle. When I suggested a human predator, he shook his head and said there were no foot prints in the muddy ground around the tree stump. When I asked what else could have taken Blanche, he scratched his chin, then pointed to the sky with his cane. When I asked if he was seriously saying a buzzard could have carried our giant hen off, he said that there were other even bigger birds on the moors. In the old days it was said that they took lambs and even babies from the moorland villages, though he thought this to be unlikely, even in the mountains of Finistere.

When our neighbour left, we went into the barn and sat with Brunhilde and Whitney. They were obviously badly traumatised, and must have seen whatever happened to poor dear Blanche. As dusk fell, I went and sat at the spot where Alain had found the feathers, and thought about our lost hen. People like to think of chickens as having no personalities, but that is probably because they do not want to consider that something on their plate once had thoughts and feelings. Blanche was the biggest and best layer, but also the softest and furthest down the pecking order. As Donella said, she was like the big, soppy schoolgirl who is bullied by her smaller classmates. I suppose that made me feel more protective towards her, and she was my favourite hen. I am aware that Brittany is one of the biggest chicken-rearing regions of France, and that millions of birds are efficiently despatched and prepared for supermarket shelves every week. I am also aware of the irony that we eat and enjoy chicken, but this is different as we do not know and love the ones we see on supermarket shelves. She may not have been particularly bright and just a good laying hen, but Blanche was also one of the family.

April 6^th:

Alain may have been right about Blanche’s abductor. Driving on the mountain road this morning, I saw what I thought was an unusually big short-eared owl trawling for breakfast. It was cruising no more than a yard above the moorland, and as I came closer, it gave an indignant shriek and flapped lugubriously away. I could see then that it was far too big and the wrong shape for an owl, and its great white raked wings looked as if the ends had been dipped in a pot of black paint. I looked the mystery bird up when I got home and realised I had made a rare sighting of a hen harrier. I also realised for the first time why the bird had been given that name.

April 7th:

Sounding like a made-up place name in a novel about sex in the Welsh suburbs, Landivisiau is the sort of town that generally sympathetic tourist guides describe as honest or sturdy. This is usually the default description when somewhere has few or no obvious selling points or is, frankly, pug-ugly.

Lacking a coastline, lake or forest, historic building, remotely famous son or daughter or even borrowed legend, Landivisiau struggles to make any claim to visitorability, or even visibility. Inserting the name in any of the gastronomic websites for the region or area comes up with not a single recommended eating house in or around the town, and the most interesting statistic Wikipedia can summon up is that nearly nine percent of Landivisiau’s local primary school children attended bilingual schools in 2007.

But this is all a typically distant and narrow-band assessment, based on conventional tourist appeal ratings. Generally, I find a better reflection of a town’s character and local esteem is the size and type of market it can sustain. Each Saturday at cool and trendy Morlaix, stalls selling exotic spices in tiny twee bags at more than the cost of gold dust are under siege. In Huelgoat every Thursday, the British - run stalls and wagons offering lardy cakes and fish and chip give a clue to the expat density level. Landivisiau is a serious country dweller’s market, and where you go for lengths of barbed wire, rabbits on the hoof, and, most of all, laying hens.

The Brittany Bird Man’s stall is always busy, and one of the few places you will see an orderly queue in France. In Finistere, it is one of the few places you will see any sort of queue . But not all the people in line are waiting to buy a hen at point of lay or a handful of day-old chicks, turkeys or quail. Some part of the soul of the most urbanised Breton is still steeped in peasantry, and it is revealing to see elegantly dressed and made-up women queuing simply for the pleasure of stroking a farmyard bird. Or more likely, perhaps, feeling its plumpness and suitability for the pot.

Unlike the window shoppers, we are here on business, and being veteran hen owners are familiar with the sometimes complex rules of behavioural etiquette which accompany the buying of a chicken at market in rural France. Having waited for nearly half an hour we have had plenty of time to spot the two birds we want, but it is important that, when we get to the head of the queue, we at least appear to examine and compare the merits and defects of the fifty pondeuse ( point-of-lay) hens on offer. In truth, we and any other civilians around the stall would not have a clue as to howto identify the better layers, but the customers like to give the impression they can judge the fecundity of a bird on sight. Sensibly, the Bird Man joins in the game, and gives anything from an approving nod to a whistle or even gasp of admiration as he grabs and boxes up the buyer’s choice. When we have spent enough time pointing out imaginary pros and cons of the selection, I indicate the two birds we have chosen. There are at least a dozen hens milling around in the plastic cage, so I point between the bars to identify them, and am immediately assaulted by a small but obviously feisty Rhode Island Red. As I suck my finger and try to look as if the injury was part of the testing and selection process, my wife asks The Bird Man to add my attacker to our takeaway box. Some of the crowd will think my wife picked the bird because it showed spirit; the longer -married women will know and appreciate it is actually because it drew blood and thus struck a blow for the sisterhood.

What occurs to me as I wrap a carrier bag around my wounded digit is how right my father was when he said that, in life, good luck is more important than good looks or even a good brain. He knew what he was talking about as he was a greyhound bookmaker, and one thing is for sure. The three hens in the box in the back of our car could have been bought as guest of honour at a chicken dinner, by being chosen to join my wife’s family of pampered pets, they have won first prize in the lottery of avian life.

*

On the way home from our chicken run we stop at a small town which has all the touristic sex appeal rating that Landivisiau lacks. Lampaul Guimiliau has a number of well-reputed restaurants and bars and some interesting old buildings, but is most famous amongst religious building enthusiasts for its parish close, ossuary and very baroque baptistery. The church was famous for having one of the tallest bell towers in Finistere, but lost the honour when it was truncated by a lighting strike and fire in 1809.

Though the fact will not be found in many tourist guides, Lampaul Guimiliau is also the site of one of my favourite bars. In the shadow of the church, the combined pub, tobacconist and paper shop is remarkable for its unremarkableness. The decor has remained obstinately in the 1970s, and the furniture is as eclectic and characterful and time-worn as the clientele. On the wall is a selection of home-made posters which appear to date in some cases back to the lightning strike on the belfry. In general, Bretons are very good at putting posters up,but reluctant to take them down. I think it is their artistic side and the desire to exhibit their talent for as long as possible. When I asked the bar owner why she had so many out-of-date posters on the wall, she asked if I would take a favourite painting off my wall because it had been there for a certain time. One of the more recent creations shows a head and shoulders photograph of a pleasantly round--faced man surrounded by what looks like the European Union circle of stars. Beneath it is the suggestion that readers might like to hire Yvon Fravel and his accordion for their balls.

Other permanent features include three classic Breton barflies. I have never been in the pub when they have not been there, and we have dropped in at all hours from breakfast to chucking-out time. The three men dress similarly with a spectacular unconcern for sartorial elegance, are short and stocky and look as if they have been standing in the same place at the bar since before it was built. Like all the best regulars, they cause no trouble, take an active interest in passers-by and visitors, and are always ready to hand out a piece of advice or a comment on the state of the region, France or any other part of the world. They have also achieved that tricky feat of being more or less permanently on the cusp of total intoxication. But no matter how long they continue drinking, they never get any drunker than their constant cruising level. Being more than three sheets to the wind is part of their persona and overall presentation package, and you get the feeling that if one of the bibulous trio were ever to appear at the bar sober, the landlady and even perhaps his mates would not recognise him. As we arrive, I see that the day’s chairman is trawling the local paper for debatable subjects, and when I point out that he is holding it upside down he shrugs and says it reads better that way. Craning my neck, I attempt to make sense of the headline, which appears to concern sausages, crime and cosmetics. As Jan explains and illustrates by running a finger across his throat, un crime maquille en saucissonage actually refers to a grisly murder, with the victim chopped up like the contents of a sausage. On a lighter note, he shows me a story detailing how the French navy has managed to lose a guided missile off the coast of Brittany. As the report uncritically explains, the missile was suppose to float but did not, and there are now several submarines looking for it on the ocean floor.

April 10th:

One of my favourite daily activities as we take breakfast in the henhouse. Rain is pattering on the roof of what was once the stable block, and I am enjoying the intoxicating mixed aroma of Marmite toast, strong coffee, damp straw and chicken poo. I realise it would not be to everyone’s taste, but then some people happily spend hundreds of pounds on a tiny bottle of coloured water which smells to me like sweaty cheese.

As the inmates go about the complex business of sorting out who is in charge of whom, I am counting the dressed stones in the far wall, and thinking about the owners of the hands which would have set them in place. I find that looking closely at old buildings can reel back time in a most satisfactory manner, and help me understand what it was like to be alive all that time ago, and how we are as we are now because of what went before. This no-nonsense wall may not be a work of art, but it tells as much of a story as any great and ancient edifice. Where there is a badly-laid line of the roughly dressed stones, I wonder if it were put there by someone with a hangover, or by a youngster learning the knack of this part of 18th-century country life. Where the great oak beams straddle the wall, I wonder how many family members it took to hoist each one up, from where the wood came, and how it got from forest or woodland to its final billet. Above all, I marvel at the simplicity and effectiveness of old farm buildings and their dressings. The door is as old as the stable block, and a perfect example of the application of artisanal logic and invention. It is made of planks , and the end one extends by a foot at top and bottom. These extensions have been trimmed down to almost a point and are braced with strips of beaten iron. These protrusions fit into holes in the threshold and lintel, and act as almost astonishingly basic but efficient pivots. By this simple but almost staggeringly effective and inspired application, the need for vulnerable hinges and all the expense and work of buying and fitting them has been excised. If one of the pivots broke, you would simply have to replace the end plank with another. And a plank of wood would have been much,much cheaper than the most basic hinge. Many years before this door went up, someone must have looked at a hole in a wall and had the big idea for making and fitting a maintenance- free door. Three hundred or more years ago and with no help from architects, specialist craftsmen or special tools or transport, a group of uneducated farm hands raised this building. It has stood against the centuries, and will be here when I am dust, while the ghosts of those people linger here and in what they have done. Whether they knew it at the time, they were leaving their mark on history as clearly as any great warrior or politician.

I am brought back to the present by an imperious screech, and see Brunhilde pecking at the neck of Speckle, the new grey hen. She is almost twice the size of the bantam Rhode Island Red, but obviously as docile as Blanche. I am tempted to give Brunhilde a lecture on anger management, but know my wife is right when she says that we must let nature take its course and the pecking order become established.

Unusually, before the disappearance of Blanche there seemed to be no established order of importance amongst our hens. They had arrived together and had almost immediately settled down into a comfortable and mutually beneficial co-operative arrangement. Or perhaps we had been lucky enough to choose a bunch of hippy hens who just wanted to hang loose and enjoy life. Now the newcomers outnumber the older residents, I suppose there was bound to be some friction. Watching them reminds me of a school playground, and the interplay and activity is every bit as complex and revealing as with humans.

Of the two veterans, Whitney is by far the largest, but she obviously wants to settle for an easy life. She has shown no animosity to the newcomers, and occasionally joined them in a sociable earth bath. This fraternising obviously outrages Brunhilde, who has now gone into a frenzy of control freakery. None of the other hens must leave or re-enter the henhouse before her, none is allowed to feed at the same bowl..and she has even taken to breaking up any gatherings as if she fears those involved might be plotting against her. The reaction of each of the hens to this Stasi-like supervision and oppression is in itself an indication of their characters. Whitney looks hurt to be so treated by an old friend and finds a corner in which to sulk, while the new bird we have called Petite Blanch is obviously in a permanent state of terror; even a glance from Brunhilde will send her racing around the compound like a headless chicken with a head, if you see what I mean. The big speckled grey reacts to and falls in with the white’s behaviour, and the two take it in turns to chase each other round the compound like the stars of an Abbot and Costello movie set in a haunted house.

And then there is Red. She, as her name suggests, is the same breed as Brunhilde, but already bigger and probably stronger. But staying with filmic comparisons, she is Cool Hand Luke. While Whitney plays the hurt best friend and the other two over-react to the petty bullying, Red simply acts as if Brunhilde were not there. When she is attacked at the feeding bowl, Red directs a measured look at her would-be boss, then carries on eating. When it is time to enter or leave the henhouse, Red will appear to stretch, yawn and saunter towards the door, carefree as to where Brunhilde is. I shall watch with interest as the relationships develop, but I know who my money is on as the new team leader.

April 13th:

We take a spectacular stroll along the cliff tops to the north of Morlaix, then stop off outside the picture-postcard village of Guimaec to take a look at a redundant bar for sale. The inexplicably ( unless you understand the pub trade) failed business is on a key road not a mile from the coast and surrounded by campsites and B&Bs. In a coastal holiday area of Britain and especially somewhere trendy like Cornwall, it would have a price beyond rubies. Here, it cannot pay its way. This may or may not be because the owners of the bar have upset the neighbour, who has then invoked divine powers of retribution. The bar is literally in the shadow of a chapel being restored at obviously huge cost by the commune, and the sign above the door identifies it as The Bar of Christ. This alone makes me want to put an offer in on the spot. Actually, the bar is named for the hamlet in which it stands, but I much prefer to think of it being Our Saviour’s local. In rural England, public houses were always built close to the village church and there would often be a tunnel linking them. This was said to be so the faithful could travel from one spiritually uplifting place to the other regardless of the weather, and perhaps more importantly, without being seen by the teetotal members of the community. It was also said that these unsecret passages were used by the curate, and in coastal areas were a rat run for the parson’s contraband brandy.

Down the road from this empty bar at Locquirec is Caplin & Co, a bar which the owners have got exactly right. It sits contentedly above a cove with a lookout balcony, and is artfully informal and even distressed in presentation . The walls are lined with books, there are customer chessboards which are actually used on a regular basis, and good music is to be heard here on most nights in the summer. A sign of the popularity of the place and the level of confidence of the patron is that he does not bother to open until well into the afternoon. If I had a seaside bar I would want it to be just like this, and to be able to take myself and the dog for a swim when the weather warranted it, to sit on the balcony and look out to sea when the fancy took me, and to have enough confidence in the well–used cash register to tell those visitors I did not like to bugger off.

Arriving at Guimaec my wife makes straight for the combined cake shop and bar, while I cross the road to check if the village’s public facilities are worthy of entry into my collection of Great Public Toilets of France.They are, and then some. It is an increasingly rare treat to discover a vintage stand-and-deliver installation which consists of not much more than a pair of porcelain footprints with a hole between them, and this one is a classic. It has obviously been much used, repaired and modified over the decades, and the council artisan responsible for its upkeep has either unknowingly or deliberately replaced the tray with the footprints pointing towards the wall rather than away. As the all-too tangible evidence reveals, this has caused all sorts of problems for those visitors unfamiliar with the procedure, and clearly some who do not know their bums from a hole in the ground...

*

In the bakery shop adjoining the bar in the square, I am treated to yet another epiphany regarding French attitudes to any comestibles with an even remote English connection. My wife has already ordered an almond croissant to go with our coffee, and I have spotted what looks like a real treat. Pointing at a thick custard slice, I ask Madame if the topping is, as it appears, crème d’anglaise. Just the juxtaposition of the two words is enough to cause her to pale beneath her artfully applied make-up. Non, she says crisply,, and for good measure repeats De Gaulle’s favourite word to the British another two times. When I ask what the delicacy is, Madame looks to see if I am being stupid or insolent, and says it is a flan. Determined not to be put off, I say I understand that it is a flan, but if not a custard flan, what sort of flan might it be? After a long silence, Madame draws herself up to her full height of Gallic superiority and announces that it is a flan flan. I give up the unequal struggle and take my treat to our table to wonder what Madame and her husband call a custard slice when discussing the next day’s batch of patisserie. When we leave, I present my empty plate to Madame, congratulate her and her spouse on their wares, and say that mine was the best slice of yellow stuff I have tasted in all France.

April 20th^:

Things have come to head in the henhouse, and there has been a serious outbreak of violence. As usual, I am being blamed for the punch-up. When Alain arrives for his solitary glass of wine at sundown, I always open a new bottle as our neighbour likes his Cotes du Rhone as fresh as his eggs. I used the remnants of yesterday’s bottle to enhance our vegetable stew, and my wife added the leftovers to the chickens’ nightly mash. Whether it was the effect of the alcohol or just time and confinement that caused matters between them to come to a head, Brunhilde and Red had a real set-to after lights-out. This morning, it was Red who swaggered out of the henhouse first, with a chastened Brunhilde limping behind.

April 29th:

Having secured her status in the henhouse, Big Red has now turned her attention to me. Donella has been seeding her vegetable patch, and I was given the job of making it off- limits to the hens. Finding that reasoned argument, bribery or threats had no effect, I set about erecting a simple tripwire of string at chicken knee height around the patch. An hour later, I returned to the compound to find Red pecking contentedly away inside the plot while the others looked on admiringly. Another hour and two balls of string later, and he simply squeezed through the improved defences. Another four hours and I had cut a dozen hazel branches down to size, pointed them and erected a miniature stockade all around the patch. After looking at it and me thoughtfully for a moment or two, Red backed a few paces away from the barrier, then fIuttered up to and over it. Thinking of the alternatives, I left her to her triumph and retreated to my study. I am used to not being in anything but titular command of my destiny, but it is still an uncomfortable feeling to know that you are below a common chicken in Life’s pecking order.