France

Provence Under late June’s ferocious heat dome, during what turned out to be an almost eight-hour drive to join Martin Vander Weyer and his guests for three nights in the Dordogne, my car was telling me it wouldn’t start due to a recurring AdBlue emissions fault. And my old phone was pegging out. At home I hadn’t had hot water – or cold – for five days because the boiler was broken. There was also a leak. I had to turn the water on and off at the mains when I needed it. Life was turning out to be more troglodyte than I bargained for. Although the water, when it ran, was chilly, my brain was overheating even before the temperature hit 44°C in the Dordogne. Like the UK, I don’t have enough income or savings to cover all my bills.

As the eco-tourism season got under way, the confused-looking French people began to arrive. They come to see ‘la nature’, and they insist they don’t mind about the rain or the terrible food, or the fact you can’t actually access any of this nature because it’s all owned by strapping great Cork farmers who won’t let you near it. After a few days, their faces suggest they’re getting a tad disorientated, but they don’t want to admit it. First there arrived a very nice couple from a town in northern France where the builder boyfriend and I had one of our most memorable holidays together. As I served them their breakfast coffee, they asked where they could go for a walk, for they had tried in vain for days.

It started during the bus journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh airport on the way home to Provence. Saying goodbye is always sad but there were other worries; earnings have been minimal for the past ten months and the new hot water tank was costing more than the balance of my bank account. People who assert that it’s no good throwing money at a problem have either never been poor or had an unhappy teenage daughter. In the old days when I had a bit of cash and one of the girls was especially miserable, a chat in the car and a wee spin round Topshop or Urban Outfitters generally did wonders. Those days are gone. I’ve been a financial basket case for years now.

The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and summer crowds. I have been spending time in the south of France since the early 1990s. Provence was fashionable in those days. Peter Mayle’s massively successful book, A Year in Provence, inspired thousands to pull up stakes and move to southern France to emulate his idyllic life in the Luberon hills. Some settled farther west in the Dordogne, famously called "Dordogneshire" for its concentration of British expats. Mayle became a one-man publishing industry, following up with sequels including Toujours Provence and Encore Provence. Thirty years ago, I stayed with friends who owned a renovated farmhouse with a spectacular view of the Dentelles de Montmirail.