Last week a friend announced that she was coming to visit. By a visit, I don't mean that I had to wash the sheets, make up beds and scour the bathroom, but it did mean that a little housework would have to be undertaken. She was only popping in to pick up something, but we all know that a pop can turn into a magical mystery tour. "Oh what a dear little kitchen - how many bedrooms do you have - may I use the bathroom - oh a courtyard, how lovely".
It's the not knowing which is sometimes worse than the knowing, so rather than take a chance, Jean and I have developed a swift but successful method of blitzing the house and courtyard which takes us 2 hours to have the place gleaming. I sweep and vacuum while he washes the stone floors. We share the bathroom and kitchen and he washes the terrace while I sweep the courtyard, and in no time it is pristine and ready for inspection.
Having lived so very far away for so long, we don't have the sort of friends that our friends here have. They do say that once you have a house in the south of France, you discover friends and relatives whose funerals you could have sworn you went to fifteen years ago, especially if you have made the move from the UK to here.
"Oh dear, I've got Susie and Mark coming for the weekend, and then Lydia is coming for an overnight stop en route to Cannes. She'll just be gone when Melinda and Clarissa and their dog Hector are coming for two days and I have no idea what to do with the cats".
Life for some becomes a constant round of changing sheets, re-visiting the Nimes arena for the fifth time in a month, burning to a crisp on a beach that you would never think of visiting, and eating and drinking copious amounts of hot goat cheese and cold rose wine. Your vision of spending the summer months lying in a shady hammock with a pile of good books and lots of Evian disappears into a welter of crammed carparks, vehicles that you could fry an egg on, queues on motorways and inflated ticket prices for everything.
We, on the other hand, only know people who already live here, and some of those, like us, have come from regions of the world that are too far away to attract an endless stream of guests. We are the ones who can be found sneaking along the back country roads through the vineyards, and never venturing outside unless it is for a quick dip in the pool before returning to the hammock under the trees.
We watch the BBC weather forecast each morning and feel sorry for those who have opted for three weeks under canvas in Devon or a walking holiday in Cumbria. Meantime, we mop our perspiring brows, reach for another bottle of cold water and rest on our dusted laurels.
