It is not every day there are twenty men at the bottom of my drive in tight uniforms. But yesterday I was surrounded. Next to our house is a plot of land owned by a local man. Yesterday morning he decided to burn some shrubs. What he had not factored i …

Last night we went to the ballet to see Swan Lake, performed by the Kiev Ballet at a venue called The Zenith in Montpellier. My suspicions should have been roused when the tops of our water bottles were confiscated by security guards on the way in. Why …

When I was a younger my stepfather would often say that the problem with me is that I am always waiting for a suitcase to show up and solve all my problems. He was referring to a suitcase of money which would magically transform my life. I need that su …

I have just had my first meeting in French. It was a lunch in an Italian restaurant in St Germain with the French publisher of Two Lipsticks and a Lover and the hottest publicist in Paris, hired by the publisher to promote the book. I was of course ter …

It was one of those few moments in life when the reality was better than the fantasy. Yesterday the girls started their ballet classes. I was so nervous about arriving late we were there an hour and a half before the beginning. We wandered around for a …

The Australian Open is on at the moment and every morning I switch on the television to be greeted with images of French players battling it out down under. And every morning I ask the same question: Why are there no British players playing? There was …

Johnny Depp has given £1 million to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital for saving his daughter’s life last year. In March 2007 Lily-Rose contracted E-coli poisoning and her kidneys failed. It was touch and go for nine days, but she pulled through. …

Yesterday Bea and I had a ballet class. Well, I say class, but it was less professional than that. I taught her the steps and arm movements with the help of a book written by Darcy Bussell called The Young Dancer. As I moved with not much grace from fi …

Sir Edmund Hillary died today. He was 88 and died of heart failure at the Auckland City Hospital. The reason you will have heard of him is that in 1953 he and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. I have never h …

Despite paying thousands of euros a year into the French pension and social security system, we are under no illusion that they will give us any money when we’re older and even greyer. So we have been vetting the children. “Which of you will look after …