Our weekend with Marguerite is going well so far. She has got used to us wearing knotted handkerchiefs on our heads and eating nothing but jelly and baked beans.

Bea had a bad go on her new pink bike. In fact she was complaining about how bad a bike-rider Marguerite is when she drove into the back of me and crashed. She has a horrible cut on her knee. Leo hit his head on the table when he stood up after rescuing his yellow car from the floor, Marguerite got her finger caught in a folding table (dangerous things these tables) and Olivia was stung by a bee. She concluded it was a “hurtie day”.

We had a lovely picnic at annual event just over the hill which involves sitting in the sunshine drinking wine and eating while listening to music and occasionally popping up to various stalls which sell wine, food and goat’s cheese. The children ran around having fun, we ate and drank far too much and had a perfect time. We were with some friends whom we invited to pop by for tea and a swim on their way home.

Sadly after all that wine and goat’s cheese not only Rupert and I, but Bea and Leo were passed out by the pool when they showed up. We were all naked, as is our habit when swimming alone (another custom for Marguerite to share with the rest of the village when she escapes). Rupert luckily had his straw hat strategically covering some of him but the rest of us were just plain undressed.

When we stumbled upstairs for a cup of tea we found a note: ‘Popped by but you were all asleep by the pool, see you very soon we hope’. ‘But maybe not so much of you’ they might have added.

Finally, Madeleine. The agony goes on. But is this a generational thing? The father of a friend of mine had the following conversation with him yesterday:

“This Madeleine thing….do you think the world is having a Diana moment?”

“Why?” asked my friend.

“Well, if we’d lost one of you, I mean of course we would have been upset, but we would have got over it.”

“How long do you think that would have taken you?”

“Oh, I would say about a week.”

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

This morning was one of those mornings that make me even happier than I usually am that we moved here. For some reason the children were nice to me, and to each other. Even Max the cat was spared his normal morning tail-pulling from Leonardo.

I took the girls off to their gym course in Pezenas. It is the school holidays and they are doing gym and art every day from 9.30 to 4pm. This is costing us a total of £30 for both girls for the whole week. Amazing considering we paid more than that for half a day in a Sussex nursery when we only had one child. They skipped behind me with their friend Manon, happily discussing various ‘books’ they are writing which they assure me will make them a lot of money. Yeah, right, I know all about that. I’m sure with my aunt disinheriting me the books I have written so far have actually lost me more money than they’ll ever make me. But I didn’t mention that to them. As their subject matters are clowns, water and fire I doubt they’ll offend any remaining rich relations.

Having dropped them off I went shopping. By the time I arrived at M. Clerc’s shop I already had my hands full. Once there I bought fresh asparagus, artichokes, cherry tomatoes and lots more goodies.

As I went to leave with all my shopping he said: “Wouldn’t you rather swing by with the car?” What a sweetheart. Minutes later I arrived and pulled up on the pavement, holding up the traffic behind me. M. Clerc loaded my shopping in, told me I looked beautiful and gave me a kiss goodbye.

There are two main reasons this little episode makes me glad we live here; first there is no more charming grocer on the face of the earth than Jean-Luc Clerc, shopping with him is a joy and however tempted I am sometimes to move to somewhere a little more exciting or closer to a plate of proper Italian pasta I know I won’t leave until he retires. Second no one here would give you a hard time for holding up the traffic while your lunch is loaded into your car. Is there anywhere more civilised to live than France?

Yesterday we had a picnic at our almond grove. That makes it sound very grand, which it’s not. We have around sixty almond trees and a little hut, known as a mazet. There is about an acre of land with a river at the bottom of it and a vineyard lining one side. We can just see our house from it, up on the hill in the distance.

We invited about twenty friends, everyone brought something, mainly children. They had a great time, building houses out of sticks, wading in the river, cycling up and down the small road, playing with the dogs. As Tom, one friend observed; “Children always seem to move at high speed, imagine if we did the same as adults.” The only high speed thing about the adults was their drinking.

To eat we had oysters, salads, quiches, grilled meats, olives, cheeses, divine chocolate chip cookies and apple tarts; everyone came laden with food, almost all of it home-made and delicious. As a way to have a Sunday lunch-party it beats the hell out of standing over a hot oven praying your roast potatoes will look like they were cooked by Nigella and not Mr Bean.

There was a mixture of French, English, Irish and Australians. A good mix of nationalities. But the one thing all their children will have in common will be that they will, in all probability, speak French for life. Which of course is reason enough in itself to move here. French is possibly the most impossible language to get a grip on (outside the really tricky ones like Chinese and Russian). Practically every time I speak I worry I have got something wrong. The poems my children have to learn off by heart at school seem to get increasingly incomprehensible.

It’s a funny thing. Some days my French seems to work and on others it just stalls, like an old car that hasn’t been started for a few years. Even the children are beginning to notice. When I told Olivia recently I had to watch the French news for work and so we couldn’t watch cartoons she looked at me with pity: “But mummy,” she said. “You don’t understand it anyway.”

Is that why France seems like such a nice place to live?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

Spring is here. I know because the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and a yellow and black salamander keeps falling into the pool. We are on constant pool-watch and have already rescued him three times. We even put some bleach in to try to deter him, but he’s a stubborn little thing.

It’s a relief to send the children off to school without coats and gloves, but for them the hard work is just beginning. I saw on French television yesterday that the government has concluded children are lacking in vocabulary. “They know the word for flower,” said an official spokesman. “But they can’t distinguish between, for example, a hyacinth and an iris.” Well, there is something we have in common, because neither can I. So once again I am in awe of the French educational system and relieved that my children will grow up to be so much more accomplished than I am.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2007

It is Sunday morning and we are in Uzès for the 14th annual truffle fest. This is a magical place, a medieval town in the hills about half an hour from Avignon. As usually happens when we travel anywhere in the direction of Provence I have decided I want to move here immediately. We arrived yesterday to bright sunshine and a bustling Saturday market. We had a lovely lunch at a restaurant called Terroir, while the market took place all around us. The restaurant is run by Tom who is an even weirder mixture than me; half Belgian and half Swedish but speaks perfect English.

Today the truffle fest will involve watching dogs and pigs hunt truffles in the main square, a truffle-cooking competition and a lecture on how to eat them by the resident truffle expert.

Last night however it involved a dinner. This started at eight o’clock and by half past eleven we still had two courses to go. As you can imagine all the courses involved truffles.

Am I the only person in the world who finds big dinners extremely tedious? I invariably get a type of claustrophobia brought on by the feeling of being trapped there for at least another three hours. On my left was a Swiss man who went into great details about the pros and cons of various Swiss ski resorts I have never heard of (really wasted on me as I only ski under duress). To my right was my best French friend Alex, so that was good. The seating plan was curious. There were three women on the table and the host put us next to each other. The third woman was his wife who, despite being a wine-maker, doesn’t touch alcohol. If I found the evening dull, she must have been practically sleep-walking.

Truffles are supposed to inspire lust. According to the gastronome Brillat-Savarin, it is impossible to remain faithful after eating them. I mentioned this to Alex who looked around the room and said. “Not in this place.” I don’t know if it was the effect of the truffles or plain boredom but I tried to snog Rupert between courses who said: “Stop that you fool, I’m your husband.”

At 1am we stumbled upstairs to our rooms to find our children still awake. Maybe we should have dragged them down to the dinner; they wouldn’t have liked the truffles but at least the conversation would have been entertaining.

I hope it’s not truffles for breakfast.

Copyright: Helena Friith Powell 2007