Provence

Life was complicated when I fled to Provence in November 2014 with no job and very little money. At first a comedian friend and his wife lent me their second home. The intention was to stay for six months, recover from a traumatic marriage break-up and write a book about my father, who was a giant (7ft 4in) and had for a spell in 1938 toured Nazi Germany and England as part of a world-famous revue. I was also planning to learn copy-editing in the hope that when I got back, I could get a job as the oldest-ever publishing intern. But in those days I didn’t even have a laptop and since money was running out, I had to abandon both ideas and find work.

My father was a giant and had for a spell in 1938 toured Nazi Germany as part of a world-famous revue

At 51, cleaning, doing laundry and ad-hoc catering work for close to minimum wage was difficult, but I had little choice with no French. After five months, when a return to the UK seemed impossible, I rented a barely habitable concrete shack up a hill in the woods, miles from the village. The large terrace and beautiful walks just about made up for the fact that when the bath water went down the plug hole, it came back up into the shower tray a few feet away, then disappeared, after which it emerged from a cupboard, flowed across the hall tiles and out of the front door. Not only that, but the bedroom walls were mouldy and the glass-fronted fire in the living room leaked so badly that a book placed on the coffee table in the morning would be covered in soot by the afternoon.

Huge dormice scratched and scurried by night in the attic space above the bedroom, and when it rained heavily, water poured through the living-room ceiling, under the back door in torrents, and dripped from the lights in the cooker hood. Once, when Jeremy was visiting, the pipes became confused and deposited the upstairs macerating toilet flush, faeces and water, into the kitchen sink. Franck, the plumber, was a frequent visitor.

Not long after I moved in, I got back from visiting my daughters in Scotland alone at midnight to discover there was no electricity. The dal I’d left in the freezer had defrosted into a stinking mess, and I had no packets or tins of food. Because the water was pumped from a deep well, there was none of that either, apart from a couple of bottles of sparkling San Pellegrino. All I could find was a bottle of whisky and the packet of Cadbury’s Mini Eggs that my youngest daughter had sent me the month before. I lit the fire and some candles, opened the French windows and heard nightingales for the first time in my life.

The cave where I live now is luxury compared to that, but things still go wrong. I was thinking about this when I woke the other day at 5 a.m., pressed the bedside light switch and nothing happened. Stumbling about in the dark with my phone torch, half asleep and, with no glasses, blinder than a mole, I tried to resolve things but quickly gave up and instead lay in bed worrying about the cost of a repair. Soon I figured it out. I had Airbnb guests staying in the little cave next door and the water heater comes on there during the night. It must’ve tripped.

Then I remembered. One afternoon in January during a ferocious storm, a young couple climbed the stone steps to my front door and stood there dripping. They’d peered in the tiny downstairs painting studio and were curious about my work. I invited them in. She had a smiley, Botticelli-angel face and worked in a gallery near Paris. In her spare time, she conducted a choir. He was a French naval officer.

It turned out they were planning to camp. They were younger than my daughters and, unable to bear the thought of them in a tent overnight in such bad weather, I offered them the cave apartment.

My daughters sometimes worry about me and ‘randomers’. They think I’m too friendly and gullible

The three of us went next door. The girl, Maria, was so thrilled at the cave’s ‘cuteness’ that she broke into song and danced about the place while I tried to put the hot water on. The electricity box is low down on the front wall of the mezzanine bedroom, and to see the switches you have to lie sideways on the floor with your legs dangling over the top stairs. I couldn’t get the switch to move from ‘timer’ to ‘constant’, so Maria’s boyfriend, Guillaume, lay on the floor close behind me to see if he could. Practically spooning, we struggled with the tiny indecipherable switch, but the naval communications expert couldn’t make it work properly either, so we left it on its usual timer function and hoped there’d be hot water in the morning. There was.

My daughters sometimes worry about me and ‘randomers’. They think I’m too friendly and gullible. Despite this, I invited the couple for a drink later. As it turned out, they were a delight. Maria played the guitar, and she and Guillaume sang beautifully in French together. Afterwards we chatted long into the evening by the fire.

Now I know: I need either a new switch or a new hot water tank.