THE HORROR, THE HORROR (PART ONE)

There are two kinds of expat Brit in France.

The first kind is retired, upper-middle-class, patrician, to be found mostly in the Dordogne or Provence, well established for 20 years or more. Public school and university education, very comfortably off thank you on their mandarin's pension or share options, they are to be found discreetly integrating into the prettier villages of rural France. Only identifiable by their UK registered cars and their Church shoes, they pass unobtrusively, speaking charming Eton-inflected French and ordering wines with an expertise that causes a Périgord sommelier to suck his teeth in admiration. Les Anglais, after all, are the greatest tastevins in the world. The men are tall, broad-shouldered, aquiline-nosed, trim silver moustaches lending them a military bearing, vaguely reminiscent of John Cleese, sporting linen jackets and Panama hats; their wives petite, thin-lipped and copper-bronzed, in Jaeger linen dresses and Pinet shoes. They wash their Jaguars and Range Rovers on a Sunday (owned by who? Tata? Indian? some mistake, surely) and always book a table in advance.

The second type are younger and not quite so well-off, usually couples in their thirties with a brace of young in tow. They are unconditional francophiles, often French teachers, and fit in well, adopting the French holiday uniform of pedalpushers, deck shoes and sunglasses permanently on the head. The children will have French names like Amélie or Ottilie, and Félix or Raphaël, and are being groomed to eat mussels and snails at 9 p.m. like French children. They are unobtrusive and you'd only know they were British by sitting next to them in a restaurant, where the telltale well-thumbed copy of "Rough Guide to France" will be sticking out of the side pocket of hubby's North Face rucksack.

o o o O o o o

Then there are the people who owned the gite I booked for a week in the Vienne, the second least desirable department of France after, perhaps, the Creuse, but on the map deceptively close to the Dordogne. The photograph looked fine. In retrospect, I should have paid heed to the fact that they were not affiliated to any reputable French tourist organisation, but they're British, I thought, how bad can it be? We have standards.


It was certainly off the beaten track. There was a reason for that, I later found out - nobody's ever wanted to go there. I nearly missed the half-hidden sign to the village of Royston-sur-Vasey. There was nobody about when I arrived at the exact time I had informed them to expect me. A line of grey baggy underwear was hanging on the washing line. I knocked on the door, and eventually a blonde woman appeared, apologizing that she'd been reading and "Reg" had been watching the Ashes on Sky. Reg emerged, pot-bellied, long greasy grey hair, baggy shorts, singlet, flip-flops. Like a cross between Roy 'Chubby' Brown and Frank Gallagher. His wife, Beryl, was a pinched-faced middle-aged blonde out of Corrie. By the accent (forgive me, Pat, don't read any further if you don't want) from somewhere round Oldham. Or Burnley. Barnsley. BNP country. McChe has a theory that as a baby I must have had a terrifying experience with a babysitter from somewhere round there, as a certain kind of trans-Pennine accent can make me foam at the mouth and show signs of epilepsy.

His, for example

My cottage was dark, dingy, and unpleasantly furnished. But it was late and there was nowhere else to go. The kitchen smelled foul and there were a lot of bluebottles. Because they're cutting the wheat at the moment, they said, which is probably what the French peasant who sold them the ramshackle dungheap told them before he scuttled off to the Crédit Agricole, cackling. We exchanged pleasantries, if you can call them that. They'd been in France 8 or 9 years, and spoke not a word of French. I wondered what they'd done before in the UK, but couldn't bear to prolong the conversation any longer than necessary after Beryl told me - with not a flicker of irony - that they didn't want to go back to the UK as it was overrun with furriners. In the awkward silence that followed, I decided that he'd been either a drug dealer or a professional unemployed. It was as if Frank Gallagher had never made it back from that trip to France. They knew I worked in Brussels. They probably had it in for me already.


They had not offered to provide a meal and left me nothing to eat but a packet of biscuits, but luckily I had stopped off at a supermarket on the way, so made the best of a cold supper - I gave up on heating anything up when I saw (and smelled) the condition of the microwave. Everything in the cottage seemed to be cast-offs or bought from a car boot sale. There was a stack of books (Maeve Binchy, Catherine Cookson - not even Peter Mayle) and DVDs (Die Hard 2, The Grinch) and a huge pile of tourist information, most of it at least a couple of years out of date. A visitors' book was thinly inscribed, the last entry dating back to April said: "Great gite - apart from the flies". Two above-ground swimming pools took up some of the space of the vast garden, which had nothing else to commend it. There was at least Sky TV with 400 mostly unwatchable channels, all in English. I watched something about child beauty queen contests in Milton Keynes and couldn't work out if the programme was for or against. I retired early to bed and spent a fitful night on a wonky mattress, between faded and very worn sheets.


(to be continued tomorrow, if I can bear to relive it)