Google Reader

Well, the good news is that I finally got to see the wild snowdrops along the lane to Bardies, always an uplifting sight after January's post- Noel plummet into the doldrums. I nearly didn't make it because poor Ellie succumbed to a viscious winter virus that caused her to cough non-stop for over a week. The pain and exhaustion of it all left her sobbing through her sniffles, which no amount of hot chocolate and boiled eggs and soldiers could abate. Why is it that when one's child is ill, there is nothing to be done but come out in sympathy? I should be thankful, I know, that winter bugs are the stuff of normal life but the hypocondriac in me inevitably goes into overdrive. It was with a heavy heart that I left for the airport.

As I looked out of my aeroplane window half an hour or so out of Bristol, I could see that the whole of central France was still blanketed in snow. After the endless grey days of recent weeks, the sheer exhilaration of seeing the Pyrenees sparkling in snow and sunshine was just what the doctor ordered, although Bardies was bloody freezing when I arrived. Just like here, our little part of France has had the coldest 'hiver' for thirty years. I kicked myself for not having replenished the kindling nor made up the woodburners before our rapid post Christmas dash for Blagnac. Scrambling round with a torch in the stable, nervously marvelling at how bats manage to avoid one's clattering presence, is a necessary prerequisite chez nous to firing up the Jotul. I vowed next time to do this before I leave.

The bad news was that there was a huge puddle of water beside the woodburner, and an even bigger one dripping through from the floorboards above. It had even caused the cast iron to begin to rust, so it must have been dripping for a while. The really annoying thing is that we had shelled out almost nine hundred euros, to a building firm which has since gone bankrupt, to finish a re-roofing job that we had already paid for! I try to desist from moaning about French workmen because it's always the same wherever one lives. This time, though, I'm really pissed off. At huge expense, we had the roof completely redone with 'flexi-tuile' beneath the terracotta pantiles, so that if tiles slip off rainwater cannot get in. Clearly, our builders did not do their job and I stupidly paid up in good faith. No wonder they went bankrupt! You can only piss punters like us off so many times before people twig what's going on. Unfortunately, the parcel stopped with us, 'caveat emptor' and all that.

Our insurer, to whom we pay the equivalent of a five star Caribbean winter holiday each year, says that we are not covered for roof damage. To be fair to him, it was pitch dark when he came, so it was impossible to tell whether 'la fuite' was caused by the weight of recent heavy snowfalls or from negligence by our recalcitrant builders. For all I know, it was caused by residual damage from the 'tempete' of last winter, for which we didn't claim either. I am resigned to being stuffed. My big worry is ongoing damage. The water has already flooded through the cupboard in which I store my spare pillows and duvets, and damaged the armoire doors in the process. It all smells disgusting! 'Une catastrophe' indeed, but inevitably part of our peripatetic existence.

Meanwhile, in the garden, the miniature 'tete a tetes' are poking their shoots up already. We only discovered a whole spread of them when we hacked back a mass of hypericum a few years ago. As 'Paques' approaches they are always a thrilling sight, presaging painted, blown Easter eggs, chocolate cake, wild asparagus spears and the new season's lamb. We have always celebrated Easter 'en France' and it remains one of the great joys of the family calendar. I love to fill the house with yellow daffodils and blue hyacinths and enjoy the opportunity to lunch on the terrace, warmly wrapped up, with snow on the mountain tops in the far distance. I know that it is still weeks away, but the anticipation is mounting already. This year, for a change, we may try to fit in some skiing in the high Pyrenees beforehand, one of the upsides of a long, bitterly cold winter here.

The garden has been very much on my mind of late, indeed one of the principal reasons for this stolen visit. Pascal et Pascal finally removed the warped and redundant tree and the space below is suddenly full of light. We have an old iron pergola there, over which have sullenly slumped some ancient, pale 'grimpant' roses for many years. I already detect signs of new life and I am looking forward to their renaissance this year. The border, sadly neglected in the shade for so long and strangled with hypericum, is about to be completely rejuvenated with a dashing new planting scheme, worthy of the late, great Christopher Lloyd himself. We are saving the vibrant red/yellow summer hues for the pool planting scheme, complete with ambitious plans for cannas and bananas, and instead concentrating on soothing pinks, blues, creams and lilacs. Our plan is to work on the detail between now and the beginning of March, by which time it will be 'go,go,go!' I can't wait. Watch this space!

The pool area is to be re-planned 'a la Beth Chatto'. We have struggled for years with grass, always unhappy with too much relentless heat and the salt water from the swimming pool. Now, 'finalement', we are going to have a go at a gravel garden. The reality of climate change has impacted even on our little micro climate. We do get significant rain in the summer still, but the unpredictability of it can cause us to lose plants much more quickly than in the past. Now, it is not unknown for it to rain for days on end in July or August, just when all one's relatives have arrived laden with suncream, shorts and sunhats, and then, when they have disappeared off home disgruntled, for it to metamorphose into a mini 'canicule'. Nowadays, we simply never know. If such unpredictability is bad for us, heaven knows what it's like for our struggling flora and fauna. If nothing else, gravel retains moisture, though heaven help us if it gets into the delicate pool filtration system.

The missing water supply to the pool still remains a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie herself. Karl, our extremely able 'plombier', has found all the pipework, which we had always known was there. When the pool was installed ten years ago, there was running water all the way from the house, fed by newly installed pipework channelled below the garden path. By the time we came to use the pool that first summer of operation, it had mysteriously disappeared, cut off somewhere en route. We have never been able to establish the reason, nor could our architect. We are now seriously beginning to believe that it was an act of sabotage by someone with a grudge against our architect, though, for what reason, we cannot begin to hazard a guess. Meanwhile, a hose is our only supply, which is far from ideal. We persevere.

It has been strange being totally alone here, with ghostly echoes of Christmas past at every turn. If I close my eyes, I hear the children's laughter, their music, their TV shows and videos. I see my family around the dining room table, Peter carving at the head. I see Richard and Jasmine at the piano, playing Tchaikovsky and Chopin, Julia and the girls with their guitar and violins, playing and singing carols, Peter on his guitar playing blues, Tessa helping me in the kitchen, Grandma looking benignly on. And behind them are the legions of our predecessors, celebrating Noel in their own unique way, like us but different. We are a small part of a very long chain, like the snowdrops in the hedgerow and the tete a tetes in the garden. Snowdrops and sniffles are just a small part of the continuum of human existence, are they not?

OK, I know I'm about to wade in where angels fear to tread but those of you that know me knew that I would, didn't you? One of my biggest problems in life is that I just can't keep my mouth shut, especially where issues of justice and fairness are concerned. This week we are observing Holocaust Memorial Day, a very important jolt to the senses every year, I always think, and never more so than today, which is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Russians. Those of you that read my 'Wilcommen, Bienvenue, Welcome' blog some months ago will know how moved we all were by out trip to Auschwitz in December 2007. I defy anyone to go there and not think 'there but the grace of God'.

As a history student in the days before colour television was invented [only joking!], I found myself forever pondering how one of the most civilised and cultured nations could have acquiesed to such a load of racist bunkum. We cannot lay the blame on the Wagnerian images of blond, Aryan, blue eyed and supernatural beings of German mythology. No, the road to 'The Final Solution to the Jewish Question' was perpetrated in little more than an hour by Reinhard Heydrich and his fellow Nazi and SS leaders at the Wannsee Conference, held on the outskirts of Berlin, in 1942. Certainly, many horrific atrocities preceded this event but it was only in 1942 that one of the greatest crimes against humanity was validated.

In between the first performance of 'Das Rheingold' in Munich on September 22nd 1869, the prologue to Wagner's vast operatic trilogy, 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', and the Wannsee Conference on January 20th 1942, there was a constant 'drip, drip' of anti-Semitism. It is easy to see with hindsight how miniscule, unattributed stabs gradually cut away at the very fabric that bound German society together. The cuts became tears, and then slashes, until eventually whole swathes of the German population had been torn completely into redundant and disposable pieces. It was not long before the exercise was repeated throughout the rest of Europe. How could it have happened? The question is as pertinent today as it ever was.

But it could not possibly happen again, I hear you say, and please God, you are right. Carly Whyborn, chief executive officer of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said this week,"Britain is not Nazi Germany in the 1930's. It is not Pol Pot's Cambodia. But on Holocaust Memorial Day we can pause to look at how we treat those around us. We can all make the choice to challenge exclusion when we see it happening - we can choose to stop using language that dehumanises others and we can stop our friends and family from dehumanising and excluding others." Martin Stern, a Dutch survivor of Theresienstadt, says, "we won't solve the problem by UN resolutions on genocide. The only hope is that in the future every child in the world should be educated to immunise it against the tendency to hate others and to regard others as inferior."

Yet in the same week that we publicly remind ourselves of the lessons from our immediate history, France decides to recommend a total ban on Muslim women wearing the niqab, the full veil, in public places. I may be missing something but, as I understand it, the percentage of women donning such attractive and enticing attire is less than 0.1% of France's total Muslim population. I mean, after all, how many women would voluntarily opt for such incarceration. I may be opening myself to a massive deluge of hate mail but, really, it strikes me that the bulk of these women who say that it is their choice are educated, smart, sassy women, with a chip on their shoulder and the Islamic equivalent of two fingers up to Sarkozy's all -controlling state. Just who is the proponent of free and unfettered choice here?

The niqab is a cultural relic from the middle east. Saudi Arabia, with its Wahabi brand of extreme and anti feminist Islam, is the great perpetrator of such illiberal dress codes. Women do not have a choice there about not wearing it, any more than women in France will soon have a choice about whether they can choose to wear it and keep their jobs or claim their benefits. The big difference is that Saudi women have no choice and are therefore no real threat to the social order. French women do have a choice and, as a consequence, are seen to threaten the status quo. These women, many it has to be said, who are converts, flaunt their veils voluntarily, and that is their crime. Historically, none of us really cared about the veil when women were kept quiet behind closed doors, least of all the likes of men obsessed with beautiful and alluring women, like Nicolas Sarkozy.

Why is it always the women who are made the scapegoats in these power games? And now, as if some great practical joke has been played on the women of Afghanistan, Gordon Brown and Hamid Karzai are talking about making deals with deeply dodgy members of the Taliban, with appalling human rights records, and bringing them into the so-called democratic political process. It beggars belief. We pussyfoot around, making daft and wildly inaccurate speculation about the chosen attire of women in our own privileged communities, whilst we sell out our sisters to help exit a war we never wanted in the first place. With the Taliban back in town, the genie has sure as hell been let out of the bottle now. My heart goes out to the women of that beautiful and beleaguered country.

My own views on the veil are somewhat coloured by my education at the hands of Ursuline nuns. They had a very nice line in wimples, and there is not, as far as I can see, very much difference. They were certainly de-sexualised, permanently, as it happens, because of their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Not much difference there then. In fact, the headmistress of my school, a six footer in stockinged feet, called Sister Philip, bore a striking resemblance to the late, great Peter Cook in 'Bedazzled'. When you have grown up with women clad from head to toe in black, you do not fear them in the least. In all truthfulness, I can't say that the issue of what women wear, however long or short, high-necked or low cut, black or white has ever really bothered me in the slightest. Surely, after all, that is one of the privileges of living in a free society? Whilst I would not relish my daughter adopting the tattoos and piercings of a Goth, I don't honestly think that it would justify throwing her out of the house.

With my own children I have always worked on the principle that if you say, "Yes, Darling, you look wonderful," and try your very best not to show any emotion in your face, as your eyes widen to the size of saucers, they usually tire of the desire to shock. Often, I found, threatening to adopt a fashion vaguely similar did the trick, particularly when tattoos were being considered. My big fear for the young women of France is that this very cowardly and silly recommendation will encourage droves of young Muslim women to make a stand. It would not be unreasonable, after all, to stand up for one's rights. We've all done it when we've felt we've been cornered. It's a natural human response. When I was young I did things that I'm now ashamed of, purely out of sheer bloody-mindedness. Why do we suppose young Muslim women are any different?

But, I guess, that's the real point. We do think that they are different. We do, somehow, and by proxy, think that we know what's best for them. We think that they are a threat to the very foundation of our liberal state. We think that it is the stuff of nightmares, the beginning of the rolling back of everything that we hold most dear. They, I suspect, think they are the height of edgy chic, the Islamic equivalent of punk or grunge. They strut their stuff with pride, especially on the smartest shopping streets in Paris and London. It identifies and radicalises them. It gives their lives meaning. It empowers them rather than subjugates them. In short, their niqabs are the very antithesis of everything we believe them to be.

I have listened to smart, young, giggling girls, swathed in black from head to toe, in Whiteley's or Selfridge's, and I promise you their conversation is the chat of all young women. I am sure that the same conversations are heard by other women every day in Lafayette and Bon Marche. "Shall I take the red or the black?" is a question about shoes, not cables. They are not a threat to us. I have no doubt that they are much more of a threat to their potentially militant brothers. They have made a choice, and they are proud of it. We should leave them be. We should stop this 'drip, drip' of cultural superiority right now and concentrate on the lessons of Holocaust Memorial Day. We owe it to our children.

Just when I was beginning to feel those winter blues creeping up on me, despite a good effort on the work front, a friend rang to suggest meeting up in Paris for some serious R and R. Well, what can a girl say? Bien-sur! I wouldn't have passed up the opportunity for the patisserie in Paris and a few days indulging my love of art for all the cheap offers on Easyjet. Indeed, it was the best of all possible worlds. I was able to meet up with my darling friend, Caroline, by train - she arriving at Montparnasse from Toulouse, me at Gare du Nord from London. Our little group was complete when Carole flew in from Bristol with her two very beautiful and utterly delightful daughters.

Spending time with young people always lifts the spirits, particularly when they laugh at your jokes and don't treat you like the geriatric that you know you are not that far off becoming. Holly, who is 25, is a History of Art student at Bristol University and passionate about her subject. Rosie, a mere 21, is an art student and loving all that that entails. Their mother owns a fabulous contemporary art gallery in Clifton, which shows Caroline's eclectic work amongst others of the great and the good, including Terry Fost and Patrick Caulfield. I was the joker in the pack, with merely a desire to be an 'artist', but probably rather more of the liquid variety!

We found our 'appartement' through my good friend and Caroline's sister-in-law, Inez Sarramon, who had borrowed it on our behalf from a male friend, who is away from some months in Argentina. It was fabulous, and not just because it was in the Marais, in the 4th Arrondisement, which is one of the most prestigious addresses in Paris. It was a penthouse flat with double patio doors and balconies on three sides, looking out in every direction. To the south-east, to the blue tubes and red and white cubes of the Pompidou Centre, to the east, to the Gothic church of St Gervais, to the north east, to the grande dame of Paris, Notre Dame, lit up in remembrance of its central place in the city's history, and to the north, the blue-white, shimmering dome of Sacre Coeur. It was too muggy and misty to see Montmartre, but through the haze we could just make out the line of the Eifel Tower. Location! Location! Location, indeed!

The owner, like many artistic and cultured gay men, is a man of exquisite and cosmopolitan taste. Everywhere one looked was a feast for the eye. There is a terrace covered in terracotta pots filled with greenery which, even in winter, were luscious and thriving. Amongst them, wherever one's eye alighted, were artefacts from around the world. Heads, masks, lanterns, candleholders and sculptures were displayed in their full glory and it was so very sad that the weather prevented us from sitting out and savouring their presence, alongside the fabulous views. The youngsters, however, made the most of the exterior space in their almost hourly requirement for a nicotine fix.

Inside, the art was to die for! Having detested my mother's penchant for snazzy 50's furniture when I was growing up, chucking out lovely Victorian pieces in the process, I have never understood the collector's obsession with that period. Not now! I am totally and utterly converted, for to see it laid out in minimal style and surrounded by contemporary art and beautiful things, it was a joy to behold. Against a background of plain white walls, the elegant, simple lines of simply curved veneered furniture works perfectly with contemporary style. Hugo's collection, from his multifarious trips abroad, of amazing cosmopolitan pieces, could not possibly have been shown off to better effect. In my bedroom, there was even the most fantastic collection of black and white photographs, mainly of men, engaged in sports ranging from boxing to gymnastics. I could have died a happy woman there and then.

After dinner chez nous, [from an afternoon's food shopping indulgence, prosciutto, a morel fettucine, followed by a walnut, Roquefort and feuille de chene salad, and not one, but two, tartes aux pommes, all washed down with copious quantities of vin rouge], we were ready for bed in anticipation of some serious art observing. The next morning, it really didn't matter that the weather was grey, because in the Rodin Museum on 79 rue de Varenne, Rodin's beautiful chateau home, the natural light from the vast array of windows all around dominated the great man's life's work within. If ever a soul dominated a space, then Rodin pervaded every pore of his grand domestic interior. You could physically feel his strength of will and purpose from beyond the grave. No wonder poor little Camille Claudel, such a talented artist in her own right, was so overwhelmed. It seems to me that she was like a butterfly at the foot of a bear.

When I saw the Rodin exhibition in London, I have to confess that I was underwhelmed, despite the very great talent of his bronze founder, Alexis Rudier. We know his work so well, it is almost too prolific. We have been so saturated by images of 'The Thinker', 'The Kiss' and 'Ugolino' that we take them for granted. Mostly, we have not seen the real thing so our perception is tainted. It is the price we pay for high exposure. As a society we know more about these great men of art and their works, but we have become inured to their true value. Like music downloads, at the flick of a mouse, we can indulge our thirst for knowledge but we cannot experience the real thing. Just as a great concert gives us an insight into the personality of the performer, so the soul of an artist speaks to us through the physicality of his work. There is no substitute for the real thing.

Here, not only can we see 'The Burghers of Calais', 'The Gates of Hell' and 'The Danaid', to name but a few, in the place that he so loved and where he worked from dawn until dusk, we can also see hundreds of smaller and less well known pieces. We can see his maquettes. We can see his portraits and some of his drawings. We can walk in his garden and savour its views. In short, we can walk in the great man's steps. We can see the work of Camille Claudel too, which is beautifully and sympathetically executed and not to be underestimated. We were privileged, for currently in residence is the Rodin/Matisse exhibition. Like the Picasso/Matisse at Tate Modern, I had no idea of the relevance of a contemporaneous showing of their respective works. It is always a revelation, and this week was no exception.

Whilst Caroline favoured Rodin's drawings as far superior to the creator of 'Fauvism', I wasn't so sure. Side by side, Matisse seems much heavier handed, less sensuous [and sensual], and considerably more free with interpretation. Despite her preference, and I greatly respect her superior knowledge, I still love Matisse's drawings and would happily have them on my walls. I said to her that I felt that Matisse was a 'voyeur', looking but not touching, whereas one had the feeling that Rodin had explored every hidden nook and cranny of the models that he depicted so beautifully. This man loved women and he knew what turned them on. The sensuousness and intimacy of lovers whispers hidden sweet nothings from every sketch. He knew his power and he used it ruthlessly.

From there, after an omelette and a glass of wine, we headed to the Musee d'Orsay where, unhappily, the permanent and stunning collection of Impressionist art is temporarily housed on the ground floor whilst its permanent location is being renovated. Had I not been many times before, I would have been disappointed. Then again, maybe not, for just to see this mind-blowing collection is the highlight for me of a trip to Paris. As with the Rodin, after endless birthday cards and Athena posters, there is a danger of saturation because one feels one already knows so many of them intimately. Not so. They are alive and kicking and the biggest high this side of legal! The vibrancy, the life, the light, the colour and the narrative of these paintings is the stuff of legend. We know them because they speak to us. They tell of the lives of ordinary people, 'paysans', painters, ballet dancers, music hall girls and prostitutes, and we know them. There is Oscar Wilde, with his luminous red nose enjoying himself in the dim light of the 'Moulin Rouge', alongside the poor little flat foreheaded bronze ballet dancer, with her real tutu and cream satin ribbon, wishing for the opportunity of a new life in the 'corps de ballet'.

This is Paris. This is life. Many of the paintings depict life in other places, like Rouen, or Arles, or even Tahiti, but they belong to Paris. They are a magnificent part of the history of this great city, and we love them for it. They are its heritage, just as they are ours. Where were they when the Germans rolled in in 1940? Where did they go? What lives have they led? They speak of the resilience of this great city, for they are still here to tell us their story. I could not imagine a life without them. Like a long lost lover, every time I come here I have to run and see them. They look even more enticing in January because the world outside is so grey. And, even better, you don't have to queue to see them. There is hardly a soul around you to encroach on the pure joy of such blissful reunion. As Eurostar is full of lots of £69 special offers at present, probably because people are worried about breakdowns due to fierce weather, I would recommend you jump on a train from St Pancras International and treat yourself to the best and cheapest high in the world. I love Paris anytime, and the great advantage of January is that it's almost all yours. Go on, spoil yourself! You're worth it!

January is a quiet time for most of us. The excesses of the festive season have taken their toll and most of us feel instantly queasy at the prospect of another mince pie or piece of Christmas cake, never mind a swig of Stone's Ginger Wine or Amaretto [now unfashionably called 'Disaronno'!], or whatever secret tipple it is that you only ever indulge in over the Christmas period. We vow to give up drinking, diet and take more exercise but the crippling cold mitigates against our good intentions and we finish up behaving just as badly, only we now feel guilty about it. Next year my New Year's resolution will be to not make any New Year's resolutions until the advent of spring. I want to see buds on the trees and bulbs in full bloom before I deprive myself of life's little pleasures.

I am one of those weird, warped people that actually likes January. I love to curl up with a good book by a fire, or watch crap movies on TV, or God forbid, 'Silent Witness', after a good stew or casserole and a glass or two of a robust, preferably Languedoc, red wine. More importantly, I always find that I am inspired to work, albeit at a leisurely pace, in January. There are so few distractions to lure me away from my desktop, I give in gracefully and go to bed genuinely looking forward to getting up in the morning and getting going again. Lunch, of course, intervenes, especially when I decide to raid the vegetables in the fridge to make masses of hearty soup. Apart from the ritual of making it at the beginning of the week [stock from Sunday lunch's chicken, peeling and preparing vegetables, watching over pot etc], it's a warm and welcoming interlude in the course of a day's gentle work.

Being a natural dilettante, though, even with minimal distraction, my limited concentration wavers as the natural light begins to wane. Charlie, our Jack Russell, will not let me ignore him indefinitely. He always senses when I am beginning to tire of my labours and knows exactly how to redirect my attentions. Even if I wanted to continue writing, I couldn't. No matter what the weather, we have to head off to the riverbank and the playground where his fellow canine chums hang out. Like teenagers in jeans and sloppy sweatshirts with hoods, dogs are pack animals, for sure. The upside of being a dog 'mum' for me is that I get to meet other owners, but more importantly, that I have become much more acutely aware of the miniscule daily changes of a single season.

There is always something new to see, like a secret cosmic message, which presages the change to come. January, more than any other month, keeps itself to itself and hides its hidden treasures, like a pirate's secret map. You know that there are hidden gems, but you have to search very hard to find them. Along the lane at Bardies, one of the greatest joys of the whole year is to see the tiny, delicate, wild snowdrop bulbs pop their heads up into the cold January air. They are so fragile, their flowers can be destroyed in minutes by a hailstorm or vicious downpour. As quickly as they come up, so they disappear for the rest of the year, when they are only sleeping. They have been there for generations and their brief sojourns above ground must have warmed the hearts of so many before us.

I am sad because this year I think I shall miss them. The heavy snowfalls and perishing cold in the UK has made travelling parlous. Since we set off for Bardies on 17th December, and wrecked the car in the snow in the process, the British weather map has been more akin to an Alpine one. With airports closed on a weekly basis and Eurostar regularly getting stuck in the tunnel, for the first time that I can remember, I haven't been down to my beloved Bardies in January with my laptop in tow. Post the hard work and chaos of Christmas, I have always relished starting my year's work off with time to myself, and there is nowhere in this world more conducive to creativity than Bardies [but, hey, I'm biased!]. Tucked up in the warm, with my music, books and computer for company, I need for nothing. I could, and would, hibernate there all winter if there were no other demands on my time.

In this semi-hibernation mode, I began to muse on how other non-employees like me work. Whenever I read an obituary, I am always taken aback by how prolific so many talented people have been. It similarly occurs to me, though, that for many people maybe it just seems to be so. I heard the supremely gifted Jennifer Saunders saying on the radio the other day that she had been known to dictate new material to her young daughters, who wrote it all down in pencil and crayon, in the car on the way to a script deadline meeting. Over a whole lifetime, it matters less how much you produce as the quality of it when you finally get round to doing it. Surely for all of us, our natural instinct is to sleep the winter away?

As the scholarly Graham Robb says in his wonderful book, 'The Discovery of France', that men and women who did almost nothing for a large part of the year tend not to figure prominently in history books. "The tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. Entire Pyrenean villages of wood, like Bareges on the western side of the Col du Tourmalet, were abandoned to the snow and reclaimed from the avalanches in late spring. Other populations in the Alps and the Pyrenees simply entombed themselves until March or April, with a hay-loft above, a stable to one side and the mountain slope behind." According to a geographer writing in 1909, he cites, "the inhabitants re-emerge in spring, dishevelled and anaemic". He goes on to say that human hibernation was a physical and economic necessity, since lowering the metabolic rate prevented hunger from exhausting supplies.

Nineteenth century economists and bureaucrats were appalled at such idleness and, just like today, compared France's more leisurely approach to productivity to the capitalistic and competitive economy of Britain. They were even more horrified by the troglodytic dwellings of the Dordogne, the Tarn, the Loire Valley, and the limestone and sandstone belt that stretches from the Ardennes to Alsace. Thousands of people disappeared into cliff faces, caves, chalkpits or quarries dug deep below the vineyards for months on end. In Arras and other Flanders towns, one third of the population lived in 'boves', from an old French word for 'cavern', in whole cities carved into medieval quarries. Their priority was survival, not economic growth, and the impetus for trade remained social rather than economic. "Most felt safer cocooned in idleness," says Graham Robb.

Sitting here in Salisbury on a cold, snowy January night, I can see their point. With no light, power or heat, and almost no food to sustain them, they were totally at the mercy of the elements. Life underground in the sleep-inducing gloom was infinitely preferable to the hardships above. Long nights and lazy days became the norm and, by all accounts, remained so until well into the twentieth century. It seems to me to have been a much better life than that of the average British mill worker and it goes a long way towards explaining our different cultural and economic heritages. Who knows, the EU Working Time Directive may have its roots in such ancient custom and practice.

So, for now, I am making the most of this time. Gone are the usual stresses and strains and demands on my time, for the snow has given us all a sense of perspective. Things that we would have loved to have done, we have been forced, along with our cars, to abandon. Work is enjoyable because it is uninterrupted by extraneous, and usually unnecessary, considerations. Life evolves into a rhythm and we seek out and find our inner selves in the process. I would say, 'Long may it last', but I also know that its true appeal lies in its temporariness. Spring will come, gradually, and these long nights and lazy days will be no more. For then I will look back with pleasure at my uninhibited slothfulness, as I rush round to catch up with everything that must be done, and for which there is no time to wait.

Well, what a fun time we've had. I always feel so sad that Christmas finally comes to an end on 6th January. When we were children, it really did start on 24th December with the decorating of the tree and it always ended, not quite as ceremoniously, on the feast of the Epiphany. It was still a special day in the winter calendar, for the Three Kings from the Orient were jolly bringers of gifts. The taking down of the tree was a special rite, with the same distant glimmers of future light as T.S Elliot so poetically propounds in 'The Wasteland'. Of course, when we lived in Madrid 'Los Reyes' was a bigger celebration than than 'Navidad' itself. Most Spanish children had to patiently bide their time through the twelve days of Christmas before they got their presents. Thank goodness, Freddie was only a tot and Ellie just a twinkle in her dad's eye!

The market saturation of the capitalist economic model, from the moment that some enterprising young 'tanenbaum' importer spotted Prince Albert's marketing potential, until now, when Waitrose et al begin stocking their shelves before the end of September, has changed the nature of Christmas for the worse. So many people are sick to death of the whole over-indulgent business that they are treeless by the evening of the 1st January. OK, I know in Austria and Bavaria they often take their trees down to make way for the brightly coloured decorations and firework bonanzas for 'Sylvestre', but that's different, I feel. For one thing, we don't have any skiing to cheer ourselves up!

My Christmas tree has stayed put! For one thing, we had to leave it up at Bardies because we ran out of time. The poor, dead car remained behind, looking decidedly sorry for itself, as we made our own way to Blagnac and onward to Bristol on Easyjet. It wasn't easy transporting two years worth of revision books and files for my daughter's mocks by plane, nor taking our son's keyboard home which he had deemed essential for his composition assignment. Dealing with European offices of insurance companies between 18th December and 2nd January has given us an interesting insight into the EU Working Time Directive. Indeed, one excuse for their tardiness was that they had not answered their telephones because the Christmas party was in progress. I wonder just how many parties they had?

Today, finalement, Regine, my neighbour, has rung to tell me that the car has gone. A result, although poor Regine was convinced that it had been stolen. There is no snow at Bardies currently she tells us, but Regine says that it is due. Back here in Salisbury, our garden looks like Narnia. It is beautiful, but with our 4 wheel drive in transit, we are virtually immobile. The insurance company refuses to give us a replacement vehicle until the car is 'in repair', rather than abandoned awaiting transit. I will desist from putting any expletives into print, but most words required to describe this ludicrous stalemate begin with the letters 'f' and 'b'!

We have SNOW! Lots and lots of it! The last time I remember snow like this, I was twelve. What a great present for the twelfth day of Christmas, for some of us idle romantics and dilettantes anyway. I love the way the UK just gives up the ghost and gives in gracefully to the elements. Sod it, we think, instead of battling near Arctic conditions, let's just give the kids a day off school and all have some fun instead. Overnight, we all metamorphose into children again and everyone is nice to each other. We are lucky, for we live in the city. I managed to hobble in with my bruised ribs to get to the dentist for my next major dental reconstruction and pick up fresh bread, milk and vegetables on the way. Everywhere was so quiet and everyone was so kind. People seem to be rekindled with the spirit of the Blitz. Friends kindly offered to take our daughter back to school in Blandford in their 4 x 4. She, unsurprisingly, declined, having already been told by her housemistress not to risk the journey.

Many people who did decide to chance it were not so lucky. Being stuck all night on the A3 near Petersfield must have been a nightmare, and thousands are without heat and light in this perishing cold. I am in seventh heaven. We have the fire going, the remains of the ham bone from Christmas making the stock for a hearty ham and pea soup and the Aga [sorry, I've admitted my one last uncontrollable addiction!] keeping the kitchen warm and cosy. I've bought the parsnips to make Jane Grigson's curried parsnip soup for tomorrow, and the potatoes to make a big fish pie with some of the contents of the freezer. I've also got enough mince to make lasagne for the whole street! There's something about cold weather and comfort food, and bugger the waistline. Oh, and I've still got my Christmas tree lights twinkling in the icy darkness. The only blight on the horizon is that they must come down by midnight or bad luck will fall upon us. Old Catholics like me don't dare take too many chances! Happy 'Los Reyes' everyone. Only 353 days to go until the First Day of Christmas!

As the last of our festive stragglers disappears out of the door and the mountain of clearing up begins in earnest, and I waddle around due to the agony of seriously bruised ribs compounded by the excesses of Christmas, I find myself reflecting on the fundamental joys of Christmas 2009. Having all the family together again for one last major beanfeast, before some of the teenagers decide to disappear off to newfound friends and families in years to come, was the greatest of them. With a whole ocean and a continent dividing us, it proved to be a very precious time forging new bonds and reaffirming old ones.

The American cousins have never spent Christmas with us, despite the older ones being seventeen. Thanksgiving is the main family holiday in the States so my sister-in-law usually just has the 25th December off work. As a single 'mom' of three, she cannot afford the luxury of unpaid Christmas leave, so the choice inevitably is between a summer holiday or an expensive Christmas trip. The airlines know that they have their Christmas pricing policy sussed! The double whammy of using up your precious holiday leave [never generous in the USA at the best of times!] and paying an arm and a leg to bring four full fare 'adults' across the pond mitigates against everyone being together. So this year was indeed something special.

Having Christmas at Bardies, en famille, then was the icing on the cake [which I only just managed to finish moments before they all came through the door!]. I even managed to make a 'stollen' this year too! We had a few anxious moments as we read and saw the horrendous holiday disruption being reported on the evening news but, remarkably, everyone made it with the minimum of delays. One brother-in-law flew from Dresden, via Schipol, the other drove down after taking an overnight crossing to St Malo with his family. My sister-in-law drove over the mountains from Heidlberg in a rental car because her own car had given up the ghost battling snow drifts in southern Germany. My mother-in-law made it from Kent to Gatwick in thick snow to meet up with my other sister-in-law and her children, who had had the good sense to take the Gatwick Express from London. And Easyjet didn't let them down either. A miracle indeed.

We started as we meant to go on, with a huge lasagne brought down from Chiswick by my sister-in-law in a freezer bag, still frozen because the weather en route had been so cold followed by a warming panetone bread and butter pudding, made with lashings of extra butter, cream and dried fruit. Nineteen around the table was a hoot and the logistics of serving everyone were helped by some deft changes to our kitchen layout - turning my workbench into a serving 'counter' was a stroke of genius, even if I say so myself! The kids, at first a little reticent with each other, and with us, warmed up as the evening progressed. By the end of it they didn't seem too daunted at the prospect of sharing rooms of six and five respectively, one sure way of getting to know one another pretty rapidly.

Christmas Eve got off to a cracking start with a solo performance on the piano of 'The Nutcracker', complete with narration and props, by my brother-in-law. I should really qualify this by saying that, as an ex Opera House Director of Music and Conductor, he does it for a living, giving solo pre-performance talks of all the major operas at the Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig opera. He has always struggled with his sight but, now, tragically, like Beethoven he has lost his hearing, torture indeed for a brilliant musician. He has his own little business now, which is much in demand, so we get personalised performances whenever he is with us. The kids will never look at the 'Nutcracker' in quite the same way again.

As we quaffed smoked salmon blinis [the blinis freshly prepared by one sister-in-law], sausage rolls [from the freezer cabinet of 'Les Mousquetaires', but surprisingly good], warmed mince pies [from Waitrose, of course!] and [pretentious or what!] 'Bellinis' [made the quick way a la recette de Jamie Oliver], we continued with carols in front of the Christmas Tree. As more alcohol was consumed, the quality of the singing deteriorated in inverse proportion. We might even have got onto 60's pop songs if we hadn't called time! I had made a huge fish pie during the afternoon so we were able to stagger into dinner without too much extra work. This was followed by Nigella Lawson's divine Clementine cake [actually, it was mine but you know what I mean!]. It was such a shame, though, that we managed to get the times of the Midnight Mass in the Cathedral in St Lizier wrong because the French go in for early starts and 'minuit' is pretty much the finale.

For Christmas Day, in true French style, we had capons, which were absolutely delicious. We started with some of Caroline's 'mi-cuit' foie gras [this is France!] and brioche, followed by the capons with all the usual trimmings. I had had the good sense to bring fresh cranberries with me to make a cranberry, port and orange relish. I had also brought vacuum packed chestnuts to make the stuffing because I have never seen any chestnut trees around us. The 'pigs in blankets' had been brought down especially from Marks and Spencer's in Chiswick because my fifteen-year-old daughter had been adamant that it wouldn't be Christmas without them. We even found Brussels sprouts locally, at the third attempt, which is more than many managed in the UK I gather. Sadly there were no parsnips to be found in a twenty kilometre radius, but with mounds of roast potatoes and honey glazed carrots, though, I don't think that anyone noticed.

The bread sauce I made with my own bread, because my darling mother-in-law had bought me a Panasonic bread machine a few years ago for my birthday "just in case you have a crowd, Lola, and can't get to the shops". Brilliant for times of mass catering like this, when the idea of slicing crusts off the round edges of baguettes is just a little too daunting. My mother-in-law had also made her legendary Christmas Pudding, which we served with creamy rum sauce from the family Father Christmas Toby jug [promised in her will to my sister-in-law in San Francisco!]. By the end of it, we were well and truly ready for the Christmas present unwrapping fracas, interrupted midway by the teenagers' urgent need to see the Christmas 'Doctor Who' special, which by all accounts was well below par. We finally got to bed, deliciously over indulged but thoroughly content, at 4.00am!

Boxing Day brought home baked muffins followed by much needed walks in the winter sunshine and trips to St Lizier and St Girons. For lunch, we had a whole leg of organic unsmoked ham, lovingly prepared by my sister-in-law and driven down, with festive coleslaw, home-made soup, baked potatoes, antipasti and salad, and the most divine cheese from Madame Gilbert in St Girons. A French 'fromagier' will never sell you a cheese which is anything other than perfectly ripe for the occasion. We had Brie, Camembert, and four different types of chevre and even the teenagers demolished platefuls saying that they had never tasted cheese so good. I had brought a Stilton with me but it remained unopened. Somehow it didn't seem quite right.

So now we're consuming all the delicious leftovers. We waved the German cousins off with sandwiches of Madame Gilbert's Brie and ham, mince pies, left over chocolate cake and fresh fruit for their long trek home. Those destined for Blagnac didn't need a packed lunch, sadly. It all seems to have gone so quickly, like Clara's 'Nutcracker' dream. The house is quiet, but ours again. We miss everyone terribly but it's nice to be just four. We talk and chat and curl up with new DVD's. We loved 'Milk' and 'Benjamin Button' especially, the first time that I've sat down in over a week.

Even the leftovers taste great. Last night we finished the fish pie and clementine cake. Today we had smoked salmon and cheese for lunch. Tonight it's ham and eggs with the remains of the 'leek gratin', followed by leftover bread and butter pudding. We seem to have eaten our way through the Christmas cookies [Nigella, again!], the chocolate orange muffins [Darina Allen] and the delicious stollen brought from Dresden by my brother-in-law, as well as the Christmas 'lebkuchen' brought from Heidlberg by the German contingent. Needless to say, the Christmas cake [mine!] and the big chocolate panetone [Carluccio's] haven't been touched. I wonder why? We are all stuffed after a festive feast of food, glorious food, that's why! The diet starts on 1st January!

Unbelievably pour moi, it's a whole month since I managed a posting. The last week of November and these mad, crazy three December weeks before Christmas have been fuddled in a haze of dental pain and, now, bruised ribs and a badly bashed big toe. Oh, woe is me! I am rapidly realising, the closer I get to my free bus pass, that after a certain age everything starts to wear out! First it was my eyes. Nowadays, I can't see a bloody thing without +3.0 glasses, which I seem to lose faster than Boots manage to restock them [obviously, my brain is going the same way too!]. Now, it's my teeth. There is no pain as debilitating as major tooth ache and two root canals and a shedload of painkillers and anitibiotics later, I am finally back on track for the festive frivolities.

The bruised ribs and blackened toe, however, are a more recent acquisition. There we were feeling thoroughly smug with ourselves that we had got through 'le Tunnel' with a mere two hour delay [at the time we couldn't understand why the sign said that this was due to winter conditions - little did we know!]. Once we got into France, it was like Narnia, only with HGV's and other more modern vehicles. The snow was falling in large flakes on the autoroute all the way to Rouen but the road remained open, despite the Arctic conditions. The gritters and 'saliers' had been out in abundance and it was apparent immediately that this is what the French get in return for their decidedly hefty taxes.

We managed to get as far as Orleans, by which time we had decided that the snow was becoming too icy and treacherous to push our luck too far. Safely tucked up in our functional, corporate designed Novotel bedroom after the obligatory steak/frites dinner, we turned on the TV. The full scale of the carnage on the French roads became apparent. People were stranded in their cars everywhere, but especially to the east in Alsace. The gods were certainly with us. After a couple of centimetres of overnight snowfall, we set off the following morning with no idea what to expect on the autoroute. It was deserted. The road was clear, every illuminated sign announced that 'saliage' was in progress and we were amazed at how easy it all was.

The oddest thing of all was driving along a French motorway with no trucks. We couldn't understand what was going on. Had we missed something? Was there a 'greve'? Eventually, on the opposite carriageway we saw a huge line of lorries parked along the hard shoulder. We ploughed on, puzzled. Then, near Limoges, we saw a similar line of stationary trucks lined up on our carriageway, topped and tailed with gendarmes. Perhaps they had become stranded during the night? Finally, the mystery was solved when we were directed off the autoroute into what appeared to be a deviation. Our hearts sank, thinking that our 'bon chance' had finally run its course.

Then, as we reached the roundabout, more trucks materialised and we assumed that there had been an accident. But, no, to our utter amazement it rapidly transpired that the gendarmes had closed the motorway simply to take any stray trucks off it. We were allowed back on, along with the few other passenger vehicles, to continue our journey. In order to keep traffic flowing and reduce the risk of accidents, the French traffic police had decided to transfer all the HGV's to the 'routes nationales'. Great for us, but a bugger for them. It made me think of my friend Caroline de Roquette, who makes divine fresh 'mi-cuit' foie gras, losing tens of thousands of euros worth of stock during a lorry drivers' dispute in the run-up to Christmas a few years ago. Perishable goods wait for noone.

We got safely all the way to the tiny 'hameau' of Gavats, less than a kilometre from the house, where we turn left to begin the climb up to us. As we turned left, we slid down the slope and, with the heavy weight of ten tons of Christmas stuff, swerved uncontrollably into the side of a neighbour's house. Unsurprisingly, the wall won, but in the process my slackened seatbelt didn't engage fast enough and the impact well and truly took the stuffing out of me! Thankfully, we weren't going too fast but, my God, it hurt. And, just to compound my injuries, as I was thrown back my legs lifted off the floor and my right toe took the brunt of the momentum. You couldn't make it up! It was the stuff of 'Live at the Apollo'.

Determined to unpack the mountains of stuff in the boot and roof rack, we managed to hobble up the hill with no seatbelts and a badly bashed in driver's wing, with me moaning and groaning all the way. Home at last - to no heating and no hot water! It's everyone's worst nightmare. It had been turned on for us by a friend the day before but something had seriously malfunctioned. I rang our heating engineer, only to find that the office would be closed until 28th December. Then, I rang his mobile just to depress myself even further. At least, though, we had the woodburners, which solved the heating problem, but they do not provide hot water and we don't have an immersion heater. Oh well, tomorrow would be another day.

We woke up to a bitterly cold, beautiful clear day. Bardies shrouded in snow is the ultimate feelgood experience, even with bruised ribs, a bashed toe, a smashed up car and no hot water. The quality of light here is magical and because we are at 500 metres, it has the same ambiance as a ski resort. We battened down the hatches and prepared for a long wait, as nothing ever happens here at the weekend. I don't think that we have ever drunk as many mugs of hot tea! Only when Peter's business partner rang to say that he had spent all day on the M20 trying to get to Folkestone with his family, en route to Christmas in Geneva, and had to turn round and go home, did we realise our luck. When we turned on the television and saw the news footage of desperate and anxious stranded travellers, we guessed that we must have been some of the last people through.

Over the weekend, the tales of travellers' woe only got worse as Britain battled, and lost, its fight against the elements. It was a story of two countries divided by a small sea and a big tunnel. It's true that noone, least of all Eurotunnel and Eurostar, had been able to anticipate the full, horrendous impact of Arctic weather conditions on the functioning of their services. However, I have to say, after our experience, that there appears to be no comparison between how the UK and France manage their road transport system in a crisis. Is it a matter of funding or one of organisation, we ask ourselves? It would be very unfair of me to cast aspersions when I wasn't there, but I can't help thinking that you get what you pay for.

Meantime, our heating is working again, the house is decorated and the family has arrived. Our car is to be towed home but, thankfully, we have our trusty, ancient, French resident Jeep here for last minute shopping. We will not go hungry. We are nineteen for Christmas, the stuff of my next blog. It's grey outside, but bright and warm indoors. The fires are stoked, the Christmas tree lights twinkling, Bach's Christmas Oratorio blasting from the CD player and everyone, so far, is happy. It's Christmas. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

As the howling gales thrash the last of the autumn leaves off the trees, leaving them scattered in huge piles like confetti from a giant's wedding, my muscle memory kicks into action again. The nerves around my sternum still concentrate like tightly stretched elastic bands whenever I allow my mind to wander back. For, since the autumn of 2003, this time of year lurches me back to a dark, bleak place where even the turning on of the sparkling Christmas lights in Regent Street or Bond Street could do nothing to dispel the gloom of the hard winter looming ahead of us.

That year our eleven year old son, Freddie, had been diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. With only thirty or so cases a year, we were suddenly thrown from the security of a comfortable, complacent, cosy family life into the maelstrom that is the world of childhood cancer. Nothing prepares a parent for either the shock of diagnosis or the advent of night sweats as one anxiously contemplates the terror of possible outcomes. To say that one's life is turned upside down would be an understatement. Like the mythical Persephone, you find yourself cast into an alien underworld, a complete sub-culture of chemotherapy drugs, blood counts and antibiotics.

Freddie had commenced his gruelling pre-surgery chemo in the June of 2003 on Carousel Ward in the old Middlesex Hospital on Mortimer Street. Ironically, it was not a depressing place despite the fact that a children's cancer ward functions with its own language and points of reference, where a raised eyebrow or hesitant response can yield up a dozen nightmare scenarios. His surgery, to remove a sizeable tumour on his tibia just below his left knee, was scheduled for the 4th November, two weeks after his 6th session of chemo.

We knew that Freddie, now bald as a coot, had a small window of time where his blood counts would be stable. In a moment of madness, we decided to give him a a special treat and take him and his poor, neglected little sister to Eurodisney for a Halloween treat. Even though I secretly disapprove, I have to admit that the Americans do Halloween so well. The upside of the trip was that with his wheelchair and blue disabled badge, we were officially allowed to queue jump every ride. The downside was that poor Freddie got so tired out in the cold and damp, we needed to go back to the hotel to let him sleep at periodic intervals.

He was a trooper throughout and it gave him a much needed lift in advance of the prospect of losing almost half his tibia. Afterwards, with a week to spare, we decided to fly down to Bardies from Paris on the new Easyjet service. More than a trip to Eurodisney, Freddie wanted to get back to our beloved Bardies. For him, it represented a life before cancer and a life that he was determined to go back to once he was well again. As for me, I had never thought that we would get back at all, so it was with some joy and a great deal of trepidation that we arrived 'chez nous'.

No sooner had we lit the fire and put a casserole into the oven than Freddie began to complain that his chest hurt at the point where his intravenous 'Hickman line' was inserted. There was some residual blood around it so, as a precaution, I telephoned the hospital in St Girons and they said to bring him in immediately. Whilst Peter drove him down, I frantically called the Middlesex in London, where, fortunately, Krissie, his regular nurse, was on duty. "No worries", she said, in her best Aussie accent, "I expect that a bit of blood escaped due to pressure on the plane. Just get them to wash out the line with some saline, as per normal."

By the time I got back to Peter on his mobile, it had been done. We breathed a sigh of relief and thought that our troubles were over. We all went off to bed happy to be home, but to be on the safe side I put Freddie in the bed next to me. As I leant over during the night to check his temperature, as I always did throughout his treatment, I knew that something serious was brewing. He was like a furnace. When I checked his temperature properly with the thermometer it was pushing 40 degrees and therefore critical. I dressed rapidly, scooped him up and put him into the car for a mercy dash back to the hospital.

After a very brief 'triage', we were shown to our room. It was private, spotlessly clean and with a view up to St Lizier worthy of a tourist brochure. In the half light of the very early morn, the city towered, twinkling, above us. If I hadn't been so panic stricken, because by then Freddie was almost comatose, I might have appreciated it rather more. A succession of people, all dressed in white, came and went. They were so uniform in their uniforms that I had no idea if I was discussing the finer points of cancer treatment with the cleaner or the consultant.

Everyone, but everyone, was dressed from head to toe in white, with white leather clogs to accessorise their dazzling ensembles. There was not a dirty mark to be seen on one of them. No wonder the French health service is so costly - the laundry bills alone must take up a serious chunk of the annual budget! All around were hand disinfectant dispenser gels and, without fail, everyone washed their hands the moment they came into the room. I would find it hard to believe that a single MRSI bug could survive a second in that scrupulously clean environment. If you are going to be ill with a life threatening condition, you would want to be somewhere like this. You might miss the creature comforts of a British hospital, the pictures of Jemima Puddleduck and Winnie the Pooh, the ubiquitous mobiles and half-dead pot plants, or the general clutter and chaos, but you would know that no flesh eating bug would dare to stray within a kilometer of your bed.

I have to say, though, that the Middlesex was brilliant. The care standards were extremely high and the nurses and doctors dedicated, and never more so than when we were stuck, stranded and terrified, for a week in the hospital in St Girons. They directed operations from London through a bi-lingual Registrar, no mean feat as St Girons is a local hospital and has no expertise in the field of paediatric cancer care. After a succession of different intravenous antibiotics, Freddie began to revive and the panic abated. His temperature slowly reverted back to normal and we were given, albeit reluctantly, permission to travel.

After a week sleeping in a cot beside Freddie, with the best view imaginable, I was glad that we would be on our way back to Carousel and the next stage of Freddie's cancer journey. For, with all its faults, it had become our sanctuary and the place where we felt safe. Freddie remained a whiter shade of pale until his Hickman line was replaced but his surgery was successful. We had many more roller coaster rides through his treatment, a further eight gruelling chemo sessions followed his surgery, but none was as memorable as our week in the ward in St Girons. I missed the view, but most of all I missed the glass of wine with lunch and dinner. It could only happen in a French hospital!

As I sat down to write this, at two minutes past the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, with the BBC's live broadcast from Westminster Abbey in the background, I felt terribly sad. Here we are, in November 2009, with photographs on our newspaper front pages of a cortege of dead young men being driven from RAF Lyneham, through the Wiltshire village of Wootton Bassett, on their way to their temporary resting place at a hospital in Oxford. Where once we watched these moving services of remembrance thinking "lest we forget", now we look at them afresh, as we vow "we will remember".

When I was growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, no one talked about the war. Looking back, I can see that it was because its horrors were best left buried deep in the recesses of far distant memory. There were only three things about it that my mother, who nursed at Charing Cross hospital through much of it, ever told me. One was that she lost a favourite green leather shoe scrambling into an air raid shelter during one of the worst nights of the Blitz. Another was that her wedding ring [my parents married in 1942, when my father was on leave] was made from gold pooled by friends, otherwise they would have had no ring. The third was that she and her fellow nurses had had to cut down a poor dead airman who had parachuted out of his aircraft and somehow landed on the parapet outside their ward.

How many hundreds of other anecdotes had she hidden, I wonder? My father, who was in the RAF, never spoke about any of it although, to be fair, he had long died by the time my interest in history had manifested itself. My mother-in-law, who was a motorbike dispatch rider charging around the Chatham dockyards in the thick of it, has recounted very little. Rather like the reluctant tourist's return from an exotic holiday, laden with tales and photographs, they must have realised pretty quickly that no one wanted to know. A new dawn had begun and war was best forgotten. Remembrance Sunday came and went once a year, and that was that.

On my flight from Toulouse to Bristol last Saturday, I scavenged a free copy of 'The Daily Telegraph' from the British Airways newspaper rack as I boarded my Easyjet flight [it did say 'please take your complimentary copy', even if they had probably only intended them for their own customers!]. Inside, on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, was an illuminating article by Peter Parker, the biographer of the last British Great War veteran, Harry Patch, who died on 25th July this year at the ripe old age of 111. I had known that Patch had been called 'the reluctant hero' after his return, disillusioned, from the horrors of Passchendaele but beyond that I knew very little else about him.

It transpires that he had lost his Anglican faith when he left the army but later joined a choir hoping to revive it. "In the end, I went because I enjoyed the music and had friends there. But the belief? It didn't come. I felt shattered, absolutely, and didn't discuss the war with anyone from then on, and nobody brought it up if they could help it." In addition, according to Parker, he refused to join veterans' associations, had no wish to visit battlefields, never attended a regimental reunion and avoided all war films. It was only when the BBC wanted to film a documentary entitled 'The Last Tommy' in 2004 that he was persuaded to revisit Flanders. "What a waste. What a terrible waste," he memorably said.

I was reminded of a scene in the film version of Alan Bennett's superbly scripted 'The History Boys', almost as good as the stage play and with the same National Theatre cast. When Irwin, the new history supply teacher who aspires to a career in television, takes the boys to a war memorial, he asks them why they think has has brought them there. "To remember, Sir," they say. "No", he replies, "it is so that we can forget." And we did, didn't we?

Almost fifty years after the end of the Second World War came Bosnia, and Srebenica, and our attitude to war began to change. A sense of failure was seared into our complacent brains. Then, twenty one months into this new century, on 9/11, everything changed irrevocably. The poppies of Flanders' fields have now been replaced with the poppies of Afghanistan. Jonathan Friedland, writing in today's 'Guardian' headlines with "The coffins will keep coming until we conquer our amnesia on Afghanistan". It is a mess, a horrible, bloody mess, not least because we have forgotten why we went in there in the first place. A war whose aims have long been lost in the quagmire of international politics is taking young lives once again.

Harry Patch was conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in October 1916. Many of his friends had volunteered earlier for the Somerset Light Infantry. "We were the PBI - the Poor Bloody Infantry- and we were expendable," he said. I think of the fallen from Bardies today, too. Like the south west of England, the south west of France provided the infantry divisions in the Great War, the cannon fodder. The effects on the economy of both were devestating.

The Barthet family, who had owned the Chateau de Bardies since 1822, was decimated. Louis Barthet, the eldest son of Joseph and Marie Lesparda Barthet, survived but returned from the war wounded. His younger brother, Etienne was killed in 1916. Amelie, one of their sisters, married Captain Ambroise Henry, who was killed not long after the commencement of war. Suzanne, another sister, married Ambroise's younger brother, Lieutenant Auguste Henry, who was himself killed three weeks later.

There were many more from our little part of France who were sacrificed; the husbands and fiances of the maids, whose uniforms were still tucked away in 'armoires' upstairs when we bought the house, the gardeners who had left hidden traces under overgrown laurel trees, rather like at the lost gardens of Heligan, in Cornwall, the farmers who had tended and husbanded the land, the 'voisins' from the nearby 'hameaux'. They are commemorated in St Girons and will be remembered today.

The Second World War took a heavy toll too. George Crinon, who had married the daughter of Auguste and Simone Henry, professor of mathematics and principal of the college, was killed in June 1940 fighting for France. Many others, ununiformed, lost their lives as members of the 'maquis', the resistance, who were very strong in our area. The nearby village of Rimont on the main St Girons/ Foix road was the scene of a Nazi reprisal on 21st August 1944, when forty four trucks filled with soldiers newly back from the eastern front rampaged through the sleepy, innocent village. On that day, 11 Rimontais were executed, many women brutally raped and 236 buildings torched. We must not forget the price that civilians also pay in war.

The town of St Girons was also the starting point of 'Le Chemin de la Liberte', the final stage of the escape route over the Pyrenees organised by the O'Leary network. More than a hundred brave local men and women, called 'passeurs', lost their lives or their liberty taking the evaders over the high mountain passes to safety. They had a choice, and they chose to help people that they did not know at huge personal risk to themselves and their families. They are the unsung heroes and we remember them today, with deep gratitude, too.


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.