Serge Gainsbourg - no longer the archetypal Frenchman, apparently. Photograph: Getty/P. Ullman/Roger Viollet
I have done that most bourgeois of things and taken a summer holiday. I will tell you about it - although it hardly constitutes an opinion piece, and is unlikely to inspire debate unless it's on the best way to string me up from the nearest lamppost.
Out of the blue, I was invited to spend a 'free' week in Provence at a writers' retreat with my dear friend and occasional employer Rowan Pelling - former Editrice of The Erotic Review and for whom I sometimes made up smutty stories - and four of her closest female friends. Sounds promising, doesn't it?
She had been lent a house by a wicked, rich uncle - not a real uncle I should state - whose name was not Monty, and who certainly didn't turn up in the middle of the night expecting to have his way with me; although as the place was so incredible, I'd have probably let him, and I reckon he's got one in the bank. Think David Hockney swimming pools, sun-scorched plaster, cool interiors and vast open fireplaces, surrounded by the Luberon mountains, medieval villages, and more naked flesh than you could shake a stick at.
It felt very grown up, especially as I took my laptop and wrote my inaugural Guardian feature about The Jesus And Mary Chain from a sun lounger by the pool. I don't know if all Guardian journalism happens this way, but I think it should.
Of course I will not descend into the nitty-gritty of what did or didn't occur (I'll save it for my erotic novel), but suffice to say, billeted with five ladies in paradise and not making a slight nuisance of myself might have caused offence. I did make myself useful in practical ways though - in the Scorpion, lizards, big ol' spiders and snake removing dept.
I was excused further driving responsibilities owing to poor road positioning and after hitting the kerb at 30 and puncturing two tyres, which rather fortuitously meant that I could drink whenever the fancy took me, which was often - especially as my Witches of Eastwick-style fantasies were somewhat dampened by the ladies discussing ladies' things with one another as I know ladies are wont to do. Already a father of one myself, I now know more about the mechanics of childbirth than any man alive, with the possible exception of Sir Robert Winston.
One thing the Gallicly-bound should be aware of this summer is that ciggies are now harder to come by than snowballs in hell. Having begun to wind down my nicotine habit about six weeks ago, I relapsed in the belief that abstinence in France was futile, and that every Frenchman was Serge Gainsbourg blowing Gitane fumes into mon visage. Wrong. A generation of O-level French speakers are now obsolete. 'Le bureau tabac est fermé' avec un accent aigu je pense.
The opportunities pour dire 'Bonjour Monsieur de Tabac, Je voudrais acheter deux cent Gauloiuses Bleu s'il vous plaît' are few and far between - this smoking ban might actually work dammit! And it hasn't escaped my notice that half the New Labour Health and Efficiency brigade vacance in this neck of the woods, so they've seen it with their own yeux.
One last piece of information to impart - the airport authorities really are serious about this ban on creams, lotions and bottles larger than 100cl. Somewhere near Stansted is a carboot sale knocking out the very latest cosmetic, hygiene and sun products at a most competitive rate. Roleurs!
