Like lemmings, the British middle classes continue to flock to France. The French embassy in London estimates the unofficial figure for Britons owning houses in France today is well over 400,000, roughly double what it was a decade ago.
Why do they do it? Their hearts are set on escaping yobbish Britain for some idyll which they believe will be more like rural life in 1950s Britain.
"There is a nostalgia for the way British villages used to be," says Marie-Martine Gervais-Aguer, who has questioned 2,750 Brits planning to move to France.
Her research, for Montesquieu University in Bordeaux, suggests these Peter Mayle wannabes imagine a bucolic heaven, peopled with polite children and neighbours waving a cheery bonjour.
Well, after four years living there, I can guarantee that at least two |
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The English dream of a rural French idyll. But the reality is more of a nightmare, writes antonia bland |
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aspects of 1950s village life are alive and well in southern France - xenophobia and racism.
On day one, a Frenchman arrived in a white Mercedes claiming to be the "manager" of our swimming pool. The house had been empty for years and the pool water was a putrid brown sludge. It could, he warned by way of explaining his hourly rate, contain all manner of horrors - dead rabbits, possibly even a wild boar. (Who wouldn't trip and fall, being chased by a gang of armed men?)
My God, I wondered, how would he clean it out?
"Don't worry," he replied. "I have a little Arab."
The following day he returned, this time in his white van. (As we were to discover, French White Van Men are liable to forget themselves and turn up in their flashy other number - a sure sign that you are not the only one who failed to renegotiate the 
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