fee in your broken French.)

Anyway, out he stepped in his jacket and tie, and out of the back hopped a rotund, dark-skinned Frenchman dressed in swimming shorts and wellington boots.

The manager paced around the pool, talking grandly on his mobile phone, while his helper shovelled spadefuls of revolting goo from the depths of the pool. Mid-morning, I approached offering coffee.

"Thank you," said the manager. And how does your colleague like his coffee? I asked. "Oh, you needn't bother with him."

But surely... "Oh all right, half a cup for him then," he said, waving away a cloud of mayflies. "Ah, les petits arabes," he swore, swatting one on his blazered arm.

At least they accepted my coffee. The next White Van Monsieur to pay us a visit was from the local burglar alarm company. He regaled us with

It only dawned on us later why houses were being sold by English couples barely talking to each other

stories of other foreigners' houses being regularly stripped bare by thieves and asked how we felt about the wealth tax. (The what?) When I offered him a cup of coffee, he refused matter-of-factly: "Non merci, madame - only the French know how to make coffee."

Like most of the English hopefuls questioned in the Bordeaux survey, my husband and I had dreamt of an old farmhouse to do up. It only dawned on us later why the majority of houses we visited with estate agents were invariably (a) half done up, the renovations mysteriously halted, and (b) being sold by English couples who were barely talking to each other.

The other thing no one mentioned until we'd bought our new home was that the hunting season lasts nearly four long months, from September until January. And whoops! The Revolution, how could we possibly