He said, she said ...

France inspires strong emotions. Read Bill Bryson and you’ll probably strenuously avoid going there. In Neither Here Nor There, he writes of Paris: “The problem is that the pedestrian cross lights have been designed with the clear purpose of leaving the foreign visitor confused, humiliated, and, if all goes according to plan, dead.”

On the flipside is Audrey Hepburn who said “Paris is always a good idea”.

Naturally, the reality is nuanced. I once fell for the folly of buying a house in the French countryside, a converted barn far from any major tourist area (no wonder it was cheap). In our first winter, we had a falling out with the local plumber over his grossly inflated bill for a new geyser. My big mistake in this part of the land where la France profonde (“deep France”) is a reality and not just an idea they chatter about at Paris parties, was getting a friend — visiting from Paris — to intervene as monsieur’s English had suddenly failed him.

She stood in the shop, dressed in a tailored Parisian suit, and gave him a bollicking in rapid, pure, metropolitan French. Later, when it was clear that “ze little one” had gone, the bill was suddenly twice what it had been and I had made lasting enemies with the most important man in the village.

Lesson: don’t get city folk to do your dirty work in the country.

That was another life and the house is long gone, but my deep adoration for France and its many contradictions continues.