Lost in Translation

In the Sunday Times (21^st November issue) there’s an alarming article about how moving to France has affected previously happy couples. A full page feature with a banner headline, “Au Revoir, Darling”, tells of how many British women find their dream move to France ends in tears because the men run for home.

A lady called Louise Sawyer is reported as having started up an organisation called Waif – Women alone in France - a lifeline for women left abandoned in France by their partners who have left them with no money or means to cope. Louise Sawyer is part of a growing group of British women for whom the dream of “la belle vie” has turned into a nightmare because their spouses have either departed or died, often leaving them and their children with debt, legal problems and a property they cannot sell.

Louise started the help line after falling victim to being up the proverbial swanny without a paddle. She and her husband moved to a house in the Charente region of south west France ten years ago but in 2008 her husband went back to Britain with all their savings, leaving her to cope on her own. Louise has no family in England but even if she wanted to go home she couldn’t afford to buy a train ticket. She told The Sunday Times she is often hungry and cold and goes for days without talking to anyone.

One of the women quoted in the same piece is the sister-in-law of Tony Blair, Lauren Booth. Her marriage has apparently broken down after a family move to the Dordogne where her husband began drinking.

“The sad truth is that life in the European countryside can be as basic, boring and as downright exhausting as it was a century ago. The man gets drunk and resentful about his role as an odd-job man when once a happy executive or, in our case, a lad-about-town,” she said.

From the many calls she has received Louise Sawyer catalogues a startling list of woe. An Irish doctor, whose wife wrote to Louise, was said to have gone back to Ireland with a French woman he had met on a train. Another woman called Jane spoke of her husband’s dream of moving to France in 2004. A year after they arrived, he began an affair with a British woman. He returned to England with her in 2006. Heather Davey said she was persuaded to move to France by an Australian she met in 2004. A decorator and amateur pilot, he planned to do up the property and run a private business flying small planes. After running up debts of £27000 and siphoning off £24000 from the joint bank account the man walked out and returned to England last year leaving her and two teenagers in France to cope on their own with no money.

The same article quotes Angela Simmons, an agony aunt, for theFrenchPaper, a monthly newspaper for expatriates.

“Men can lose their role as manager of the household because it is often the woman who speaks the language. Men might become depressed because they have nothing to do.

“It’s often hard for the English to integrate. You’ve got to be able to speak the language. The climate is different from what you expect – they usually come in summer and in winter it’s cold and damp,” she said.

There for the grace of God go I.

Shit Happens

THE SHIT SHIFTER



Our lovely house in the Dordogne, with its classic Perigordine roof, vines covering the exterior walls, marble fire places and polished floor boards, lacks just one thing - a fosse septique (septic tank). Instead the sewage seeps away into what is known as a “fosse communal” – a drain which flows into an open pit in our neighbour’s field just across from the house.

Our only WC requires an electric pump which churns up the excrement after which the remains flow into the aforementioned pit. The system seems to work as long as one is judicious about the amount of loo paper used, otherwise it is time to roll up your sleeves. If a warm westerly is blowing then it is not advisable to set up table for breakfast or lunch on our small patch of front lawn, a stones throw from the “fosse communal”.

If the sun is shining and a large evacuation is pending then the outside “dunny” – a rudimentary hole in a wooden bench over a deep hole in the ground - is recommended. If you aren’t shy and leave the “dunny” door open you can contemplate uninterrupted views of our neighbours orchard and vines.

If you chuck a bucket of water down the hole after use you can hear the effluent draining away along a tributary of the fosse communal. Sadly this drainage system is not perfect and it’s easy to forget, or not bother, to sluice it down. After a time the chamber gets blocked up and then it is time to call “The Shit Shifter” - in verity Lissague, the sewage people from Bergerac.

Last week an old boy turned up in a tanker truck with an assortment of large gauge hoses attached, one of which he shoved down the hole in the ground. After he turned on a heavy duty pump the effluent was sucked back up into his tanker. He then opened the two concrete traps on the path outside the “dunny” and sucked out the remaining excrement from the chambers they cover.

I witnessed the job being done from, what I thought, was a safe distance. The stench was quite staggering – like a combination of rotten eggs and the entire compliment of Le Havre’s oil refineries burning at full capacity. How our shit shifter friend was able to inspect the offending drains at such close proximity was remarkable. He was quite unperturbed. After paying him for his trouble he drove off smiling with a cheerfully bid me "aurevoir".

Post Traumatic Syndrome

Just outside Bergerac on the route de Bordeaux is a little hotel with a small bar and shaded veranda called Chez Jakmy. We sometimes stop there for a coffee on the way to shop in Leclerc because Bertie, our border terrier, likes to play with the resident Bretagne Spaniel.

It was there last year that I met David, a British army officer who is partially blind after suffering Post-Traumatic Stress following a tour of duty in Iraq. He was hardly able to identify where exactly on his table the patronne had placed his glass of white wine. He spoke with a stammer and he was unsteady on his feet.

David’s story is very sad. After being invalided out of the army he has been unable find a job, his wife has left him, he has had to sell their house near Chelmsford in Essex and he is being cared for by his parents who live in the Dordogne near Bergerac. When his mother and father go on shopping trips to Bergerac they leave their son with the friendly patronne of Le Jakmy and her few regular customers.

When we last met David told me that, so far, eye specialists both here in France and in the UK have been unable to do much to help him restore his sight. He told me that he had been advised to rest and that his French specialist was hopeful that his eyesight would slowly return. The loss of sight, he was told, was due to his nervous disorder and time would be the healer.

David told me he had had little help from the army in finding future employment and he had received no counselling. He was expected to survive on a meagre Captain’s pension.
His plight reminded me of a documentary shown on ITV last Saturday called The Wounded Platoon. It told the story of a group of American infantrymen when they returned home from Iraq. There were drugs, drink, suicides, wife beatings and murders. They were terrified, paranoid damaged boys.

The failure of America in this case, and of Britain in David’s and many other similar cases, to care for the psychological damage wars do to those who have to fight in them is a worrying issue which is only going to get worse. Governments will have to take into account not only how much damage to inflict on the enemy but how much collateral shell shock will be inflicted on their sons.

When I called into the Jakmy yesterday I asked after David. The patronne told me he had gone to England for a few days to visit relatives. Sadly, she told me there had been no change in his condition and he still couldn’t find his glass of wine without her help.

Fighting the Taliban - a new strategy

We have been lucky enough to be here at our house in warm, peaceful, leafy Dordogne for four months at a stretch. Spring has merged into summer and we are already a week into August. The grapes will soon be ready for picking and autumn is round the corner.

The days have been marked by a few projects around the house and garden with the occasional interlude for lunches and soirées fuelled by copious amounts of fine wines and food with well and newly met ex-pats who appear to be of a rather better financial disposition than us. With what little money we have at our disposal we have done some painting and decorating and outside we have planted hydrangeas, roses, hibiscus, lavender a palm tree and six cypress trees. We have also created a feature in the centre of the courtyard to the rear of the house. We found an ornamental, carved urn in an antique shop in Riberac mounted it on a, stone plinth planted lavender around it and bordered this with a ring of terracotta floor tiles cemented into the ground and grouted with a mix of white choux...

These small projects notwithstanding we have had time to reflect on how lucky we are to be untouched by the horrors of world events which we see televised on the British news channels courtesy of our Sky satellite dish. There have been pictures of the appalling oil spillage from BPs damaged rig in the gulf of Mexico, of the continuing suffering of earthquake victims in Haiti months after aid should have reached them, the recent floods in Pakistan that have left at least 15,000 dead, the search for Raoul Moat, the serial killer of innocent bystanders in Cumbria, of Ian Huntley the Soham murderer who is demanding £100,000 compensation for an attack on him by a fellow prison inmate and, last but not least, we see pictures every day of our brave soldiers, killed in Afghanistan, being flown back home..

It is the latter I find most upsetting. Our young soldiers’ deaths make me feel even worse by languishing here in southern, sunny rural France and being so removed from this horrible pointless conflict that Britain should never have been involved in. With time to think, I have a suggestion to make to the politicians and decision makers about how to deal with helping our boys in Afghanistan.

Some, like me, think bringing back National Service might be an idea. It would be a means of helping to solve the unemployment problem and give many young, undisciplined youths the chance to earn money and self worth instead of turning to drugs and crime. But this apparently is not feasible as we don’t have the money, army personnel or wherewithal to monitor and train such a large number of raw recruits.

Could I suggest another route?

Why not oblige all persistent offenders, including paedophiles and including Ian Huntley, to enrol in the army, give them the minimum training - perhaps a couple of weeks square bashing at Pirbright - fly them out to Afghanistan, put them in the front line and let them dodge the IEDs. This will give our real soldiers more chance to get on with taking the fight to the Taliban without the constant worry of improvised roadside bombs. To add to our dwindling reserves of troops we could also empty our prisons of first time offenders and bogus asylum seekers, who cost the tax payer circa £80 a day for being in jail, and pay them half that money to sign up.

Everything is Shooting Up

Taking Bertie, our border terrier, for a walk on a refreshingly cool July evening after previous days temperatures had been in the 40s it was interesting to observe the variety of crops shooting up all around us.

In a large field directly opposite the house a new crop of sunflowers has sprung up with their heads turned towards the sun. An avenue of prune trees adjoining will soon be producing. Walking up a hill south east past the Chateau Paradis vines, on which small green grapes are appearing, we came to a recently harvested cornfield. A small wood borders this field from which a young roe deer shot out and stopped for a heartbeat in the middle of the field. Bertie had a clear site of it and I let him give chase. He sprung off his lead like a ground to air missile and appeared to be airborn for several seconds.

Despite his brave chase, the deer disappeared into a field of sunflowers and Bertie, unusually, was bidden back so we were able to continue our walk. We arrived at a lake which we were able see being put to use for irrigation. Alain, our neighbouring farmer, had left a tractor running with its revolving back axle turning a pump A submerged pipe, joined to an oil drum floating on the lake, was linked to a network of other pipes which snaked from the banks of the lake to a large field of maize. Water was being pumped from the lake and being sprayed intermittently in a high, wide arc over the maize. The maize ( like corn on the cob ) was already well above head height and is used for feeding livestock.

We returned through another wheat field, yet to be harvested, and down a line of prune trees past a second, fuller lake which evidently had not yet been used for irrigation and back through Chateau Paradis vines. The chateau and its 16 hectares of vines are for sale. Last year the owner had been asking in the region of 1m euros but now she has dropped her price to 800,000 euros. We sampled some of the 2004 and thought it was excellent. The 2009 which can be found in some local supermarkets is not so good.

Back at the house the garden is coming along. The roses we planted last year are thriving as is the lavender. We have planted five hibiscus bushes and potted 7 hydrangeas in enormous terracotta pots. The bamboo plants we put in along the west boundary of the courtyard are shooting up nicely. A wistaria planted against the south facing wall of what were the pigstys is doing wonderfully and has climbed to a height of 3 metres. The two grass areas we seeded last year are a bit like the “curates egg” ie “good in parts”. They have needed constant sprinkling and certain patches have had to be reseeded.


We have two fruit trees, one producing wild cherries and the other wild plumbs which are too bitter to eat or cook but will be ideal for chutney. The two tall marronnier trees (chestnut) and one plane tree in the courtyard were lopped in May and are looking healthier, have let in more light and now allow us a better view of the pretty, stone cottage and its tall, sloping Perrigordine roof which borders the east side of the court yard. We are enjoying these long lazy summer evenings watching the garden mature and bloom.

Parrot English

We have owned our new house in the Dordogne for more than a year now. I am pleased to report all is well and we are very happy with the renovation work so far embarked upon which has included rewiring the house throughout.

The purpose of starting this blog was to give a “tongue - in - cheek” account of an ex-pat living in what is known in local parlance as Dordogneshire and which boasts the highest number of British homeowners in France.

It has not been a disappointing experience. In the main we have met an enthusiastic bunch of my fellow countrymen. They include a satellite TV expert from Yorkshire called Chris whose pastime is competing in marathon’s all over France including running half way up Mont Blanc, a retired old Etonian wine grower who claims to have put Bergerac on the map, a lady who has been successfully selling Farrow and Ball paints from her beautifully designed shop in Eymet, a charming bar owner in the same town called Rupert whose French is fluent and an architect with a beautiful Perigordine house near La Force and our neighbours Peter and Christine, a retired couple from Sussex who have lived in the Dordogne for 6 years. Christine helps put together the monthly freesheet called La Petite Gazette and they have both joined the Boule club in Bouniagues. Before that Peter had been running a bar on the Costa del Sol. Other Brits we have met in markets, shops, bars and restaurants have, in the main been friendly, helpful and enthusiastic about living in France.

There have, however, been some exceptions. There are a few who have made no effort to learn the language of the country they have chosen to reside and have made equally little effort to integrate with the French only mixing with their own. It is therefore not surprising that they find it difficult to understand or cope with living in a very different culture. To give you one example, last week my wife, Lyndia was looking for a house owned by Irish friends in a small village near Duras when she stopped at a roadside house to ask the way. She asked in French if the lady of the house could tell her the directions to Puysserampion, 3 kms away. The reply came back in English:

“Never heard of it.”

As her husband went off to look for a local map Lyndia said:

“Your husband is very kind”

“No he’s not”, she scowled.

“You must love it here, what a lovely position,” Lyndia replied.

“No we don’t .We hate it. We’ve got 38 parrots here and parrot food has doubled in price” came the retort.

Another example of someone living in glorious ignorance is recounted in the June issue of French Property News in the “Postbag” section. It reads as follows:

“In our village of Lauzerte, Tarn et garonne an Englishmen was seen going into every shop with a photograph of some nails asking loudly:

“”Avez- vous?”” to each shopkeeper, pointing at the picture.

“Our French language teacher Karen, who lives nearby, went over to help, and was amazed to find that he had actually lived in France for 7 years. When she asked if he would be interested in learning some French he replied:

““No need I’ve peaked!””

Getting the chop

Last week our local arboriste, Alain Benn, came to lop two tall Chestnut trees (Marronniers) and an equally tall Plain tree (Platane) in the courtyard at the back of the house. Their leaves had been falling on the tiled roofs of our dependences. They had been clogging up the gutters of an adjoining cottage and a row of stables. In the winter months the courtyard itself was thick with fallen leaves which constantly had to be raked up and burnt.

The taller of the two chestnut trees is over 30 metres (100 feet) but Alain was up in the top branches with his chainsaw as quick a squirrel. Tied round his waste were a series of ropes and tackle on a harness similar to that of a mountaineer. He showed me a special knot he tied designed by an Austrian climber called a Prussick which enabled him to winch himself 20 ft up into the branches of the chestnut without having to scale the trunk itself. He used a led weight like a plumb line to throw a safety rope over branches above him.

Fortunately it was a beautiful, sunny day so Alain was able to happily get on with what appeared to be an extremely precarious task. He could, he said, have done the job if it had been raining unpleasant though it might have been. High winds, he said, were what presented real safety problems with swaying trees increasing the chances of losing his footing and the danger of falling branches being blown off course.

After a day in the three trees Alain had totally changed the look of our property. He cut the plain tree back severely because many of its branches were diseased and the chestnut trees had also received his full attention. The result was that we were now able to see the attractive stone features of the cottage that bordered one side of the courtyard. Overhanging branches had previously hidden much of the sloping, tiled Perigordine roof and its beautiful limestone walls. The courtyard and the main house had also become much lighter

Instead of paying him to take all the dead branches and wood away we asked Alain to cut the wood to a suitable size for burning in our open fires and we now have enough logs and kindling for the whole of the coming winter. The remains we burnt on a huge bonfire.

When we bought Maison Mayets last year these trees were subject to a bizarre clause in the Act de Vente. They were still owned by the commune the vendor’s Notaries informed us and we were required to enter into another contract to be able to buy them at an extra cost. But when later I asked the Mayor of St Perdoux if he could arrange to have them lopped, he told me that they belonged to me. Ask no questions as they say!

Paying the bills

We got back to our house in the Dordogne last week to find that our electrician and his team had finished rewiring throughout and had left the place surprisingly clean and tidy. There was very little dust considering the amount of walls through which they had to chase cables and wires.

That’s the good news. On the downside the work took a month longer than anticipated and the final bill, the electrician tells me, is likely to be considerably more than the original devis. This apparently was due to us insisting that the wiring was chased into the walls rather than boxed along the side of them.

Still on the subject of electricity, yesterday we had a third rendez vous with the EDF who agreed to change our 60-year-old fuse box. They came the first time in February and said they didn’t have the equipment. The second time they turned up unannounced, checked the existing fuse box, were unaware of a previous visit and went way again saying they needed to check back with head office. Luckily another EDF man arrived the following morning just before we were about to leave the house with no knowledge of the previous EDF visits. This time he had the right equipment and we now have a brand new white,state of the art comptoir in our hall. The whole saga reminded me of the story of a British journalist I knew who moved to Prague shortly after the Iron curtain had been lifted in the 80s. He asked for a telephone to be installed in his apartment but the telephone engineer turned up when he was out. He was subsequently told he would have to wait another year for the next appointment.

The extra cost of the rewiring and the estimates for other renovation projects has concentrated my mind on how to earn extra cash to pay for all this. The French Paper a new monthly newspaper for British expats may have come to the rescue. In the Work and Money section of the paper there’s a feature article about letting your house out to numerous film companies who are looking for locations all over France. Apparently you don’t have to own a chateau or Manoir – notwithstanding if you do own one you could earn between 3000-4000 euros a day. Film companies are apparently looking for all kinds of properties both modern and old to shoot low budget films on location. There’s a big market for old farm houses which can be used for everything from feature films and photographic shoots to adverts.

Let’s hope our place meets the criteria. I would describe it a something between a farm house and a Maison de Maitre. It has several dependences in need of restoration which include a ruined cottage. The latter could be good for maybe a crime thriller where mutilated bodies are found buried beneath its walls or the property could suit something like a French version of the English property programme Location, Location. The house has a classic, tall, sloping Perigordine tiled roof, hexagonal stone pillars at the front of the house, a fan window above the front door and it sits amongst rolling Bergerac vines. Come on Ridley Scott make us an offer.

Looking for Toto

Auditions have been taking place this week for Toto – a canine star to play Dorothy’s loyal companion in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of The Wizard of Oz.

Full of expectation, along we trotted to Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire with our 2 year-old Border terrier, Bertie freshly washed and groomed, to join about 400 other hopefuls of all shapes, breeds and sizes. Every sort from a small one-year-old Bichon Frise to larger types like Border Collies, Poodles, Spaniels and all manner of terriers, including several Borders.

In the 1939 movie version staring Judy Garland, a black Cairn Terrier called Terry played the part of Toto and along side us in the queue a girl studying at Bath University had high hopes for her own well trained black Cairn, the image of the original Toto. Behind us were two girls from Manchester with a black and white Schnauzer called Dangerous Dave. The competition was indeed fierce with all sorts of likely Totos. With such rivalry the tension got to many of the contestants sparking lots of rows including a series of fisticuffs between Bertie and Dave.

Contestants were split into groups and then put through their paces walking on a lead around a ring with the other dogs in their group. Owners were asked to show any tricks their dog could do. By the time we were called the judges, who included Jodie Prenger who stared as Nancy in Lloyd Webber’s production of Oliver, decided to call in three groups at a time. The poor student from Bath with the Cairn wasn’t even interviewed or given the chance to show the tricks she had trained her dog to do. Lyndia, who was handling Bertie, was only able to exchange a couple of words with the judges and Bertie was ignored.

Our hopes were dashed when the judges announced Dangerous Dave had been chosen to go through to the next round. Bert was spitting chips.

Maybe it was a blessing that we failed to get into the last 40 as we would have been required to turn up the following day and, frankly, by the end of the first morning I was getting bored and tired of waiting amongst a pack of yapping, snarling, barking dogs.

The judges will have by now made a short list of ten who will appear on Saturday’s BBC1 talent show, Over the Rainbow which is selecting the girl to play Dorothy in the Lloyd Webber production.

You may have worked out that we are still in England but we will be returning to the Dordogne before the end of April.

Six Nations - too little too late

We had hoped to get to Paris to watch England play France in the Six Nations rugby last Saturday. These plans and some expensive tickets had to be binned because of urgent business back in London. A hard pill to swallow as only the day before I witnessed Kauto Star and Denman being trounced by my tip, Imperial Commander in a thrilling Cheltenham Gold Cup.

For several months I had been talking about Nigel Twiston Davies's charge being a good bet in the race. In the end I only had a small wager on Imperial Commander for a place at a fraction of the odds of what was on offer each way with Ladbrokes two months ago. Frankly it was worse than losing and a classic case of bottling out.

As for the Six Nations game in Paris, watching the teeming rain on the TV back here in London made me feel slighlty better for not being there. A pulsating, early try by Ben Foden gave us high hopes of an exciting match. The rain slowed things down and the French failed to show their normal flair. Mike Tindall did a marvellous job smothering the brilliant and dangerous Bastareaud and he had a great game. It was a pity Tindall was substituted off early and a pity Jonny Wilkinson was substituted on so late. He kicked a brilliant penalty to take England within 2 points of France's total but sadly too little too late.

The story of England's performance throughout the Six Nations championship and the story of my Cheltenham betting week.

Maison Mayets

Maison Mayets

Comfort Food

When looking for a packet of bread sauce in a supermarket called Leclerc in Bergerac I discovered a shelf dedicated to English produce. It was even flagged up with the Union Jack. Sadly no bread sauce but I bought a tin of Heinz baked beans for the princely sum of 1.5 euros, three times the price in England.

Other English fare on display included:

Oxo cubes; HP Brown sauce; Bisto gravy; Branson pickle; Bramley apple sauce; Cross and Blackwell salad cream; Tate & Lyle golden syrup; Scots porage oats; Ready Breck; PG Tips tea; Tikka Masala curry sauce; bottles of Tangle Foot Badger Beer brewed in Dorset.

Another supermarket chain called Leader Price, a branch of which can be found in Bergerac, does a very nice line in joints of frozen New Zealand lamb at half the cost of similar sized cuts of Gigot d’Agneau.

About 20 kilometres south west of Bergerac is the bastide town, Eymet, where half the population is British. It is the ideal place to look for British comfort food. L’Epicerie, otherwise known as “The English Shop”, in the Rue du Temple, stocks everything from Christmas plum puddings, three varieties of baked beans, Fray Bentos steak and kidney pies to Scottish oat cakes, Coleman’s English mustard and Oxford marmalade. I found exactly what I was looking for – a box of Darjeeling tea bags.

The shop is run by a South African called Michael Rice who has another similar outlet in Brantome, north of Perigeux, the prefecture of the Dordogne. His emporium was running short of stock because Michael is moving back to England to open a shop in Glastonbury, Somerset. A retired English couple have bought his business in Eymet. Michael was shutting up shop ,he said, because trying to expand his business in France had been fraught with bureaucracy and punitive social security charges.

The Russians are coming


Rumour has it that the private jet parked up at Bergerac airport belongs to Roman Abramovich. Christian Lacombe, the press officer for the airport, seems to think so. Rumours also abound that the beautifully manicured Chateau Thenac, south west of Bergerac in what is described as the Tuscany of France, is also owned by the Russian billionaire.

Not so! On further investigation it appears both the Chateau and the jet belong to another Russian Oligarch, Eugene Shvidler, a close friend and business partner of Abramovich. For a birthday present, Abramovich apparently bought his friend a flock of Highland sheep which he had shipped out from Scotland to Chateau Thenac.

The manager of the Chateau , a smart young Englishman, said that Abramovich and his Russian mates certainly visit to party and to sample the wine but that he couldn’t comment further. Chateau Thenac wine, incidentally, can only be purchased through Berry Brothers in London. An English chum told me an artist friend held an exhibition at the Salle de Fete in Thenac and someone from the chateau turned up at the private view - “vernisage” - insisted on buying all the paintings on show and had them taken over the road to the chateau that same night.
Now look here, we Brits own Aquitaine, not the French nor the Russkies. When our Henry 11 married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152 the English ruled the region from Bordeaux and we imported huge quantities of wine. We put Bordeaux wine on the map. For that matter, more recently, an old Etonian called Nick Ryman, who owned Chateau Jaubertie, put Bergerac wine on the map by improving the stuff and marketing it abroad.

There are 200,000 British passport holders registered living in France and a big slice of these reside in Aquitaine. At Eymet, 20 kilometres south west of Bergerac, half the town’s population is British. In another nearby bastide town called Issigeac, one Australian tourist was overheard saying she was horrified to have heard nothing but English voices.

In the summer months at least three daily Ryanair flights come in and out of Bergerac airport from Stansted and Bristol and there’s another daily Flybe flight from Southampton. The planes are usually full and the airport car park is packed with old bangers with British number plates.

You don’t get so many euros to the pound these days but most of us are staying put and continuing to enjoy the good life. We’ve taken back Aquitaine and we lovingly call the Dordogne department, “Dordogneshire”. We’re not about to let the Russkies do the same thing to the Dordogne as they have to Chelsea – sorry, “Chelski”!

Britain awaits murder trial

The fate of Andrew Ludlam, the prime suspect in the case of murdered fellow Britain, Peter Fuller in June 2009 has been the subject of a number of enquiries received by Letter from the Dordogne. One reader from the United States said he knew Andrew Ludlam and that he was surprised he would have been capable of such a deed.

Andrew Ludlam was arrested at Luton airport having fled from the scene of the crime - the house owned by Peter Fuller at Plaisance near Eymet - having driven off in one of Fuller's cars and having boarded a plane at Bordeaux airport. He is reported to have been found with as large sum of cash on his person when he was detained.

Ludlam was subsequently deported back to France from Britain in July last year and is now languishing in jail at Perigeux, the Prefecture of the Dordogne. He is accused of murdering Fuller with a blunt weapon after a heated agrument fuelled by alcohol. There is speculation as to whether the weapon used was a golf club or a cricket bat. Fuller, a retired executive in the oil business, had built an 18 hole golf course on land adjacent to his house.

According to the local regional daily newspaper, Sud Ouest, Ludlam remains incacerated in the same prison in Perigeux. Before a date can be given for his trial there apparently needs to be a revision of the case and the police will need to accompany Ludlam back to the scene of the crime.

The British invade Aquitaine


French population figures published last week confirm that, after Paris, the department with the largest number of British residents is the Dordogne.

According to L’Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economique, 6,300 Britanniques live in the department. The region of Aquitaine, says L’Institut, contains, half those “Brittaniques” living in France. Shades of France in the 12th century when the English King, Henry11 married Eleanor of Aquitaine and England ruled most of the land between the Loire and the Pyrenees.


The first wave of British immigrants settling in the Dordogne is generally acknowledged to have been due to economic factors such as cheap properties and the strong pound against the euro The second British influx of the Dordogne, according to Charles Gilloley, President Departmental de la Federation Nationale des Agents Immobiliers, were pensioners or retraites.

Another interesting theory, touted to me several years ago, as to why the Brits were first attracted to the Dordogne is that the department was half way from England to the warmer and cheaper climes of Spain. Finding that the wooded valleys and undulating fields reminded them of home and that it was hotter than expected, these early pioneers decided that buying a place in the Dordogne would prove a better bet. Another story relates to a British entrepreneur who, on a ferry crossing from Dover to Calais, got out a map of France and marked a point half way down south of Angouleme. He then promptly bought a plot of land suitable for a caravan site near the spot and has never looked back.

Despite the recent global financial crisis, with their pensions having drastically shrunk and with work difficult to find, most Brits are staying put and others are still coming according to the daily newspaper covering Aquitaine, the Sud Ouest. The paper quotes “Une veritable qualite de vie” as to why they are leaving Britain to live in the Dordogne.

“I am used to it here and I am very happy”, says Toby Brown who, lives and works in Perigeux.

Another Englishman, Stewart Edwards, who has lived here for 20 years and who introduced the game of conkers to the locals, says he likes the tranquillity and the space. His roots, he says, are here in the Dordogne and no longer in England.

Desperately seeking Bertie

Our Border terrier, Bertie is now 18 months old and, in human years, a teenager. He is becoming more and more aware of the wild animals that are to be found in the woods, fields and vines that surround our hameau, Les Mayets. These include roe deer, rabbits, hares and coypu. There are also plenty of pheasants.

Thanks to our neighbouring farmer, Alan Pujol we are able to take Bertie anywhere on his land covering one hundred hectares and often further. While on his normal walk yesterday we spotted a couple of roe deer amongst Alan’s prune trees beyond which there was a small wood. On the other side of his orchard Alan had ploughed a field and the deer set off across the plough. I decided to let Bertie give chase because the field was quite small and the furrows were deep impeding him from getting too far too fast. The gamble paid off because the deer quickly slipped him and, after stitting in the middle of the field for a time, Bertie decided to give up and came back to me.

Congratulating him on being bid back, I quickly sarted to attach him to the lead again. As I was doing so we both sighted three more deer grazing on the other side of a lake about 200 yards from us. A steep ploughed field rose from the banks of this lake into woodland. Vines and a big seeded field lay on the other side of the hill bordering a large wood. Feeling more confident now about Bertie’s ability to answer my call I slipped him off the lead again. This time there was grass between us and the deer and Bertie was off like a missile.The deer hooked left up the steep plough the other side of the lake and ran up the hill with Bertie in full chase. He and the deer were quickly out of sight.

Determined not to panic I climbed up the steep incline and continued down the fields into the next valley to the large wood where, to my relief, I saw him coming out of the trees into the corner of another field.

I managed to get within a few feet of him but however much I muttered “good boy”; “stay”, there was no way I could grab him. My final lunge was to no avail and he was off again into the wood. There were problems here. It was late afternoon, the light was going, it was freezing hard and the wood into which Bertie had disappeared was big with dense undergrowth. This was a place popular with “chasseurs” for shooting Palombes – small grey birds similar to Doves. They fly over areas of south west France in October and November on their migration south from Scandanavia and East Europe to Spain and Africa. I noticed several platforms had been built high up in the trees. I could see all sorts of make shift pulleys and cradles which, I was later told, were employed to hoist live pigeons, used a decoys to attract the Palombes, up into the trees. The wood had a rather sinister eerie feeling about it and I was fearful there might be fox traps in which Bertie could get snared.

Still no sign of him but once or twice I thought I heard the jingle of his name tag on his collar and on another occasion I heard a distant bark. Otherwise it was deathly quiet and the light was going fast. It was becoming difficult to pick out the fallen branches, brambles and fox holes. Heart in hand, I reluctantly left the wood in the direction of home.

No early drink by the fire for me and possibly no dinner either. Instead an all night search by torch light. I secretly hoped that Bertie might find his way home as I started to trudge up another steep hill and back into the vines.

“Oh well, it was nice to have known little Bertie since he was a puppy”, I told myself.

“I suppose I’ll just have to get a replacement but it won’t be the same. What is my wife, Lyndia going to say? She adores the little chap and treats him like a baby”.

Just as I was nearing the top of a strip of vines and giving up hope, I heard a “chink, chink” to my right. And there he was, the little bastard, soaked to skin, covered in mud and lying panting in an adjoining strip of vines.

“Good boy, good boy, stay, stay”, I shouted as I crawled and edged my was under the wires tethering my line of vines. Finally I managed to grab him. He was too tired to run off this time. We slowly made our way home.

Like a true terrier,Bertie was still pulling on the lead when we got back to the house.

David Tennant is our Christmas star.

The highlight of our Christmas here in the Dordogne was not Christmas Eve, Christmas day or even New Years Eve (réveillon) but BBC TV’s production of Hamlet on Boxing Day.

Kauto Star’s demolition of his King George VI’s rivals in the big race at Kempton Park earlier in the afternoon had to take second place to David Tennant’s tour de force as the mad Prince of Denmark. His "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy was mesmerising and his performance will hopefully uncharacterise him from being simply Doctor Who. The producer was John Wyver and the director was Greg Doran who also directed the RSC’s stage production of Hamlet.

Coming back to Les Mayets after the warmth of a centrally heated flat in London was a rude awakening. We had to stock up with 20 litre cans fuel for the poêles, (petrol fired heaters), en route then fill them up in the freezing cold, chop wood for the fire and search the dependences for the one serviceable radiator. It took three days and a new supply of logs to warm the house enough to be vaguely user friendly.

The morning after our return here December 15th Ben Welch arrived with more of our furniture from London. The young lad was driving a massive articulated Mercedes lorry on only his second trip to France from his base in Nottingham. He turned up bang on time. His Sat Nav had got him to Les Mayets without a hitch. Nothing was too much trouble and he carried a large marble work surface, which usually takes two to lift, on his head from his lorry to our dependence with the minimum of fuss. He's a strong chap and works week-ends as a bouncer in a night club. His lorry, he told me, could take a 20 ton load and after delivering a batch of wood burning stoves to a British importer near Eymet he was due in Bordeaux to transport a full load of wine back to England for delivery to Tesco.

We managed to have some sort of knees up in the run up to Christmas when we persuaded a few French we had got to know in the commune to come for an apertif chez nous. Our immediate neighbours, Marie Reine, her son Stefan and his Portuguese fiancée, Carla came. The others were a retired couple called Richard, whose father had served in the Foreign Legion, and his wife, Jacqueline and a farmer called Phillip, a former clay pigeon shooting champion of France. He and Stefan had just returned from shooting partridge in Spain. We were given a brace for Christmas. Philip brought along his wife, José Anne who, despite looking 30, was about to be a grandmother for the second time. The men all drank whisky and the ladies drank champagne. They must have enjoyed themselves because they didn’t leave till after 10pm.