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.