The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singular world of tu.

The day when a Frenchman switches from the formality of vous to the familiarity of tu is a day to be taken seriously. It is an unmistakable signal that he has decided - after weeks or months or sometimes years - that he likes you. It would be chulish and unfriendly of you not to return the compliment. And so, just when you are at last feeling comfortable with vous and all the plurals that go with it, you are thrust headlong in to the singular world of tu.

I have a very set routine. I work six days a week, but only half days. I work from 9 in the morning till 1 in the afternoon, without any interruptions, a fair slug.

Sundays in France have a different atmosphere to other days, with fewer phone calls, no postman, no delivery men and no one banging on the door.

Very little happens in my books.

Day after day we looked for rain, and day after day we saw nothing but the sun. Lavender that we had planted in the spring died. The patch of grass in front of the house abandoned its ambitions to become a lawn and turned into the dirty yellow of poor straw. The earth shrank, revealing its knuckles and bones, rocks and roots that had been invisible before.

Nowadays, if you have a journey, albeit a simple one, you consider yourself lucky if nothing happens.