For a time, tootling through the countryside with every square inch of earth put to some productive use or other, I began to think we were in the land of impoverished farmers. That misconception was soon put right.
‘Everybody’s loaded round here’, our host Phil who hailed from Orpington and is married to a French lady called Dominque, informed the husband doing that thing that men never do, ie gossip. ‘They all plant the fields then go away and don’t come back until the harvest’, he concluded moving the conversation on to the inevitable topics of football and ‘when I was a lad’.

Phil proved to be a very likeable chap and didn’t seem to mind at all when I came over a bit blonde and forgot that to make a shower work you have to turn it on. The husband donated a bottle of Dandelion and Burdock from his stash to round off memories of Blighty and ‘when I was a lad’ and to repay the bottles of local brew that welcomed us when we arrived.