Dear friends, It is midsummer here. I am in the south of France where the heat is almost suffocating if one is not fortunate enough to live by the sea, have access to a pool or be able to escape to the mountains. Up north, in Paris, the Olympic Games known here as JO (Jeux…
I have been walking through wildflowers on the terraces that are waist high. The butterflies, bees, pollinators are gorging on their delights. The land really does feel to be alive, which is joyous to experience.
Hello dear friends, I am writing this on a cold, wet, blustery day in northern France, at our Mad Old Chateau. I have a chest infection. Last weekend I was in Berlin, accompanying Michel for a few days to the Berlin Film Festival where it was even wetter and windier. Fortunately I escaped the cold…
Dear Readers and Friends, I am late with this again. Apologies. The last few weeks have been challenging and very busy. I seem to have spent most of late November and December in airports. I have been to London three times and to Dublin once. All that aside from trajectories between the Olive Farm and…
Above: Home-made vin d’orange from our farm. Hello dear Friends! My goodness, it has been a long hot summer. A time of waiting. Waiting for rain, waiting for news, waiting for inspiration! … I am happy to be back in touch with you all after a slightly longer than usual break. We have been struggling…
Hello dear Friends, My goodness, we are are experiencing temperatures here in the south of France that are WAY above what we used to think of as average for this time of year. Every day it hits close to or a wee bit higher than 30C. It has meant a change of life in that…
Hello Dear Friends! Welcome to my Spring Newsletter. This last week has been a bit of a whirlwind. Last Saturday, the 22nd, was my birthday – a milestone one. We celebrated quietly but with gusto. M took me for dinner to one of my favourite “special” spots, La Colombe d’Or in Saint Paul de…
Dear Reader, Spring is in sight. Mediterranean Spring. We have almond blossoms almost in full flower which, of course, is the first sign of spring around the Mediterranean basin. Do I say this every year? Possibly. I am always so overjoyed to see that lovely pale pink petal showing its face like a blush on…
Happy New Year! There was a time when I used to look to the years after 2,000 and think of them as distant stars. A universe I could not see into or imagine. Now, here we are, almost a quarter of a century into this millennium. It hardly seems possible. I remember my father when…
This was last year. Ours is not up yet! This letter is so overdue that I am almost too embarrassed to apologise, but here we are and … erm, sincere apologies. My last note was in July. I wrote it soon after Michel and I had made a journey across southern France to spend a…
Happy Easter, dear Readers and Friends! I am moving offices! A few yards from one building at our home outside Paris (fondly known as the Mad Old Chateau) to another crumbling stone building on the same patch of land. Today is Good Friday, the sun is shining and I am traipsing back and forth through…
Hello! Once again this letter is a little late. My sincere apologies. It has been a low-key Christmas and winter for us this year, which explains my silence (nothing really to write about!). After I had finished shooting and recording the final episode of Carol Drinkwater’s Secret Provence (Channel 5 changed the title from A…
Hello! This comes so late! I meant to write this Newsletter almost a month ago. I apologise for the delay. My only excuse is that I have been so busy. Thanksgiving has just been celebrated by all our American friends, Black Friday has been studiously avoided by us and we are now looking at the…
Hello! I want to begin this missive with an apology for the delay in writing a Newsletter. I know, it has been several months since the last one. Truth is, it has been a hectic summer and I have quite a bit of news. I am writing this from Greece where I have been attending…
Hello! I am writing to you from the South of France where our first waves of spring have been very contradictory. The blossoms have been simply spellbinding. Hours I have spent strolling about the land breathing in the delicate scents of fruit flowers only to wake the next day to heavy rains, which have driven…
Dear Friends, Well, if you are reading this you, like Michel and myself, are still here. Thank heavens. We have all struggled through and reached December of this crazy, rollercoaster of a year of 2020. Earlier, back in the spring, which seems like many lifetimes ago now, I lost two very dear friends to Covid….
Dear friends and readers worldwide, It is ages since I have written a Newsletter. There have been several blogs posted directly to my website, but no Newsletter. My sincere apologies for this; we have been experiencing technical difficulties with the site and some glitch or other was blocking mails going out. Grrr. Fingers crossed my…
Hello to you all, I am writing this from our home/office up north, east of Paris. The pic above was taken at the farm last week. We’ll be back down at the farm after the weekend. It’s mighty hot here in the Seine-et-Marne region with the temps soaring to 34C yesterday and then an overnight…
Dear Friends, It is the last day of April. I am at my desk looking out onto more blossoms than I have ever seen here before. It is a riot of colour and a joyous expression of nature’s determination to live and procreate. Our “confinement” will due to ease in twelve days from now. It…
Hello dear friends, Apologies. I don’t seem to be very good at keeping to my schedules at present. There seems to be so much on, not least hammering away at a new novel. I am almost half way through – that’s of the rough draft so doesn’t quite count as half way through. Even so,…