Not even once-in-a-century rains could dampen our return

Colin Randall

• Last Updated: May 04. 2009 6:23PM UAE / May 4. 2009 2:23PM GMT

At the office in Abu Dhabi, people passing by would stop and admire the beautiful photograph of my French home that I had saved as a desktop image.

The beauty was exaggerated, the angle of the picture giving a misleading impression of size and layout. But it was close enough to the truth, capturing the luminosity and colour of my corner of Provence, to sharpen nostalgic impulses as the months passed without opportunity to visit.

I knew there would be surprises awaiting my return to a place where I feel, far as it may be from the north-eastern England of my youth, at home. The tentacles of recession have reached our little seaside town, leaving a few empty spaces where there were shops as recently as last June.

Another surprise was that it rained solidly for two of my first four days back. Not, however, as solidly as it had rained for a couple of days in December, a “once in a century” torrent according to one local.

We had been warned that many properties had been flooded but felt our hilltop position would have spared ours. Not so. Water had inched up the rear outside wall and refused to force a swift enough passage through the leaves blocking the drain. The interior walls of three bedrooms were not a pretty sight; each room will need redecoration with, we fervently hope, the help of our new best friend, the man at the insurance agency.

My wife is convinced the weather in the south of France is getting worse and that it will end up being warmer in her part of the country, far to the north; she has already imagined in her sleep that we were packing to return to the UAE and was disappointed to awake and find that she had been dreaming. But we do appreciate that others here suffered much more severely from the storm, so must be grateful.

Inside the garage door was a mound of unopened mail dating back six months to the expiry of a postal redirection contract. There were dozens of editions of the International Herald Tribune, a relic of an old subscription that must have run out two years ago. There were bank statements, copies of bills paid by direct debit, newsletters from the town hall and, despite a prominent sign pleading for no junk mail to be left, enough shopping bumf to account for a small row of trees.

There were pleasant surprises, too. Despite a reported threat to our low-cost flights to the UK from an airport 20 minutes along the coast, a confirmed reservation suggests that all, for now, is well. In our small garden, the magnificent, if solitary, oiseau du paradis has returned in full bloom. It took only a couple of days, instead of the week we’d expected, to get back online and contactable by phone at home.

And even Monette, the world-travelled cat, is happy to be reinstalled in her native France though the move was less welcome to the poor wall lizard that she encountered on day three and was later found, intact but lifeless, beneath an army of ants.