This is now my third visit to France.

Technically, it’s my fourth, but I am blocking a whirlwind “three days in Paris, two days on the Côte d’Azur” bus tour from my re-telling, but I thought I should set things straight in case any of those suppressed memories rear their ugly heads in the near future.

The first was a nervous meet-the-family visit to my boyfriend’s hometown, all under the guise of attending the Festival des Francofolies in La Rochelle. Linguistically, I was able to express that I was 13 years old, which was hilariously funny for me, but I don’t think the joke carried well, and I’m sure that many family and friends thought that perhaps Guillaume (let’s give him a name) was indulging in some illegal fetish that involved an over-grown pre-pubescent…

The second was spontaneous – and all related to the fact that the mercury had plunged to -30° in St. Petersburg (after a marvellously temperate 0° for the whole of the New Year’s festive season), whilst Toulon (where Guillaume was studying at the time) was enjoying a mid-winter 24° (plus!), so I thought I should join the dazzling sunshine to shake my winter blues. I spent a month nearby, in a little holiday unit, rented to students in the off-season. With the Mediterranean as my backyard, I could concentrate on the hardly serious pursuits of buying a pain au chocolat of a morning, and wandering amongst seaweed of an afternoon. To finish it all off, we had a memorably compact week in Paris, staying in a friend’s capsule-like apartment and notching up tourist attractions like they were prize scalps. Needless to say, this time, I’ve hardly ventured outside. I can see the Eiffel Tower from the nearby metro station, and otherwise, I might just wait till the tourist tide has ebbed away… wish me luck, please, I might be waiting until 80…