At 5.30 this morning in a neighbouring village, friends were awoken by the sound of gravel trucks disgorging on the one main street.

At midnight last night, under a full moon, but with headlights ablaze, a huge combine was still harvesting the wheat fields around my house. A truck lay parked to take the crop and a couple of small white vans signalled that others were working in cab or field.

The speeding school bus that picks up the one child in and outside our tiny village zoomed by at 7am, an hour earlier than usual. I saw it because I was already returning from my dog walk that had begun at 6am.

Now at mid-day, I am inside, all shutters almost closed, a fan clacking behind child gate and aimed at Cesar who lies panting and spent in its cooling air.

By mid-afternoon I will be lying in my bedroom, curtains drawn, a wet flannel across my head and, no doubt, like the dog, panting.

That is how we deal with canicules (heat waves) here - with great respect, time adjustments and a slowing down even further of our lazy paced southern life.

With temperatures averaging 38 degrees for the last week and set to last for the month, often hitting 40 plus, life has gone into lockdown.

Luckily, if the shutters are used properly, our stone houses remain cool and cave like but it's all relative - coming in to 27C from 38C is a blessing.

This is the first year I've followed the French and reluctantly closed my windows against the sun to live in semi-darkness.

It's always easy to recognise the ex-pat houses, winter and summer. Our windows are wide open, shutters used only last thing at night and then not always.

None of us understand the locals' determination to shut out the world, to turn their backs on other lives.

Even on mild days most villages have a deserted, lonely air as the inhabitants go about their time in closed off rooms where a centre light always burns.

I've always had to fight down the urge to drive through shouting: "Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead."

But this summer we've gone French and recognised the wisdom of hiding one's face from the fierce, often lethal rays, which ironically led most of us here.

For this canicule period is even longer and hotter than the infamous one of 2003. Then, 15,000 died, mainly elderly French, mostly from dehydration.

Shocked and ashamed that neglect of the old could result in such unnecessary deaths, the authorities set up a three-tiered system to aide and check its old people in future similar conditions.

This may be the first real test of its effectiveness.

Warnings to stay indoors and advice are constantly updating on radio and television; the mairies have a check list of the over 65s to work through as the high temperatures continue and free bottled water will be handed out as a secondary check.

Apart from the large stores, shops and, thankfully, cars, air-conditioning does not play a big part in our lives.

Freestanding fans do; ugly big ceiling fans do, but expensive systems rarely do - faith is placed in thick stone walls and volets (shutters.)

The old ways, that baffle incomers who cannot understand why so many houses are orientated away from the sun; close in on themselves around courtyards; and have small, mean windows where they would have an expanse of glass to make the most of the view.

It takes their first canicule to understand the simplicity and beauty of houses built in tune with nature at its fiercest.

The word itself comes from the Romans. They called the hottest, most humid days of summer 'dies caniculares' or 'dog days.'

But it had nothing to do with watching heat exhausted hounds stretched under tree or roof.

They linked such days to the star Sirius, known as the Dog Star because it was the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog.)

During summer when it rises and sets with the sun it seemed likely to the Romans that its brightness added to the sun's beamed extra rays at the earth.

(I'd have made a good Roman for that seems a fair enough explanation to me.)

And so night-time is the time to venture forth. It's the time of the night markets and the fetes and spectacles that begin as late as 10pm.

Cafes and restaurants now come alive as the sun dips and sitting, even in shade, becomes comfortable again.

Our gardens are empty until twilight.

My first canicule I lay beaming with the sun on a sun bed as the sweat lashed my frame, moving only to crawl into the pool.

My neighbour Pierrot actually drove up to ask me if I were mad. Did I not realise it's a canicule?

"Yes," I said, wrinkled and brown as a crocodile, "Isn't it wonderful?

"This is what I came for. Bliss."

He stared at me blankly for a while before turning and walking off. He turned just once more before leaving.

"You'll learn," he said. "One day."

He was right. That day has arrived.