At 10.45 this morning I sat down with a plate of remnants from yesterday’s Sunday lunch reheated in the microwave. It’s the one meal I cook rather well: roast chicken smothered in butter with garlic, bay leaves and thyme; cauliflower and broccoli in a bechamel sauce and of course roast potatoes crisped in the butter dripping from the chicken.

Of course I couldn’t eat lunch without at least a glass of Bourgogne Aligote. The time was immaterial – I live in France for God’s sake and it was lunch, after all.

As I’d only got up at 9am I was still in my dressing gown, hair spiked from a restless night, but soon after eating I had a shower, put the old rollers in and dressed for the day.

Although the temperature has been as low as -6C, I put on a pair of cropped linen trousers and a Breton long-sleeved T-shirt over a short-sleeved T-shirt.

I didn’t really have much choice. In my manic clearance, or rather Emile’s, in the summer after the horrors of the bathroom mould, I appear to have ditched all winter clothes. So it was either the beige linen crops or white linen full-length.

Ah, sure, who is going to see me, I rationalised as always. In fact these days I basically shower and dress in case the firemen have to throw an oxygen mask on me and take me to A&E.

Anyway, as I chewed and sipped, I thought about the weekend visit from my son and heir.

Unfortunately one of the consequences of having COPD is that plummeting or rising temperatures leave me struggling to breathe, so I spent a lot of the time leaning on chairs doing the pursed lipped panting I was taught.

A giant looming over you banging on about why can’t you come for Christmas or why the house isn’t on the market does not make for calm, reasoned replies in this state.

"God, you’ve become a miserable woman," he yelled from the separate rooms we’d retreated to. "Living in a bloody field in France has made you odd, weird. What happened to you? Well, apart from what you’ve done to yourself with the smoking. I can’t forgive you for that."

My reply was a succinct one unsuitable for a family newspaper.

Today, though, 24 hours after peace was declared prior to his departure and my half-promising all sorts of things, I have to accept he’s right.

I have become quite odd, even weird. Or rather, odder and weirder.

I’m sure it happens to most of us who’ve lived alone for a long time but particularly those of us who live without the frequent stimulus of others.

A lot of it is a nice odd, a good weird; like eating "Sunday" lunch early on a Monday morning and washing it down with, ooh, maybe just one more glass.

Or learning to tap dance from YouTube; shouting at the dog to "grow up" or to "get your own bloody life" and engaging cold callers in a random discussion while betting with oneself how quickly they’ll hang up.

It’s being on the internet for hours or "living life through others" as my son called it. (Actually I believe it’s a global window on a fascinating if deeply disturbing future.)

It’s being able to stand stock still in a room wondering what the hell you’re in it for without somebody giving you a cognitive reasoning test.

It’s saying no when you actually don’t want to do something, and never keeping the peace or having to tiptoe around another’s fragile ego.

It’s also having a Mars bar or a bag of Maltesers for dinner without some bugger asking "what we’re having".

It can be talking back to the television, or rather it used to be. Now I stick on Twitter what I’d yell at the TV.

But it can also be being still on the internet or watching TV at 2am because it’s one of those twitchy nights when you don’t want to turn light or sound off and go to bed.

Twitchy because – forgive me, I’ve said this often – no-one can hear you scream in La France Profonde and the dog won’t stop barking at the shuttered doors and windows.

It’s also no reassuring pat from another sentient being when you think your breathing is moving beyond the calming exercises they taught you in pulmonary rehab.

At least, now that I’ve moved upstairs the dog won’t start gnawing at me if I "go" in the night. He’s too scared to climb stairs.

I am odd. But miserable? That hurt. I am all sorts of things but I do not think I’ve ever been miserable.

Yet, yet … sometimes I am now, I must admit. Isn’t everyone bloody miserable when they’re ill?

The problem, or truth, is that living alone in that field also removes the social niceties; the pretence that all is fine when it isn’t. When alone you can moan and groan around the house on bad days and tap dance on others.

Trouble is when you get irritated with others present because you can no longer continue to do that. So you do and therefore you’re miserable.

Ah, sod it. Accept I’m odd and weird and catch me on a good day.

I might even make you roast chicken.