THE very first Christmas I spent in Las Molieres comes back to me, like the ghost of Christmas Past in swirling technicolour, as I look around at the now-decoration bereft rooms.

A huge tree stood before the glass doors, a vision of baubles going back to my childhood – a large star touching the ceiling from which a cascade of white lights swathed the branches.

Boughs of firs, interspersed with clementines, sprigs of holly and squat church candles, draped chimney pieces and ledges.

Pine scent drifted with the smoke evoking the forest outside and the smell pulsing from the chimneys of nearby farms where different traditions were being followed.

A crib with a constantly burning candle to welcome all lost in the darkness, or in case a family needed shelter for a birth, sat on the hall table against the window.

In the salon, sweet scented logs crackled and sighed in the wood burner; fierce embers burning blood red against the glass. Crystal decanters, filled with whisky and port, twinkled on the gun table; my books danced in the reflected light as did the photographs of a busy, mainly joyful, life.

Stretched before the heat was Portia, my best beloved of Afghan Hounds, demanding little and retaining an aloofness cast only aside, occasionally, for me, the favoured one.

In different rooms to the compulsory swelling sounds of Christmas carols, my dearest younger friends, Laura and Steve, here from London, and my still unmarried and carefree son, were dressing.

Entranced by the cornucopia of all on offer in the supermarkets and markets at what was then an extraordinarily cheap price, me, the non-foodie, had a kitchen packed with foie gras, guinea fowl, champagne amuse bouches, canapés prepared by the traiteur and wines and champagne at a price that made me laugh out loud with astonishment when they were rung up at the till.

Cakes and deserts of trembling perfection awaited in the fridge for those who had need of sweet offerings following such feasts of land, sea and sky.

Outside, wrapped in cellophane and sitting on top of my car in the crisp, cold air, was a mountain of sea food from lobster to tiny clams and all permutations in between – my order picked up on Christmas Eve from Leclerc 20 miles away.

It was to be our nod to French Christmas, eaten on the eve until long into the early hours. The chapon pintarde was for the day itself.

I had a rough idea of what I was to do with it along with the chestnuts, the sauces, the complex vegetables, but, believe this if you can, I had no worries.

For Steve, a journalist who missed his calling as a chef, was my safety blanket, ready to catch me should I falter on merely entering the kitchen which was as much a mystery to me as was my presence here.

Just six months earlier I had taken possession of LM in an audacious act of defiance and here we were bathed in endless, unknown possibilities – and the unmistakeable magic of Christmas, my favourite time of all.

A party had been planned for Boxing Day: open house for all the neighbours in the fields around me; the workmen, now friends, who had laboured here; the Britons who’d welcomed me, and us.

I wasn’t sure how many would come as open house and a buffet is, even now, a strange concept to my France Profonde neighbours who like the formality of strict times to eat..and a table.

But they came, all of them, bearing oysters to be shucked, foie gras to be eaten in chunks of bliss, and stood to the manor born eating from their hand-held plate.

The fact that the fosse septique had erupted in the bath and all but one lavatory was – said with the benefit of 14 years on – a minor irritant.

Men need no encouragement to pee outside – women, like camels, can hold it for hours.

And my new neighbour Pierrot told me I was his neighbour, therefore his cousin, and he would be around the following morning to sort it out. He was.

He has been sorting out many, many, problems in this house ever since and I bless the day we met.

Gosh, I find I’m growing quite tearful at that memory playing before me like a fast flickering film projected on a wall.

Laura and Steve divorced; my son Pierce is married and the father of two girls – I see him rarely. Portia is long gone and another, difficult, Afghan demands constant attention.

And me? A breathless shadow of the woman who danced around that kitchen as Mario sang out Joy to the World. A woman who piled her trolley high and laughed at checkouts; a woman who sat on her steps that Christmas looking all around her and never imagined the dance would splutter to an end.

That’s life, non? It weaves and wends its way. Nothing, nothing, can stay the same – we age, we get sick, we falter and we…disappear.

Ah, but Christmas. Christmas has a magic like no other time. Celebrate it. Hold it.

Remember it – always.

Joyeux Noël.