Today has been a very French day. Do I hear you say, "what the hell is she on about? She lives in France, every day is a French day?"

Well it is and it isn’t. Many of us, if we so choose, can hunker down inside our houses filled with our non-French bits and pieces; switch on the BBC, read our English books and forget we’re actually here.

We can trot off to drinks or dinner parties and the chat will be all about UK news and politics, and the silverware and places settings will be reassuringly ‘normal.’

There will be side plates, if one must have bread, and a regiment of knives and forks for each course, not just the one set re-used as is normal at a French gathering.

Of course cheese will be served before pudding, a French foible enthusiastically taken to by the Brits, and there’ll be a little conversation about the wine.

But, unlike in the French houses, there’ll be lots of wine and no bottle will be left unemptied. And, thank God, we don’t need to get a migraine speaking the language for the whole of the meal.

Any French people will be there because they speak English, unless it’s a return bout and only French-speaking ‘English’ will be begged to come and help out.

Then we can return to our stone-clad farmhouses or townhouses, pull our curtains (very non-French) and go to bed in our White Company sheets having bathed or showered in our childhood soaps and shampoos. Of course that’s winter life.

In the summer we’re truly Frenchified and live outdoors with aperos, dip in and out of the pool, clip exotic flowers for the house and serve up amuse-bouches for the visitors promptly at 5pm.

Oh yes, we tell them, this is what we all do in France, dontchaknow?

We do get mildly annoyed that our ‘wonderful’ French neighbours are making a lot of noise ploughing or reaping the fields as we concentrate on well...living la vie Francaise.

The noise and the dust, darling. Sometimes we despair!

It’s sooo much harder in winter. A lot of expats get quietly stressed when dealing with anything other than a visit to the supermarket and a conversation beyond: ‘Bonjour.’

The market is sooo much easier when one can just point and nod while carrying one’s basket like a true French housewife. (The French housewife who, actually, is trundling her trolley around Lidl and not paying the inflated prices, doubled up for the tourists and holiday home visitors.)

Believe me, I’m often no better and so do not sit in superior judgement, merely in observation.

When my French aerial stopped receiving did I get it fixed? Non. I heaved a sigh of relief while apologising to visitors that they couldn’t have the full experience of dubbed old American ‘Friends’ and banal afternoon chat shows.

Anyway, got side-tracked there; one does, I find, after a couple of hours or so with Eric, my wine merchant who happened to call in to finish off my French day.

So the French day. Snapshots. Ordered an oven online in the sales with three clicks then spent a day and a half speaking to customer services to get it delivered and the old one taken away.

Waited one hour and a quarter in the doctor’s surgery, watching afternoon TV, until he and his young intern called me in. After the checks, spent half an hour discussing among other things: seaside resorts in France and Spain; restaurants in Bordeaux I really must go to; freelance journalism; best way to cook mussels; death of David Bowie and why I hadn’t gone to see his wife in Montauban yet who will teach me how to walk again in high heels.

Eventually I said I really had to go as I had a column to write.

In the chemist I handed over the ‘ordinance’ – the prescription – to sort out the sore on my elbow that is causing recurring infection. I know, too much information.

The doctor ordered dressings and alcohol to ‘draw it out.’ Three chemists gathered to discuss whether they thought that was a good idea or not.

The usual pharmacy crowd gathered behind me to chip in their thoughts. "You had antibiotics for this at the end of December," said the senior chemist checking his computer.

"That’s why he wants to try this," I said.

"Mmm," he said. "Mmm," murmured the crowd, shaking their collective heads in disagreement.

Twenty minutes later I was allowed to leave, reluctantly, with the doctor’s request. I could see they didn’t agree. Nor did the crowd.

I’d barely got home when Eric turned up.

Over my cheap Lidl Bordeaux we discussed books, French sexual habits, nude beaches, buying foreign brides, power walking in Biarritz, cocaine, cannabis and Britain’s exit from the EU.

After he left I went to close the shutters. In the bathroom a column of tiny ants had formed an extraordinary busy circle on the tiles. I stamped on them.

In the salon Cesar was scrabbling up a wall where a lizard clung on grimly.

I distracted him with a biscuit and sat and wrote this.