I NOTICED a woman browsing the aisles in Carrefour and knew immediately she was a self-identified expat. It’s pretty obvious really. Even if the clothes are French, the way they are worn is unmistakeably English.

That is to say they’re neat, pressed, usually coordinated with loafers or ‘sensible’ shoes and perfectly nice, just lacking a certain élan. They may have mastered the many ways to tie the obligatory neck scarf but it is just not quite carefree enough. One knows it has taken much practice before the mirror.

The shopping basket is held just so; the back straight and proud and the hair is neatly worn above the collar line. And make-up – always make-up – and a hint of perfume; floral or lemony. And the backsides are always wider than the rest of them, even the skinny ones.

I look down at my rag-bag of clothes, the battered trainers, hair on end, no make-up but, but, a perfect scarf tied like the French. Le sigh.

When she turned to continue to walk the aisle, she hesitated, and in her look, I knew she’d recognised me and me her. I started to smile but it never got beyond its beginning as she purposefully blanked me and turned in the direction she’d come.

I know when I’m blanked for this is not the first time and won’t be the last.

Now before you think I must have said or done something dreadful to the woman, au contraire, I only knew her from long ago apéros or dinners here where we made friendly, meaningless conversation.

The plump, middle-aged assistant behind the counter had noticed it too and, deliberately, came out kindly to say hello and ask me how I was and all the usual pleasantries. There were no bisous, for the French know I don’t do them and are not offended, and our French – or so I like to think – was fast and furious. She rolled her eyes in the direction the woman had fled and we both shrugged. Words were not needed.

Several months ago, a couple I’d known well, whose house I’d often entered and who’d frequently been in mine, was sat opposite the chair I’d taken in the doctor’s surgery.

Looking up I’d grinned and warmly greeted them. She looked at a point on the ceiling trying to be invisible. He nodded. I prattled on not immediately realising what was happening. The responses were brusque and cold and once I got the message, I took a mischievous pleasure in watching their discomfort as I warmly asked about the family, the house, the animals. I was relentless – charmingly relentless.

God, were they relieved when called in for their appointment.

I won’t list the many other examples. Too many and tedious.

I was exiled, put in eternal Coventry, many years ago and my ‘sin’ can never be purged. Even now, new, desperate to mingle, incomers, are warned to avoid me – I’m poison.

All this I know, for I still have the odd one or two who couldn’t give a merde either, who keep me informed. And, in the beginning, a copy of the round robin email to all, really all, ‘expats’ within a 50km radius that I was ‘the serpent in our midst.’

My crime for newcomers to the column? I wrote about them. I didn’t use names or villages but yes, I cast a cold eye. I was often sympathetic and even kind but I suppose, yes, I could be seen as cruel sometimes. I blew the living the dream myth apart but also praised those who were doing it for genuine reasons – not the economic migrants, who re-created themselves and the past, in these foreign valleys.

All of them had been told right from the start that I wrote a column. All had been told it was about my life here and those I met. What more could I say?

I will never be part of a fantasy. Look, it’s tough here for many incomers particularly since the exit from the EU. Money doesn’t go far in rate exchanges; the retired are frightened that their health care will go; the workers have no right of movement; their houses don’t make a profit even if they can sell them; they know returning to the UK is almost impossible for they could neither afford to buy nor easily return into a health system they long ago left and look on now with despair after having the best.

And still many of them voted for Brexit.

Later, at home, and not for the first time, I thought about the Carrefour snub and found myself surprisingly saddened. Occasionally I miss those ‘Cotswold’ dinner parties where the silver shone, the food was delicious and the chat contained; within strict middle-class rules of behaviour; but the odd maverick was admitted for the frisson of amusement. So long as she/he didn’t go too far...

In their eyes I did. They were all kind to me in the beginning and I appreciated and understood I was fresh meat – until it all bored me.

But I do miss it – God, they gave me great columns. What?