During the past three years I have spent quite a bit of time in a rented house in Provence. Volets Bleus is a rectangular breeze-block bungalow perched on the side of a hill. In front of it is a tiled south-facing terrace resting on concrete pillars. The terrace looks over the tops of the trees that grow out of the valley floor, and further out over a commercial vineyard, and then to a distant line of oak-forested hills. Our nearest neighbours are a Dutch couple who live in a pretty old property a quarter of a mile away and high above us, currently on the market for €1.2 million. Kukor and Ezzard refer to our breeze-block shack as ‘the ugliest house in the Var’.
Previously, Volets Bleus was owned by a wealthy Scottish couple who used to drive down from the UK in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. The chauffeur thought the property beneath his dignity, so while his employers camped out in the house, he stayed in the best local hotel.
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