The old English proverb, It never rains but it pours, seems to be the buzz word here on the French Riviera these past few days ever since the Cannes Film Festival started. As I write this it’s absolutely belting down and the forecast predicts worse is yet to come. I fear skimpy frocks and dainty shoes on the red carpet tonight would be better replaced by some stout old wellies and heavy-duty duffle coats. This rain is also rather unfortunate as my friend Ineke is down here visiting Montpellier for a few days and hoped to bask in some hot southern sunshine after the deluges of the UK recently. But things are made sadder as it’s her birthday today and like me (’cos it’s mine too) she remembers it nearly always sunny.

Pre-empting our move later on this year and as one of my birthday presents, Nigel bought me a super book entitled ‘Success with Mediterranean Gardens’ by Shirley-Anne Bell. The book has been compiled for gardeners yearning for a hot Mediterranean-style garden but who live in a cool, temperate zone (much like here really for the moment). As Nigel and I continue to discuss the type of property we’d like to have in Aquitaine, the idea of renovating an old place and creating a garden from scratch appeals to me more and more. And of course it goes without saying my new garden will do its utmost to care for the welfare of bees, butterflies and other endangered species.

Talking of bees, yesterday I met with the very lovely Carol Drinkwater and, my word, is she ever the busy bee. I’d interviewed Carol in 2005 when The Olive Route was just about to be published. Her latest book ‘The Olive Tree’ is due out in October and promises to be one incredible tour-de-force. While I have always admired Carol’s tenacity and passion to uncover the origins of the olive tree, her current work with UNESCO’s World Heritage and the environment is utterly staggering and deserves our full support. I’ll be writing a detailed report about my meeting with Carol and the work she is currently doing in the June issue of AMB. Indeed, while I might blog about my garden and its funny ways, environmental issues are seriously lacking on the website. Plans are currently underway to rectify this and I’ll be telling you more about them in my next editorial.

But today is my special day and so I’ve decided to spend it away from the office. Nigel is preparing a special birthday lunch for me though, sadly, not outdoors by our pool, and then I shall try and find some Mediterranean sunshine, even if it is between the pages of my new gardening book . . .

Thanks to Jill Shepperd of the English Book Centre in Valbonne, some rather splendid reading material came my way today. While I don’t doubt the ease in which the internet has turned book buying into the simplest of tasks I do wonder if it hasn’t made it somewhat mundane and impersonal. What, I ask myself, could be more glorious than the ability of visiting a real-life bookshop, discovering new titles or the anticipation of finding long lost old ones and even discussing authors and their books with the bookshop owner?

Last year I think I blogged how much I loved books and how I have a tendency to sniff them, wallowing in the smell of new pages or crusty old ones. I think I forgot to mention that I’d also learnt never, ever to lend one of your dearly prized possessions to anyone - be they your very best friend or marital partner. These books are not boomerangs - they don’t come back. So when Kathy Alex of Cooking with Friends lent me her own copy of Julia Child’s book My Life in France, I quickly realised that this would be a book I’d want to keep and treasure. I also knew the guilt I’d suffer if I held on to it. The solution was a quick call to Jill to ask her to get me my own copy. What I love about the book is Julia’s candid openness and great wit which makes it difficult not to stay awake into the wee small hours immersed in her world to find out what she’ll do next. But the book is made more fun because Kathy lives in the same home that Julia did on the Cote d’Azur and, because I know Kathy, indirectly I also know Julia.

My second book was another classic, Two Towns in Provence by MFK Fisher. Martin Hills had already highlighted this book to me a few weeks ago as being a rather good golden oldie and suggested that it merited a review. Now that I have it I can see what he meant and so have asked him to write a review for the next issue of AMB. It too is written from the heart and contains much nostalgia. Published in 1964 it is a delightful journey of a world that no longer exists but would have been charming to know.

But it is Jill’s third book which is rather special. By sheer fluke she came across Cote d’Azur - Inventing the French Riviera by Mary Blume. This book is now out of print so I’m over the moon she knew how excited I would be about finding it (proof - I’m blogging). I felt magnetized by it even after delving into a few pages. Crammed with nostalgic stories and some rather brilliant scandals Mary talks of a Cote d’Azur I would have loved to have known as one senses the French Riviera on the cusp of sliding out of innocence into industrialism, simplicity into mega tourism.

These are books I shall treasure and turn into friends while others in my bulging library shall remain as research material. And while I may appreciate the effectiveness of Google and other search engines, I am glad that I haven’t lost the ability to open a real book and read. Knowing how hard it is to write makes me appreciate so much more someone else’s effort.

Here’s a thing: did you know that 83 blogs are created every minute of every day? No, neither did I. Put more succinctly 120,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day and every day with 112.8 million blogs being tracked by Technorati.

Mind you, blogs have been around for quite a while beginning first in 1994 as online diaries before turning into personal web pages in 2002 when they really ‘took off’ to become the phenomena they are today. So I suppose these figures should come as no surprise and just goes to show how many people are ‘out there’ writing and sharing their world with others.

However (and this shows my ignorance) I honestly thought people just wrote one blog, possibly two at a push, so I was humbled by my meagre attempts when I read in ProBlogger.com that there are some who write twenty blogs a day! The mind boggles. Of course, this has all to do with that same old chestnut: How Can I Make Money Out Of The Internet?

When I was a kid I kept a diary and made a fair bit of money out of that. Every Christmas my brother and I received a small leather-bound diary from our grandparents to whom we would promise faithfully to record our daily activities. Upon each visit we’d drag out our diaries (hastily written up the night before) and lo and behold, we’d find a silvery half crown coin slipped in between the pages. My piggy bank soon swelled. Keeping a diary was instilled in me by my father. He had kept one as a child and wrote one during his war years. Later he wrote specific diaries of holidays spent abroad with my mother’s Belgian family (quite the mine-field I can assure you and no doubt made my father’s war effort look tame in comparison) and, being the gifted artist that he was, interspersed his writings with comical drawings.

I think, had he been alive today, he would have been very bemused by today’s brew of digital media. Not only do we have blogs, websites, twitters and Wikis, but also Mashups and RSS feeds and this is without the addition of image sharing by way of Flickr and YouTube. Talking of which, this morning I came across an interesting article (BBC News Magazine) written by Tom Geoghegan entitled Innocent Photographer or terrorist? It’s a wonderful piece which relates the mishaps of a number of innocent holidaymakers getting apprehended by police or security guards in the pursuit of their hobby. Thankfully I’ve not had any such occurrence happen to me, but then again, I can’t quite imagine the French Riviera ever becoming camera-shy.