Remember the James Bond film entitled ‘You Only Live Twice’? The lyrics go: You only live twice, Or so it seems, one life for yourself and one for your dreams. Well, it’s all change now. How about ‘You Only Live Thrice’ with the words: You only live thrice, so say we all, two lives for yourself and one Virtual. And what brought that on, you must all be asking yourself.

Well, I came across a rather surprising article on the BBC website a couple of days ago that sort of shocked me. Nothing serious but very, very sad to the sociable creature that I am. The article was all about Virtual dinner parties. It now seems a new cyber trend is developing whereby people can discuss a pre-set topic via e-mail rather than meeting over dinner. Can you imagine sitting alone with your plate and a glass of wine in the evenings, emailing your other ‘dinner guests’, who equally sit alone with their plate and glass of wine and all emailing one another? I have never read anything more morose.

Having said that, don’t we do this already at work? Rather than walking a couple of metres over to a colleague and discussing an issue or project, do we not email instead? While I may do this during work hours (boss breathing down my neck for an immediate answer, chained to my desk, bunions on my feet, etc.), I simply cannot see myself giving virtual dinner parties. Not that I give any dinner parties at night. I do lunches.

And, as we’re in France, I think it’s only right that I serve some wine. To be honest, I’m not a great connoisseur and tend to shy away from heavy reds preferring the light, refreshing Provencal Roses you can find here. This is normally chilled (but not icy) and then served in some rather posh cut-glass glasses. Any reds are left to come to room temperature (though there’s some debate as to what ‘room temperature’ means nowadays). Anyway, I was much amused by another BBC article I read recently on how music ‘can enhance wine taste’ and that playing a certain type of music brings out the best in wine (and your taste buds). Thus it seems that Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Syrah and Merlot are quite particular in their musical tastes (ex. Syrah adores ‘Chariots of Fire’) and the effect they have on us, after they’ve had an ear full.

AHHH, now all is explained. That’s why I feel so terrible the next day after a glass or two of wine. It’s not so much the amount of wine I consumed but the music I played it . . .

‘Would you like a baby donkey?’ I was asked a couple of days ago. Talk about temptation I thought, my mind twirling round the idea on how I’d get this animal past Nigel without him noticing. But the question was not so daft as I’d mentioned a couple of weeks ago to Liz that Nigel and I were planning on moving perhaps by the end of the year to bigger premises with more land. And with our burgeoning family of dogs, cats and kitties - what’s a donkey here or there?

These past few weeks, if not months really (though Nigel says it feels more like years to him . . .), I’ve been wanting to find a larger home with land rather than just a garden. Sadly, the type of place I’m looking for is beyond our financial reach here on the French Riviera so I’ve been looking at properties further afield. Thanks to the magic of internet, my nimble fingers have danced across my keyboard and most of France without me once having to visit an estate agent. My virtual search has led me to some beautiful places but also to wonder if the whole of France isn’t up for sale. Though I will admit that, at times, I may have gone off on tangents out of sheer curiosity (New Zealand at one point) I managed to restrain myself and cast my net within the boundary of what I understand to be the South of France.

In view of all these forthcoming exciting and more personal adventures, I felt I should extract my current blog from AMB Cote d’Azur and create a dedicated blog site with a new face lift in the process. The new blog also reintroduces an old favourite of mine: Highslide. If you’ve not seen it before, quite simply you just click on the image in the blog and up pops a bigger one, much like a Jack in the Box. I’ve already set it up on the one here so have a go.

Now, that wasn’t difficult was it? Photo taken from Ile St Marguerite towards l’Esterel hills.

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If you clicked on the photo you’ll know that it was one I took when visiting Ile St Marguerite last Sunday. The photo was taken on the fort where once the Man in the Iron Mask was incarcerated. You can read more about my trip in the upcoming issue of AMB.

We start our first round of house hunting at the end of May with Freddy and Bertie tagging along for the ride as we head off to the Dordogne to look at four properties. I know many of you dip into my blogs from time to time because you find them fun but if you’re now thinking of buying a home in France why not follow us on our adventures to see how we get on and if, finally, we find our dream property with room for a baby donkey.

Speaking of which, Nigel darlin’ . . .

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.