An absolutely delightful article landed on my desk this morning, which I just have to share with you.  French Kissing – how do you go about it? Before you all get hot and bothered under the collar - no, it’s not that sort of kissing; it’s the Cheek Greeting Kiss kind!  We Brits have never been over demonstrative in our affections, sufficing normally with a formal handshake for “unknowns”, a heartier one for someone familiar and, daringly, a pat on the back if it’s someone we really like. Thankfully, France is much more convivial and has a wonderful tradition that once you’ve been “accepted” either as work colleague, friend or part of the family, you will be cheek-kissed. I find this a lovely gesture but it does mean you’ll need to cheek-kiss back.  And if you’re new to the game it can be all rather worrying, but the trick is simply to let your new French friend take the initiative – and simply copy them.

“Faire la bise” (to give a cheek kiss) is normally done when you meet friends for the first time and, depending where you are in France, the kiss count is different.  (Cheek kissing began in the Middle Ages when men began kissing women as a form of greeting: Bourgeoisie on the cheek, Nobility on the mouth).

But I can tell you that here on the French Riviera you only need to kiss once on both cheeks – and that goes for the whole of the department Provence-Alpes-Maritimes-Cote d’Azur. It’s also true for the departments of Aquitaine, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Rhone-Alpes and Limousin. But it’s three kisses in Midi-Pyrenées, and Poitou-Charentes. The further north you go it becomes four kisses as Ile-de-France (Paris), Picardie, Normandie, Bretagne, Pays-de-la-Loire make you feel very welcome; as will Champagne-Ardenne, also with four kisses. Mind you, for a glass of their gorgeous bubbly I’d gladly accept twenty kisses.

Now that you know all about French Kisses – have I told you the pitfalls about offering flowers?

One of the pleasures of working from home is, for me anyway, not having to travel to work or having that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, come Sunday evening, that the weekend’s over and it’s back to work on Monday. The downside is that there’s no escape and that each day tends to merge into another. Worse still, I’ve even managed to lose days: “What do you mean it’s Thursday – where did Wednesday go?”

In the good old days I knew exactly which day it was because my mother always did the family washing on Monday, the dustmen (or whatever they’re now called) came on Tuesday, Wednesday were always fun as the whole afternoon was set aside for art, my swimming lessons were on Thursday and my dreaded French classes, given by a very strict Mother Superior, were every Friday afternoon. But now the spanner’s definitely been thrown in the works – I do the washing every other day, our dustmen come three times a week and I don’t do art classes anymore: unless you call working on the website sort of “arty” – then I do that every day.

So this weekend I decided I needed to be more organised and define the days of my week better, using the weekend as a marvellous Full Stop. Monday will now be admin day, Wednesday will be used to review future articles, features and research material for the website and Friday will be marked by a chilled glass of wine. That’s the plan anyway and I rather liked the idea about Friday . . .

This afternoon the 63rd anniversary of the Libération of Opio and Le Rouret was held on Rond-Point de la Font Neuve in Opio at its commemorative war stele. The flags of America, Britain, Canada and France were raised while the anthem of each country was played and, what I thought, rather moving speeches were made by, among others, the mayors of Opio and Le Rouret.