Why on earth would anyone give up this and willingly return to a gloomy, grey post-Brexit Britain in which, as my great friend Pete Sixsmith put it on the phone today, there is a distinctly nasty atmosphere? Not so much racism, he thought, but xenophobia, a loathing of all foreigners.
Well for a start, the France I leave behind is not so much better, socially. No one needs to support or even understand the evils of ISIL/ISIS/Daesh to see that some in France, and by that I mean some in authority as well as ordinary people, have made communal harmony less rather than more likely.
The absurd but also dangerous bans on burkinis, albeit overturned in most cases by courts more open to reason than the mayors (my own in Le Lavandou included), reflected a nation unable to deal maturely with a cultural clash, one that is serious but should be capable of being lived with. As did the experience of my French-Algerian friend, a fireman whose summer duties include lifeguard/beach patrols, when called the equivalent of "dirty n*****" by a woman he reproached for having her dog on the beach in defiance of numerous signs. Prosecutors saw no reason to take the matter further and that, I feel, brings shame on France.
That said, there were great moments during those six months in the Var.
The Gecko bar - pronounce it as if you were saying j'aime, ie j'ecko and not, as I did for most of the summer, as if saying game - was our saviour. Le Lavandou seems to have less and less live music but it could be found at the Gecko night after night, right up until the last weekend of September.
I know what the musicians earn from it, and doubt the Gecko makes much either from adding one euro to the price of each drink on gig nights, and can only applaud every one of them plus the bar-owner Jeanno.
From Dave the Brit to New Deal and Smoking Birds, these people provided great entertainment and often superb musicianship.
What is more, I discovered that two members of New Deal, the band playing Apache in that clip, Jean-Louis (marvellous guitarist) and Rene (once taught drumming at the Conservatoire de Paris, but now plays bass, beautifully) are near neighbours. Aperitifs next spring seem in order.
But here I am, back in London until March. That means the company of granddaughter and daughters to cherish, Indian restaurants to enjoy, Sunderland games to endure.
This is how I described le grand detour at Facebook ...
Back. After 1,400+km on the autoroute/then M20/M25/A30/A4, Le Lavandou is behind us and an Ealing winter ahead. There were gorgeous sights en route from a white morning mist forming a moat for Cézanne's mighty Mont Sainte-Victoire to the splendour of autumn leaves in Champagne and onwards to Calais, via a picnic at one of those 'aires', ie not service stations but pull-offs with very limited facilities but on this occasion, just south of Lyon, with gloriously green surroundings.
If only to appal my electronic friend Michael Goulding there was an obligatory stop in the lovely old part of Troyes for andouillettes. Now, I did go off pigs' intestines as sausages for a while but they're back in favour. This would have been better had I chosen it without sauce instead of just switching from cheese to mustard grain. Tasty all the same.
Playlist for those 1400+km? Not cutting edge, I'm afraid: decided to ignore France Info for once so RTL2 (not great but better than the rest of French music stations) and a mix of CDs- his, hers, ours and oursish. His: Dubliners, Oysterband, Show of Hands, Sharon Shannon. Hers: Elvis, Bonnie Tyler. Ours(and -ish) Chumbawamba, Faudel, Kirsty MacColl. And the Nepalese meal in Ealing (Mustang) was a lot better than anything we've eaten in France for weeks ... but missing the Var coastline already
We will make the best of being back. London and Britain have so much to love. I must endure Sunderland AFC, but then that is a curse that follows me wherever I find myself.
And as all my friends in Le Lavandou said before I left, Joyeux Noel.
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