23rd August:

Home, apparently, is where the heart lies. Last year, however, almost 200,000 British people decided that their heart no longer lay in the UK and so they upped-sticks and left. The reasons given for the desire to go and live somewhere else were predictable enough: the cost of property in the UK, the climate, the state of the health service, high taxation and a general feeling that quality of life was not as good as it could be.

Your congenial host has been fortunate enough to have travelled a bit and has also lived in other countries. There are some familiar things about home that you miss, but compensation comes in the form of discovering new things that you have never tried or experienced before.

Statistics suggest that the average retired ex-pat manages to live abroad for 2 years before returning home again. Perhaps some people make the mistake of treating the rest of their life like one big holiday or maybe they don't make enough of an effort with the language or try hard enough to integrate with the local community. Either way, 2 years seems to be the average time it takes for paradise to go mouldy.

Everyone's view of perfection differs. For me, the recipe requires a few key but good quality ingredients: take the climate of the South of France and mix with a good quantity of Corsican scenery and Mediterranean and North African cuisine. Add a generous helping of Italian and Cypriot hospitality, a liberal measure of American customer service, and then wrap it all up in British humour and broadsheet journalism.

Should be served hot and accompanied with a large helping of high denomination Euro notes.