A temporary disillusionment with the countryside

Welcome to the south of France. If you've watched the right movies, you'll know it as a place of endless fields of sunflowers and lavender and row upon row of orderly vines drooping with grapes. Old men play petanque in the dappled sunshine, people hop on their bikes to pop down to the local boulangerie for their morning baguette, and everywhere is lit by a sun that doesn't ever seem to shine over England.

And in pursuit of that sun and those vistas, the Brits have set about invading France. I can't be bothered to do the statistics, maybe somebody else has, but I imagine the destruction that has taken place since Peter Mayle wrote 'A Year in Provence' has been more permanently damaging than anything the Germans achieved during the Second World War.

Thanks to many properties being snapped up as 'holiday homes' by class-climbing Brits, the villages have disintegrated. My local one has a boulangerie, a post office that is open a couple of hours a day a few times a week, and a pharmacy. There is a church where the doors are always locked, and a garage that never seems to be open. Oh, and a petrol station selling fuel at prices nearly 15% higher than at the supermarket 10km down the road. I noticed this morning that there's a B&B with rooms for a meagre 15 euros a night. That shouldn't inspire cries of, 'my, what a bargain!' but rather it reveals how desperate the residents are for some money. Any money.

Some of these houses have stood here for hundreds of years, but are reaching that point where they are no longer decaying gently but vigorously. Overstuffed postboxes from uninhabited homes spill bright flyers onto the cobbles. The depression is almost palpable.

I went to the market in a nearby town last week. It was a warm, bright day and people had emerged from wherever they are hiding to wander round the stalls; everyone was either ancient, or ageing and English. I've been told that the English who did make the effort and move here have since understood the reality of being in an area which offers no laid on entertainment within a two hour radius, and they've taken to alcohol to numb the reality that they've tied up their savings in a property that they will almost certainly never be able to sell.

This business of 'second homes' has destroyed communities. I know that's not a novel idea, but I've never been anywhere the evidence is quite so starkly laid before me. Supermarkets have sucked the life out of towns.

In a country that is known the world over for romance, I don't know of a florist within about an hour's drive (and it could easily be further than that, I just haven't wandered that far yet); the only flowers for sale are in supermarkets. Paris doesn't represent France any more than London does England. And there's something for politicians to take note of: what is relevant and important in London isn't necessarily relevant and important in the rest of England. When does Cameron go to Cornwall except on a summer vacation, when of course all looks lively and well because the place is packed out with tourists? Visit even the most popular tourist spots in the depths of winter and the only cure for the resultant depression is alcohol.

I've always held the belief that life doesn't just happen to you; you have to get out there and make yourself available for life to come and tap you on the shoulder. It seems such a shame that these days 'life' is synonymous with 'cities'. Idyllic rural life has become idle rural life. I might have to reluctantly acknowledge that my next move must be towards a city – it just seems frustratingly ironic that rents are higher in places where there is more for you to spend your money on anyway. Someone should sort that out.

[For the record, this feels like a viewpoint that will almost undoubtedly change in the near future. I'm just currently a little disillusioned with everything.]

“I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.” (Sydney Smith – English wit, writer, and Anglican cleric)