For sale: one French département, unexpectedly back on the market after having been occupied by the same nationality for 40 years. Offers incoming purchasers a chance to modernise to their own taste to create a marvellous ambience for family life.

Sale triggered by vendors facing credit crunch back in Britain, putting strain on finances, making it hard to raise mortgages for foreign property purchases, and thus forcing expatriate community to “retournons à nos moutons” (literally, “go home to Morden”). Compounded by frustration that the natives insist on speaking their own language; possibly because even after many decades of tourists addressing them in English, the locals are evidently a bit slow in picking up a foreign tongue - however loudly the English might speak.

Also disenchantment with the local menfolk parading along beaches in Speedos the size of a Post-It note; and German shepherd dogs guarding houses where the Jean-de-Florette-style owners don't even possess a full set of their own teeth, let alone valuables to tempt a burglar; and a nagging unease at taking children afflicted with swimming-related ear infections to be treated by French-style medicine (“Mais comment c'est possible, Monsieur le Docteur, qu'un suppositoire que vous voulez introduire dans la derrière de mon fils va améliorer un mal dans une oreille?”).

The Brits depart relieved that they will never again be embarrassingly caught out offering a double-cheek kiss to a native who kisses three times, or cheek-kissing three times with a diehard four-cheeker. Or be baffled by how much to tip, even though the bill says “service compris”.

Meanwhile, British males take home their regret that the local girls, always sniggering at their ankle-socks-with-sandals, never invited them to dabble in that legendary French cinq-à-sept pastime of “mouchoir-pouchoir” (or “hanky-panky”).

Like Samuel Johnson, Brits have decided that “what I gained by being in France was learning to be better satisfied with my own country.” So “à tout a l'heure” (or, “What a wake-up call!”).