The past five and a half years have been a long history of moving on; from marriage, from living in a family, from jobs I didn’t like, from people I don’t appreciate.

Next month comes one of the final steps in that process: Leaving the flat which became my haven in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid confinements and my new life as a single person.

I rented the flat in Moulezan just because it was what was available when I needed it. In many ways it was perfect: two bedrooms, sitting room, not too big but just big enough, next to the boulangerie and in the village where the girls went to school. There’s a great general store/cafe/bistro, the post office and enough visiting tradespeople to make it possible to live there without driving anywhere.

I had to drive, though, to go to work. At first that was fine, all in Nimes and about half an hour away. But then the conditions in that one school in Nimes became so bad and the incompetence of the school’s director so egregious that I had to leave, and then most of my work was in Montpellier with just one day a week in Nimes. That one day was quite fortuitous at the start since it was all day on Mondays. The pay was OK and it suited our family needs to take Scarlett to Nimes every Monday morning to spend the week boarding at her lycée.

But she was as dissatisfied with her lycée by the end of the year as I was with teaching in that last school in Nimes, and we both moved on; she’s now in England and I taught only in Montpellier. Although cuts in classes in all my schools mean that I’ve now, very reluctantly, started teaching for half a day a week in Nimes again. The school is fine but I don’t enjoy the hundred kilometre round-trip every week. Twice a week sometimes, in fact. But that’s the way things go when you’re the only one paying the nearly one thousand euros a month to support your daughter in England – you have to work, no choice.

The Moulezan flat reverts to its owner in three weeks and I’m gradually emptying it out. Much of the furniture is going to someone else or Emmaus; the flat in Palavas is pretty well furnished so, apart from a desk, some carpets, a few bookshelves and a bin, nothing is coming here.

The added complication to my new life is that I can’t rent the flat here in Palavas all year round, I have to move out at the end of June so that it can be rented out for more per week than I pay for a month during the winter. So, my books, shelves and other sundries will go into storage for the summer before coming out again for the winter.

And I know that I would hate it here in the summer anyway. The population of Palavas grows from around 6 000 in the winter to over 100 000 in the summer if you count all the day visitors, and the beach which is a few paces behind me at the moment will be wall-to-wall screaming children. Not for me.

So we’re going to travel this summer, stay with friends, do the tourist stuff up in the hopefully cooler north of Europe. If you find a stranger sleeping on your sofa, that’ll be me.

I’ve also re-launched my quest to become a French citizen. Now that other administrative nonsense has died down – don’t get me started on why two adjacent French Départments have apparently never heard of each other when it comes to taking a child to school because that takes at least two months and includes lots of ‘Well you can’t get there from here’ clichés – I find I now have the mental energy and will to attack another French bureaucracy. It will, I’m sure, drive me nuts but, this time, it’s not strictly essential. But I’m going to do it because of the mutterings of the far-right (sorry, ‘The Centre’) about ‘Sending the immugrunts home’. They are incapable of differentiating, legally, between me and the people of colour they think are taking their jobs (no one wants to do your job, Daryl, not even you) and I fear that in any future pogrom people like me who have the French equivalent of Settled Status would be caught up in the mayhem and be obligated to do lots of things we don’t want to, including going home. Wherever that’s supposed to be.

Accepting and becoming, to some extent, comfortable with one’s past is a big part of growing up, especially at my age. I can’t change any of the things I’ve done in the past but I can move on and do things that I want to do now. I’ve said more than once that this is what I now do – I do what I want within the limits of the bounds of freedom available to me – and I’m going to go on doing that.

My mental health is better than it’s been for decades. Probably better than it’s ever been, in fact, and for that I’m grateful to those who’ve helped me along the way. Those who’ve actively worked against me don’t even know who they are and have their own troubles, and I’m glad that they’re no longer mine.

Look after yourselves, people, and look after those you love.

Sunset from Carnon harbour looking towards my flat, November 22 2025.