Well, I say ‘busy year’. Lots of interesting things have happened but from where I’m sitting I seem to have spent most of the past year either cooking or sleeping.

When I finished cooking in Morzine in April I was really done for; stick me with a fork, I’m finished and ready for bed and I reckon that I spent most of May sleeping. Five months of six-day, 16-hours-a-day weeks was too much. Did I do much skiing? Yeah, right. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed all the work and the cooking, but I wouldn’t do it again – not least because Delphine and I got to see each other for, on average, 36 hours every two weeks with her making some heroic treks up the mountains from Avignon. I did learn about my limits though, how much I can do without falling over too often. Sleep is the secret and, like working in the restaurant, I found that I ended up in bed snoring every afternoon. In fact, it was harder than the restaurant because at least there Jean-Rémi insisted we had two consecutive days off every week; in Morzine we had only one day off each week, and that was a real killer, torn between the desire to catch up on sleep or go out and do something interesting instead. Going out usually won, but that was often a really bad decision; the lovely – no, really – people with whom I worked were younger, a lot younger, than me so their idea of ‘going out’ was 17 pints of lager and a quick vomit. Which is fun to do once a year but not every day off. Especially when the 17 pints are consumed at the top of a good hour’s ski away from home. I will never drink again.

We went on holiday in May to Crete, with our favourite holidaymakers Nouvelle Frontieres and their Paladien chain of all-inclusive hotels. The hotel was great, as good as if not better than the fantastic one we stayed in last year when we went to Guadeloupe, but Crete was a disappointment; well, not a disappointment but just not different enough from home. The countryside was just the same as at home, the sea filthy – I refused to swim in it at all after the first day’s grim toll of floaters – and the prices outside our hotel ridiculously expensive. €50 for two fish lunches? Please.

Then in June I did my first stint for a French family in St Tropez, which was great. Nice, polite people who wanted interesting food. St Tropez was something else, the original tourist trap with made-up prices suggestive more of telephone numbers than the actual cost of whatever it was you’re trying to buy. A really lovely fishing port turned into a hateful, money-grabbing pit full of all the sorts of people you’d pay good money not to be with. The quality of the produce was excellent and I met some very nice shopkeepers and suppliers and I understand their point of view that they have a 10-week season in which to earn their money. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I went back to St Tropez in July and worked for the same family, this time with their regular chef in tow. She’d come along supposedly to keep an eye on the children and have a break, but in fact to boss everyone else around. As the ‘senior’ member of staff everyone else was automatically Wrong. Doesn’t matter what you do, it’s wrong. She was one of the most hateful – and hated – people I’ve ever met, her mission in life – according to her as well as everyone else – being to get all the other staff sacked and replaced by members of her own family. She’d already got the family’s Parisian housekeeper replaced by her sister and the chauffer (a nice English chap) was next on her list (and, in fact, this has now happened I’ve since learned). Really a truly bitter, twisted and horrible woman – I haven’t loathed anyone as much as her since the traiteur in Nimes; possibly not since 1990 when I had my cuttings stolen. Anyway.

After St Tropez I went up to the mountains behind Grasse to work for a lovely English family in their old olive farm. They liked proper food (well, they did – the children had special needs) and appreciated everything I cooked, which was nice. And one of their guests gave me a €100 tip, which was very kind. The problem with this gig was the distance from the shops – half an hour to the nearest town, a three-hour round trip to the supermarket, farmers’ market, butcher, baker and fruit and veg specialist shop every single day. Which meant leaving the house at 7 am every morning. And then doing lunch and dinner and cooking with the children this afternoon please? Again, cook-sleep-cook.

I’ve spent the autumn doing a day here, a weekend there and several job interviews and trials, looking for a permanent gig and getting some jobs lined up for Christmas. I did a trial in Monaco for a lovely English family which was interesting – would have been dinners only, normally just family, entertaining twice a month and all school holidays off as they travel. It wasn’t enough money for me, and the accommodation was a single bedroom with a shared bathroom which wouldn’t have suited Delphine and I anyway – we’d have been forced to rent or buy in the area and Monaco isn’t known for its cheap real estate so I’d have been commuting in from the other side of Nice, and in the end we’d have been worse off than staying in Avignon on the dole. And I didn’t get the job, it went to a local Italian chap who already lived in the area and who wouldn’t need accommodation. But the lady of the household did everything correctly – telephoned me personally to tell me the news, paid for my time and travel expenses and treated me extremely well throughout.

Unlike a complete asshole who found my CV online and summoned me over to Villeneuve-Loubet, birthplace of Escoffier. John Sellers read my CV and understood the part where I explain that I work for private families and am looking for work along the same lines to mean that he could have me as his sous/Chef/Exec (pick a title, any title) in his grilled chicken restaurant. I disagreed and we parted our ways with him owing me 35 euros. Well, that’s the short version anyway.

The full version is worthy of an entire dinner party, if not a book on ‘How not to open a restaurant and how not to pick your chef’, but the highlights:

I arrived and got 20 minutes of his story about being a recovering lung cancer victim; then 15 minutes of life story (apprentice FoH Savoy, Ritz, Barclays) in mid-70s, then 18 years in Azores as governmental tourism adviser, then 6 years in Uganda as failed coffee plantation owner (chased out by ‘business partner’ the Foreign Minister, walked out with just the clothes on their backs via Kenya), then – first mention of cooking – six years around Nice/Antibes giving private cookery lessons in Asian cuisine to French people (my clients all love me).

Then six months ago his wife (nice Indian lady) sees an ad for a restaurant for sale, they buy it with savings from Uganda which they’d hidden in Switzerland.

His six years teaching Asian cookery have taught him that (a) French people like Asian food and (b) French restaurants sell rubbish roast chicken because they don’t put enough salt on them (no really – any fule kno this). So he’s opening a restaurant based around this fantastic new chicken grilling machine which he’s found which will cook 27 chickens in 30 minutes, three lots of nine chickens with different marinades/rubs/spices. The secret will be that the chickens will be brined for 2 hours before being spatchcocked and nuked (lots of salt!).

He will also be serving three kinds of moules (French only eat marinieres, they love all my new spicy recipes), three kinds of saté (French love etc etc) and a French ‘plat du jour’, which is where I come in – I get to build up a database of 90 different PduJ so that in 18 months time he can start selling his concept as a franchise!
Me (having spent nearly an hour trying to work out what’s in this for me): “So, you’re not looking for a personal chef for your family then?”
Him: “No no, you’re the person we want to run the restaurant, you’re perfect, you’re grown up, you’ve had the right experience” etc etc etc.

So he drags me to see the restaurant, stopping at the bank on the way to get some cash to pay my 95 euro travel expenses (which I had to ask for – it’s a sign of a good interview when they offer to pay without prompting). The restaurant is upstairs from a Tex Mex/Barbeque restaurant and well hidden by their gigantic signs. It’s next door to a fish restaurant, the only building between it and the pebble beach at Villeneuve-Loubet. Over the road is an immense Chinese/Thai restaurant (est. 1977) which does 120 covers on quiet Wednesday evenings, Sunday lunch it turns its 100 tables three times.

Just down the road is a French bistro restaurant. Next door is a HUGE ‘Moules Frites à volonté 12 euros’ restaurant.

So his plan is to do better Asian food than the 30-year established Chinese/Thai over the road, better barbeque than the Tex Mex downstairs, better fish (you know how to cook fish, Chris?) than the fish restaurant on the beach, better Moules than the all-you-can-eat warehouse next door, better traditional French bistro food than the bistro next door. “We’ll beat them all at their own game”.

The restaurant is still very, very much ‘under construction’ – builders have been on holiday, were due to start back this week but were very absent on Monday. Opening in three weeks.

John has all the recipes and is going to mastermind the kitchen, but wants me because since his two cancer ops and four chemotherapies he can’t lift heavy weights. There will be a commis and a plongeur. There will be a choice of half a dozen desserts du jour, all made in house by his wife.

Me to her: “Ah, so you’re a patissier?”
Her: “Well I cook a lot at home, cooking in a restaurant is just a question of scaling up what you do for dinner parties.”

Me (in my head): AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Final kicker: as I’m leaving he hands me my travel expenses, “Sorry I’ve only got 60 euros, the cheques I paid in at the weekend haven’t cleared yet, I’ll send you a cheque.”

Right. And apparently I shouldn’t worry about my salary because although officially it’s only half what I’ve been used to earning for the past year (a third, actually, but I only know that because I can do sums) “There will be plenty of cash from the daily takings, we’ll be skimming off that to make up your salary.”

Perhaps needless to say, despite them both assuring me that I’m the man for the job and that they’d be making a decision within seconds I haven’t heard a word from them since – least of all about the €35 they still owe me. They haven’t replied to e-mails or telephone calls or even a recommended letter – which I know they received because I got the signature confirmation slip back here.

So, if you’re ever visiting the birthplace of Escoffier in Villeneuve-Loubet do NOT, whatever you do, dine at John’s restaurant – it’ll be a ripoff if it’s anything like my experience with the place.

Since then I’ve done two job trials in Ireland. The first was a real disaster – I’d been invited over for a week and ended up back at home having spent barely 36 hours with the family. I came home on the Saturday morning instead of the following Wednesday (having left on the previous Thursday) because they were going off early to the USA. The whole thing was, from my point of view, an almost complete disaster from start to finish with the exception of the actual cooking.

It got off to a bad start when Aer Lingus left my suitcase in Paris while taking me to Cork on Thursday; I didn’t get it back until Friday evening at 10.30 pm – and I left on Saturday morning at 7.30 am so didn’t even bother opening it. It contained my knives, other kitchen equipment and my whites. All I had with me was one apron and the clothes in which I’d travelled so I had to cook in a denim shirt, chinos and Timberland boots. Not a very impressive start.

I’d been due to start cooking on the Friday, the day after I arrived but the family were in residence when I arrived on the Thursday evening, and wanted me to start cooking immediately so I had no time to acclimatise myself, get to know the kitchen, do some shopping and prepare some food. Of course I did start cooking immediately and gave them a snack and then a three-course dinner with the ingredients I found in the kitchen.

Things went on going wrong. The original job offer included a cottage in the grounds; the family’s secretary informed me I’d be able to stay in it that night, sharing it with one of the decorators working in the house, and then would move to the gate lodge to share it with the chauffeur/handyman as that would be where I would be living if I were to be offered the job. I asked why they’d changed this and she said the family wanted to keep the cottages free for visiting workmen. I told her that I had been given to understand that the job came with the cottage and that this changed everything for me and asked if my fiancée would be expected to share a house with the chauffeur too when she moved to be with me?

Apparently they didn’t know about Delphine and the original offer was reinstated. Hmm.

I met Monsieur, for want of a better name, several times that evening and again the next day when I cooked him no less than eight different meals (special diet, you see). His wife, who had very particular and special nutritional needs from both personal and medical points of view, refused point blank to speak with me until almost the end of my stay, and then it was to make it clear that she saw me as some sort of weird interloper, if not a child-molester (they have a six-month-old baby). Weird experience all round.

And then at the end of the day announced that I must go home first thing the next morning as, er, we’re going to America. Yes, that’s right. America. Right now. Off you go.

With hindsight it seems clear they just wanted to get rid of me, or at least she certainly did – I’ve remained in touch with their butler (hired the same day I arrived, fired two weeks later because – er, We’re going to America. Yes, that’s right. America. Right now. Off you go) and he said they stayed until the day they were originally due to leave and lived on takeaway pizzas and Indian curries after my departure.

And then they queried my bill and expenses, despite everything having been agreed in advance and finally took a month to pay – this from a family who are easily half-billionaires in any currency you care to choose.

The motto: never, ever work for New Money. Ever. Good motto and one which I’ve found to be very true over the past year; people who are used to having staff since their own childhoods treat you properly; those to whom staff are a new thing – and perhaps I was their first ever ‘servant’ – tend either to expect you to do literally everything for them 24 hours a day, or want to help you, peel the spuds, do the washing up and get you to join them at the dining table. Neither is a practical option really.

Most recently I’ve had another job interview and trial, again for someone in Ireland, but this time for someone much more used to employing staff. And we got on very, very well indeed; as I write this I’m expecting a call any minute and hoping, half-expecting even, to be offered the job. Off to Ireland?

Up in the hills near Grasse at the moment, cooking for an English family and their visitors. It’s great to be away from the noise and crowds of St Tropez, a town I would NEVER visit voluntarily. In fact, you should only go there if you have more money than sense – and, being a reader of these pages, I know you’re not such a person.

I do miss being at home in Avignon, though, and I miss Delphine very much; only seeing each other for a day or two every couple of weeks get real old, real soon. That’s why I won’t be returning to the Alps again this winter, either – that and the fact that I now earn about four times as much as the top chalet chefs get paid.

On a technological note, I would like to say just how very happy I am with my (now not so) new MacBook Pro Apple laptop; works faultlessly, connects to the nearest WiFi network without a murmer, turns on when I open the lid and shuts down when I close it, and plays DVDs and other films downloaded to the hard disc beautifully clearly on the excellent 17″ screen. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, or even a desktop, look at the Mac offerings first. My current clients have a new Dell laptop and I’ve spent several afternoons trying to sort out Vista on it. Vista may have lots more security built in – although the only evidence I see is that, like the Mac, it asks if you really want to install/uninstall stuff – but otherwise it really does look like Windows XP with a facelift. And, of course, the obligatory moving of a few buttons and changing of a few labels just for the sake of it – but then I got that when I moved to the Mac platform anyway.

Hardware-wise, though, the Apple beats the Dell into a cocked hat, but then it did cost me 50% more than the Inspiron. But then I have three times the memory, twice the hard-disc space, a much bigger widescreen-format screen and a lighter, thinner package. Worth the money, I think.

And I’ve installed the Parallels Desktop software which allows me to run Windows XP – not that I’ve bothered, mind you. It’s installed, but I just don’t find the need to fire it up.

On a more interesting subject, I’ve been enjoying a little Indian and Thai cookery here, making Indian-marinated chicken salads and Thai fish cakes; French people aren’t that fascinated by ‘foreign’ cookery. But then all decent cookery is ‘foreign’ if you’re English, isn’t it?

To St Tropez, that is, with the family I worked for over the Ascension holiday back in May.

Which means more traffic jams sitting in a ridiculous SWB Landrover Defender. A black one designed especially to absorb heat and focus it on the driver.

And more ridiculous prices: €39/kilo for rougets anyone? Thought not. Unless you have an unlimited food budget which, luckily, I do.

The demands of the family mean that I’m up at 7 every morning to get to the fish market and the butcher before the good stuff is gone, and quite often going back shopping in the afternoon when they’ve changed their minds about what to eat for dinner.

Mostly it’s simple stuff, BBQs and salads, roasted veg, that sort of thing although last Saturday I did a very nice rabbit terrine with edible flowers studded around the outside for a dinner party. Classy stuff, this.