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"\n\n Sooner or later, everyone experiences one of those moments of terminal frustration with the corporate grind that can turn a mild man into an ill-tempered brute. Most people are sensible and mature about dealing with it. They simply go home, kick the cat, have a drink and tell themselves that things will be better tomorrow. I was not so sensible. I left an overpaying job on Madison Avenue and went off in search of sanity and the ultimate luxury\u2014the kind of independence that allows you to choose exactly where and exactly how you wish to live. And, such is the unfairness of life, I have been lucky enough to find it.\n\n The process of achieving a consistently pleasant daily existence has taken several years, because to live outside the system is in many ways more expensive than staying within it. But making enough money to escape was only part of the problem; there was also the question of where to escape to, given that the options extended from Alaska to the South Pacific. The perfect spot was out there somewhere, but how did one set about finding it?\n\n We started with the climate. My wife and I had spent our formative years under a perpetual cloud in England, where, as is well known, there is no such thing as a climate, only weather. Regular and predictable sunshine was essential. So, for us, were good food and drink, which immediately disqualified some sunny and promising possibilities. If the nearest decent restaurant is a plane ride away, as it can be in parts of Australia, for instance, it tends to discourage any thoughts of a spontaneous evening out.\n\n The choices began to narrow rapidly once we were honest enough to admit that we would make unsuccessful hermits. A simple life is all very well as long as it doesn&amp;#39;t involve sacrificing certain basic necessities\u2014friends, books, music, fine old buildings, the attentions of an accomplished barber and a local store that sells foie gras. For these and many other reasons, we now live in Provence, halfway between Avignon and Aix, with the Lub\u00E9ron mountains at the end of our back garden. Our house is a converted mas, or farmhouse, that began life in the eighteenth century as one room and spread haphazardly over the next 200 years. Everything is solid. The spiral staircase was cut from local stone, and the walls were built to withstand the winds of the mistral, which, they say, can take the ears off a donkey. An enclosed courtyard separates the house from the pool, and terraces of vines, cherry trees and almond trees stretch for miles along the valley, polished by the extraordinary clarity of the light. All in all, to borrow from W. C. Fields, I&amp;#39;d rather be here than in Philadelphia.\n\n A hundred miles and a hundred years away is the strip most often associated with the south of France, the C\u00F4te d&amp;#39;Azur, which, unfortunately, has grown to resemble a garlic-scented Coney Island. We are well back from the sea; grapes are more important than tourists, and people live here year-round. This is important to point out, because it means that life doesn&amp;#39;t stop at the end of the season, as it so often does on the coast. Finding someplace open in Saint-Tropez in November is only slightly easier than finding a parking spot in August.\n\n For eight months a year, I live mostly outdoors. Breakfast is on the terrace under the vine trellis, facing the early-morning sun. I walk to work in forty-five seconds, devoid of attach\u00E9 case, tie, socks or panic, and I write. I&amp;#39;m not fussy about the medium I write for: books, articles, film scripts\u2014whatever comes along, and whatever allows me to continue enjoying working conditions that C\u00E9zanne would have envied. My desk is ten yards from the pool and five yards from the sunbathing terrace. From the window, I view vineyards and mountains. Never before have I had an office that I so actively liked, and I could happily spend a lot of time in this one if I weren&amp;#39;t so easily distracted by the everyday curiosities of rural life in Provence. To a foreigner reared in cities, these are strange and absorbing. The business of the melon field is still fresh in my memory, and it will give you an idea of what I mean.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Our neighbor Faustin, the farmer who takes care of the vines around the house, appeared one evening looking unusually spruce and purposeful. He had important news: The wine produced from our six acres of vineyards\u2014C\u00F4tes du Lub\u00E9ron\u2014was about to be upgraded in status and given appellation d&amp;#39;origine contr\u00F4l\u00E9e classification. As a result, it would become more expensive, and local vineyard owners would make more money. Clearly, said Faustin, the more vines one had, the more money one would make. I couldn&amp;#39;t disagree with that, so he moved on to a second glass of pastis and his proposition. It seemed to him that our melon field would be more profitably employed if it produced grapes; melons he dismissed with a wave of his glass as being too demanding in terms of time and water. By coincidence, he had done an estimate, and the field would accommodate 1,300 new vines in place of the tiresome melons. Was I interested?\n\n It needs to be said here that Faustin divides his working year between two occupations. From spring through autumn, he nurses the vines. In the winter, he sharpens his knives and visits the local farms as a one-man abattoir, killing the pigs, ducks and rabbits that have been fattened up for Christmas. I found myself curiously reluctant to argue with a man who slits throats for a living. I agreed that the extra vines sounded like a good idea, but I thought no more about it after Faustin left. He is a ruminant among men and not given to hasty action. In any case, nothing happens quickly in Provence. Perhaps next spring he would get round to it.\n\n At seven o&amp;#39; clock the following morning, a tractor was plowing up the melon field, and two days later, the planting team arrived\u2014five men, two women and four dogs, under the direction of Monsieur Beauchier, who has been planting vines in the Lub\u00E9ron for forty years. With their bamboo rods, their balls of twine and their big wooden triangles to measure the distance between vines, they moved in a slow but raucous procession up and down the field. It appeared to be part of the ritual that lengthy conversations were always conducted between the two people farthest away from each other, a distance of about 300 yards, while the intervening members of the team cursed the dogs, argued about the straightness of the lines and made unflattering remarks about one another&amp;#39;s hats.\n\n Halfway through the afternoon, work stopped for the Proven\u00E7al version of the coffee break. The team sat on a grassy bank above the vines, looking uncannily like a Cartier-Bresson photograph, and demolished four liters of wine and a basket of the sugared slices of fried bread called tranches dor\u00E9es. How anyone could walk straight afterward, let alone plant straight, is beyond me. And yet, when they had finished, the field was impeccable in its symmetry, and noticeably quiet. I could get back to work again.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n _The author, clearly overworked, as he labors in his\n\n &amp;quot;office&amp;quot; at his home in M\u00E9nerbes. _\n\n But not for long, because the next distraction is never too far away. The postman delivers a package of books and tells me how to prepare a wild boar for the pot. Our clarinet-playing plumber arrives to check a hiccup in the water supply and expounds his theory that Mozart would have made a first-class electrician. A man who will not give his name pulls up in a white Mercedes stuffed with purportedly genuine Oriental rugs and offers miraculous reductions for cash as he carpets the drive. There is always something, and at the end of the morning comes the most regular and welcome interruption of all: the sound of a cork being drawn from a bottle. This is the signal for a swim and a glass of Kir. Drying off in the sun, I brace myself for lunch.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Lunch is not a meal to be rushed anywhere in France and particularly not here in Provence\u2014first, because of the heat, which makes any sudden or industrious movement between noon and three o&amp;#39; clock inadvisable, and second, because of the food. Burgundy may have its snails, Brittany its oysters, Normandy its cream, but down here we have herb-scented lamb from Sisteron; fish from the Mediterranean; tiny, delicate goat cheese from Banon; olive oil as thick as honey; and fruit and vegetables that look like paintings and taste, as one frenzied gourmet put it, like angels copulating on your tongue. These good things are on our doorstep; our nearest town is Cavaillon, which is a market center for much of the produce grown in southern France. And so, the day before the Parisians get them, we can come home with armfuls of young asparagus, trays of peaches, melons you can smell six feet away, peppers, plum tomatoes, aubergines, figs, pink-streaked onions and rose-colored garlic, cherries, strawberries and grapes the size of pearls.\n\n All of this, of course, needs to be assisted by a glass or two of wine, and it is one of my domestic duties to make sure there is always a comfortable sufficiency in the cellar. There are worse chores. Gone are the days of spending a hurried half hour in a jumped-up liquor store that masquerades as a wine merchant; instead, I take the day off and drive up to the vineyards round Ch\u00E2teauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas and buy direct from the factory. I have come to like men who make wine. In my experience, they are hospitable fellows who take pride and pleasure in their work ,and most of them have a sales pitch that I can swallow without the slightest resistance. Monsieur Bernard, who makes his C\u00F4tes du Rh\u00F4ne in Vacqueyras, is a good example.\n\n The contrast between the heat outside and the coolness of the cellar, the distinctive and musty smell of grapes giving their all, the beaming face of Monsieur Bernard and his uncle&amp;#39;s impressively tinted nose\u2014before tasting a drop, you know you have come to a serious establishment. The glasses are polished and lined up in front of you, maybe six or seven of them, while you are asked what it is you want. Something sturdy to put away for the winter, to go with a thick game stew? A lighter red, which won&amp;#39;t interfere with your after-lunch game of tennis? (I can&amp;#39;t play tennis, but it seems churlish to spoil their fun.) Maybe the white C\u00F4tes du Rh\u00F4ne, less well known than the red, but dry and delicious? Or the house pink? But why make a quick decision? Since monsieur has taken the trouble to come personally, all of them should be tried.\n\n And all of them are, while the uncle with the nose tells you which corner of what field each wine came from and what is indisputably the best dish to accompany it. (Maybe they&amp;#39;re frustrated cooks, but all the winemakers I have met possess the ability to talk a stupendous menu as you sniff and sip. If there was ever a law against lip smacking and kissing the tips of the fingers, most of them would go out of business and become accountants or insurance salesmen.) As the afternoon wears on, the wines taste progressively better and naturally become progressively more expensive, and you know you&amp;#39;re being gently traded up. But it is done in a leisurely and charming fashion, and anyway, you say to yourself as they load half a dozen cases into the back of your sagging car, you have cut out the middleman. You leave with an invitation to come to the vendange, the grape gathering, and with the feeling of a job well done.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n But as diverting as country life is, we occasionally feel the need for contrast, to spend a day or two among people with smart clothes and diaries full of important appointments. For a concentrated whiff of high chic and foul air, there is always Paris, which is an hour by plane from Marseilles. Somehow, though, whenever we go on an outing, we never get farther than Aix.\n\n It takes forty-five minutes to drive through the mountains, and you come into town at one end of what must be the most handsome main street in France. From spring until October, the Cours Mirabeau divides Aix with a pale-green tunnel formed by the plane trees that were planted during the seventeenth century. To call it a street is to do it an injustice; it&amp;#39;s an avenue, short but perfectly proportioned, and there is a nice geographical distinction made along its length between work and more frivolous activities. On the shady side, appropriately enough, are the offices of banks, real-estate agents and lawyers. On the sunny side are the caf\u00E9s.\n\n I have liked almost every caf\u00E9 that I have been to in France, even the ratty ones in the hill villages, where flies are more plentiful than customers, but I have a soft spot for the caf\u00E9s of Aix, and the softest spot for all of Les Deux Gar\u00E7ons. It has been on the Cours Mirabeau almost as long as the plane trees, from the look of it. Successive generations of proprietors have put their profits under the mattresses and resisted the temptation to redecorate, which in France usually ends up in a welter of bad taste and plastic, and the interior probably looked much the same fifty years ago as it does today. The ceiling is high and nicotine-stained, the bar is polished copper, the waiters have aprons and flat feet, as waiters should, and the clientele spills out of the dark interior onto the terrace under the trees. And what a clientele it is\u2014posing, parading, practicing with great gusto the art of the social kiss and generally showing form. Aix is a university town, and there is clearly something in the curriculum that attracts pretty students. My friend Michael, who works in the film business and is a connoisseur of such matters, agrees with me that nowhere in the world can you see so many lovely young ladies as you can sitting outside Les Deux Gar\u00E7ons on a fine June day, letting your eyes swivel and your beer go flat.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n The Auberge de la Loube restaurant in Buoux. \n\n It is tempting to stay there until the show closes, but it would be a pity to miss the rest of Aix, because it is a beautiful and civilized place. Cobbled streets, graceful architecture, a flower market, fountains everywhere, good shops and restaurants, a summer music festival\u2014there is everything here a man could reasonably want, but without the tension of big cities. And it has an ambience that can make the most mundane transactions enjoyable. The last time I was there, for instance, I went to cash some traveler&amp;#39;s checks and received a neat bundle of 100-franc notes that had been expensively scented. That&amp;#39;s the kind of town Aix is.\n\n The only drawback is that it&amp;#39;s a little too far away from home after a good dinner, bearing in mind the mountainous road and the recent enthusiasm shown by the French police for inviting motorists to blow into le ballon. Since I have devoted a great deal of time and money to maintaining a healthy level of alcohol in my bloodstream, I feel sure that any intimate contact between myself that a Breathalyzer would end badly. And so, when we go out to dinner, we go to one of the restaurants that can be reached by a short drive along back roads.\n\n There is no shortage of choices. A characteristic that I find admirable in the French is their willingness to support good cooking, no matter how remote the kitchen may be. The quality of the cuisine is more important than the convenience, and a Frenchman considers it quite normal to drive for two hours, salivating en route, in order to eat well. Consequently, it is possible for a restaurant to prosper in what might appear to be the most isolated and unpromising location. We are lucky. There are perhaps a dozen gifted cooks within twenty minutes of where we live.\n\n The closest is in our local village, less than two miles away. Chez Marie is at the end of an alley, just behind the ramparts of M\u00E9nerbes. Marie herself is worth the trip; she is a striking woman of a certain age, and in the heat of the summer, her chef&amp;#39;s outfit is shorts and high heels. Here, as in many of our local restaurants, there is an extraordinary contrast between the ancient surroundings and the modern sophistication of the food. You can be sitting in a room that is 300 years old, with stone walls a yard thick, a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace big enough to roast a small flock of sheep en brochette, and eat food that is as delicate and beautifully presented as anything you would find in Paris. I have had mussel soup served under a paper-thin dome of pastry, sorbet made from fresh rosemary, fish terrines of three colors and textures, lamb and duck that barely needed a knife and always, to go with that final glass or bottle of wine, the local cheese. Not the miserable selection of middle-aged and perspiring blobs that in other countries passes for a cheese board, but a dozen or more varieties arranged on a bed of vine leaves and barely old enough to be allowed to stay up so late.\n\n These meals haven&amp;#39;t been eaten in three-star restaurants. In fact, there&amp;#39;s one not far away in Les Baux where the food is superb, but there is a little too much reverence in the air for us, and so we stick to simpler places: the Auberge de la Loube in Buoux, whose customer sometimes ride to dinner and leave their horses in the parking lot; Chez Michel in Cabri\u00E8res for fresh truffles in the winter; Les Bories in Gordes during the game season; Tante Yvonne in Lambesc, where the cook is 81 and her husband, the head waiter, is 84\u2014at any of these you can eat and drink memorably for about half the price of a modest lunch with Perrier at the Four Seasons in New York.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n And so the daily business of keeping body and soul together is one of the great pleasures and advantages of France, but is there life between meals? And what about the legendary arrogance of the French, their lack of sympathy as you flounder in the complexities of their language, their reputed dislike of foreigners? No doubt this exists, particularly in Paris. Down here, perhaps because of the sun, it&amp;#39;s different.\n\n There are flaws in the Proven\u00E7al nature\u2014notably a cheerful contempt for punctuality\u2014but how can you be irritated at people who smile so often and laugh so easily? Visitors from the cooler temperatures and less relad atmosphere of the north often find this vaguely suspicious. Parisians in particular like to say that the people of Provence are superficial blagueurs\u2014that is, full of hot air\u2014but I&amp;#39;ll take a friendly blagueur anytime in preference to someone who keeps his distance and rations his laughter. There is also an unhurried politeness here that I like very much, which is expressed in a number of small ways, from shopkeepers who acknowledge your presence and bid you good morning (becoming rarer every day in cities) to the ritual of physical contact between acquaintances. Women kiss other women, and men, on both cheeks; men shake hands. If hands are not available because they are full, you will be offered a little finger to shake. If fingers are dirty from a day&amp;#39;s work in the fields, a forearm will be extended. The important thing is to touch. Maybe it is all superficial, but it makes you feel you&amp;#39;re among human beings who are pleased to see you, which in turn makes everyday life more agreeable.\n\n Our slow and pleasant existence is interrupted once a year by the month of August, when tourists outnumber the wasps round an overripe melon and when the locals go into hiding. With temperatures in the nineties by midmorning, it is a month for the pool, for the siesta, for long, cool dinners in the courtyard and for unplugging the phone. We stay at home, except for a trip to the village of Bonnieux, five miles up the road, for the thrills of the annual goat race.\n\n The course runs from the Caf\u00E9 C\u00E9sar through the narrow village streets, across a water obstacle by the old pump and back to the caf\u00E9 again. Wagers are accepted by the lady who sits under a parasol by the starting line. The goats wear hats, unless they can shake them off and eat them, and their drivers are equipped with identifying numbers and stout sticks, as the goat is not a natural competitor and requires a measure of encouragement. The atmosphere is electric; a sporting event of this magnitude could make Bonnieux famous and the owner of the Caf\u00E9 C\u00E9sar a rich man. Never has the village seen such a chic and international turnout, and side bets are taken on how many elegant Parisian women will step in goat droppings before the morning is over. A good time is seemingly had by all, and there is inevitably at least one goat who manages to escape for long enough to eat somebody&amp;#39;s garden before being arrested by the village gendarme.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n A well-stocked produce market in Aix. \n\n Normality returns in September. The tourists have gone, and the sun seems hotter than ever, bringing the grapes on our vines to that stage of heavy ripeness that signals the start of the vendange. Early in the morning, Faustin is out there cupping the bunches in his hand and sucking his teeth in contemplation. Should he give them a few more days to cook? This will help the alcohol content and make the crop more profitable. On the other hand, there is the risk of stormy weather and damaging downpours. Merde, but it&amp;#39;s difficult. You can do everything right for eleven months a year and have it all ruined by two days of bad luck.\n\n He decides to pick. With his wife, Henriette, their daughter, Fran\u00E7oise, their cousin Raoul the beekeeper from the Basses-Alpes, the inevitable dogs and a thirty-year-old Citren truck, he descends on our vines promptly at seven-thirty every morning to spend the day snipping off the bunches with surgical precision. During the week or so that it takes to harvest our small crop, they drop in every evening for a drink and punish the pastis; a bottle barely lasts two days. When the last vine has been snipped clean, we go down to the wine cooperative with Faustin (avoiding the main roads, because his truck ceased to be officially roadworthy several years ago), where the grapes will be turned into C\u00F4tes du Lub\u00E9ron. The indicator on the big vat registers 12.5 degrees of alcohol, and Faustin is pleased. Another good year.\n\n There is a peaceful and reassuring rhythm to life out here that could easily mislead you into assuming that the rest of the world feels as relad as you do. But rude awakenings come from time to time, usually announced over the phone. (In the good old days, the French phone system was atrocious, and your privacy was guarded by a French-speaking operator who refused to tolerate any nonsense in a foreign tongue. Now, alas, the system is automatic and alarmingly efficient.) The calls we receive are carefully timed to coincide with the start of dinner and are seldom short. There are two kinds.\n\n The first is the call of duty, crackling with figures, dates, deadlines, items to be discussed, matters that need to be worked out. I sit there in my ignorance, thinking that this is the purpose of the call. I&amp;#39;m wrong. The purpose of the call is to arrange a meeting, which, at great personal inconvenience, the caller is prepared to attend in France. But not just in France; he is prepared\u2014the things he has to do to make a buck\u2014to come all the way down south to meet me at home. At first I was astonished that people who once found excuses not to come across London in a cab to meet me were suddenly eager to put themselves through the ordeal of a long weekend in Provence. I now know better.\n\n The second is the call of friendship. Or if not friendship, exactly, the memory of an introduction in the distant past and the hope of sunshine in the immediate future. By coming here, we have become popular. I never knew so many people liked us. Come to think of it, I never knew so many people knew us. It is heartwarming and inconvenient. We find ourselves hunting for houses for them to rent or buy, negotiating with housekeepers and baby-sitters, driving to the airport to pick them up in hundred-degree temperatures, guiding them through the gurgling mysteries of French plumbing, making restaurant reservations, and, in extremis, stacking them in guest rooms.\n\n After a hard morning by the pool, they gather at the bar in the courtyard, puce and thirsty from the sun, and tell us how much nicer this is than staying in a hotel on the coast. We agree. We prefer it, too. And then, over the fourth or fifth bottle of wine, sitting at the square stone table as the sun sets over the remains of a marathon lunch, they lean back and point out how convenient it all is. Why, you can be in Paris or London in a morning, New York in a day. I try to explain that I didn&amp;#39;t come to live here in order to go there, and that if I&amp;#39;m going anywhere I&amp;#39;d rather go to Aix, but I know they don&amp;#39;t really believe me. Either that, or they don&amp;#39;t understand me, because they always ask the same question: &amp;quot;What do you do all day?&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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