Happiness is a chainsaw and a maul in the rain and the mud

It rained all day long last Friday in Provence, and it rained all night, and on Saturday morning it was still raining. The rain fell out of a lowering, field-grey blanket of a sky. After breakfast and a wash, we assembled in the living room wondering what to do with ourselves on a day such as this. There were four of us: a couple en route for England who arrived in a Land Rover packed to the roof with possessions; our hostess; and me.

The ugly breeze-block house with a large tiled terrace was perched on the side of a hill. Fountains sprayed in unlikely directions from leaking joints in the rain gutters. The rain came down faster than the drains could take it away from the terrace, flooding it. The unmade road below the house was a torrent. Lightning brightened the living room, flickering continuously, as in a horror film.

We lit the fire and sat quietly and cosily around it absorbed in our phones and iPads like a lot of teenagers. A raindrop fell from a damp patch on the living-room ceiling and splashed on to my thigh. A report came in from the kitchen of a large puddle with no discernible source spreading across the floor. Another was creeping across the floor in the hall. A crack of thunder directly overhead rattled the glass in the windows and made us look up from our devices.

Around noon the deluge eased a little. The bouncing curtain of water became merely heavy rain. You could see between the raindrops. We took a vote and decided to venture out for a drive and perhaps a glass of pastis in a village bar somewhere.

What makes Provence attractive is the quality and clarity of the sunlight.