Je T'Aime À la Folie

Telegraph columnist Michael Wright's joyous and very funny story of self-imposed isolation in deepest rural France doesn't end with C'est La Folie. Here is parte deux of the story. Having spent three years alone in France, doing his best to survive in a foreign land, and failing miserably to woo a dishy French copine, the author feels he's perhaps reached a near Zen-like state of contentment. He has everything he ever wanted - his new life as a paysanne, his cat, the chickens and the sheep, his French neighbours and friends, his piano, his aeroplane - perhaps he should call un arrete to his occasionaly over-eager search for a woman to complete a life that already feels complete? But of course fate's a fickle mistress and barely a week after coming to this momentous decision, an email from an old school friend re-introduces him to Alice. Now Alice is a paid-up urban girl with an expensive shoe habit and deep-rooted mistrust of any countryside, let alone the French