The first time I heard about my tumbledown farmhouse in the South of France was when a friend sent an email saying: “Beautiful place. Great potential. South-facing, with its back up against a wooded hillside. Very old farm with heaps of charm.”

Much to my horror, and before I’d even set eyes on the place, my husband sped south on the TGV (train à grande vitesse) and made an offer on my behalf. The bid was way lower than the asking price so I naively assumed it would be rejected out of hand by the elderly owner and her four children. Only, it wasn’t.

By the time I pitched up a couple of weeks later to see the house, accompanied by my incredulous son and daughter, the estate agent and the notaire (Uncle Tom Cobley and all, in fact), the old lady was excited making plans to move into a new house with all mod cons in the nearest town. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to wreck it all by saying “sorry, this is all a horrendous mistake. I’m not touching this dump with a bargepole.”

Instead of asking sensible questions about water and electricity, I enquired what the house was called. The old lady looked blank and told me it wasn’t called anything. Two years on, I haven’t a clue how any letters ever get delivered. I still call it “the house with no name,” although perhaps one day, when it’s been transformed from a sow’s ear to a silk purse of a house, we’ll think of one.

PS: I’m loving former fashion editor Karen Wheeler’s new book, Tout Sweet – Hanging up my high heels for a new life in France, about her spur of the moment decision to wave goodbye to her glamorous fashionista lifestyle and buy a run-down house in rural Poitou-Charentes. If she can do it, I keep thinking, then so can I.