“Listen kid,” said a long-time American friend of mine last year, “Armageddon just doesn’t happen”. I took issue with her at the time, and I still do….even though her wisdom is a constant source of inspiration to me.

The Spring just gone in southern France has provided as good an example as any of why she’s wrong: for in nature, cataclysm is not a rare event – it’s the norm. Until three days ago, it had been desert-dry here: so thousands of species have thrived, and others have been wiped out. We have so many small black beetles here, the pool filter is crammed with the buggers every day. (And yes, I know – complaining about beetles in your swimming pool is pretty insensitive in these awful times).

But the black beetles overcrowding problem is one side of a coin, on the other side of which is the obliteration of  natural predators. I’d imagine this is a rodent or bird of some kind. No doubt their tabloid press is headlining Gottadammerung every day. ‘PHEW WHAT A CULL!’ they probably scream.

The temperatures throughout May were, by any standards, abnormally high. We have several deciduous tree species in our commune whose leaves are turning yellow. They don’t normally do that. But the fruit trees are so laden with produce, branches once pointing to the sky are now sagging towards the grass beneath.

Walking into our village today with the dogs, we passed a field of sunflowers. Several yellow splashes were visible among the lush green. It is the 9th of June today; you don’t normally expect so much as a dash of sunflower until mid July. On the rural path leading down to the road, even the weediest sapling was covered in damsons, wild prunes and sloes. It’ll be interesting to see if this obvious glut is reflected in EU prices. (In Villareal market last weekend, it wasn’t: a kilo of cherries was 2.35 euros….a 20% increase on last year).

Our objective was the butte de la vierge – the virgin’s hill that dominates our landscape here. There is a monument at the top of it celebrating the miracle of a local wife who, a century ago, went to see the priest and asked for advice about how to conceive. The story goes that he blessed her, and lo – nine months later she had a child. The local atheist community has its own theory about how this miracle occurred, but we can pass quickly over such cynicism. The point is, from the top of the butte you can see for miles in every direction. And the beauty of this experience is that, having enjoyed the vista, the way back is downhill all the way.

In our newly combined epicerie-boulangerie, the owner was as hard-pressed and talkative as ever. Nobody in French villages minds this. Queues lengthen, but gossip rules. And anyway, the members of the queue are listening just as intently as the gossipers. The large Second Empire mansion next to the shop was bought by rich Rosbifs seven years ago. No doubt part of some bust or other (could’ve been dotcom, might’ve been concom) the word is they went broke. Now starlings and rats have squatted the place. It is a scandale. I agreed most heartily, keen not to be lumped in with such decadent neglect.

And so we walked back down the  road to our house, pulling the dogs urgently this way and that as French motorists careered round every corner at an average 40% above the speed limit. Not only do the French drive down every country road as if  competing for an advanced F1 grid position, they never slow down for dogs. For coqs, hare, rabbits, deer and cattle yes – you can eat these – but only uncivilised Asians eat dogs. When it comes to the immediate prospect of eating lunch, of course, 200% above the speed limit is not uncommon: it is for this reason that we observe our golden rule without fail – we never, ever walk the dogs after 11.45 am. When the French are late for lunch, any species using the roads is fair game. If they get in the way and are killed, they can be eaten later, after being suitably hung. If they survive to sue the driver, there is not a Court anywhere in France who would find in their favour.

If you think this makes me sound francophobic, you’d be hard-pushed to find anyone here who’d agree with you. Some of the locals (and the odd Gallic having read my comment threads at Le Canard Enchaine) regard me as a man who should have been made a senior member of the Legion d’Honneur years ago. This reputation is growing with every blog on the subject of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and his uphill fight against mad Americans and the Sarkozy Axis of Evil. My dislike of Christine Lagarde is something of a clincher in this process: I have yet to meet a provincial anywhere in this country who doesn’t think her to be a bird-brain who has spent too long on the sunbeds of Paris.

All things being considered, I remain a francophile. Others may rail against French duplicity and cynicism, but not me. All I see at the top of this culture is a Sorbonne-trained elite who know what they’re doing – and have been trained to ensure that, come what may, the French State survives. They back the Germans, stay close to the Americans, criticise British isolationism, and plan for a world in which there is no energy, and nobody who can take on the Chinese. Compared to the overpaid and corrupt mandarins in Whitehall, they are a shining example to us all.