The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Ok it’s January, cold, bleak and raining.   The decorations have been packed away, the weight from party nibbles has been packed on and I’m uncomfortably aware of  the low balance in the checking account and the high one on the credit card.  I don’t want to sound ungrateful after all of these winter festivities but I think I need a vacation.   I want to go someplace warm where life’s pace moves with the seasons and nothing moves too fast.  Someplace where living well is more than the best revenge.  Oh heck, I want A Year in Provence. A Year in Provence is one of those miracles that hit the publishing business about twenty years ago.  Picture this: British author and advertising executive, Peter Mayle, accumulates enough money to retire early and move into an old, stone, farm house in the South of France.  Living there, he finds, is both less relaxing and more fun than he ever anticipated.  He writes an account of the strange and wonderful things he finds there (under the heading of strange include a neighbor who expects him to cook a fox; the expert who teaches him how to handicap a goat race; the winter gales…