The next job was fitting and tiling the en suite bathroom and I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

‘The trouble is,’ said Doris, ‘that Ricky was too competent. But we’ve learnt so much. I’m sure we’ll get it right.’

I was less certain. My last tiling experience had been 40 years earlier and I recalled that I’d made a mess of it. The best thing perhaps was to try something else first, something simple. I made a frame and boxed in the bath. So far so good.

As the shower cubicle and tray were already in place I had run out of room for procrastination. I mentioned this to a friend at the Chaplaincy.

‘I’ve done some tiling,’ he said, ‘would you like a bit of help?’

‘More than a bit,’ I said.

‘Then you shall have it,’ he said.

It was now the end of June and Doris was busily planning for my 70th birthday in July. We were expecting perhaps two dozen of our immediate family to come out for the big day.

The problem was sleeping accommodation. We had done our calculations and even with a couple of tents for the older children and using the living area as emergency bed space, we were still struggling.

‘It’s a pity there are no vampires in the family,’ I said, ‘they would be comfortable hanging from the rafters in the barn.’

‘Not with the amount that our lot can drink,’ said Doris, ‘they’d fall off.’

We considered our options; we had friends who could put people up nearby or we could book some of the family into a local hotel. Neither of these ideas was the answer. Apart from the family politics involved, it cut across the idea of having the whole family together for as long as possible. One of my sons was coming in his motor home so that would help, but even with extending the tent city to all the children, we were still a couple of bed spaces short. The only solution was to put the old caravan back into service.

In fact the van had remained in occasional use. It was ideal for sleeping when the weather was hot because it cooled down more quickly than the house after dusk. Hooked up to the electric, and with its ‘en suite’ shower and toilet, it was perfect for a couple. However, for safety as well as aesthetic reasons it needed securing on a permanent base. It is something I should have done earlier, but having become an expert in putting down concrete I was now confident that I could take it on.

The first job is to work out how much concrete you need. Most DIY books will have charts showing how much is required for a given area and depth but, in general, you need about four inches of concrete laid over a bed of hardcore. The actual depth depends on the surface you are working on; soft soil needs more hardcore than hard.

I did not need to be too precise as I was mixing my own concrete and I knew there would be other jobs I could do using the same materials. It was just a case of making sure that I had enough, and anyway our local builders’ yard delivers any quantity for €20.

At the yard I ordered three tons of sand and gravel mixed (ballast), two tons of sand and eight bags of cement. The girl complimented me on my French, I was delighted, not because my French was truly wonderful, but because it proved I now had complete confidence in doing my own ordering.

The next thing was to find a cement mixer. I knew our new English neighbour, Derek, had one. Better still, it turned out that he was not only prepared to let me use it but he offered to come along and help.

Derek, Doris and I worked together. Derek mixed, Doris was on barrow duties, and I laid it down. Initially we mixed it too dry, then settled on nine shovels of ballast to six of sand and one battered washing up bowl of cement. Perfect. I put down the mix over an old iron bed frame – also provided by Derek.

It took the three of us four days. This was largely because rain kept stopping play, but the job was finished – and I think pretty well done in the circumstances. I now had a full 24 hours to spare to move the caravan onto its new hard standing before the birthday guests arrived.

On the day of the big celebration I woke up to blazing sunshine and a house full of family and friends. It was just wonderful. OK, so I was officially old now, but my mood was geriatrically blissful, so blissful in fact that when I opened the letter from the British department of work and pensions, I felt only mildly homicidal.

‘We stopped paying your pension a year ago,’ they advised me, ‘and you have no right of appeal.’

Doris poured me a strong dose of anti-panic tea. Fortified by this I rang Newcastle where I was informed by a bubbly female that my pension had been stopped because I had not returned their ‘Life Certificate’ – basically a declaration that I had not yet been nailed down in my little wooden box.

I explained that there was a logical reason for this: despite the fact that they, self-evidently, had my new address I had not received the appropriate form.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’ll send you another one. It happens all the time.’

‘Not to me,’ I said, ‘And anyway, you attached one with the letter I have in front of me. It tells me that, as I hadn’t previously filled in the form, I previously didn’t get, I’m as dead as mutton with no right of appeal.’

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘just fill in the form and send it back. We’ll reinstate your pension immediately.’

So I filled in the form and sent it off as a registered letter.

It might seem strange that I did not know that my pension had been stopped for a year. The oversight occurred because our pensions are paid into our English accounts in pounds sterling. We could have asked for payment in euros, but may have lost out to the constantly fluctuating exchange rate. What we try to do is leave the sterling in the account and only convert to euros having tracked the rate to a moment that seems advantageous.

I follow the rate movements through satellite TV, or for an instant update I press the red button on my Sky remote whilst tuned to BBC 1. Then 1 toggle through the menu to Foreign Exchange and go to the Bank of England pound/euro rate. This sets the benchmark for contacting a foreign currency dealer to find who comes closest to the Bank of England rate.

After a while you get the instinct for the best time to buy. Obviously there are no guarantees, but it does at least give you more control over your money. I cannot be the only one doing it as there are plenty of ads for currency dealers in French lifestyle magazines.

Of course, to get a really good deal, you need to exchange a decent wad. We tend to do it in £10,000 blocks, which you can live on for quite a long time in France. This also explains why I had no idea that I had been dead for a year. Given the circumstances I felt remarkably well and, in due course, after another phone call or two, they reinstated my pension and paid the arrears up to date.