Monday evening. The Portuguese neighbour arrives at my door with a new bottle of ketchup and a tube of tomato puree.

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The maize in the fields is now as tall as me, and Biff and I have a new game - dodging the long-armed irrigators that early morning and evening, send giant arcs of water soaring across the green and blue horizon.

On one of our favourite walks the farmer has positioned the irrigator on the narrow grass track close to the edge of the tall green field. This means we have to judge the moment and then run by as quick as whippets in order to avoid a drenching, should the rotating pipe suddenly swing in our direction. Sometimes, we wait for a good few minutes watching the white water - often framed by a rainbow - soar across the blue horizon before being able to pass by.

Returning from a walk early on Saturday evening, I find my noisy neighbour hanging out of his window, bare-chested and smoking a cigarette.

'Ca va?' he says with a lazy smile.

'Ca va bien merci,' I reply, avoiding eye contact.

'When are we going to have that aperitif?' he asks.

'I'm very busy at the moment,' I reply. (This never sounds convincing in rural France.)

Ten minutes later, I am grilling a venison burger for Biff's dinner when the doorbell rings. It is my neighbour (now wearing a t-shirt). He wants to borrow some ketchup and tomato puree to make a bolognese sauce - or at least that's what I think he wants as he speaks with a very thick accent.

'Please don't forget to bring them back,' I say sternly, as I hand over an almost empty bottle of ancient ketchup and half a tube of tomato puree.

'Bien sur,' he says, with another languid smile. 'Bon appetit eh?'

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Up at 8.00am to take Biff to the vet's for his vaccination contre la rage.

'Bonjour Beef,' says Mlle Beaupain, the supermodel veterinary surgeon, crouching down to greet him.

He jumps up to greet her and tail wagging, follows her happily into the examination room. As she pats him on the head and asks how he is, he is like putty in her hands, rolling his eyes, batting his black eyelids and happily submitting to having his paws and heart beat checked. (I imagine many male clients find their heart beat racing in Mlle Beaupain's presence, for not only is she very pretty but exceptionally charming. And unlike some vets, she does genuinely seem to like her four-legged patients.)

Only when she sinks the needle into his neck, does it all go a bit pear-shaped and he leaps off the table and into my arms with an agonised yelp. I coax him back and this time, he snaps at Mlle Beaupain's slender brown arm. Fortunately, she takes it in good grace.

On the way out, I notice a handsome man dressed in shorts and sandals waiting with his cat. (Perhaps it's just coincidence, but most of Mlle Beaupain's clients seem to be attractive single men with cats.) The man with the cat and the beautiful vet would make a very handsome couple, I think.

I don't know why but I am smitten by this little vignette. As Biff (bless his little black paws) throws up in the car park, I like to think, that on this Saturday morning love is possibly blooming inside the vet's surgery.

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The Man and I have split up. ‘You took too long deciding whether to marry me,’ he says. He's right of course: that sort of question deserves an instant answer - or at least a response within eighteen months.

But in reality we both know it would never have worked, not least because we were hardly ever in the same country at the same time.

He has many fine qualities, including an excellent knowledge of all things rural, inbuilt GPS and a flair for making onion bhajees. But I have come to the conclusion that I am not the marrying kind.

So we have parted on amicable terms, I am no longer his Minx, and he is going back to the UK this weekend to be reunited with his ex-girlfriend. As for me, I am a free spirit again. But now I have my little four legged soulmate, this doesn't seem so bad.

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Searing heat this morning and by 9.00am it's too hot to walk Biff en plein campagne, so I take him down to the river instead and indulge in the lazy person's approach to dog walking: I sit on a bench in the picnic area, while he scampers around chasing birds, and occasionally diving into the water in pursuit of ducks.

'Il faut faire attention, eh,' cries my neighbour Claudette, from the road on the other side of the river. 'Il y a des vipers.'

Beating a hasty retreat in my flip-flops and taking care to stomp the ground as I go to warn off the vee-pers, I head back up the hill, where I bump into my next door neighbour [not the Portuguese one].

'It's time to take action,' he says, shaking his head regretfully and pointing towards the house of les portugais.

It turns out that my neighbour and his wife have not slept for the past week because of the noise. 'I've had enough. I am going to see the maire this afternoon,' he says. 'And he will have to do something about it.'

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My neighbour rings the doorbell shortly after 8.00pm. Aaagagh. What to do? I make a snap decision: I know it’s not mature or becoming behaviour but it seems to me that there is only one thing for it ...I hide. I sit in the courtyard garden reading Elizabeth Gilbert ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and ignore the tapping on the sitting room window and the doorbell ringing intermittently.

The problem with this self-imposed siege is that at some point I will have to venture outside to take Biff for his evening walk and close the shutters.

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Late Sunday afternoon and I am at my desk, working peacefully on a cosmetic dentistry feature (due in tomorrow), when the doorbell rings. It is my Portuguese neighbour.

On Wednesday evening, he appeared at my window blowing kisses - I'm not sure whether it was to Biff or me - while I was watching Location, Location, Location on satellite.

On Friday, he was barbecuing sardines at midnight, when I returned from dinner in the local restaurant. He put down his tongs and came over to pat Biff on the head.
'Ecoute!' he said. 'In a short while I will take a shower and then knock very quietly on your door.' He mimes an action of knocking on the door.
'That's very amusing,' I said. 'But I don't think so.'
When the doorbell rang at 1.00am, I ignored it.

Saturday provided a reprieve, with no sightings of my neighbours. And today, apart from a brief interlude of U2's 'Sunday Bloody Sunday,' all has been quiet in the house next door.

But now my neighbour is standing on the doorstep. Biff, annoying, sits suppliantly in front of him - he likes any company - not even bothering to bark. My neighbour has come to claim the aperitif that I managed to escape last week with the vague promise of 'another time.'
'I'm working,' I say.
I can give you a coup de main, he says. [I look at his muscley arms and fleetingly it occurs to me that he I could do with someone to help clear out my garage.]
'It's not that sort of work,' I say. 'I'm working at my computer.'
'Then I will come back in an hour,' he says, looking at his watch. 'At 7.30pm and you can take a break.'

Aagaggah......As my friend Tom would say, I have failed to land the plane (ie make him go away for good) but how to do it in a friendly, neighbourly way?

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My Portuguese neighbours are asleep and all is quiet and peaceful as I head to the boulangerie on Sunday morning. On the way I bump into my neighbour Claudette.
'Ca va?' she says, with a look of concern, before pointing to my neighbours house, and shaking her head with regret. 'On a pensé de toi hier soir.'

It turns out that the loud music played by my neighbours continued all night and could be heard several streets away. Claudette expresses amazement when I tell her that I was able to sleep through it (but then I was exhausted after spending the afternoon tidying up the courtyard garden.)

After breakfast, I bundle Biff into the car and drove him over to see his second family (from whom I dognapped him) and his big sister Milou. He perks up hugely when we arrive - I am starting to worry that he might get bored with just my company - and dives straight up the garden path to greet them.

Sitting in a shady corner of their garden after a delicious Sunday lunch Frances shows me Biff's baby pictures, taken shortly after they rescued him. The pictures - of a scrawny but perky looking dog - tug at my heart strings and make me love him even more.

'We were almost embarrassed to take him out back then,' admits Frances.

With great tufts of hair missing and patches of pale flesh exposed, Tiny Tim (as he was called by the rescue) looks extremely vulnerable but still recognisable as Biff. I feel a huge surge of gratitude that thanks to the care lavished on him by his former family, Biff has grown up to be a very handsome boy indeed.

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The sounds of France in summer: birds singing, pigeons cooing ....and the heavy metal classic All Night Long, by Rainbow, blaring out from my neighbour's windows. For some months now, the peace of my rural existence has been broken by the Portuguese construction guys renting the village house next door. I'm not quite sure how many men live there: at least three, but sometimes up to seven - all single, in their thirties and, it seems, ticking testosterone bombs.

At weekends, they turn the street outside our respective houses into a party. (Biff, annoyingly is drawn to them like a magnet, enticed by the barbecue that they often set up outside.) When it gets too loud, I stick my head out of the upstairs window and shout, 'vous faites trop de bruit,' and (sometimes) they obligingly turn it down.

But, yesterday being the fete de la musique, with outdoor music and concerts taking place all over France, I couldn't really complain. Early evening - before heading over to Martine's village for an outdoor concert of Celtic music and roasted pig - I took Biff and my bike and headed to a quiet country lane to run him.

My Portuguese neighbours, who were drinking beers on their doorstep, watched our departure with the usual interest. I was then surprised to find one of them following me up the country lane in an attempt to persuade me to have une verre de porto with him later that evening.

'II est joli ton chien, comme sa maitresse,' he said, scooping up Biff. As chat-up lines go, it wasn't bad and I allowed myself to be flattered, which was foolish as a) he had clearly been drinking b) he is missing a tooth c) it was very hot and the summer solstice and everyone's thoughts seem to have turned to lust. (I had a similar encounter with Pascal, the bearded and eccentric local artist, earlier in the day - again, very flattering, as I am no spring chicken, but less inspired by my charms than the heat and possibly the bongo drums being played in the square at the time.)

I told the Portuguese neighbour I was going out and wouldn't be back until late but he wouldn't take no for an answer. When I returned, just after midnight (after an excellent evening - one of the highlights of which was a long-haired, tattooed man vigorously and expertly carving up the pig) he was waiting in a cloud of CK-One, with a lairy and hopeful expression on his face. The party, meanwhile, was in full swing.

I managed to fob him off - with difficulty and the vague promise of an aperitif another time. But as I fell asleep, listening to the music reverberate below my bedroom window well into the early hours, it struck me that a lairy and amorous neighbour could spell trouble ahead.

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We stand before the iron gates of the 16th-century chateau - the setting for my friends' forthcoming wedding in November. Quick as a flash, Biff slips through the railings and is galloping joyously across the manicured lawn and its flowerbeds. 'Biff! Biff! Come back! Now!' we shout in urgent tones, to no avail.

The chatelaine appears dressed in jodphurs and couldn’t be more charming. Ditto Charles, le chatelain, who is French but speaks impeccable English with a jolly spiffing upper class accent.

As my friends debate in which room to have le cocktail and which to hold the dancing - this is definitely going to be a wedding to remember - Charles explains the history of the chateau and the paintings on the walls. I have to fight the urge to ask the manufacturer and colour of the pale blue-grey paint used for the woodwork (it is exactly the shade of gris-bleu I have been searching for the past three years) though I am bold enough to ask the provenance of the beautiful floral wallpaper in the drawing room.

The owner is remarkably unprecious about his pile, and has no problem at all with Biff trotting across the Versailles wooden floor and beautifully worn Aubusson carpets. As we explore the chateau's eighteen bedrooms, Biff, I can tell, is really enjoying himself - yet more proof of his very refined tastes. (More refined than mine, since in London, he tried several times to slip into the opera in the local park - whereas I can only take quivering operatic voices in very small doses).

Later, as the four of us tour the gites and chambres d'hotes in the village - quite honestly, the perfect day out - I start planning the oufits that will do justice to this magnificent setting when we return in November.

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