There are times when fate intervenes and keeps you from harm. In this case, from the chasse lunch, which was not graced – or should that be disgraced – by my presence this year. I write this bathed in the glow of the righteous, suffused in the joy of phoning for reports of others’ misbehaviour, not hiding black-eyed beneath the duvet as the phone trills with tales of my own. Is there anything worse after a night too well refreshed than the voice which says: “And how are YOU today?” with the unctuous faux sympathy of “concerned well-wisher, Lavit”?

What a pleasure it has been to be that person this week. I so rarely have the chance to practise my compassion while doing unto others what has been done unto me.

Not that I was grateful at the time for fate’s intervention. In fact, I was a raging, barely comprehensible lunatic, practically frothing at the mouth as I stared at the blank screen of my computer.

Having been given a deadline extension on my book by the publisher, I was on a manic lastminute three-day countdown with the chasse lunch as my reward. At precisely 11.10pm the night before, I put the little asterisks under the penultimate chapter and pressed return. It was like a scene from The Matrix, as two thick black lines appeared on the screen and threequarters of the words of the whole document disappeared.

There is not enough space to recount all I did in searching through my hard drive. Not enough space to detail how many anguished howls for help I left on friends’ answering machines. I did get my friend Peter, whose well meant suggestion of switching off and starting up again subsequently buggered any chance, as I was to discover, of recovering the words. I could simply have rightclicked “undo”, as my son told me the next day when he finally answered my plea.

So with the empty screen mocking me, I summoned up every reserve of sanity I’ve ever had, crawled to bed, and with throbbing head and deep breaths gnawed the edge of the pillow until sleep overtook me.

The following morning I phoned to say I wouldn’t be at the chasse lunch because of what had happened.

Nobody believed me; they presumed I was copping out, incapable of restraint and fearful of going under the eau-devie spell. I cursed them and settled down to begin all over again, whimpering with each keystroke.

And as I tried to remember and retype my scintillating sentences I thought of them all, quaffing away and eating every beast known to man, and hated them for it. I swear I heard their laughter in the distance.

Well, am I glad I didn’t make it? Oh yes, because I’ve heard all the gossip from both British and French sides and I have enough ammunition to keep myself amused for the next week at least. And I am not, thank God, at the heart of it. For a start, despite their individual denials, the Brits drank at least four times as much as the French. The French were fuming because the Brits all sat together. The Brits the same with the French. But each side admitted they found it exhausting to try to speak to each other in either language and were quietly pleased they didn’t have to, while protesting they should.

The mayor, who loves the Brits and sat on their table, was hacked off that she had to pay for her lunch despite donating use of the Salle de Fetes for the day, hacked off that neither the head of the chasse nor his chasseurs actually live in the village, and hacked off because when it came to the official picture for La Depeche, the regional newspaper, she wasn’t invited to stand with them.

The vet was close to making an official complaint because he hadn’t officially passed the wild boar. He needs to pass the boar because they have worms which can be fatal to humans unless the meat has been cooked for hours and hours. Nothing should be cooked without his say-so.

Even worse, the Brits won 11 out of the 15 raffle prizes, mainly legs of boar and venison, and drunkenly cheered each painfully worked-out number.

There are rumours that because of the insult to the mayor, most of the chasse may find it difficult getting their permits next year, and some of the Brits are already threatening to boycott future lunches after hearing the chasse leader told the mayor there were too many English.

My wicked bilingual French source who told me all this said, “If either side had really understood what was being said about them, there’d have been mayhem.” Yet one of the Brits I spoke to said, “It was wonderful. The French were so hospitable. They just love us supporting the lunch.”

And did anybody miss me? “Well,” he said, “There was a grumpy old woman with a bottle of eau-de-vie looking for you.”