Mr Wrzesniok says: "The financial services industry in the UK needs to convince more investors to go for gold and see it almost as an insurance policy for their portfolio. But every brasserie and bar we visited in Provence was happy to rustle up pizza, poulet or goujons thus dispelling the myth that French children cut their gastronomic teeth on gesiers and goats cheese.Not that we ate out much. We were endowed with a well-equipped kitchen, a choice of two al fresco dining areas, a dishwasher and more hypermarch?on our doorstep than you could shake a baguette at just a short drive away. So moving gently from the sun loungers to a table heaving with locally produced cheeses, saucissons, rillettes, light reds, insouciant whites and the richest, reddest tomatoes we had ever seen was far more appealing.With Cadogan's Take the Kids: South of France as our bible, we investigated the family oriented tourist sights: the reliable delights of a train museum, the slightly more suspect Haribo Candy Museum at Uzes and, less predictably, an alligator farm ("I won't step on the cracks ever again, Mummy").We dutifully ticked off the Pont du Gard with its excellent child-friendly visitors' centre, but Maison Ventoux was calling us back.For the adults there was poolside reading to be done. The waiters at La Mirande were unfazed by our request for beignets de poulet (aka chicken nuggets) as a side dish to their sublime menu degustation. But the French make the good life easier for those with children. A day in Avignon - taking turns at culture, couture and child-minding - was blissful.

Cam clocked up six revolutions on the giant carousel in Place de l'Horloge and two trips on the agreeably kitsch tourist train - which took in Avignon's extensive range of historic buildings (and McDonald's).After the activities we ate in the 17th-century walled garden of a five-star restaurant. And the scorpion in our bedroom.Appropriately enough, Paul Bowles was the assassin this time, sending the offending arachnid clattering on to the cobbles below the window. Two hours later, after moving everything in the room to make sure that the beastie had travelled solo, we crept back into bed, folding the sheets up around our necks like nervous wedding night virgins. Cameron carried around the picture of it that his daddy had drawn for the rest of the week, and to this day is occasionally heard to mutter to himself: "If you see one of these, run away."You might expect some tension between two childfree adults, two permanently exhausted parents and a pint-sized potentate of polymorphous perversity. Except for wasps the size of sparrows - killed with increasingly wine-fuelled confidence by the excellent swat-team of Jonathan Franzen, Alice Sebold and Carol Shields. As she quickly informed us, we were too high to be plagued by mosquitoes Paradise, no? Of course. The owner of our villa - heavily pregnant, exclusively Francophone, and dressed in a Pagnolesque uniform of white petticoat and blonde curls - greeted us bearing olives, freshly ironed bed-linen and several bottles of the local wine.

Chiaroscuro weather swept across the sky but rarely stopped to cloud this sunny sanctuary or disturb our diligent survey of the local industry: at home and at the bar.Viticulture dominates Vacluse, with the touristic caveaux of Beaumes de Venises a short drive away and plenty of less prententious cellars within a 10-minute stroll. In practice this proved difficult in the tiny village of Suzette in the foothills of Mont Ventoux. One bar with a great line in cr? de cassis and salade aux lardons does not a metropolis make, but at least the landscape around us was idyllic.The view from Maison Ventoux was of a bell-tower, vineyards, more vineyards and, a little further in the distance, the misty summit of Mont Ventoux itself. So who were we to tell them?Admittedly, the holiday was pitched on the promise that Susannah and Simon were, at least once or twice, free to wander off in search of Gallic flirtations. They'd never spent seven days in the permanent company of the small human dynamo who passes himself off as our son, but they didn't seem to see it as hard work. But it came at a time when our be-childrened friends already had their holidays mapped out.