Jeremy Josephs is a British freelancer based in France’s warm and sunny south. Jeremy has traded in his local pub for the café life, the dreary London fog for predictably sun-filled days, and -- judging from the impressive list of credits on his webpage -- his career is showing no signs of wear and tear for the choice of lifestyle. He doesn’t regret the decision for a minute, even though he claims to be...

Skint In The Sunshine!

by Jeremy Josephs

There are few things worse in life than being an English writer living in France. "Hello, my name is Jeremy Josephs," say I, "a journalist living in Montpellier in the south of France." I am on the phone again (my wife says I am never off of the phone...) doing my freelance bit, which means flogging my articles to anyone who'll have them. It seems like I will never learn, because despite having lived in the sunny Languedoc-Roussillon region for the best part of seven years, the negative response is invariably the same. At least when you ring in from England, that is.

"Oh that must be very nice," comes the standard, starchy, sarky reply.

"Yes it is," I continue. "I was wondering if you might be interested in a very nice photo-essay I have put together on the subject of the pink flamingoes of the Camargue."

"Weather nice down there, is it?"

"Not bad. Not bad at all, thanks."

"'Coz its pouring down here in London, you know."

"Oh dear. I am sure it will clear up soon. Yes, as I say, do you think that your magazine might fancy running my flamingo piece? I could pop the whole package in the post if you would like to examine the visuals."

"Your flamingo piece? Oh no, no thanks."

All right, I might be exaggerating a little. But the truth of the matter is that you invariably put English noses out of joint as soon as you announce that you live in such sunny climes. To the point where I have now changed tack completely and announce that I am ringing in from some god-forsaken place in the north of England where, chances are, hypothermia is ripe and the local pond has frozen over.

I first fell in love with France when I was just ten years old. I loved the language, and thirty years on that love has not faltered. Plus the food, the people, everything. You know what it’s like when you are in love. I always had it in the back of my mind that one day I would live in France.

But the opportunity only presented itself in 1992 when I said to my wife (less of a Francophile, it has to be said) that if we were ever going to have a go at setting up shop in France, then the time had come. The deciding factor? The age of our son, then six years old. Leaving it any later would have made things much more difficult from a language point of view.

Work? Not at all easy, especially in the administrative department we had chosen, where unemployment has been slowly but steadily edging up towards the 20% mark. Clever old me then, I thought, for arriving with a commissioned book safely tucked under my belt; at least that would keep us going for six months or so. I had already written five other books -- one a year, more or less, since the late eighties. None of them best sellers, I might add, but enough for us all to get by. Not that I had come armed with a particularly cheerful subject -- the Hungerford Massacre -- but work is work. There then followed another book, this time accompanied by an hour-long television documentary, about the Newall murders, another cheerful subject. Everything was going swimmingly (we are just a stone's throw from the Med, after all) until I found myself struggling to have another book idea accepted.

Having taken a fair old battering in terms of ego and confidence, I eventually bounced back. If book publishing was deep in recession, I thought, then I would change tack and turn my hand to journalism. And I gently dipped my toes in the journalistic waters by writing about local subjects which might be of interest to English-language magazines: Perrier water, Roquefort cheese, and so on. Far be it from me to say that they were snapped up (especially when writing about such subjects) but I was lucky enough to strike a chord, and I stumbled and bumbled my way into the in-flight magazine market, picking up work with British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Aer Lingus, and so on. Plus, I soon discovered, I was having a hell of a good time 'at work' -- wonderfully pleasant days out sampling nougat in Montelimar or chocolate in Brussels. My wife thoroughly approved.

Communications? Well, the old phone bill is fairly disastrous, I have to admit. But then again it wasn't too healthy when I was living in London either. Nor has my addiction been made any the easier to deal with now that mobile phones are with us. But what I try to do is to operate as much as possible via the Internet. Which, I have come to realise, presents the most tremendous opportunity for freelancers. Of course, when sending e-mails up into cyber-space it really doesn't matter where you are. Even English people don't seem to mind my living in Montpellier. "Bet the weather's nice down there," they e-mail back cheerfully. Funny lot, the English.

Keep those ideas coming. Write them down in the ideas file. Sell, sell, sell. These are my daily matras, where admin and marketing skills are as important as journalistic skills. More so, it seems to me, than in the world of publishing. Plus, it's much more frenetic. Instead of dealing with one publisher, you might have eighty articles up and running, and be dealing with fifty separate magazines and newspapers around the world. Better be good at record keeping, on or off of the computer, if you feel that this life might be for you.

You must know that old Edith Piaf song about Regrets. Well, she announces in that hauntingly oh-so-Frrrench voice that, 'Non, je ne regrette rien' -- and I have to confess that I do, too. True, I moan and groan about being Skint in the Sunshine. But if you are going to have a battle on your hands, then the south of France is, in my view, the best possible battlefield on which you could possibly wish to be.

-- JJ

©1998 Jeremy Josephs