We bought a ruin in the beautiful Languedoc village of Cessenon-sur-Orb and before work started on the renovation we thought it best to write a note to all our immediate neighbours telling them about the works we would be carrying out and the hope that it would not cause them any inconvenience. It also gave them my contact details so they could get in touch should there be any problems.

Work was going well when we started on the creation of our courtyard garden. This involved taking the roof off an old ‘remise’ at the back of the house and then removing an internal wall and lowering the surrounding walls - to create a lovely private courtyard. Now firstly all this work had the required permissions and I had assumed that the architect that had drawn up the plans had at least considered the consequences of this work - as I was soon to learn NEVER assume anything!

The work went well and the roof was soon removed along with the internal wall however the remaining walls were now exposed to the elements for the first time in centuries and the weather had seen to it that they were then thoroughly soaked and then heated in the hot summer sun.

That night I hit the sack, tired but pleased at the progress and had decided that I could allow myself my first lie-in for weeks and not get up with the builders at the crack of dawn. The next morning I was awoken by one of the builders banging on the door of where I was staying, to inform me that ‘the neighbours house was falling down!’ and I should come urgently.

I pulled on my clothes and rushed to the site. Overlooking the as yet un-finished courtyard, was a balcony of my neighbour M Rousseau, who I had not yet met. As I stood below this balcony, some 12 feet above me, I saw a huge crack had developed and you could actually hear the mortar falling like sand out of the wall. Stones were literally falling out of the wall.

At this point, a somewhat agitated M Rousseau appeared at the balcony. Now my French was not great at the time - but I got the general gist of what he was shouting! After his barrage and his insistence on calling the Mayor and the police, I managed to get him to agree to us having a look at the problem from his side of the wall. With that horrid feeling of panic in the pit of my stomach, we ran to his house.

Basically the wall, now un-supported by the internal wall we removed, was falling away from the rest of his house, and was going to take his balcony and God know what else with it. We calmed him down and made a plan. The tell-tails we put in the crack confirmed it was growing, and fast - time was of the essence. Without going into details - disaster was averted, thanks mainly to the fast work of the builders, it took two days to secure the wall, and one sleepless night where we were in the ‘lap of the Gods’ - but the wall remained. And in the end was far more secure than before.

M. Rousseau was fantastic, considering, and impressed by the speed of our response and quality of the work, then asked if he could use the builders to do some work on his fireplace. Relations have since improved and we have become good neighbours. He has even brought us gifts of his home-made eau-de-vie.