Chez Fab time

So it isn't often these days I get the chance of a holiday on my own. My holiday preference would always be with my partner Richard and some of our best times together have been spent relaxing by various pools around the world.

However recently a set of coincidences conspired to allow me to spend the last week at Chez Castillion in the Dordogne, a beautiful house run by my long-time dearest friend Janie Millman and her lovely husband Mike. They moved over to France about three years ago having bought the house they have done an absolutely brilliant job of doing it up and turning it into a gorgeous retreat. They run courses on photography, painting, and creative writing and you stay as a house guest while partaking in the course for six days.

I've read a lot about it on their website and various other people's posts on Facebook and yet I suppose until you experience something yourself there's always a little scepticism that remains. I didn't believe it could be that good. I was wrong. It's even better than it looks.

I've just taken a week-long crime writing course with the author Adrian Magson. (an absolute delight to work with and I'm certainly going to help increase his royalties now by downloading a couple of his books on my Kindle) All the classes were laid-back but absolutely brilliant. I've long been a fan of crime fiction and when I used to buy books in book form, crime novels - Ruth Rendell, PD James, Val McDermid, Nicola Upson - were the ones I would always invest in in hardback. At the moment thanks to a set of fortuitous circumstances I don't have the time to write a crime book as I have just been commissioned to write a book on corporate acting, but the time spent with Adrian on how to discipline yourself as a writer, how to order your work, and just how, in general, to get inside the mind set of someone who by August is going to have to turn out 50,000 words was absolutely invaluable.

But it's not just the course. I don't know how on earth she does it but Janie manages to turn out three fabulous meals a day. Four course dinners with excellent wines, three course lunches, and a gorgeous welcoming breakfast with some of the best coffee I've ever tasted.

There are two gorgeous dogs, Gus and Rory, who won't forgive me if I don't mention them in this blog so there you go boys. Neither will the lovely Betty and Sue and Helen who were also on the course, so there you go girls - loved meeting you all. The house is just a delight. The gorgeous course room in the garden for writing or painting, a beautiful cosy library to retreat to and work in the afternoons, a fabulous salon for meeting for the predinner drinks, and the bedrooms are all individual and thoughtfully prepared. I was lucky enough to have an enormous room at the front of the house with two lovely French doors onto a balcony overlooking the main street of the town.

The house is 2 min walk from the Dordogne, and has a fabulous swimming pool and Gardens. Throughout the week I was there the rain was ceaseless, and yet it didn't matter one iota. Brilliant people, lots to learn (I manage to write over 8000 words which I feel rather smug about) and the best hosts possible in Janie and Mike.

If this all sounds like an advert, then it is. I want you to go. I want you to click on their website now www.chezcastillon.com and look at what they do. There's a photography course in October and I want to book Richard on it right now. Not that he's going alone!