A close encounter on the M40

There's a light drizzle as I point the car onto the sliproad. Eyes on the runway ahead, I press firmly down on the accelerator. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel, but this isn't 'Top Gear'. More like 'Driving School'.

With hubski on a training course for his new job, it falls to me to take our left-hand-drive Toyota to a car dealer in Nottingham, shedding the last vestige of our French life in the process. I have little idea of how to get to Nottingham from Oxfordshire, except to follow my dad (who is giving me a lift home) in the car ahead. If this arrangement sounds a little slipshod, let me tell you that this is pretty damn watertight by my family's standards.

The left-hand lane of the sliproad is taken up by a thundering juggernaut. In a moment of wild, non-self-preserving recklessness, I decide to cane it down the right-hand lane, overtaking the world's biggest lorry in the process, and then to shoot out effortlessly onto the M40, as if I casually defy death every single day of my life.

What actually happened was that I drew level with the lorry and was teleported to a far-off dimension resembling the inside of a car wash. The spray from its wheels totally engulfed my poor little Yaris. Worse, the lorry driver seemed to be unaware of our existence, and the roar of its engine grew deafening as, in a casual, absentminded kind of way, it drifted over to my lane, in the same, casual, absentminded way of someone hogging your armrest in the cinema.

Except in this case the stakes were rather higher.

Windscreen wipers slashing wildly, I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. This must be what it's like in the final split second before death in some terrible accident, when you realise there's no escape. Fully expecting to be crushed by the lorry, now only inches from my wing mirror, or crushed from the other side by motorway traffic, I lost the ability to move or think, and just kept my foot down on the accelerator and waited to depart this life. I've heard stories of people who've had near-death experiences and describe seeing their entire life flash before them, or their late granny beckoning them towards the pearly gates, or experiencing some kind of spiritual epiphany. At the risk of this reflecting badly on me, my last insight was roughly: 'Ah, sod it'.

But then the din receded and we (my trusty Yaris and I, for we bonded that day for the first time) shot out onto the motorway just as, I swear, the sun broke through the clouds and I embarked on the second, or possibly the third, or the fourth, of my nine lives.

I lost sight of my dad around Birmingham and ended up buying an A-Z of Nottingham (if anyone wants it e-mail me as I have no intention of ever returning there) and navigating my/our way to the car dealer. But that was nothing to someone only two hours into a new life.

All in all it was an emotional day. As I stood in the garage forecourt and bid our Toyota a silent farewell, I was surprised to find my eyes fill up with tears. I'm not into cars and thought I had no sentimental attachment to ours. But it felt like leaving behind a member of the family. So many memories and trips were tied up with it, that the new owner would neither know nor care about. It felt wrong. I wished I didn't have to leave it.

And I think that counts as the first stab of French nostalgia. There really is no way back now.

A major disadvantage of moving back to your home town...

I'm standing innocently at the crossing in the centre of town, daughter in pushchair, waiting for the little red man to turn green.

Absentmindedly, my eyes flick over the passersby on the other side of the road. My town (let's call it V.) specialises in old people, wearing fleeces that make them look like forlorn, misshapen teddies. Other than that, where would we be without white van man and the gaggle of teenage mums around the statue in the market place. Some of them could well be the daughters of my class mates, who left school at 16 with a baby and not many GCSEs. It's a sobering thought. Not from a 'Daily Mail' reader's point of view, just that I'm getting old.

I do a double-take.

It can't be.

Approaching the crossing is a man, tall, heavily built. He walks with a familiar, plodding gait, leaning forward slightly. At some point in the 15 years since I last saw him, he's cut off his lanky tresses, and put on a fair amount of weight. He now looks about 40, although I know he's younger. He was in the school year above me.

This man, although he doesn't know it, is responsible for my worst ever 'please tell me I dreamt it' morning-after recollection. He also deserves to take first place on the podium of Francesca's biggest ever mistakes (and that's taking into account many pints of snakebite and black).

The outline of his arse, silhouetted against the stars (thank god the night was dark) will forever be imprinted upon my memory.

It was a short-lived... (the next word should be 'romance', which would be wildly and laughably inaccurate) It was a short-lived... whatever it was. It began in the Royal Oak pub, the day after I finished my A-levels and enjoyed my first night out, and drink, since the previous autumn (that was always my excuse, see). A combination of glandular fever and intensive swotting meant that I had been absent from the social scene of the town of V for many months, and tonight was my re-coming out. Hurrah!

He chatted me up over my fourth pint, and we met up several times over that summer to get drunk and indulge in alfresco heavy petting sessions (euurgh). I knew that he was ugly, flaky, and into drugs, but I didn't care. There was noone else around, and he was in with the in-crowd, which I had never been part of. I fancied finding out what all the fuss was about, before I was rumbled as an imposter.

It ended when I invited him to a friend's party and he decided he liked the look of another girl there, and they started romping in a bedroom. My friend very loyally threw them out, but before they sloped off into the night I told him what I thought of him. My theory is that he then spiked my drink, which would explain the hallucinations and panic attacks that followed, and the fact that I STILL don't feel safe walking down stairs without holding on to a bannister, because I started getting dizzy spells. Still, those were the days, eh?

Back in 2006, my feet turn to lead and I silently will him to walk past the crossing and not look my way.

Amazingly, he does.

We did it!

Ever since I started this blog, rarely a day has gone by when I haven't asked myself if I was crazy.

I know the answer to that. I am crazy. I have never sent a text message. I supported the war in Iraq. And my favourite song is 'Living on a Prayer' by Jon Bon Jovi. That's just three examples off the top of my head. Plus I spent eight years in France when I could have just gone to London after uni like everyone else. But at least crazy is not boring.

I can't remember now what the last straw was. There was a whole haystack of them. I think I finally decided to abandon hope in France after the street demonstrations about the CPE (remember that?) in March this year. The thing that enraged me more than anything was the cynical way that the protests were unofficially pencilled in as part of the national calender. New Year, then in a matter of weeks the February holidays, Valentine's Day, then, to fill in the gap before Easter, 'manifestation' season! Then came Easter and everyone went off on holiday and forgot about it, just as they forgot about whatever they had protested about the year before. Nobody I saw interviewed on those protests had anything to say about what could be done to improve the job market for young people, or seemed to be living in the real world. But pose for the camera staring wistfully into the middle-distance holding a single flower, just like Mamie did in 1968? Much more fun than lectures!

Anyway. That's not my problem now. In April, after a year fruitlessly searching for a better job in France, hubski resigned his dead-end post, and we put our flat on the market. Living in France, which had once been an adventure, our precious neutral territory (he Russian, me English) and common enemy, had starting eating away at us. Fourteen years after arriving from Russia, he had never managed to get offered a job by a French company. Although I had, it was always as a foreigner, with all the caveats that implied. I was sick of feeling like a second class citizen. And also? I was afraid of hearing, in a couple of years, the words, 'Mummy, when I grow up, I want to be a notaire.' Or 'Mum, can you lend me a flower? I want to go on a march. How does my hair look?'

We took a huge risk. I was very aware that many mixed marriages bite the dust in similar circumstances. If hubski had insisted on staying in France, I would have stayed, but I dread to think at what cost. Instead, he gave up the modest everything he'd built up over the whole of his adult life, and took a leap into the unknown.

And here we are, three months later, and hubski has found a job at Heathrow airport, with prospects, and training, in his beloved aviation. He's been sent to Germany for a month to learn more about bloody aeroplanes. That won't make him more of an interesting dinner party guest, but it makes him happy. We exchange contracts on a house at the end of the week. And I've decided to resume work as a freelance journalist and editor, legally this time. Because in England, there is no such thing is URRSAF.

As Bon Jovi would say. Woooaah, we're halfway there!