Blogging, it turns out, is addictive.

I have tried to stay away. How I have tried! To no avail.

What is more, it also turns out that learning is addictive, too. No sooner have I returned my borrowed cap and gown, than I find myself enrolling with the OU for yet more study...

Carole and I holidayed this year in Avignon, as I may have mentioned. If I haven't, then let me say now that Avignon is genuinely awesome. Even better, it can be reached in one hop by Eurostar; or two hops by Eurostar and TGV. Either way, there is no better way to travel, and fewer equal destinations.

We are quite attached to France, Carole and I. We honeymooned, all those years ago, in Paris. Can I tell you the story?

We were not well off when we married. Until my father fell ill with throat cancer, we didn't have, and couldn't afford to have, a car. We took my father's car once he became incapable of driving, and used it to visit as often as we could.

Our marriage was in the high summer following my father's death in May. As was our custom, we spent the first week of August at the National Eisteddfod, returning on the 6th for our civil ceremony, and then departing on the 7th for Paris - 4 nights by coach, on a bargain basement trip organised by the Western Mail.

Everything about that holiday is memorable - standing by the now demolished Empire Pool, waiting for the coach; discovering that the coach was circa 1980 and that the driver did not even know the way to Newport (the next stop), never mind the way to Paris; the relief of finding that we were to transfer to another, more modern, coach at one of the services on the M4. Most memorable perhaps was arriving at the hotel in a modern development on the outskirts of Paris.

Now, Paris is deserted - except for tourists and those who serve them - in August. All the Parisians have gone to the Cote d'Amour or some other favourite resort location. So there is no work for business hotels. Our coach therefore arrived at a massive, glass-fronted, brand new hotel and disgorged fifty or so cheapskate tourists who had paid next to nothing for their holiday.

"This can't be right", I said to Carole, "They must have made a mistake. This place is too grand for us. Maybe our hotel is the next stop, or something". But no, this was our hotel. A little far out from the centre of Paris, but close to an RER station that put the Place de la concorde within easy enough reach.

So every day, to save money, we walked to the town centre near our hotel and bought bread and cheese, perhaps a salad too, to have for dinner, and caught the train into Paris. We bought a Carte Musee that gave us entry to many of Paris' museums including the Louvre - a major coup since, apart from the financial benefits of the 'carte', we also avoided the queues for the Louvre and were saluted into a side door by a smiling gendarme.

Carole is somewhat more sensible than I am, so she had worked out a budget - what we could afford to spend from day to day. As it turned out, we spent quite a bit less than our budget and reached our final day with a good sum in hand.

On that final day, at about 7:30 p.m., our coach was going into Paris, for anyone who wanted a lift in, and was stopping at Etoile Charles de Gaulle, where it would wait, to take us back in the late evening.

We descended from the coach and walked down the Champs Elysees until we found a restaurant that offered a decent menu for vegetarians; then we took our table on the street outside, ate well, drank a bottle of wine, and watched the sun descend over the Paris rooftops. We didn't say a lot, but we felt - both of us did - how lucky we were to have found this beautiful place, and to have found each other to enjoy it together.

So we've been back to France a number of times since then. Not always to Paris, but also to Brittany and the Midi.

Each time we go, by the end of the first week there, we can feel our French becoming more natural: and every year, after a week back home, we can feel it slipping away. So we've signed up on French courses with the Open University, and will also be going on an OU summer school to Caen in Normandy at the end of July - and then maybe on somewhere else for a second week of French immersion.

Shall I keep you informed as to how we get on? It looks like it, doesn't it?