Voila Vincent: Our little house on the hill

Our house in Eus is all colour, clutter and tres casual French chic. It sits halfway up the mountain. From a distance the homes looks just like pink-tiled ochre Lego boxes tossed and tumbling downhill. Eus is one of the most beautiful villages in France so tourists ramble up and down the tiny village passageways until late in the evening. Lots of tourists. Every day. I am amazed at the number.

Our house has three floors: the entrance opens onto the middle level, via a door from a medieval narrow alley to one side. After unlocking the door, two complete revolutions, you take one step down to this level, as you enter the tiny kitchen space and the compact living room, bathroom and narrow hall which leads to outdoor steps, downstairs.

The floor on this middle level is tiled with tomettes, those delightful red glazed hexagons, so typically French. To match the tomettes, the kitchen is all red: red and white squares, red and white spots, red hearts on white, or white on red: cushions, chair covers, tablecloths, tea-towels, prints, floor mats, china, curtains, wall hangings, canisters – everything: right down to dustpans and ticking wall clocks.

There is a hob and an oven set in a single small fixed unit where there is room for stacked china and cutlery and sel, poivre and herbs. We make space for our groceries on a small square table pushed against the wall near the fridge which is covered in red and white oilcloth.

Everything is at hand. The broom, if you want it, the wine glass, the tea towel. You barely have to reach for a thing. Everything is in its place, and every space has a thing in it.

The bathroom is Beetlesque orange: all tangerine dreams and marmalade tiles. Bright citrus splashes: bathmats, towels, wall hangings, medicine cupboard, and a retro tangerine-tinted Sunlight soap print. It would be impossible to be sad in this room. There is even a terribly French bidet.

The living room has white walls, white toiles du soleil curtains, spiced up with spritzy orange and red Santa Fe stripes: cushion covers, throw rugs, basketry, napery. The combined colours work.

Spaces on walls are hung with saucepans, graters, utensils, tea caddys, memo lists – and clusters of prints and works d’art in delightful little collections. There is even a singular French Brie cheese boxtop, too charming to throw out, hooked to a small space on the china cabinet wall. And a framed Pablo Casals poster advertises a chamber music festival held in the next village, Prades, each summer. Prades was the cellist’s favourite village and he often made his home there.

Up a narrow flight of stairs that hug the wall on which the kitchen cabinetry is hung is a quiet single guest bedroom, a narrow toilet, and our delightful space--a combined and quite large studio-bedroom, coloured in lemon, orange and grapefruit, that overlooks the Pyrennees through two awesome sets of windows which I can hardly bear to shutter. Here the flooring is wood, with occasional throw rugs, where needed.

Downstairs, beneath the kitchen is a laundry room, a well, a cellar, and an excellent storage space, large enough for another low-set bedroom or two, if you sealed the flaky schist on all the walls. On the same level, but open to the sky is the garden. A fig tree hangs from above and ripe figs burst from it each day. There are vines, dripping orange pods, which I can’t identify climbing the stone surrounds, and hardy tufts of parsley scrabble up from the pebbles.

Here, too, our outdoor dining suite is set on concrete and pebbles beneath a shade umbrella. All terribly Mediterranean. The stone walls of the house rise two floors, enclosing this space, which stops at a pedestrian path above. We can often hear passers-by, but it is not possible to see them in this amazingly private garden.

This outdoor space, alone, is the size of many of the boutique homes in the village. Set into its stone walls are niches holding candles for dining at dusk, and tangy potplants that fill the air. As well as being beautiful, it could be Camelot, as rain seems to only fall just after sundown, which is just as well, as we have yet to find the watering hose should we need it to refresh the garden.

We’ve added our pot of basilica to the scented garden, as it has decided, this year, to last forever. We’re harvesting it daily, but still it grows. Eus is marketed as the sunniest village in all of France, and our basil is in on the act.

Solid thick external walls keep out the heat, and picturesque window shutters which we secure back on little slide fasteners, keep in the cool. These very French shutters cover all the windows, up and downstairs, on which more toile au soleil hangs.

Added to which there are stacks of books I plan to devour: Anita Shreve, Margaret Atwood, Steven Fry, Sebastian Faulks. Ahh! Along with DVDs: The Painted Veil, The Constant Gardner, and many of that ilk: works we rarely take time out to enjoy at home. Here we will.

Many of the local residents are artists, sculptors, silversmiths, leatherworkers, potters, even philosophers, so while there are less than 400 inhabitants in this village (albeit several are absentee homeowner) this local group of residents has a complete schedule of serious musical and literary performances on offer at this time of the year.

At least twice a week there is some event at one or other of the two eating places that advertise visiting artists: poetry readings, collected folk tales and chansons du Languedoc-Roussillon region, avant garde groups with thin elegant wrists, and thinner instruments, and last Friday, a Cajun soloist and instrumentalist we could hear from our bedroom window -- simply superb.

And if it all becomes a little too French, or a little too esoteric, or even a little too late – most guest artists don’t start till 9pm, and some featured artists not till much later -- one can simply sit enchanted, as Eus looks out over a valley, that at night, twinkles with the clustered lights of at least three villages. It is all utterly charming.