JACQUIE AZUR

Hello, and welcome to the South of France. Or, if you're not here yet: welcome in advance. It's lovely.

First, who's talking to you. I'm Jacquie: Canadian, married to a Frenchman, and I've made the move to France twice, once years ago and again two years back, after eight years of living in the United States. So I've done the titre de séjour, the préfecture queues and the file-that's-never-quite-complete not once but twice, the second time with a teenager and a shipping container. Today I'm a real estate agent on the Côte d'Azur: helping people arrive and settle here is literally my day job.

The team behind these pages is my family. My husband is French, and house clearances are his trade: he sorts and values what is there, sells the pieces worth selling on the owner's behalf, gives what can be given to charities and makes sure the rest is properly recycled. Real estate is my own main job; I work the clearance side with him too, with rather less energy than he puts into it. So every tip here carries both perspectives: the French one and the newcomer's. Every address in this series has been walked to; every administrative step in these pages has been survived personally.

Every month there's a new issue: what's actually on in the villages, where to swim before the crowds find it, which vide-greniers are worth the early start, what to do in the garden, and a short note on the property market. Nothing disappears, so you can read back through the year.

The four guides are the reference shelf underneath it: arriving, buying, clearing a house, and the address book. All free, all PDFs, no email asked for.