Here in Switzerland there is no socialised medical coverage. No NHS, no OHIP, no Obama Care, no nothing. We pay a small fortune every month to the private health insurance company of our choice. Basic coverage is obligatory. If you want extras (such as an ambulance or a pair of glasses from time to time) you need a second “complementary” insurance. Don’t even think about dentists.

Your paperwork must be impeccable as each insurance company employs a team of mean and picky people who find all your mistakes so they don’t have to pay.

Right now is the insurance world’s exciting pre-season. In a few weeks, the companies will announce their increased rates for next year, and you have a small window of time when you can actually change companies. This takes knowledge, organisation, motivation and luck. Musical medical chairs and loads of unpleasant telemarketing. Most of us don’t bother.

I consider myself the picture of health. Of course, I take cheap generic pills for one thing and another, but this is simply to keep my hooligan doctor happy and (as I am hugely competitive) to get good scores on my annual medical exams.

I occasionally drink water and eat fruit and vegetables and strenuously vacuum at least once a month. However, the largest medical insurance company is offering an annual rebate of 146 Swiss francs if I walk 10,000 steps every single day. To qualify and prove my devoted athleticism, I must buy a device for my wrist and send the daily results to them via my smart phone.

You also have to buy their complementary health insurance package, and I have calculated the cost of saving 146 francs to be the following:

• 150 francs (cost of wrist step-measuring device)
• 146 francs (cost of sending 365 sms’s)
• 840 francs (cost of complementary insurance coverage)

TOTAL:  1,136.00 francs and this does not even count the cost of getting your device by taxi to your grand-daughter so she can do your 10,000 steps on those days when you are actually sick.

Obviously, the next logical step is a chip implant. Straight into the jugular. That way the insurance people can see it all: the smoke, the drink, the drugs, the laziness, the grease, the sugar.

Believe me, crime (cheese fondue) and punishment (ever increasing monthly medical premiums) are just around the corner.

In France, a sandwich for lunch is a sign of both culinary and moral failure. Of course, living in the Geneva countryside you can sometimes sneak in a peanut-butter-and-strawberry-jam-and-bacon-sandwich and no one will ever be the wiser—except, perhaps, your tattle-tale ever-expanding waistline.

So, attention must be paid, and proper French lunches addressed as often as possible. In fact, you can eat almost nothing, and it can be delicious.

Once upon a time, in the south of France the old mother of a friend used to cook for us. Protesting at her bustling morning activities—up early to the market for fresh products, working in the cool kitchen for an hour or two—she explained that what she produced was entirely ephemeral.  The soup was just water. The spinach soufflé was just air. The gigot was just the thinnest of slices. The fromage frais was medical (calcium). As was the fruit (vitamins).  There was a big basket of fresh bread on the table, just in case anyone was hungry.

Sitting down to eat is healthy, as are starched tablecloths and napkins. A serious lunch is eaten indoors where you are protected from the sun, insects, and deadly draughts. Only tourists, children, and bohemians eat outside. Knives and forks keep reflexes sharp and wrists and fingers strong. Bubbles in the water promote digestion and a glass of red wine successfully fights many many diseases.

Menus are highly coded and there are a few basic traps.  For example, both façon grandmère and à l’anglaise means boiled in water which is often not so good.  We once had pork chops and vegetables cooked in this manner and the slop on our plates was exactly what we had ordered. You learn quickly.

Of course, there are occasional hideous surprises. A lunch in a small rather shabby mountain-village restaurant recently offered beef cheek stew as their plat du jour.  The cook (who hitchhikes to work) hadn’t been offered a ride early enough, and his cheeks had not spent a sufficient amount of time in the pot. They were extremely chewy and we spent some time trying to swallow them whole.

I was working on flattening them out and hiding them under my mountain of rapidly-cooling pasta spirals when a lady at the next table called over the owner/waiter/manager, and explained, pleasantly, that her knife could not cut the meat.  He dropped everything and tried to saw apart a big rubbery chunk. He failed, and then, along with the whole table, burst into laughter. The meal was officially inedible which was jovially accepted as an accident of life.

Relieved, and then restored and fortified with a café gourmand (a strong black French espresso surrounded by three little delicious deserts) we left happy and sincerely promised to return.

A French lunch out is a meal of hope and possibility. It takes time, and, occasionally, tolerance. And you must always keep in mind that if your beef cheek stew is tough today, it will probably be much better tomorrow.

It is Sunday July 10 in the Haute Savoie and I am a prisoner of the Tour de France bicycle race. Not the real one—the pretend one. Today, if I chop off a leg with the chain saw, fall through the hole in the upstairs floor or blow myself up while applying fire-starting gel to the BBQ coals, then I’m a goner with a capital G.

Medical assistance is not an option, as 15,000 people dressed in almost identical silly spandex clothes are riding their fancy bicycles in the summer heat over four mountain passes to complete one of the difficult mountain stages of the Tour de France.

And so, our escape road from mountain to city is officially completely closed.

These amateur cyclists are leaving in large packs at about 5-minute intervals. They make a road block 68 kilometres long and each has a yellow number attached to his/her handlebars.

(By the way, the REAL Tour de France comes through next week and takes about 5 minutes. I know as I’ve seen it. Once, sitting on a bench in front of the church gossiping with my old farmer neighbours and the priest, it zipped past in an almost silent buzz of energy.)

So, on this day of enforced physical and emotional stasis I am taking stock of my valley.

At the top stand the mountains strong and still – the Aiguille Verte, La Tête à l’Ane and the Mont Blanc catch the early morning sun.

Half way down, the yellow building cranes stand inactive on the new Club Med construction site that has (now that there is no snow anymore and global warming is firmly established) finally been given the green light at the ski resort across the valley. Soon more than 1,000 tourists will be able to come and cavort there in the winter rain and mud.

Further down the mountainside there is the latest landslide that suddenly opened up a couple of months back. Everyone is waiting for the condemned house at the edge to finally fall into the abyss. The insurance man has asked me to give him a call if I see this happen.

So, on this action-packed day of high summer in the mountains, I will set myself up beside the sand heap and the cement mixer. I will get out the green and white parasol to add a festive touch. I will read my book, and doze, and sip mountain-cold spring water. I will try to stay out of trouble and will wait for the evening and its freedom that I will no longer desire.

But right now … if someone could just get me the binoculars.

Summer in the Geneva countryside can be glorious, but there are dangers dangling under every leaf. And not just for the plants.

For example, there is the revolting tick situation. Ticks of all shapes and sizes find me attractive and alluring.  Hats, socks, sprays, elastic bands and duct tape cannot keep them away. Just yesterday a pin-head-sized mountain tick came with me to visit the lowlands. It was a one-way trip.

Successfully removed in an operation requiring husband, flashlight, magnifying glass and tweezers—tricky as he only has two hands—I did a tour of several drug stores this morning seeking medical advice.

My home-base pharmacy where I regularly line up for hours and spend hundreds of francs, told me in no uncertain terms to go away and phone my doctor. This was not successful as the phone was not answered and there was no helpful message. Obviously, she has run away for her summer holidays and is jet-skiing and kite surfing in some tick-free part of the world.

Crawling reluctantly towards of the local emergency health clinic, I thought I’d get a second opinion. Fortunately, here in the Geneva outskirts, drug stores are ubiquitous. They are like 7-Eleven convenience stores in Sweden or Japan. There is one on every corner.

This turned out to be much more satisfactory, and the nice lady told me to do nothing, but keep a close eye on the situation and seek medical help if the bite-site got bigger and/or turned into the famous tick bull’s eye which is a sign of long-lasting complications, multitudinous painful symptoms, and eventual death-by-tick.

Buoyed up no end, I thought I’d chance a third opinion. This was better than ever. The amazingly friendly and intelligent drug store lady put on her spectacles and examined the red blotch. She gave it a poke. She called over a colleague and they had a little conference which included the idea of photographing the site to keep as comparative evidence. She asked if I had the body of the perp (for a post-mortem, one assumes). I was ready for DNA testing myself. She then sold me a nifty product – a roll-on disinfectant and anti-inflammatory especially designed for bug-victims.

Back at home, after a delightful festive tick-free lunch with the cat, my rational mind was formulating plans for an afternoon under a tree with a book when the neighbours’ unsightly bamboo poking through the lawn brought out the inner Wimbledon-Grass-Cutting-Maniac in me.

Now hot, sweaty, and happy, I’m revelling in the knowledge that a well-tended garden should be entirely tick-free.

We’ll see.

Well, on April 12, 2016 at 15:36 a 28-metre, 4-ton log smashed its way through the back wall of my mountain house (fondly known as The Shack.) Having slid down from a considerable height, it was moving at speed and went on to pierce the upper floor, the middle wall, and the front stone wall. There it came to a halt and that was that. There was an uninvited log in the house.

Being a polite log, it had just barely missed all supporting beams and its discreet exit was underneath the living room window and above the basement door. Damage was considerable, nevertheless, and the shock-value was tremendous.

To remove the log was dramatic and dangerous. More damage was inevitable, but total disaster (house collapse) was miraculously avoided.

The new open gashing wounds were again boarded up, pulverized furniture dragged out into the rain, the stones from the old walls gathered up, and unrecognizable debris shovelled into industrial-strength garbage bags.

Meetings were held to discuss insurance claims and counter-claims. The youngest man on the wood-cutting team was held responsible. Adjusters were called in, photographs were taken, and the site examined and re-examined. Estimates were submitted, convocations sent out, contracts signed, and the repair work has finally begun.

For example, there is a cheery orange cement mixer in the filthy, yet breezy, living room.

Yesterday, on June 23, 2016, by a majority of 52%, the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. England was always a renegade log ready to slip down the mountain on a rainy day.  And, sure enough, it has pierced the house that is Europe.

But, like The Shack, old Europe has not fallen. Its beams have not taken a direct hit; its foundations are holding.

Neither accident seems to have been either an act of God or a natural disaster. Any insurance company worth its salt would easily blame the cocky young woodcutter, David Cameron, who has now suddenly discovered that being prime minister can be an extremely dangerous job. He has decided to quit. Lumberjacks on the same team (Northern Ireland and Scotland) claim their complete innocence.

But now is the moment when serious attention must be paid. Removing the British log will be difficult and dangerous. If it’s successfully removed new rents and fissures will appear, more stones will fall, and more glass will be shattered. If it’s pulled out too fast or too hard or too carelessly, beams will give way, the roof will cave in, and Europe will fall down.

It will, of course, take years to clean up the mess, to shift through the rubble, to try to find things that can be saved, and to not cut oneself on the broken crockery.

So, Europe, on this shocking day after the Brexit vote, take heart. It’s a huge mess, but with hard work, honesty, and a lot of luck, perhaps you, too, will have an orange cement mixer in your miraculously-saved living room one day.