The French holiday home of Martin Bril

Martin Bril is known as the inventor of skirt day. But he also loved his second home in France.

The stories in his collection Plat Du Jour, Messages from France are very recognizable to any owner of a second home. Who does not know the gnawing feeling, if you have not been in the holiday home for too long? You want to get in the car right away to be there. Leak away. Nice and home.

Glasses sometimes do not come for months at a time, but sometimes he suddenly misses it. Then he'd want to be there, on the land, among the hills. Sawing wood. Firing a fire. As Glasses describes it: ‘All I have to do is close my eyes, or I can see the plume of smoke circling up from the chimney.’

Sexy weather woman

His stories about France are unsurpassed. With melancholy he writes about the French village café, with its bar of formica and scraps and the great clock of Cinzano that always stands still; the 86-year-old neighbor, who has lived all his life on the same hill; or the weekly visit to the hypermarché, always a nice getaway.

Bril writes with dedication about the farmer who gets every homeowner at his house; Catherine Laborde, the hoarse, sexy weatherwoman of French television; or the crackling of a chainsaw, the music of the French countryside. But Paris, a city he knows like the back of his hand, Corsica and the Côte d’Azur also feature extensively in this book.