This is a selfie  of David Pearce.

It was taken long before selfies

were invented and so long

ago that it bears no

resemblance to anyone

living or dead

but it is so flattering that I

cannot bear to replace it.

Having lived most of my working life in south Devon I retired in the year 2000 and spent the next six years or so travelling by motorcycle and living in a tent mainly in France and Italy and especially in Sicily.

When Wayne and Lorraine, a pair of Kiwis who I caught up with in Sicily, told me that winter in a tent in Europe is too rugged for the elderly  I bought a converted ex-Devon County Library van. The New Zealanders were, and hopefully still are, phenomenal travellers. Their BMW K100 motorcycles (they had one each) must have covered more miles than all the others of that model added together.

I perched a smaller motorbike on a platform behind the library van and continued my explorations until old age and the cost of insurance ran me off the road.

I now live in the south of France. If I leave it at that you can imagine the life I lead; the sun soaked private beach, my yacht bobbing, topless...not quite. The reality is the southern Ardeche, boar and truffle hunting country, deep gorges, rivers choked with canoeists during the short season and paintings to rival those of caves anywhere in the world.

My back yard