I AM not absolutely sure, not completely. Say about 80 per cent, and that's good enough. There is something definitely dodgy about the customs control point between England and France.

I am not saying that they are doing anything illegal, just something a bit strange, and the reason lies within three kittens curled up in a basket.

Before I left the UK to pursue a new life in French fields, I liked to think that I was a true individual, I had my own personality and people either loved or hated me for it. A good few were indifferent, but we won't talk about them. Life was not always great, not always bad, but more often than not, a bit of fun. And it was always my own.

The crisis came when I was stood in front of my wood burning stove, gazing at the logs hewn from our own land burning away, when I noticed in the old newspaper basket all three kittens curled up together in a big kitten ball. They could not have looked more clichéd if they had been rolling around balls of wool while being cuddled by George Clooney.

And then it struck me. Those uniformed customs guards must have stolen my whole life from me, and replaced it with a cliché. I drive a white van to the building site, where Sue's penchant for buying me hipster jeans can reveal a tantalising glimpse of builder's bum. I refuse to work for anybody who won't make me a cup of tea. I look in my cupboards and I see stockpiles of Heinz baked beans, HP sauce and enough tea bags to survive the next siege of Stalingrad. My neighbours laugh at me as the mad Englishman who bought that ruin without a roof that nobody else in the world, and certainly no self-respecting Frenchman, would have bought.

What is worse is that I am not just limited to imported clichés. When customers complain about the mess or are not happy about delays, I don't worry about their needs and worries, I simply shrug my shoulders. I complain about taxes. I complain about the government. In fact, I complain, just like everybody else. If it wasn't for that English accent I could be a clichéd Frenchman.

But surely these clichés can't all be negative. I have done the struggling writer bit, tapping away at the keyboard into the small hours, and accumulated a pile of rejection letters about the size of the Eiffel tower. Enough of that, I am ready for the best-selling author bit, the champagne receptions, the yacht in Antibes. Failing that, the successful builder, with a huge mansion, gold medallions, a guitar-shaped swimming pool, and a wife dressed head to toe in leopard skin Yeah, okay, I seem to have proved my point, a cliché does seem to be obliged to be negative - but when you look at that cute little pile of kittens in the wicker basket, I'm not sure that it is all bad.