HOME is where the heart is. Home is feet in warm slippers, a centrally-heated house, cats stretching out on a rug in front of a roaring fire, soft fluffy towels awaiting your exit from a hot shower, mains gas and electricity, mains water, mains drainage In the UK, at least. For those people you last heard from some years ago heading for a new and exciting life in foreign fields it can be somewhat different.

Almost without exception, the dream for all ex-pats is to find some kind of a wreck and to create the home of their dreams. The first rung of this particular Jacob's ladder is always to install the satellite dish and build the pool. It is not uncommon to see a satellite dish lead trailing across a muddy field and ending up in a hovel that is not much more than the cowshed that it used to be: "To hell with the fact there is no roof, no piece of flat floor stable enough to support the kids' beds, or a kitchen; at least we can watch EastEnders!" is the rallying call of these new generation pioneers breaking ground on French soil.

Something happens to the middle classes when they break free of their restrictive roots. Liberation walks hand in hand with regression. The very people who used to complain to Anne Robinson about the repeats on TV, and write their "angry from Manchester" complaints about the frequency of bin collections, are to be found in the French countryside living without running water, sending their waste to open cesspits, collecting and stealing wood to keep warm, using chemical toilets, and generally living in conditions not seen in the UK since the Boer war.

From my lofty position as a builder, and healer of all ills of a construction nature, I have seen nearly every uncomfortable lifestyle choice made by the formerly well-heeled, and I have managed to establish that there are several distinctive groups.

There is the non-caveman. They will generally try to fix everything by use of telephone, internet and money, the idea being that if you call the right people, make organising noises and throw lots of money at them you will get a home built. That may work elsewhere, but the general result for these people in France is a whole bunch of deposits paid, an empty bank account, no artisans on site and a family living in stone-age conditions.

The second class is the true caveman. This is the character that has to move every shovelful of soil himself. He will clean every roof tile with a toothbrush before carefully replacing it himself. He is the type that will personally know every grain of sand that went into the home of his dreams. Unfortunately, dreams are as close as this type ever gets to seeing their project completed. They will tend to spend most of their lives living in Monty Pythonesque squalor before health or budget forecloses on their dreams.

The third class, and the canniest, is the plastic caveman. This is the type with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of savvy. He calls up Trev, gets him to do all of the heavy stuff, knocking out window openings, building walls, throwing around beams and sheets of plasterboard and then sends him home when the time comes to tack on the skirting boards, slap the emulsion around and site the vase of flowers. Surprisingly, this works well for Trev. He can do what he does best but not get involved in all of that fiddly stuff. The result for the client is a finished warm home that he can tell all of his friends that he built himself, except for a tiny little bit of help from that builder chap.

Home is perhaps where the head works.