We have always found that New Year's Eve, with its eleventh–hour excesses and doomed resolutions, is a dismal occasion for all the forced jollity and midnight toasts and kisses.
And so, when we heard that over in the village of Lacoste, a few miles away, the proprietor of Le Simiane was offering a six–course lunch with pink champagne to his amiable clientele, it seemed like a lunch more cheerful way to start the next twelve months.