And then my parents came to visit
How looking back shouldn't always be through rose tinted glasses
Today’s post is an interesting one. Reading it back, I fear I had rose tinted this experience entirely. I suppose when I wrote my blog back in 2013 I was at the point in time where our french house experience still felt quite magical. And also the blog was to speak to those who also dreamt of owning french property. I mean no one wants to read about how awful it is having a second home in France - Channel Four are not commissioning series where an english couple buy up a french house and then spend two years screaming at each other, become bankrupt and get divorced are they?
But the real story of our french house is somewhere in between (spoiler alert - we actually DO get divorced at some point but that’s not until 2017 you might have to be on a Substack paid subscription to get to that point in story!)
And so it is that the visit I describe below when my parents came to stay was indeed at points lovely - and as my Dad now has dementia so serious he doesn’t even remember the last sentence he uttered - seeing the photograph below is joyous. He started to suffer from dementia about a year or two after this visit and I think that those days he spent with Peter tearing down vines and painting shutters were probably some of his final happiest.
But there were also periods where my parents were not so supportive of our purchase. My Mum in particular, is not a fan of anything that isn’t brand new and with golfing facilities. For her this was a total folly, an embarrassment and not something she would have wanted her daughter to do. By this stage in life I think she expected me to be going on luxury holidays to Dubai - not painting falling down houses in a non fashionable part of France. And on this she made her feelings quite plain.
And by the next time they came to visit although the house was a little more finished it still wasn’t showing them the potential they sought and they never came again. It was also when we first spotted my Dad’s dementia when, distressed over a row about our ridiculous house he wandered off into the village and when we found him he was crying and couldn’t remember how he had got there.
I sometimes show my Mum - who sadly now can’t really walk - pictures of our house now that it is finished and I think she is quite surprised at how lovely it is. She tells me she likes what we’ve done with the bedrooms and bathrooms. And we DO have a brand new crazy golf course only twenty minutes drive away.
MEET THE PARENTS - POSTED FEB 3 2013
Our first guests – sort of. My parents. Strangers to roughing it, they arrived fully warned as to just how basic our french home still was. I’m not entirely sure they believed us (my mum had optimistically packed white linen trousers!) but they were kind enough to make the right comments about potential, one day, blah, so much space, blah… In the end, despite the completion of the bathroom we decided it might be best to house them in a nearby B&B so they could retire at the end of the day to a bedroom with en suite and fluffy towels.
They stayed with a fabulous Danish woman in a lovely nearby village called Marciac. I wished I was staying there too for the breakfast buffet alone! Plus, Marciac is a picture postcard french village based around a square that looks how you imagine a French rural village to look. Think ‘Chocolat’ or those ‘Petit Filou’ ads and you get an idea. As a result, it is swarming with English people. On one of our first visits there I spied an entire english family of curly blonde haired children of varying ages, all in matching breton tops plus a dad in white linen shirt and straw trilby. So, thats Marciac. There is even a french restaurant run by an english chef called Le Monde A L’envers – an amazing place but only open about twice a week.
Marciac is also home to posh shops that sell shabby chic french home accessories and stripey tablecloths! (Bought largely by english people) Its also home to our favourite restaurant (frequented almost entirely by french people just to prove I am not one of those ex-pats who track down jars of marmite and Mother’s Pride) Its called La Peniche and was once a boat but is now a restaurant on the lake complete with resident parrot. They serve a a four course meal with wine for around €15 and the kids get duck and chips.
So, each day, during the parental visit – Mum and Dad would drive over and my dad would help Peter to get rid of the climbing vines that were blocking out all our light. Dad then took up the task of white glossing all windows – to put into context, we’ve now had the house for three years and still have about 80% of them still to do as it takes forever! But we were very grateful for his input. My mum kept an eye on the kids so I even managed to steal some time to read books and bake. And the kids played in a wheelbarrow. It was boiling hot and we could eat outside. And we could begin to see the future. a big table in the sun, laden with cheese, bread and tomatoes so big and juicy they look and taste more like nectarines. The boys in stripey tees and Pete in a linen shirt. What more could you possibly want from a holiday?