When we introduced our boys to their new holiday home
Ah all the happy memories we were going to make there - or would we?
The best thing about keeping a written history of your life is that you can read it and look back and scoff at your idealism. Part of the reason I wanted to start up the story of my french house again is that reading old blog posts from that time remind me of those early days and how much hope and optimism we had.
Now I’m not saying that I will spend the current parts of this newsletter simply telling you not to believe the hype - I am currently sitting in my gorgeous french kitchen with a roaring fire and the sun is pouring through the windows - spoiler alert - this does not become a horror story. But it isn’t quite the plain sailing we had hoped for.
The house I describe below did indeed remain a destination for Peter (my husband) and I that we largely looked forward to - more so him - but he loves broken old things so this is the dream. For our boys though I think the picture became quite different.
When they were younger and we had lots of other family friends to stay there were definitely fun times and memories made - like the time we hired a paintball company to set up in our woods for us and two visiting families and we dressed up like we were in Money Heist. But as they got older and became teenagers the lack of wifi and youthful company meant rural France was not their dream holiday. While school friends all headed off to Dubai or on fancy ski-iing holidays ours had a 14 hour car journey to a ‘broken old house’ (their words) in SW France. We offered for them to bring friends and that happened a couple of times but because we normally had a carful of essential DIY supplies and a dog - doing that was quite tricky. And so they had each other and us. And as my sons have little in common and that gulf only widened as the years went on, there is a limit to how much fun you really have playing Perudo with your parents.
I hope that one day the boys will use it by themselves, with friends or their own families. I hope we get invited if they do. I also think that as I go back over these old blog posts I, and they, might remember that we DID have some magical times here playing Scrabble in front of the fire. They will remember fondly, the crazy golf course that only opens for about an hour and only for four weeks every summer. Or the time when Peter built them a treehouse and was about to put the last screw in when the whole thing fell down. And they will be happy we didn’t take them to Disneyland.
January 2013
Come on kids its like Disneyland but with no water, or heating, or Mickey
So I won’t bore you with the year it took us to actually buy the place. There were unusual french laws, strange bank demands and a bizarre incident where Sebastian pulled the 1970s style lace curtain down in our solicitor’s office (a child with taste – obviously). But almost one year to the day after we put in our offer – we had the enormous, Scooby Doo-esque key to the house!
From memory I think Peter went twice before us on his own taking down Calor Gas heaters and some thermals to get electricity and water connected and all that sort of thing.
And then we all went for a holiday. And there was no water for loo flushing so I learnt how to do this by pouring water down the toilet with a bucket. We had a fire to keep us warm in the kitchen and nowhere to sit except for four old wooden chairs we’d taken with us.
And it was AWESOME! We discovered the joys of the local Super U – ate out – A LOT, met our neighbour Serge – more on him later, discovered the joy of the vide grenier (literally translated it means Empty Attic and is the french equivalent of a car boot sale but with the odd hidden gem!)
And we spent our evenings in front of our fire, drinking wine and planning. Planning how we would transform our new french home. Thinking of how we would redecorate each room and how to best utilise the space. Dreaming of a time when we would come here and it would be warm, comfortable and chic. And until then we were happy with it just as it was.
Happy with Scrabble and a bottle of Madiran. A steak cooked on our Smeg range we had bought on ebay and driven down with us in the back of our car. And happy to go upstairs and see our two young boys sharing a room with a fireplace big enough to climb into. Like something CS Lewis would have written about. And if you think I’m exaggerating about just how bad it was here are the pics to prove it…