SECOND TRIP

We planned to take items over bit by bit and on the first trip we stayed in a local motel and took Helen with us. We hoped to take Christelle (oldest daughter) when the house was finished, as we did not think she would have coped with all the spiders, who had been in situ so long they now regarded the house as their own.  As it was, Helen would not use the toilet until I had checked, and double-checked, that all the spiders had gone. 

We only cleaned up the rooms on this trip, washing floors and dusting ceilings.  I noticed little drips of what appeared to be varnish on the floors of the kitchen, dining room and downstairs toilet.  I started to clean it up then realized that some of the drips had pointed ends – rats?  There was no tell-tale rat smell so I scraped a sample into a container to check to find out what it was. I was currently working with an Environmental Health Officer, Peter, a very clever man, and thought he would know.  It turned out to be a type of field mouse, a moulet, not harmful, just in need of a bit of warmth from time to time.

BOXES DELIVERED – JUST!

On our third trip we took 2 camp beds and also arranged to have our collections of wireless and perfume delivered to the village.

On the second trip after buying the house we had noticed that work was starting on the pipe-laying for the drainage in the village, to take rainwater to the lake.  The lake was just down the road which ran by the side of our house.  We hoped the pipe-laying would be complete by the time our container lorry arrived.  It was not to be.

When we first bought the house, there were no pavements and no street lighting in our village.  It was a nice surprise to see that these were being installed.

There was about a 10 mile detour to get to the village.  We had to go in a huge circle round several other villages to get there.  On arriving, we saw that the road had been dug up all over the place and pipes were still being laid.  The road and pavements were thick with mud, as it had been raining for some time.

I explained to the workmen that we would have a huge lorry arriving the next day and they said they would stop work for it.  They did – only after they had dug a huge trench across the road!  The workmen stood waving and smiling.  Andy had to drive back along the detour and guide the lorry up another route.  It was so silly, we could see and talk to the removal men but they just could not get to the house without the detour.  I think it may have been better if I had explained that the lorry would be coming ‘tomorrow’ and not ‘today’ which I had apparently told them in my best French!  They had actually stopped work for us on the previous day.

The two lads who delivered the boxes of radios and Avon were really helpful.  They carried all the boxes up to the bedrooms where they had to go.  It was amazing just how much they could lift.  We had packed each drawer carefully so that they could be lifted separately and the lads just picked up entire chests full of drawers in one go.

As we were only really in France to see in the delivery in of the boxes, this was a short visit and the next one was anticipated eagerly.

SENT TO PUBLISHER UP TO HERE

FIRST FLOOD

The next trip was done using a ‘visitor’ discount that my boss had given us.  He was in the ferry’s ‘Home Owner’ club and got a few discount tickets for visitors.  This was in late Feb/early March and the weather was really bad.  We decided to carry on regardless as we had logs for the wood-burning stove and a kettle to make coffee, so we could be reasonably comfortable.

Andy turned on the water and electricity and called for me to make some coffee whilst he gathered some logs from the barn.  I put the kettle on and heard a peculiar noise – a bit like a waterfall!  One of the pipes in the old bathroom had come apart, probably in the cold weather, and the water was pouring out of the break.  It ran through the ceilings into the rooms below and rushed through the light fittings, along the edges of the walls and all over the floor.  Quite quickly it spread into two of the other rooms and even though Andy turned the water off as soon as I alerted him, the water continued cascading for some time. 

When the waterfall stopped, we set about clearing up.  We gathered at least four buckets full of water and put down lots of newspapers and cardboard boxes to soak up the remainder.  The only carpet we had was absolutely dripping wet.

We tried our best to mop the water from the carpet without much success, then I had an idea.  I scraped across the carpet with a long piece of wood and Andy used a sponge to soak up as much water as possible as it whooshed out of the edge of the carpet.  We did this several times and got another bucket or two out of the carpet.

Andy put the carpet in the barn to dry until we could return.  We were probably the only home in France to have a carpet in the barn!

SECOND FLOOD

For the trip in April 2003 (Easter) we used the free ticket I had won on the Fun Run.  This was the last time we used this particular ferry company and eventually it stopped running on that particular route altogether.  There was no entertainment on the ship except for fruit machines and a gaming table for six people to play pontoon.  There also appeared to be only one flight of stairs to the car decks, although the ship was twice the size of the other company’s ferry.

On our arrival at the house we saw that the mice had returned.  They had wandered around the kitchen area, up onto the worktop and into the sink.  Luckily all our stock of food had been put away before we left the previous time.

Andy turned on the hot water system as usual, only to discover there was a tank in the eaves of the second floor which, although water went in, there was nowhere for it to go once the tank was full.  The water cascaded down to the first floor – again!  We mopped up and moved boxes of Avon and radios which we had stored in the third and fourth bedrooms.

We started to strip the wallpaper in the lounge ready to re-paper.  Neither of us could quite reach the top of the old paper and thus obviously couldn’t re-paper either.  We had to buy a step-ladder for the next visit. 

Andy removed the front door and scraped and repainted it.  It was fun re-hanging it.  There were three drop-in hinges.  The door was slightly bowed with age, so we could only connect two of the three each time.  It took ages to get all three aligned.  We put a brush-type draught excluder at the bottom to stop any ingress of animal life, but still had a couple of spaces around the sides of the bottom of the door so we filled these temporarily with tissue and ant spray.

Whilst removing the wallpaper we discovered that the paper around the archway through to the lounge had been covering polystyrene sheeting so we left it as it was, to paper over.  Unfortunately, the original paper was quite dark brown and the new paper was cream.  We were very lucky though, the colour did not show through.

Andy fixed several of the lights in the house.  French electrics leave a lot to be desired.  There were three wires hanging from the ceilings connected to light bulbs.  Andy fitted new ceiling roses and hung the lights properly.

The downstairs toilet had a small leak from the flush handle on to the floor and water continually ran into the bowl as the ball-cock was in need of repair.  We put a bucket under the leak and eventually discovered that each of the toilets could be turned off with tiny taps on the cisterns. 

Andy then connected the TV and video/CD player so we had something to do during the evenings.  Still without street lighting, we did not venture far from the house at night and as we were usually exhausted by the end of the day, we just sat and relaxed until it was time to sleep.

FIRST NIGHT

Just before falling to sleep that night, in our camp beds in the lounge, we heard a terrible noise in front of the house – I thought later it may have been a wild pig or something, charging along the road – it turned out to be a slightly demented donkey in a field along the road, just letting everyone know it was there.

The door of the church next door had been open when we first arrived so we thought it was sure to be open on Easter Sunday.  No sign of it being opened for a Service however.  The next time we saw the door open we popped in for a look round.  The church is small but very lovely inside.  There is quite a bit of damp and the doors are actually left open most days just to let the air circulate.  The local priest is shared by several villages and comes to our village about every four months.  Most Sunday services are held in the nearby ‘head’ village.

The bells in the church tower, which we were told struck twice a day, actually strike every half-hour, but they are not obtrusive and quite nice as we always know what the hour is.  When weddings or funerals are held in the church, the bells are played for quite a while and there is always a ‘practice’ a few days before. 

When we last visited, we had left quite a large spider in the lounge, as he was just out of reach.  ‘He’ turned out to be a ‘she’ and her offspring, although still small, were wandering about everywhere.  We found the daddy in the kitchen and the mummy was hiding under the front window curtains in a hole in the corner of the bay window.  This hole is now no more!

The carpet had dried out since our last visit, and the first flood, and was put back into the lounge.  The pool table and photocopier were still in situ – I had thought by then the previous owners had realised we had found the quirky plumbing and were not too keen to see us again.  I didn’t think they would ever return for their odds and ends.  

The house needed a lot of cleaning and although we could cope with just cold water, we could not make the hot water run, no matter what we tried.  The tap was a swivel type – when pointing to the right, (cold) water came out, when pointing to the left (hot) the water stopped completely.  The heating system was in the side annexe, the pipe work ran throughout the house and we traced it as best we could.  As soon as we tried to run the hot water, the flow stopped dead!  No water at all and we wondered if it was on a different circuit?

The village now had street lights and we had pink pavements!  The curb around our back gate had been replaced with a drop-curb to facilitate entry into the garden, which was nice.   The day we arrived with our very heavy concrete garden statues, there was an 18” gap between the road and our garden, waiting for the curb-stones.  We had to navigate the hole carrying the very heavy garden ornaments.  Now the pavement is in place, the villagers are copying the Brits, and parking on it!

My hands had swelled up quite a bit after removing the wallpaper in the dining room and I think it may have been a reaction to the old paste.  It could also have been a reaction to mouse pee!  The mice may possibly have peed on the towel I had left in the kitchen to dry.  I had not brought any hand-cream with us, but I found an Avon sample of face cream and plastered that on the swelling.  Seemed to work quite well, at least temporarily.

Whilst wandering around the bedrooms I decided to remove all the drawing pins and staples in the walls of the rooms which had belonged to the children, only to find that they were holding up the wallpaper!

There was a patch of damp on the inside of the front walls of the house, probably condensation.  We hoped that once we moved in permanently, a constant air-flow would put an end to it.

FAIRY GODMOTHER!

A few weeks after moving into the flat we were finally contacted by the famous Fairy Godmother who said she would arrange for us to see some properties if we let her know when we could get over to France again.  We immediately made a ferry booking and hired a tiny Gite (little self-contained dwelling with all the basics for self-catering) in St Sever, Calvados, for 5 days. Fairy Godmother said she would meet us there.

Over we went again, this time with a different ferry company and the difference was amazing.  We found the French crew very happy, very nicely trained and very helpful.  There were games to keep customers occupied during the trip and we decided then that once we were ‘property owners’ we would join this ferry’s ‘Home Owners’ club’ and just travel with them.  We currently use a different, no frills, ferry service which runs from Le Havre, and find them good.

We arrived at the Gite and were met by the lady owner – who apparently spoke no English whatever (we found out later that she did know some English but wasn’t going to use it until we spoke French, which is common practice in France!).  We managed to get ourselves understood and were given the keys to the gite, a really tiny house in the grounds of a huge mansion, with one main room with kitchen and bathroom off, and a bedroom on a ‘shelf’ up a small staircase.  As we were being shown around the house and gardens Andy saw an apple tree and declared in his best French “Ah, pomme de terre!” 

“No”, said the lady, “that is not a potato tree!”  End of lesson two!

The septic tank at the gite was a bit ‘perfumed’, to say the least, and the flies were having a field day.  We had taken fly spray with us and sprayed all around the gite.  The flies died.  Unfortunately, the spray also stunned the huge spiders, which had been hiding in the bedroom area, and they fell to the floor, staggered a bit and started running around.  Thank goodness for heavy boots!  Fly spray does not kill spiders, just puts them to sleep for a while.  Some of the spiders in France are a bit on the large size, we tend to call them ‘horses’ but after a while we got used to them and just moved them out of our way.  The smaller ones seem to be the most aggressive.

We settled into the gite and made a couple of quick trips to nearby villages and towns to look in windows of Immobilier and buy groceries.  Most of the week came and went and we were worried about contacting Fairy Godmother.  I had tried to call her on my mobile phone and got ‘call barred’ on the screen.  I eventually telephoned the flat in the UK and got our youngest daughter, Helen, to phone Fairy Godmother from there and then message me back.  No joy.  On the Wednesday we were given a hastily written message from the owner of the gite, which said Fairy Godmother would be with us on Friday – one day before we left to go back to the UK!  Almost a whole week wasted – we had mostly stayed in the Gite, not daring to stray far in case she came.

Fairy Godmother and her partner Jim arrived early in the morning on the Friday and we set off in our car, following theirs, as they had a large dog with them which completely filled the back seats.  Again we had been told we would be driven around to view the properties.  Being far more familiar with the area than we were, they kept disappearing from our view but we eventually stopped outside house number one.  We knew this belonged to an Englishman who wanted to move to another location.  What a mess!  Paper peeling off with damp, piles and piles of clutter – real rubbish, old paper, old tatty books and junk everywhere and the smell was dreadful.  We walked through the garden and saw that there was another piece of land further away which was part of the property.  Even to the untrained eye we could see this was so waterlogged it sunk in the middle.  Apparently a local farmer had grazed his cattle there for a while but I think even that idea was given up – I imagined the animals kept sinking!

There was a small ditch running through the garden with a little ornate bridge over it and we finally realised that a stream actually ran under the house, through the foundations!  No wonder everything was damp.  The outhouse, a few yards from the main house, held a bath and toilet, the only one on the property – none inside the house.  We imagined running to the loo in the middle of winter.  No thank you. What else can we view?

Andy and Jim got on really well and I liked Fairy Godmother.  We asked if there was anything we could bring over for them on our next visit – all Jim wanted was some tins of corned beef.  We took several tins over on a later trip but never saw Jim again.

The next house we were led to was in the Village Chardonnets in the Department of Orne.  The village had no shops, no grocer, no baker, no butcher, no doctor etc, not even a pub.  The house we were to see was next door to the village church and in a very quiet area.

The house was unlocked when we arrived so, after debating for a while, we all went inside.  The previous owners had bought a small farm and had already moved out.  We entered through the back door.  The door stuck as we opened it and the two rear porches (it had originally been a shop and small house and had two back doors, each with a porch) were full of clutter.  Inside the house, the first room we saw was a kitchen that had definitely not been put in by professionals.  Most of the unit doors and drawer fronts had fallen off.  A make-shift pantry was in the corner, made of chipboard with a curtain on a piece of string over the front of it.  The eye-level oven was full of grease and muck and the hob was a total disaster area.  We walked on into the house just as the owners, a young couple with three children, arrived.  They said they did not think there were any keys to the house, as it had never been locked.  This is something which would never happen in the UK.

We walked past the kitchen into the breakfast/dining room, which had a beautiful room divider made of oak with a shelf above it.  A space in the divider led to a large lounge.  There was an archway (actually, a very large jagged hole about eight foot square) into a smaller lounge and a separate door to what had been the original kitchen of the house part of the property.  A large mural of a forest scene was on the wall and, although torn, it looked very nice and very French.  There were odd nails stuck in the mural and one was on the branch of a tree in the picture.  For several future visits we would hang our coats on the nail and it looked like they were hanging from the trees.   The door panels of the door to the old kitchen contained sheets of mirror instead of panels – this was to enable light to reflect into both rooms.

We went up the stairs to see four bedrooms and an old, really tiny, bathroom – partly dismantled.   In the old bathroom was another door which led to a staircase to the rooms in the loft.  These were freshly decorated (badly – they had been papered over fresh plaster and the wallpaper was already coming off).  We were told the roof had been blown off in the storms a few years before and the whole roof and the upper rooms had been rebuilt with the insurance money.

We later discovered that the roof had been destroyed by a fire, possibly by the children playing with candles in the attic, during a ‘camping’ game.  Also, when the roof had the new guttering attached, they had run it the wrong way, but that’s another story.

Back down from the roof and a further door on the first floor opened onto the most gorgeous bathroom ever, a huge corner bath, large corner shower, bidet and ‘his and hers’ basins.  There was also a large, walk-in linen cupboard.  The bathroom had only just been completed when the roof went.  Floor to ceiling tiles around the bathroom were in a Grecian style with sections of tiles showing pictures of Grecian scenes.  We were hooked.  This was the house for us. The bathroom swung it!

We saw about four more houses with Fairy Godmother and Jim but didn’t really take much in as I think we had already decided.  I remember one property looking like it came straight from Steven King’s ‘Children of the Corn’ and it scared the pants off me.  All the fields surrounding the property were cornfields and it was then I realized I had been watching too many horror films.

Once we had decided that the Village Chardonnets house was for us, we realised we had got the price slightly wrong, confusing Euros with francs (the currency had only recently changed) and would not be able to buy the place for cash.  Fairy Godmother met with the sellers and negotiated a slightly lower price and we took out a small loan on our flat in Portsmouth.    

We visited the property again on our own the next day before getting the ferry back to Portsmouth and agreed we were doing the right thing.  Being on our own we examined the house and grounds more carefully.  In the large barn, which used to be a forge of some sort, there was an old pool (billiards) table, but the sellers had told us they would be taking it with them – it took them a year to collect it, as you will see later.  The garage contained the biggest photocopying machine I have ever seen, it half filled the garage but was not really any good to us, so we asked them to remove that also when they came for the pool table. 

Billiards in French has the same spelling as English but when pronounced sounds like ‘beer’ and it took us two years to finally realise what it meant.  We saw a sign in a café advertising the fact that they had billiards upstairs and by then we had discovered that double ‘l’ in most words is not pronounced at all, we already knew that French words contained so many letters that the ends of words were often dropped as well (like ‘filles’ (girls) – spoken as ‘fee’ – so why all the extra letters?)

We had seen in the garden that we had a huge grape-vine and several fruit trees.  We later found raspberries, strawberries, apples, pears, rhubarb, cherries and lots of other fruit.  As the seasons changed we also discovered many plants and bulbs which sprouted into life.

The annex on the side of the house had an earth floor and stone walls and had been previously used for storing potatoes, but the upstairs room was part of the roof renovation and was ready for use – except they had inserted a Velox window and forgotten the lead flashings, so the rain had poured in and destroyed most of the plasterboard ceiling.  An easy job to put right in time.

We decided that these two rooms would be our museums, Andy would be upstairs with his radios and I would be downstairs with the perfume bottles.  The lower room also contained the fuel tank for the central heating oil and the smell was like an old garage.  The stairs to the upper room were way past their sell-by-date and would also have to be replaced.

In the far corner of the lower room we spotted a door at the bottom of a flight of three steps and when we looked, we discovered we had a wine cellar!  Sadly the wine had all gone, but there were jars of preserved fruit, which had probably been there since around 1940.  The shelves were also full of rot and worm so these were one of the first things we would have to remove.  The cellar was also damp, and currently still is, probably because of an underground water supply.  We had the village pump outside the house when we bought it, but this was later removed and replaced by a dummy well.  The damp mould spoors had risen into the lounge above, and although we have cleaned up the lounge, we still have to sort out the cellar.

Once home again we started to make plans.  We booked an appointment with the Notaire (Solicitor) in a nearby town and arranged to meet Fairy Godmother and the Notaire to complete all the formalities. 

Fairy Godmother said we should buy the house as a couple, meaning that if one of us died the other would be able to live in the house but half of it would belong to our children.  We argued that we wanted to buy as two separate people so that if one died the other had full ownership.  As it turned out the Notaire had already thought of this and had prepared all his paperwork for both eventualities. 

In November 2002, we finally became the owners of the house in the village centre of Village Chardonnets.  Strangely, our Fairy Godmother disappeared almost as soon as the paperwork was done and I was a little worried when a lady outside the office called to Fairy Godmother who promptly disappeared back inside again leaving the lady outside.  We had seen on TV agents who were not what they seemed and were worried that we may have been conned – after all, we did not know that much French.

NEIGHBOURS

We were introduced to the young couple who were to rent the flat next door. We presumed they were a young married couple – how wrong can you be? 

Within days, the vulgar (very vulgar) rap music was blaring out, despite polite requests to turn it down a bit.  The chap starting beating up the young lady and she responded by shouting and screaming out of the window – it got so bad at one point that the regulars from the pub opposite all turned out with their drinks to watch and listen.  Police were called by a passer-by and peace was restored for a while. 

Over the months, for no apparent reason, they began to taunt us badly, playing really loud music at all hours of the day and night, kicking the walls to our apartment, filling their apartment with many young men who were obviously the worse for wear on drinks and drugs.  This culminated with a warning from the local council and finally the appearance of police, to find a drugged up young man, who was visiting the neighbours, who had banged his head so hard on the wall that he left blood all over the walkway. 

The flats had a staircase at each end of the row and obviously the police chose the staircase at the opposite end to which the young man ran, but another passer-by put them on the right track.  He was promptly seated in a patrol car and his mother was sent for.  She called up to our balcony and thanked me for calling the police – it wasn’t me, but I’m thankful to whoever it was.

One morning I went to put my washing on the line I had bought to share with the previous neighbours, one of those which pulls out and clips on another wall.  I pulled the line across to the neighbouring apartment only to discover that the hooks had been hammered right into the wall, making it impossible to use.  What lovely people.  The line had previously been twisted and knotted several times and I had grown used to untangling it before I could put out my washing to dry but I thought this final action was really mean.

CHRISTMAS

Our last Christmas in the flat was horrendous.  Very early on Christmas morning I woke to see bright lights flashing in the car park at the rear of the apartments.  I looked out to see a car ablaze, right next to a car belonging to elderly people who lived in the flats.  I telephoned the fire brigade and they eventually put out the flames, but both cars were totally destroyed.  The police told us that two cars had been stolen that night, one had been dumped in our car park, and set alight, the other was still missing. 

Still very early in the morning, I decided to have a cigarette on the front balcony before trying to get back to sleep.  I telephoned the fire brigade again – on redial – telling them I had found the other car – it was also ablaze, halfway up the hill behind the pub.

Over the Christmas holiday, in the parade of shops that ran under the apartments, the chip shop had the door kicked in, the Betting Office was broken into, the Co-operative store had the window broken and so it went on.  For about a year, loads of groups of young people had started to congregate around the local Co-op store and ask people to buy drinks and cigarettes for them.  Their language was dreadful, especially the girls, and it was getting impossible to sit out on the balcony for fear something might be thrown.  Chips were strewn everywhere and we eventually had rats around the flats.  The maintenance charges rose but nothing got done.  We had to get out.

Luckily, on New Year’s Eve, the time I was really dreading, someone again smashed a window in one of the shops and the police arrived in force at around 9pm and stayed for most of the night, parking outside the shops.  Peace at last. 

We decided to try once again to get on with our neighbours and I told them that I would be working at 5am the next day and, although we had no problems if they were having a party, could they please ask their friends to leave quietly in the early hours.  Their guests left, between 2am and 4am, slamming the neighbours’ door, banging and kicking our door, swearing loudly, throwing cans and things all over the place and finally gave us a recital on a set of saucepans! 

I was glad to get to work!  I used to have a table at various flea-markets and New Year’s Day was usually busy as people had got ‘cabin fever’ from being indoors over the holidays.  That day proved no exception, even though I was yawning all day.  I had an ‘Everything Must Go – Emigrating’ sale and did quite well.  The rest of our ‘collectables’ we eventually brought to France.

Burning our Bridges

BURNING OUR BRIDGES?

Back home in the UK I looked up various properties on the Internet and found several possible suitable houses.  The broken English descriptions of some of the properties were a joy to read, including one which stated that the house had a large room dedicated to just a toilet, with a photograph to prove it.  Actually the room was a going to be a bathroom but was never completed – we saw it on another trip.

We had, by now, both decided we would like to live in France and we put our large semi-detached house on the market.  After several viewings by people we came to refer to as ‘day-trippers’ we finally shook hands with a family who really wanted to buy the house. 

We decided before we left the house that we would have a last BBQ as we would be moving to a small apartment until we could buy a property in France.  After the BBQ, I had a bath and Andy had a nap in front of the TV.  When I came down from the bathroom, I thought the neighbours were also having a BBQ as I thought I could smell cooking.  I wondered what they were cooking, as it smelled awful, then realised it was not a BBQ, but a fire! 

Andy had tipped the ashes from the fire onto a bare patch of soil in the garden, as he always did, and the ground had caught light and the flames had run to a small container in which we kept petrol for the lawn-mower!  The fire engines came roaring up the road to extinguish the fire in the garden, which, by then, had taken hold of the fence and the shed – we had a couple of large sheds and the next one along held all Andy’s collection of radios and my perfumes, packed, ready for the removal men.  Had the fire spread to my perfumes and after-shaves, there could have been massive damage as it is all very flammable, even though the majority of my bottles were empty.  As it was, we had to replace the wall of the shed, a couple of fence panels and a garden lamp-post.  Also my garden tools were welded together in one big lump.  Luckily, we were insured.

With the proceeds from the sale of the house, we bought a small, but practical, flat, which was situated above a parade of shops, and banked the balance ready to buy in France.  We had the removal men arrive for the boxes for long-term storage – our collections of radios and bottles and a few other items we would not need for a while.  There were over sixty large boxes to go into storage and we filled up two and a half huge containers.  As the removals company had quoted for two containers, they only charged us for two. 

It was slightly worrying to see that a large carton of radios, clearly marked ‘this way up’ was being used as a door-stop – upside down!  However, they arranged to get everything away and we set about packing for moving to the flat.

THE FLAT

The same removal men returned a few weeks later and I told them specifically not to touch my handbag in the corner of the room – this contained my blood pressure tablets, a black pearl and white gold necklace, a full Gucci purse (our float money for bingo) and various other bits and pieces I had to take to work on that day and which I definitely did not want put onto the removals van.  When I looked for my handbag, it had gone and with a full load on the van I had the feeling it would be some time before I saw it again.  Luckily, I managed to get an emergency prescription for my tablets.

We went to the Estate Agent to collect the keys to the flat and they would not let us have them.  We called the Solicitor and he said the deposit had not yet been received from our bank.  We all sat in the pub opposite the apartment, along with the removal men.  I kept calling the Solicitor who told us to stay put.  The removal men eventually said if there was any further delay they would need extra help and we would have to pay for it.

Andy walked across to check the flat, as the previous owner was supposed to have removed the old cooker, fridge and two huge boxes of rubbish.  He wondered if the man was actually inside the flat.  The door was wide open, as were the windows, and the door keys were on the kitchen top.  There was no sign of life, so we moved in.  The cooker had been removed – by cutting through the cable and leaving it on the floor (with the wires still live).  The fridge had gone, but not the two huge boxes of rubbish. 

I noticed a really bad smell – it was so bad that I was physically sick and flew to the bathroom only to discover that the toilet was filled with bright green mould.  The dreadful smell was coming from Helen’s room (youngest daughter), where food, including butter, cheese and other obnoxious things had been slowly melting through the boxes.  Under the box also dwelt the remains of a tin of paint – unfortunately, no longer contained by the tin.

Andy and Helen donned face-masks and rolled up the carpet, complete with boxes of rubbish and took it to the local dump, whilst I tackled the toilet.  That afternoon we went to the carpet store and bought a new carpet.  Whilst they were at the dump I cleaned up, having already scrubbed the toilet, and started on the bath – only to give up almost immediately, as I would not put my feet inside it, let alone my body!  A new bath was promptly ordered.  I sprayed everything in the apartment and eventually got rid of the stench. 

Our bedroom, when we viewed the flat, had a broken extractor fan in the window, which had since been removed and replaced by a sheet of chipboard.  One of the smaller panes of glass had also been broken.  Andy replaced the glass whilst I carried on scrubbing.  I cleared up all the broken glass in our bedroom and then noticed that where the previous owner had removed the curtains from the main room, he had simply ripped them down, breaking all the curtain rails and these and curtain clips were all over the place, along with screws and nails and more bits of glass.

The delivery-men had given up putting boxes in their respective rooms half-way through and decided that the boxes could go anywhere, regardless of where they were marked.  When they lifted a large box of tinned food onto the work-surface in the kitchen, the entire top crashed to the floor.  Luckily they chose to put just the tins there and not the microwave oven.  The kitchen worktop had been held up with four nails!  I started to put away some of the tinned goods and found two of the kitchen units crammed full of empty drinks bottles.  Luckily the pub across the road had a bottle bank.

The mail was piled high for five separate addressees.  I made piles for each of these and took it all to the Post Office.  We opened the mail marked ‘Occupier’ and found red bills for water etc for well over £200.   Over the ensuing 2 years in the flat, we received dozens of letters asking for outstanding balances to be paid, and almost every evening we were called by debt collectors and, strangely enough, people offering loans to the previous occupier, who, we discovered, had possibly moved abroad.  We had decided to keep the existing telephone number to save any extra expense.

We switched the water heater tank on, and went across to the pub for a drink.  When we returned to the flat it was full of steam and condensation was pouring down the windows and walls and there were puddles on the windowsills and floors.  There was no timer or cut-off switch on the tank and it had just got hotter and hotter until it boiled over. 

Before we went to the pub, we had locked the door and pushed it to make sure it was locked.  It promptly opened again.  Andy had to fit a new lock before we could go anywhere.

We eventually managed to undo all the boxes and there was still no sign of my handbag.  It turned up months later.  The bedroom was piled high with clothes and linen and our new wardrobe came after about two weeks to house it all.  My PC and desk were up and running as I was still running my collectors’ club.  Andy’s workbench was also ready to use.  We had decided to use a small corner of the lounge and set our workplaces back to back as we only had the one swivel chair and could share it.

The boxes of alcohol we had packed were amazing – every time we had had a BBQ, people brought bottles of various drinks, usually drank my home-made punch, and the ‘Bring your own Bottles’ were rarely opened.  We had also won quite a lot of bottles in games at our local club’s Bingo night.   It seemed that every time I brought another box to unpack it was alcohol.

After a lot of hard work, cleaning, unpacking and storing, we finally had a place to sit and relax.

When we first got settled in the flat – merely a place to sit, eat, and sleep, whilst waiting to move to France, it appeared to be very nice.  It was a bit like a holiday hotel room at the front with a small balcony where we could sit and watch the world go by.  Everyone seemed to know us and they all stopped to speak to us.  Previous to moving into the semi-detached house we had just sold, we had lived in that particular area for about twenty years.  I thought we could be happy there.  Then – the new neighbours moved in.

The second house we wanted to see was a much larger building, but the agent just drove by.  It seemed that if you did not have the money ready to buy, you were a waste of time.  No good explaining we had travelled for over 10 hours and covered many miles for a half view of one house.

Having said our farewells to the agent and mentally scratching him from our ‘helper’ list, we drove to our second appointment, arriving just before lunch-time and a couple of hours ahead of schedule.  Never mind, we thought, these agents are British and should be easier to deal with, at least we would be able to understand them.  We also found out when we finally met her that the lady’s first name was one we recognized – could she actually be the Fairy Godmother we were looking for?  This place wasn’t a shop, but appeared to be a private house in the throes of being completed. We knocked on the door – no answer.  We could see people inside and knocked again.  No answer.  After knocking a third time a woman came to the door and told us that even though we had driven over 300 miles, we were too early and should come back at the right time.  We decided to call in at the café across the road, have lunch, and call back later. 

We opened the door of the little bar/café and went inside.  People were eating and drinking at the bar and looked at us a bit puzzled. 

“What do you want?” 

“We would like some food please.”

“We’re shut!” 

“But it’s lunch time.” 

“Yes, that’s why we’re shut!” 

Funny customs in this village we thought.  This was to be the same around most of the villages we have since visited.  Almost everything shuts at 12 noon for two hours, even some of the cafés.  Lunch is a leisurely pastime and regardless of whether you are in a shop, café, bank or whatever, at 12 noon, they shut.  Lights go off and doors are locked.  We were given proof of this when, having queued for about half an hour to see the cashier at the bank, we got to the desk and the assistant turned off the lights and said “Lunch!”  Luckily there was a bar next door to the bank which actually remained open for the whole day.

We finally went back to the agents for our appointment at the correct time.  We asked if she was the Fairy Godmother we were looking for and were told definitely not – they knew the reputation of this ‘other Fairy Godmother’ and did not want to be confused with her.  Judging from the attitude of the ‘wrong’ Fairy Godmother, the right one had to be far better.  Manners maketh man, but obviously not woman! 

The agent and her husband told us they only had one house for us to look at and we were driven to a house which they said was  ‘just round the corner.’  After about 25 minutes, we arrived!

We were told we would not be able to get into the cellar of the house as no-one could find the key.  As we got out of the car I noticed that the ground was very spongy although we had not had any rain for quite some time. 

The house was quite nice.  Only a small front garden, in a triangular shape with a small fountain.  There was a lovely dove-cote at the front of the house and a set of stone steps to the front door.  Inside the house we were met by a large wooden staircase which looked pretty impressive.  Each of the rooms had a lovely plaster ceiling, complete with light rose and moulded pictures around the coving of the ceilings. 

We started up the huge staircase.  We noticed that the stairs cut half way through the windows at the side of the house and realized later that the original stairs had long gone and those we had climbed were obviously bought from another house and put in to ‘almost’ fit.  All the rooms were large but there was no heating installed so we thought it may be a little expensive to have heating put in.

Whilst inside, the agent mentioned that English people owned the house and were moving.  That would account for the unfinished plumbing, bad restoration, the dreadful linoleum on the floors, and the locked and boarded cellar door.

The agent took us to the rear of the house and showed us the barn, which was part of the property.  I started sinking in the ground and began to realize that the land around the house was extremely water-logged and that the cellar was probably flooded – hence the ‘loss’ of the key.  The barn was reasonable on the ground floor but the floorboards were extremely dangerous on the first floor and would need replacing, in fact, most of the floor had rotted away completely.  This could have been other major expense.

Back at the agent’s house, we again bade farewell and said we would be in touch.  Not a hope!

(I was going to call my book "Tashmoosh" as we had spoken to a lady in the after sales part of a large department store here to whom we had been guided by a shop assistant.  In quite good English, she asked 'Did the man have a Tash-moosh?'  Many phrases in France seem to be the opposite of what we would expect, for example, this year, last year and next year become 'This year, Year last and Year next!')

MASTERING THE LANGUAGE

 

During the previous twelve months, we had attended an evening course to learn French and were delighted to attain our National Vocational Qualification’s (NVQ’s) at the end of the course.  Classes had been fun, and we made a few friends there, some who were just learning a new language, others who had holiday homes in France and still others who were contemplating moving permanently, like us. 

Andy and I got the nicknames of Popeye (because of his pipe) and Fag-Ash Lil (I am a smoker and dived for a cigarette instead of coffee during our breaks in lessons).  At the end of the course, we had the NVQ certificates, but realised we could not speak French, could not read French and certainly could not understand it.  However, once we got to France all the words we had learned fell into place and although pronunciation is extremely important (many words sounding almost identical), we muddled by. 

Towards the end of the course we were told by our tutor that the entire evening must be in French only, anyone caught speaking English would be fined and the money given to charity.  Andy struggled with the words and whispered “What’s ……?”  I whispered back “Meatballs!”  He did not hear me and asked again.  “Meatballs!” I said, a little louder.  The teacher shot over to my side – that’s 50 pence please!  She had not heard Andy, just me.  Never mind, I was not the only one, she had collected around £20 sterling by the end of the evening.

A chance of a course called “Get by in French” came up by accident at work.  Normally these courses are aimed at Naval personnel who are about to leave the Navy and civilians are not allowed on them.  However, someone had forgotten to put ‘Service Personnel only’ in the advert and I jumped in straight away. 

I had been working in the Occupational Health Centre in Portsmouth Naval Base and several of my friends there were helping with my French.  Peter, the Environmental Health Officer, knew quite a lot of French and was a frequent visitor to France on holidays although he did not own a property there.  Sian, the Head of one of the departments, knew a lot of French and was really helpful.  She also visited France a lot on holidays with her family and would be a visitor to us once we were established there. 

Our teacher at evening classes had been English, teaching French, and the teacher in the Naval Base was French-Canadian.  There is a difference in French spoken in France and French spoken in Canada, where the words can sometimes be a bit archaic.  We actually learnt a lot of French, but when arriving in France we found that words are fairly easy but that actual conversation is much harder.  All French words are either ‘masculine - le’ or ‘feminine - la’ and you have to use the correct ‘gender’ for each word.  Also, if there is more than one item that you are speaking about, the le or la has an ‘s’ added.  Strangely enough, when the ‘s’ is added you don’t pronounce it with the ‘le’, but add it to the next word – for example, an English woman is – la Madame Anglaise, an Englishman is le monsieur Anglais but a man and a woman become le s’anglais.  Hard to learn but eventually it becomes easier.  I think the strangest thing is that an English man and woman become English men!  Even if there are 100 women and just one man – they all become men!

On the ‘tashmoosh’ theme, an elderly, white-haired gent becomes ‘gentleman ancient, hair white’.  

How we got here

I am going to try to let you know how we came to be living in France.  Here goes:

I originally planned to turn this into a book, similar to the ones by Peter Mayle but from a woman's perspective, but the publishers weren't interested.  .

I was woken up early this morning (OK, so it was 8 o’clock) by the sound of the running engine of a large bus.  For one awful moment I thought I was back in England, in the dreadful flat we had bought prior to moving to France almost six years ago.  The engine belonged to the school bus, collecting two children to take them to the nearest school for the day.  When we first moved here there was a small mini-bus, this has grown to a full 54-seater coach.  The coach is due to leave at 8 and nothing in the world is going to make it leave before that time, so it just runs its engine until 8.

The flat we bought before moving here was sadly situated at the terminus of the Portsmouth bus route and despite many pleas and even notices posted by the bus company on the bus stop poles, the buses arrived and ran their engines for sometimes up to half an hour, ensuring that no-one could get back to sleep – the service started in the wee small hours and ran almost to midnight.  Luckily we were not to stay too long in the flat, it was just a means to an end.  We had a large house close to a castle and had sold that and bought the flat and a new home in France, which we intended to retire to.  As it turned out, Hubby, Andy, was offered early retirement and I decided to quit work shortly after him.

At the time I started to write this, England is in recession, the snow is over a foot thick and the country can’t cope, with schools closed and public services not running.   My small pension has been cut by around a third because of the Euro exchange rate and Andy does not get his State Pension for another three years.  So, would we be going back to the UK?  Would you?

Hopefully this may inspire you to up sticks and move here.  I recommend it highly but you must learn at least some French before you do.  If I use any French words, I will try to spell them phonetically as well, but I hope not to use too many.

Two Years Before We Moved

 ‘So, how do you feel about moving to France?’  This was the question that started everything off.  I was a bit bemused as Andy had never shown any inclination to go to France for a holiday, let alone live there.  Apparently, someone with whom Andy worked commuted from France on a weekly basis, his wife lived there and drove him to and from the ferry.  Another of Andy’s work-mates took some brochures of French properties to work and Andy borrowed them for a few days.

I was taking a home language course in Italian at the time and looking forward to the day I could stretch out on the sunny Italian beach and be able to understand what the locals were talking about.  I used to commute to work in the Portsmouth Naval Base, on the bus, complete with headphones, murmuring phrases in Italian, complete with all the Italian hand-signals, much to the amusement of fellow passengers.  Andy persisted.  He suggested we look on the Internet and see what was available.  We also decided to buy a French Property magazine for a few months, just to see what type of properties were available.

At the time there was a programme on TV which took people to France to find them houses there so we applied to go on the – A Place in the Sun.

We had to submit a video of ourselves, explaining why we wanted to move to another country, so we arranged for Laura, a friend of our daughter’s, to film us with the video camera she had received for Christmas.  As we were getting on a bit – both nearing retirement age – I thought it might be a good idea to stick a large piece of card to the garden fence behind Laura so that we would be able to remember all the points without looking too thick!  The film was a disaster, to say the least, we looked frumpy and old and even with the ‘prompt’ sheet, still got a bit tongue-tied.  When we saw the result it was obvious we were reading a script.

We introduced ourselves, mentioned our huge collections of 300 vintage wireless sets and over 6,000 Avon perfume decanters.which were out-growing our current home, and said that we would like to move to France where the houses appeared less expensive than in the UK and that hopefully there would be room to open a little museum for them  The whole film was extremely stilted and looked dreadful.  We sent it anyway and the reply came back that France was no longer being included in the programme as they were now looking for people who wanted to move further afield.  It could have been that the producers took one look at us and decided ‘enough was enough’ and that they wanted younger, more aesthetically pleasing people to film for their programme.  Sensible idea I supposed, as the make-up department would need more Polyfilla than foundation to make my lines disappear.  I have always been a happy person and it showed in the ‘laughter’ lines – not so much a ‘lived-in’ face, more a ‘squatted-in’ one.

 Whilst going through the French Property magazines for a third time, Andy found an advert for an exhibition in London for people considering buying abroad in France and Spain and so we went for a quick nosy around.  Andy was obviously impressed, far more than I was – I took a couple of days to get over the shock of paying almost a fiver for a beef-burger – the drink to go with it was way out of my price range!  It was quite a high-class affair and most of the people looking round seemed rather more affluent than us.  Of course, there were a few there who had obviously just gone for a day out and had no intention of buying property – they also did not buy the burgers! The houses on offer were rather more expensive than we had in mind, but most of them were ready for moving into and we would have preferred something a little less ‘up together’.  We did however find the addresses of several companies who had agents in France so decided this would be our next approach.

We eventually signed up with a company in London who were exhibiting at the show and who had estate agents (or Immobilier) in many areas of France, and decided to go over for a couple of days to look at some properties, just to give us an idea of what we could afford if, and when, we ever really ‘took the plunge.’  I was still not too keen to leave the land I had been born in, even though it had changed a lot since I was young.  I originally only went along with it for a holiday break.  When we were newly married, England still had the £10 emigration to Australia deal and I had believed that there was where our future lay.  I had not realised it at the time but Andy had only gone along with me for the ride!  Like Andy was with France, so I was with Australia, full to the brim with enthusiasm.

We duly received appointments with two Immobilier.  One was in Vire, in the Department of Calvados, quite close to the ferry port, and the other a bit further south.  We were assured that they were both expecting us and that they each had several properties ready for us to inspect.  We were also told they would drive us round to view the properties in their company cars.

 

FIRST TRIP

As was almost always to be the case with the ferry company number one, the ship was delayed by about 2 hours.

For one of our future trips, I won a return ticket with the same ferry company by completing a sponsored fun-run around the Naval Base and getting the most sponsorship.  For one of our future trips, I won a return ticket with the same ferry company by completing a sponsored fun-run around the Portsmouth Naval Base, where I worked as a Medical Secretary, and for getting the most sponsorship.  It was funny, as I am overweight, a moderately heavy smoker and ‘fit’ is not a word I know, so everyone thought they were on to a good thing and I was heavily sponsored.  I was obviously the last to finish the run – actually, the Marshals had all gone back to the office and I managed to do an extra circuit as there was no-one left to tell me the correct route.  Eventually, the organisers sent a motor-cycle policeman to find me and escort me to the finishing line.  As we turned the last corner, he told me that they had put the tape back up and that everyone was waiting for me at the finish line and I would have to run the last 100 metres!  I was dressed in a furry Bugs Bunny costume and it was decided my costume was the best so I got a small plaque for that too.  I received the plaque from the Commodore of the Naval Base but kept my rabbit mask on, as I was totally purple underneath!

On drinking our complimentary coffee at the ferry port in Portsmouth, Hampshire, (you are always offered a complimentary drink when the ferry is not on time – must cost a fortune in coffee!) we fell into conversation with a middle-aged couple who had bought a dilapidated farmhouse in France, which they had restored and moved into, and who had been back to Wales to check their UK property was still OK.  They spent most of their time in France, returning to their UK address as, and when, they needed to.  They could not wait to return to France.  As we talked, they told us about this wonderful woman who had acted as their agent when they bought their French property.  She sounded fantastic, quite the ‘Fairy Godmother’.  She had found their house for them, done all the translating all the way through, sorted their driving permits, their health insurances, cards etc and had become such a good friend that she often spent Christmas with them.  As the couple had not been married at the time, Fairy Godmother had even suggested they ‘tie the knot’ and promptly arranged their wedding for them, even arranging the catering for the reception.  This lady we had to meet.  We gave the couple our card and asked them if they would ask Fairy Godmother to contact us.  (It eventually turned out that the Fairy Godmother vanished in a puff of smoke after we bought the house having promised to help us with everything, like the taxes, meeting the mayor, gardeners, house-sitters, etc etc.)

The channel crossing from Portsmouth to Cherbourg is about 7 hours long and we visited the gift shop, the Duty Free shop and spent the rest of the time in the bar playing cards and other travel games, which I always packed along with passports and tickets.  There was a quiz and a game of Bingo on board and I won a small cash prize.   I eventually started to win prizes for the quiz too as they used the same questions every time!

The ferry docked at Cherbourg in Northern France and we made our way through the town of St Lo, not realising at the time that there was a route which by-passed the city.  We inevitably got lost and asked several people for directions.  We managed to ask correctly, but could not understand a word of the replies, so finally went into a large petrol station to see if anyone there spoke any English.  Luckily, one of the staff spoke a tiny bit of English and told us we should go to ‘Carrefour’.  As I remembered passing a Carrefour hypermarket, we returned to it and turned left as instructed.  ‘Carrefour’ also appears to be French for other things.   After several twists and turns, we ended up back at the petrol station and tried again.  This time they told us to go to ‘total’.  This time we imagined ‘total’ to be the end of the road – no, it was ‘Total’ another petrol station!  We eventually figured it all out and eventually found ‘Vire’ on the road signs.  Actually, after several journeys to France we have discovered that the road marking are incredibly easy to follow.  Normally you just follow signs with your destination on.  If these are on the right hand side of the direction boards, you are on the right road.  When the destination becomes the bottom name on the sign, you take the next turn-off.  Easy,unless there is a deversion.  The make-shift signs say ‘detour’ so you follow them until they suddenly stop and you are in the middle of the country side without a clue where the next sign is going to be. 

We finally arrived at the first Immobilier, in Vire, only to be looked at over the top of the man’s spectacles and asked, “What do you want?”  We explained we had an appointment to view some houses and we were given the old ‘Gaelic shrug’ and sent outside to look in the window to see if anything interested us – some system!  We selected just two houses in our price range.

I asked if I could use the bathroom as we had travelled for some time and was directed to the public WC across the road, where I was confronted with the obligatory ‘hole in the ground’.  Wearing tight jeans, I decided it was a physical impossibility and returned to the shop to ask if I might use the office one.  When we finally moved to France we visited a fair and I saw what I thought was a row of Portaloos.  Amazingly they all had the ‘hole in the ground’ and I looked in several of them and came out again.  Some French ladies saw my problem and kindly showed me how to use them.  Really quite simple once you know how.

Comfort regained, the agent drove us grudgingly to the first house and told us we couldn’t actually go inside (as we weren’t ready to buy) but could just look round the grounds.  Never, ever, tell a French Estate Agent that you are ‘only looking to see what you could afford’.   It was a lovely, large, bungalow with a terrace all round, a sensible sized garden (neither of us being Percy Throwers) and it had an underground garage and even a vegetable plot and a chicken run.  Absolutely perfect.  The village in which it was situated had one of each type of shop – grocer, baker, butcher, doctor etc, even a pub!  We were already smitten with France.