I selected this image last night – I had just the story to go with it. But what a difference a moment makes. I wandered past my drawing room where my TV was still on, left talking to itself when my youngest daughter rang for a chat some 2 hours earlier. But here was no frou-frou Friday entertainment, here was our Giant Panda lookalike of a President looking shaken and grave. Paris riven assunder AGAIN by terrorists. Reports of death and maiming and pointless, unspeakable, unthinkable violence. Our borders closed, we are on lock-down and in a state of emergency for the first time since 2005. This morning, the community I live in is numb, shocked, shattered by proxy to the core. We have shaken hands and dolled out les bises with tears in our eyes and rolling down our cheeks. The last post I made on here was about bells. Our bells have tolled their mournful E flat for a full ten minutes every hour this morning. Peeling for the dead. Peeling for the bereaved. Peeling for the battered, mutlilated injured. Respect. Respect.
So I give you this image of Napoléon on his Marengo – a strange fabricated effergy that I photographed in Paris in September. Just off Rue Saint Honoré close to the Place de la Concorde I have no idea what he is doing up there waving his banners like that. But somehow I feel that he IS appropriate today. When the very fabric of the country is waivering, reeling, tested to it’s extreme. Maybe a molded dictator riding bare-back and tied down by guy-ropes is an accessible image of victory we can embrace. Victory not of one party over another, nor one country over it’s adversery. But the victory I dream of that love will prevail. Because I do believe that in the end love is all we need. And we must not let the bile of retribution get in it’s way.PS: I was posting this in response to the Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge entitled Victory – the other more remarkable entries can be found here.
PPS: The actual Napoléon is responsible for my title – my favourite of his attributed quotes ‘Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength’. Today of all days, those words resonate.
In villages all over the world bells mark time. They mark the hours, often the half hours and even the quarter hours through the day and sometimes throughout the night. They call to prayer, they toll for the dead, they ring out joyously the news that two people are wed. They sound their eccastic pleasure on Christmas morning and in France they are silent from Good Friday til they sound sonorously, building slowly, softly, increasingly exuberantly on Easter Sunday. After they have flown to Rome to be blessed and have dropped their goodies for the worthy on their flight home, of course. Here in my village we have eight-til-late bells tolling out the hours and giving a single bong for the half hour. I rather think I know their secret – shhh, don’t tell but … they are mechanised. However a human person, possibly the Priest himself rings the bells for Mass. He’s a dashing figure who wears his Catholic robes with a panache that the kings of couture would applaud on the catwalk. He is also quite clearly tone deaf and devoid of any rhythmn. A far cry from the rehearsed peels of my village church in England. That was melodious this is frankly cacophonous.
Church bells to me are the soundtrack of ordinary life. They mark out that rhythm that man has lived to for centuries. It matters not whether you are part of the Church. It matters not, indeed whether you have any religious faith. The bells provide the backdrop to life itself.
My birthday is at the end of September. My youngest daughter came to stay for a week and wanted to take me for lunch. Her treat. This is a HUGE deal when the daughter in question is a student. We drove to Brioude. Its a town I have wanted to explore for a long while, just over the border in the Haute Loire (also part of the Auvergne Region). We had very delicious lunch and then walked in the rather insistent mizzle that marked my birthday out from the WHOLE of the rest of the sunshiney month. We heard the bells of the Basillica and we knew instantly from their sober tone that they were marking a funeral. No-one needed to tell us to be quiet as we passed the building, the bells did it for us. And somehow, those bells wrapped us for a moment in the huddled sadness of the group waiting to greet their loss for the last time. Brought us to a halt, illicited respect. Yes, bells are the soundtrack to ordinary life and that soundtrack is played in simple notes that mortals simply recognise and divine.
These bells are in Sainte-Anastasie in the Cezallier Cantallien. They sit in a fine clocher-peigne which for non French speakers translates as a ‘bell comb’. It describes perfectly the open structure that prettily suspends the bells rather using than a tower to house them.
PS: Zuzu, George Bailey’s ‘little ginger snap’ is quoted in the title … at the end of the magic that is Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ squeezed tight by her daddy whose Guardian Angel (second class), Clarence has literally been his salvation she tells him this fact. Her teacher told her so ….
I’m no magician and smoke and mirrors are not part of any repetoire I possess however much I might sometimes wish they were. In arrant contrast, it was abundantly clear that the incumbent owner of the house was a maestro of the art. What greeted us was a filthy mess though there were still a number of rather lovely pieces in the house. But we had this feeling, this sense that it can be, will be, beautiful again. We signed the Acte that made us the legal owners exactly a year after we first viewed it. A year that will remain forever tatooed on my little brain and a year that provides the reference for a novel in progress in my head.
Three months after signing the Acte, the process of cajoling the previous owner (who mostly spends his time in Marseilles and seems mostly to be unable to leave his bed though he was beyond vigorous when we met) to come and take what he wanted from the house before the start of les grandes vacances on 1st July or thereabouts, was ongoing. The village had been totally and remarkably supportive of us and we had agreed that they could use the ground floor as an Office de Tourisme and that they could revert to the years old tradition of using the house in their famed Nuits de Marcolès. In France if the owner of the effects wants them you have to dance a lengthy gavotte before you can retain them or eject them. We danced. The village stowed things upstairs to make way for their tourist office. We continued to dance. The summer festivites came and went. We still danced. Le Monsieur came and went sporadically and things disappeared. He was clearly suffering from the cold further south in Mediterranean Marseille because he decided to rip the radiators from their moorings excavating chunks of wall with them. All this is legal by the way. We carried on dancing. Finally about a year ago word came that he had taken all he wanted. Exhausted, we threw off our Red Shoes and stopped dancing.
I drove south to my newly empty house. Wind back. Empty? Nah! Every stick of junk he possessed was still there. Somehow my enchanting house, the place I fell in love with on the internet, remember, had turned into a cold, unwelcoming landfill site. We had known it was impossible to walk across the grenier (attic) floor, my husband had kept the worst secrets of the cave (cellar) from me on the basis that the ladder was dodgy. Lies, all despicable lies – I’m quite the mountain goat on the quiet and I bound up and down ladders quite nimbly, thank you. But I chose not to argue, nor look, frankly fearful of what I might find. The truth was far worse than any imagined fiction. And sandwiched in the middle of top and underground floors are two others, which somehow seemed to have sprouted their own detritus. Abundantly.
.
Enter the town. Monsieur le Maire de Marcolès is officially my hero. His assistant can clearly trace her ancestry to celestial angels. The town would see to the emptying. The least they could do in the face of our saving their jewel (they call it their emblem) … well actually they didn’t need to, but my goodness me we snapped their hands off with the speed and certainty of a Kingfisher skewering it’s supper.
The town workers (generally referred to as les ouvriers) set about their task. They fitted it in between their routine and other jobs. I journeyed down after a month and was overjoyed. A week later I went again and could not believe what greeted me – there was even more debris than the week before. This bizarre and unwelcome routine continued for weeks. Smile-despair-smile-despair. Every single time I thought there was nothing else to unearth, the jolly ouvriers found more. Not that I was complaining, they were moving the damned stuff. And it was just stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. The physical incarnation of a clearly disturbed mind. The demented collection of a frenzied, and almost certainly certifiable magpie.
In November, we were in the Mairie (town hall, if you will) discussing something or other with the beatified assistant when the chief ouvrier came staggering in. He looked at us, shrugged the most glorious gaelic shrug I have EVER seen and told us we were entirely and clearly mad to have taken on the house. The beatifeic one laughed angellically. I felt sick.
Christmas loomed. We were to spend it in England. HB² arrived at my mother’s house on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day (his birthday incidentally), he checked email. The beauteous creature who is the assistant to the mayor of Marcolès (I’ve recommended her for canonisation) had sent us a note: ‘The house is empty. Happy Christmas’. We danced.
PS: The picture shows me clasping a rose. A rose plucked by the Mayor the first time we showed him inside a house he remembered from his childhood throughout his adolescence and for a large chunk of his adult life when it was always, always part of village festivities. Until the previous denizen moved in. The rose-bush flourishes on the side of the house. The Mayor has taken it upon himself to keep it tended in our absence. And tells me whenever he has pruned, or re-fastened it to the wall with a liberal sparkle in his eye – sparkling at ladies being something I have noted, he is more than rather good at. I may not have been promised a rose garden, but I beg your pardon – I got one tended by the highest official in town!
And just because I can and I fancy giving you a bonus … here’s Moira Shearer again but this time strutting her red shoes to Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control’ … let’s face facts, I know the feeling.
Catch up on the previous installments of this noble saga here which contains a link to part one
We fell in love on the internet. It’s the modern way. The one touts their promise, the other falls under their spell and happily ever after they both live. House and owner. You didn’t think I was talking about Two Brains and I, did you? You got that I am talking about our fragile hearts being ensnared by our Maison Carrée?
The house was advertised all over the place – every single immobilier in France seemed to have it on their books. Clock forward two and a half years and hindsight and a bit of experience has taught me that this means nothing. Often an agent will have grabbed the content from an unprotected site and will be advertising it as his own. But we knew where it was and we knew it was the former Tour Seignoural for the perfect little city it sits plumb central in. And it is officially a city even though it would appear to be a small village to modern eyes, and we simply swooned when we found the website for the proprietor who was currently running the little jewel as a Chambre d’Hotes. The description, down to the seductive promise that he is an accomplished masterchef and would cook you local food magnificently if you wished and that breakfast was all conjured from the local boulangerie, epicerie, charcuterie, fromagier, had me wondering why he was selling at all. After all this three bedroomed beauty, including the miraculous bathroom all newly fitted, was kitted out with the most elegant antique country furniture clearly snaffled from local houses of some note and auctions and brocantes and the owner certainly and assuredly had excellent taste. Hold that thought.
Beware the power of the picture! Beware the interweb! What greeted us when we arrived was entirely a different picture. What on earth induced us to go ahead and buy I am not convinced I will ever know. A certain madness unexplained. Assuredly bull-headed stubborn-ness and a sense that this disaster of a place can be, will be, really special and an uncharted recognition that we should be the people to return the house to it’s former unpretentious glory. And give it a properly appointed bathroom rather than what greeted us which I have flatly refused EVER to use. And a kitchen that does not stink in that sickly sweet way of festering food complete with maggots and fresh fly-eggs – sadly it became clear that this was the state that unsuspecting visitors who had booked in on-line found the house in and I sincerely hope that none ever took their host up on the opportunity of his unashamedly trumpeted home made meals – rather they hot-footed it to the Mairie to complain loudly and threaten nasty reviews on the very internet upon which we had found the house languishing apparently so alluringly.
Once we had bought the place, once the place was ours we were hit with the reality that HB² is mostly on the wrong side of the Atlantic and that I, although more than once invited to row that ocean on account of my once-upon-a-time Olympian prowess as an oar puller, I was simply not equipped to begin, let alone complete the task of emptying the house once the ancien proprieteur had taken what he wanted … you guess that bit surely – anything nice, anything pretty. Well, he would, wouldn’t he! There follows the account of the next nine months in which we, collectively being Winnie the Pooh, never lost heart.
…. In the meantime, here I am looking somewhere between despairing and disgusted in the best of the bedrooms the day after we took ownership.
PS: The quote is Twelfth Night – Helen declares of her Demetrius that ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is wing’d cupid painted blind ….’
‘You’re not dead – so stop living as though you are!’ shouts CC Bloom as played by the immeasurable Bette Midler at her best friend in ‘Beaches’. The story of two girls who meet under the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ and begin a 30 year friendship cut short by jealousy, poor (and even more unfortunately, conflcting) choices of significant others and all the other things that can and do get in the way of ordinary lives – and then impending, premature death wields his scythe unscrupulously to focus us further on the importance of living the life we have whilst we have it. I watched the video with each of my daughters in turn when they reached the age of 11 or so. Some would say it was an odd thing to do – some would say it crossed boundaries – it certainly made us cry and it certainly reminded us that life is a lottery and that we can lose those we love the most and that we should make the most of every day. Here, in response to The Daily Post’s weekly prompt entitled this time, Boundaries is my local beach (or one of them) – lakeside on the Dorgogne you can see the Correze on the other bank and the unutterably Disney Chateau du Val in the distance. Boundaries are important in life but steer them clear of love …. and whilst you have life promise you will feel it, promise you will breath it, promise you will see it, promise you will live your life and not a dynamic death.
PS: ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’ comes from ‘Beaches’ … it is one of the very few songs that has caused me to pull the car over and listen to it when it first came on the radio. When you have a chance, lend an ear to it yourself and ask yourself who that person is in your sentience – there is one in every life, I do believe.
‘Oh swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon that monthly changes in her cycles orb lest your love prove thus inconstant’. So pleaded Juliet to her Romeo in the first demanding throws of their love affair, so brief but so eternal. Change is all around us – creeping up on us in the dead of night and taking us over before we even notice. Sometimes we do notice and we protest but mostly life is too encompassing and we let it be – like the moon waxing and waning and imperceptably altering but seemingling holding an eternal rhythm. Everything changes, nothing stays the same.
The necessary PS: The picture was taken in winter at Milhac not 10 miles from here … my husband goaded me that the moon was an accident. It wasn’t – it was one of the first moments in my embryonic photographing life that I actually saw and shot rather than just shot and hoped for the best. I bite my thumb at thee, HB²!
I grew up in a malecentric world. Sandwiched between two brothers and with numerous boy cousins (all much older than me) I learned to perform young. My latent Lily Langtry was my ticket to inclusion in boy games whence otherwise I would have been barred. I remember one Autumn day, damp and musty my brothers and I were playing in the front garden. My father re-gravelling the drive, we were probably supposed to be helping. But my older brother had a better idea. It involved a rubber snake. I was briefed, repeated back my instructions to ensure I accurately understood, little brother confirmed that father was unable to see big brother planting the ductile serpent in the undergrowth and once all was point perfect I took my cue and ran out of a copse of trees screaming hystrionically at the top of my voice. My father instantly rushed to my aid and I stammered sssssnnnnnaaaake whilst pointing melodramatically at the glimpse of viper in the grass. With not a smidge of hesitation dad swung the spade and smashed the snake with all his might. Over and over again. We were quite helpless with laughter as it’s rubber body twisted and writhed and indeed bounced. When entirely satisfied that it was properly dead he took a step forward and picked up it’s stretchy corpse. The head was utterly flattened like a dimpled pancake. We were helpless with laughter. He was thunderous with rage. We were sent indoors to our rooms. It was worth the punishment.
The prompt is beneath my feet … it almost was as I clambered over a rock close to home:
PS: Kaa the snake in Kiplings Jungle book anthropomorphisised so brilliantly by Disney hypnotised Mowgli as he murmured his song ‘Trust in me …. just in me’. My dad was the man I could always trust to protect and defend me from all foes including, crucially, rubber snakes.
It was hot and sunny and we were walking a walk that I had tried in the last gasps winter but the waymarks simply stopped – trees felled or fallen … it happens. The Bean and I, that day in the snow decided to call it a day, even though it meant a near vertical scramble back down what is in fact the edge of an ancient (no seriously, it’s 10th century ancient) quarry to the car. That had been March. Now in July we determined to find the main event – 10th century cottage remains … their owners driven out by the plague it is thought. The plague – up here where the air is clean …it makes you think! In the hot sunshine this beauteous butterfly did aerobatics thence alighting and sunning its stunning wings and then again making a beeline for my exposed skin and delighting in intruding. It hurt by the way. But I didn’t flinch … such an up close and personal experience with so etherial a creature who would be dead by dawn was an unmissable feast … I hope it was good for flutterby too.
PS: Shortly after the picture was taken and for the next 2 hours straight as we walked, the heavens opened in a deluge of biblical proportions and we were quite literally drenched to the skin. I wonder about what butterflies do in the rain. Just a ponder. The cottage ruins were worth it incidentally despite the fact that visibility was practically zero. Just walking in a place that was a community a thousand plus years ago and seemingly wiped out in a whisper of invisible venom made me shiver far more than the saturating rain ever could.
The title is swiped from a 1996 movie starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer which I loved and am reminded to seek out again
Given the title Half and Half for this week’s photo challenge I immediately thought of The Bean. She’s half Jack Russell and half Chihuahua – a feisty combination particularly if you are a rat since both breeds are bred fundementally for snapping and trapping rodents. I get asked all the time what she is. I could answer ‘une croix’ which means a cross but the correct expression is la moitié x and la moitié y which means half x and half y. I learned this from the delightful middle child of friends of ours. He must have been 6 at the time and it was a relief not to have a poo-related conversation. This particular evening he fired moitiers at us all and we had to act them out. I thank him for the half fish-half hippo, half dragon-half horse, half raptor-half mouse etc etc because it really really helped my French. With his growly childish slightly lisping voice it has taken a while to tune my lame ear in but he and his beautiful siblings are always forgiving of this apparition of a lady who speaks French like a two year old. Middle child also happens to adore The Bean despite the fact that she once bit his nose. She has no idea how lucky she is. But I know how lucky I am to know, love and be loved by the three of them.
Here comes The Bean, running back from a shady ditch to jump in the car for the obligatory post walk drink, served from her bespoke bowl made from the bottom of a small mineral water bottle, and a treat from her personal supply kept replenished in the car at all times. As you can see from her tongue she was a hot dog … a condition she has had to get used to these last few weeks as we boil and frizzle in France. The picture is a little blurry – life here is a little blurry in the heat but it sort of seems to fit the challenge in that she is half the frame – give me some licence here, please!
PS: Do I wish I had a million dollars (or whatever inflation has done to the million since George Bailey exuberantly made his wish in 1946) … not really – give me the love of beautiful children, my tiny Hot Dog and HB², the place I adore, and I feel as I do – the richest poor girl in the whole wide wonderful world.
Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins isn’t it? Maybe that’s why we are finding it so hard to find our perfect Maison Principale given that we are beautifully sated and fully occupied with our Square House. Why do we need another house? Well, we have a large family who we want to be able to comfortably accommodate when they visit and, in the end, we want our own land and quite a bit of it surrounding us because we are a teeny bit antisocial and to be able to grow and nurture and live a sort of half-baked gaelic good life. La Maison Carrée was never intended to be our principal house though we will live there for part of each year.
I have spoken before of the idiosyncracies of the French property market and it does take a little getting used to. I watch a programme on Channel 2 which pits two immobiliers against one another to find a home that ticks the boxes set by the couple of the day and what stands out to me is that prices don’t seem to vary from place to place at all. So you can be easily commutable to Paris and the ask is pretty much the same as down here in Vache-ville. I’ll try and put some meat on the bones of my theories about the property market in France along the way but for the moment, because it’s what I do, I will just tell the stories (and there are rather a lot) of the houses we have looked at. One at a time to give time for full digestion – I don’t want to be accused of further gluttony!
So here is the story of the house we very almost bought:
We met the immobilier in a nearby town (remember, I observed they are generally extremely reluctant to give away the precise location of a property for fear of dirty dealing behind their backs). He had been quite rude in our email exchange and we had been given no choice of day or time since he was coming down from Paris. Which in fairness is a more than 5 hour drive on a good day with a following wind. He stepped out of his rhinocerous of a 4×4 and the first thing HB² noted in a barely muted stage whisper was that he was wearing ‘European trousers’. Two Brains has an untreated phobia of such garments. He means corduroys in a variety of orange, pink or yellow hues (occasionally they even bleed into the emeralds and sapphires and I live in dread of an unplanned encounter with any shade of purple). He blames the trousers for a particular type of personality. Not, you will gather, a personality he is attracted to. I noted the trousers and distracted him with the fact that the extraordinarily glossy woman with the man was dressed for some sort of mythical interpretation of outdoor pursuits. She had clearly invested enough to prop up a small country in her attire. The illusion was completed with a Dandy Dinmont Dog. Which meant that The Bean would be trapped in the car because she can be a little, dare I say, fiesty with other four-leggers until they are fully accepted and even then can have random moments of vehement disapproval.
We set off for the first house (another time – you will have to wait for that one) and thence to the house that we had agreed would probably be a bit dark and oppressive. European Trousers slowed to a snail slither as we reached sight of the place and pointed. It was love at first sight. A coup de foudre. We drove down the long drive and parked up. The drive went over, incidentally a bridge crossing a little river, which if you know me at all will tell you that I was pretty much sold, and as we got out of the car, a young man was propped against the front door with that air of nonchelance that the French effect better than any other nation. The building is not an historic monument but it is historic. The cellars (at ground floor level so probably more underneath) are 11th Century and the main building rebuilt in the 14th. The young man who by now had charmingly introduced himself as the grandson of the deceased couple who had restored it to what it is today said that his grandfather had located the site of the original tower. Had he lived he would have carried on restoring I am sure and my inner Rapunzel was already fast-forwarding to rebuilding the tower. In fact in the village (about 5 km away) there is an identical building, but intact. It is a storey and a half higher and has the most curious top to the tower which looks broken until you realise it is deliberate. Who knows why. The grounds were perfect … the stream, an orchard with apples, pears, cherries and quince a fine place for a beau potager and views over the valley several hundred metres below that are just breathtaking. The house has 6 hectares. We worked out that there was about 1 around the house including the swimming pool compound and driveway (the swimming pool incidentally had a pair of robust trees growing out of the cover so a little attention needed before necessary relaxing with an apero before an evening dip) and another 2 or so in the field below but we were intrigued to know what of the woods beyond was included to make up the other 3. European Trousers who thus far had been frankly disconnected with the vital fact that we might be interested buyers deflected the question to young Monsieur Nonchelance who stepped up to the plate and explained that in his boyhood when visiting he was allowed to go as far as the waterfall. This was a romantic notion but not particularly helpful.
We climbed the fantastic stone steps to the imposing castle door. Inside everything seemed perfect. The ‘monumental’ fireplace lived up to its name, the ground floor bedroom was delightful with a well thought out shower room and loo off and the possibility of making a balcony to the full length window (though it would need some monumental supports of its own given the size of the stone pointed to below as the ideal base), the kitchen was tiny (one of my criteria, as a incurable kitchen dweller has always been a kitchen big enough to live in) but as it opened onto the piece de vie which is absolutely humungous taking up, as it does, most of the ground floor, I felt myself compromise. The restauration was superb … very sympathetic with lots of wood to include a built in Auvergne style clock, a lit clos (basically a bed built into the wall and very much of the region and which young man had happily passed many childhood nights when staying with his gramps) and a touch of magic in the form of a set of bookshelves which at the touch of a button will recess and allow the TV to make a grand entrance a la those wonderful moments in world of 1960’s James Bond. It needed to be restored but Two Brains was confident it would be a doddle. I leave these things to him. Upstairs and one huge and another decent sized bedroom, the former used as a workspace possibly by a designer judging by the work-table both with shower rooms. No bath. A bit of a draw back for me as I am a wallower but entirely fixable. The big room would divide comfortably into two good sized bedrooms if necessary as an asside. It was fair to say that it appeared ET was correct when he said it was ready to move straight in.
Outside a liberated Bean was frollicking with a verve that would eclipse any Spring Lamb and clearly loved the place. Her verdict was noted.
We walked around squeezing hands like toddlers. We knew we had found home. A few days later we visited again, sans immobilier and the charming young nonchalance answered our questions as best he could. It was clear that his grandparents had loved the place and we romantically imagined ourselves continuing their work and concluding it – making the house entirely what it once had been. Captivated by the vaulted cellars build by men a thousand years ago we imagined these people smiling down at us. We pointed to a tiny window almost under the eaves that we couldn’t understand – it didn’t correspond to anything inside. Blithely he told us that his gramps ashes were interred up there so they would forever look over the valley. I felt fine about that. No, really I did ….
Back home we discussed and digested and cojitated both together and after his Brainship had flown back to Boston and came up with a price we were both happy with. Questions were asked to ascertain the exact location of the mystery woodland, to stick a stake in the ground that we understood that the chimney needed attention and that we understood the exact condition of the pool mechanisms. Bear in mind that our local friends suck their teeth at asking prices and endlessly fill our heads with tuppence ha’penny deals done on the Q.T. We offered 75% of the ticket price and waited for the knock back. Quite amazingly ET came back to us with the news that our offer had been accepted. That was just before Christmas and I went to bed happy that I would have my forever house by summer.
In January I visited in a blizzard with eldest daughter and her intended – so they could see it at least from the outside. They did not tell me I was mad.
March. After a long period of flatline communication, we were suddenly summoned to a town nearby in 3 days time to sign the Comprimis de Vente (this is basically the moment of exchange of contracts and the comprimis should contain all the clauses we have asked to be included). As it happened we were in Grenoble and so decided to run the document past the wonderfully effete and beautifully bi-lingual Philippe. All our friends are called Philippe by the way. The Brain has excellent French but is humble enough to reach out for a helping hand when needed. I sat reading a magazine lost in the romantic notion of walking Grande Randonee numero 5 – 620 km through the Alps to the Med and Monaco. 3 or 4 weeks they suggest. I could feel the grass, smell the air and ….. a problem. A problem? Two Brains was drained of colour and looked for all the world like a doctor breaking difficult news to a patient’s relative (compounded by the fact that I was sitting in the refreshment area of a modern Science institution). Philippe, diplomatic as ever had balked at the price we were paying and had then drawn attention to the value of the house 7 years ago (pre the 40% drop in overall valuations in France) …. around a third of the original asking price so way, way below what we had offered (remember the speed of the agent’s response). But we are decent people of morals and we had already agreed that given the difficulty of guaging an accurate price we would just go with what we felt was right. A rather lumpy swallow but swallow we would. We loved the house. The electrics have mulitple areas of non-conformity … sort of to be expected even though they look fine enough but the bit that presented an impasse was the Level 2 problem with the LPG Gas. Expliques-moi s’il te plait? Well, the thing is this …. it could cause the house to explode at any minute. Nothing lost (girder-made we are). An email is sent tout de suite to ET and we set off on the 6 hours journey home falling into bed around midnight. Up with the lark, wakened by the barking (and it is genuinely a barking) of the Brain Phone – an alert to a mail. Possibly the rudest mail ever. You WILL be at the notaires office tomorrow morning and tough titty, the problems are yours to solve.
My husband is a mild sort. My mother always said they are the most dangerous. The ensuing conversation with ET was lethal. The man accused him of lying (he clearly thought the real reason was the discovery that the value was much lower than the offer – wrong M’sieur. You were so very wrong. Decency prevails on our side however bitter the pill). And the deal was off. End of. A desparation call from the owner would not sway us. We smelled a consipiracy but now is not the time to air that. And numbed, we were back to square one. HB² quietely commented that he should have trusted his instincts. I mean to say – the man wears European Trousers!
Four months later we are still there. We have opted to broaden our search outside of le Cantal. As much as we adore it here we need to find the right place for us. So the last few months have been about (and mostly remotely – remember Brains in Boston, Charm in Cantal) looking at other places. Our criteria are simple (for the location) snow in winter, sun in summer (if it pleases) and mountains preferably in sight but certainly no more than a half hour drive. If you have ideas, please share them. We are open to ideas.
I have just searched on the net for the house in question and it appears to be under offer … if that is the case, I sincerely hope it doesn’t blow up after money has changed hands
PS: I am inordinately proud of the title of this series because it marks a milestone in my absorption of French … I now find myself punning and playing with words even though the result may still be ‘Comme une Vache Espagnole’ and the words that inspired Part 1 … ‘Your lips are redder than her lips, they’re fuller, they’re redder but they’re not better’ altogether ‘ sorry but I’m gonna have to pass …. thank you The Coasters … you can hear the whole song here – it fits when you understand that the bar we are working to might seem modest (a 2 bedroomed rented appartment) but modest as it is, home is actually pretty much perfect. A high bar indeed.
PS: I was posting this in response to the Daily Press Weekly Photo Challenge entitled Victory – the other more remarkable entries can be found here.
