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So, there we were in the summer of 1999 with the keys to an empty house. Well, naturally we'd brought a car full of stuff with us: a couple of Z-Beds (remember those), a camping stove, some pots and pans and crockery. The basics. I ate my first meal there sitting on the stairs. We had thought to get really into the French country life there. What we found was that our next-door neighbours on one side were English. There were several more English families either living there permanently or with holiday homes around the small village. In fact it seemed at times as if every resident of Hampshire and his dog had bought a nice little house in France. Lovely, sociable people all. We played "Spot the English Car" in the supermarket car park. After just a couple of days we went back home. Our task was done. On our next visit we found out about the depots vente, places people take their unwanted goods for sale on consignment. They are wonderful places to rummage around, and we do love to rummage. In a short time we had a whole bedroom suite in the old French style, carved wooden doors and headboards and all, and a buffet or two-storey sideboard. And a fridge. We think that they must have been the property of an old French family, inherited with a house and not wanted by the younger generation. We wanted them though, they were perfect for our old cottage. The only problem was getting the stuff home. The fridge and some smaller stuff came from nearby and went in the back of the car, but the sideboard and bedroom furniture were from further away. Not to worry, though; the depot vente will lend you a van if you leave your car with them as security. It was a rather old Renault Master. It didn't have power steering. But me, I'll drive anything. So we loaded up and I drove this very heavy left-hand drive van with a steering wheel the size of the London Eye back to our house. At one junction I actually had to have two goes at getting round the corner. Luckily the roads in France are less busy than those in England, and I got back without enraging any French drivers. Which is where we ran into problem no 2. The buffet was so heavy - solid wood - that I couldn't even get my end of the smaller top half off the ground, never mind up the four steps to the front door of the house. Our next-door neighbour came along at that moment, the French side not the English side. Did we need help? We certainly did. They carried the purchases in for us. What lovely people. Problem no 3. The divan base of the bed is too big to get around the spiral staircase to the rooms upstairs. Solution: simple. We use the small room downstairs as a bedroom. No more problem. A nearby furniture shop had some second hand things, a bed settee, table and six chairs. Gradually the house filled up. Cheap electrical appliances and a few more things from home, and we were living the good life over there. We looked at a few houses throughout Normandy in the spring of 1999, and each one was - how shall I say it - different, but that's what happens when you haven't got a lot to spend. There was one which, officially speaking, had no toilet at all. When we got there we found of course that there was a little hut perched over a drainage ditch, about which nobody was very specific. Also the house consisted of two buildings which touched at a corner but were otherwise unconnected, so that to go from living rooms to sleeping room you had to go outdoors. The current owner was obviously very proud of her little house, though: she had newspaper down on the floor of the living room so we wouldn't sully it. We didn't go very far in, as the room was stuffed as full as it would hold with china ornaments and knick-knacks and we were afraid of breaking something. Then there was the one which was built in cob, or mud and straw to you and me, where you could see daylight through parts of the walls. What was worse to my sensibilites though was the way they had covered over a beamed ceiling with lambris, a sort of pine board cladding. Following exactly the contours of the beams underneath. Then there was the one with the shower in the middle of the kitchen. I mean, in the middle, where normally you'd put a table, there was a shower cubicle. And the one where all the furniture was piled up on tables and cupboards. "Don't worry," the agent said, "it's only flooded twice in the past twenty years." Finally we got to our last town. As on most stops before, we found that the house we had been interested in had been sold months before, but they had some others we might be interested in. Apparently this was not an unusual ploy over there, where they would get you in the door with a picture of a neat little cottage which matched exactly what you might want in a holiday home, and then showed you the properties that were actually for sale, which looked nothing like your dream. "We've just had this one come on the market," the agent said, showing us a picture of what looked like a dark little stone cottage. It was a sad story. The old couple had had a large family, and the last child, a son, was a little slow. All the other children had moved out, but he stayed on with his parents, and worked odd jobs hedging and ditching for the local council. Finally one day the council offered him a permanent job. Excitedly he cycled home to tell his parents, and was hit at a local pinch point by a car driven by a seventy year old man, and died. The parents couldn't face driving past the scene of their son's death every time they went to the small town nearby to do their shopping, and wanted to move away. I have to say it wasn't a prepossessing house from the front, but when we went inside it had nearly everything we were looking for. It had a shower room of sorts, a couple of bedrooms, a reasonable kitchen/diner, in the French manner. Admittedly the toilet was outside in the garden, but not too far from the back door, and there were a few outbuildings that came with it, and about three quarters of an acre of land. It was the best of those we'd seen on that trip, it ticked the boxes, and it was immediately habitable if you weren't too fussy. It grew on me. The back view was better than the front view. We bought it. Those of you who have read my blogs in another place will probably know that we have a holiday house in France.
I don't want you to thin that we are therefore wealthy. We used to take the children on self-catering holidays in France (being cheap and easy to reach) and, as you do, we looked idly in the estate agents' windows at the houses for sale. For a moment I thought I'd slipped a decimal point somewhere. At that time houses in the part of England where we lived were going for upwards of £100,000. In France you could get somewhere really nice for a fraction of that. At the time, of course, with three small children and one income, it stayed just a dream. Then eventually I went back to work, and was sent on a time management course. Wait, and all will become clear. One of the things they told us on this course was not just to have a goal, but to think about the steps it would take to achieve the goal. And they had us make lists. I remember one person's list was "Go to China. Er." Mine was a lot more detailed. Starting with "See how much finance we can arrange," passing through "Go to French property exhibition, look at French property magazines" to "take a trip to view possible buys". Within a year we had bought our house, taking out an extra mortgage on our house in England to finance it. It sounds simple. In fact it was pretty simple. And our little house in Normandy, habitable as-is, cost us around £27,000 plus fees and taxes (not a neglible amount in France). We have had friends who have said to us that they would love to own a little house in France like ours. We have offered to lend them our house, for nothing, so they can look around. But I doubt that they have ever achieved their wish. So if you have something on your bucket list that is practical, that you have the finances for, then what are you waiting for? My list includes publishing books. Watch this space! |
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Doreen lives in the empty bit in the middle of Wales, where since her retirement she has taken up writing. She says it's better than working any day. Archives
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