My Good Life in France

by Janine Marsh

  At least, most of the time. One Friday night in late July, after a day in the office, we left London by bike under ominous dark skies. When we emerged from the tunnel in Calais we were met with torrential rain, thunder and lightning. Pulling on our gloves and doing our coat collars up, we headed into the wetness and aimed for our village. Somehow we missed a turning and ended up off course and in the forest outside the port town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, just twenty minutes from Calais. It’s a huge area of hills and forests, quite beautiful during the day and popular with walkers, but at night, when you’re lost in a storm, it resembles a place you might see in a scary movie.

  By now it was almost midnight, pitch black apart from when the sky was scratched by vivid wild lightning streaks. The bike intercom system we used to talk to each other had died – it had drowned, I think. I had visions of us being eaten by wild pigs and our bodies being discovered by gendarmes a few weeks later.

  This is not me being overdramatic; there are plenty of wild boars in parts of France and I’ve often seen them run across fields. Great big hairy creatures, they’re quite shy but, if scared, can be aggressive.

  Thankfully, on that dark night in the woods, it wasn’t our time to go. Mark managed to find his way back on to a main road and we arrived home, bedraggled and utterly fed up. My gloves were so sodden they disintegrated. My boots were full of water. We simply dried off and fell into bed to sleep off the stress of the journey.

  In the morning, the sun returned, and streamed in through the windows, which I threw open to breathe in the scent that comes after a downpour in the country. Grass and blooming flowers are a heady combination in this sweet pure air. The perfume chased away the memories of the horrible journey of the night before. I could hear Thierry the farmer firing up his tractor at the top of the hill and a couple of minutes later he drove past dragging a trailer load of manure – the other scent of the country.

  The house started to reveal itself to us as we spent time there and I wish I could say that there were hidden treasures – secret marble fireplaces and fabulous delights. Sadly, that wasn’t to be. Upstairs was completely uninhabitable, dirty, dark and open to the elements, with gaping holes in the walls as well as the roof. We simply closed the trapdoor at the top of the stairs and left it alone. It was a bit like a submarine hatch and at least it kept out some of the draughts, bugs and animals that lived there. Downstairs was just about endurable. We camped in the room with the flint stone wall and Dad camped in the front room. Cooking was done on a barbecue in the garden, whatever the weather. At one end of the house was the room with no door and a pole holding things up. At the other end, matching it in hideous style, was a room that had only two walls, which were covered with a plastic roof. We used it as an outdoor dining area, dragging our little barbecue under cover when it rained.

  Our main job that summer was to clear out the rubbish in the house and keep the garden under control. We went through each room, getting rid of sticky carpets, old beds, fridges, piles of newspapers from the 1970s, broken tiles and assorted trash. As we went along I painted all the walls white, including the concrete blocks, in an attempt to make it look a bit better. In reality it looked more like a prison than a holiday home.

  Spending short stints in your second home abroad once in a while doesn’t really give you a full sense of what real life is like in a new country. We met the neighbours occasionally and they seemed pleasant and friendly, if a bit aloof. Most of our encounters at this stage consisted of nodding to each other.

  Friends and family came to visit and were shocked by the state of the house. This was no Provençal dream barn, after all; staying with us meant roughing it. With no shops or bars in the village it can feel really quite isolated. Some people, however, fell under the spell of the slower pace of life, the fabulous chocolate shops and boulangeries in the nearby town of Montreuil-sur-Mer, which smelled of freshly baked croissants and baguettes, and the vibrant street market in Hesdin, which we discovered was nothing like the dull place we had thought it was that grim February day when we ended up there. It was hard not to love the cafés in Hucqueliers, the sheer gastronomic delight of French life and the history and heritage of this part of northern France. Everyone was captivated by the fact that we could buy fresh goats’ cheese straight from the farm down the road, and the weekend flea markets won many fans among our visitors. Dad liked to try the different foods: locally made hams, honeys and jams, though he baulked at snails and turned down crispy fried frogs’ legs in the Chinese restaurant in Saint-Omer.

  Some people were amazed by the amount of land we had, and Mark’s sister Loraine and brother-in-law Martin adored it; they dreamed of one day buying a house close by. Like us, they had lived their whole lives in London and relished the space, the sheer vibrant greenness of the lush countryside of this part of northern France and the fact that you could drive for miles without passing another car.

  Whoever came out invariably got roped in to help with renovating and gardening. At the end of the summer, the house started to feel less like a shed and more like a shed with a little bit of soul (if you narrowed your eyes and were in an optimistic mood).

  Dad’s prediction that having a second home was a never-ending chore started to come true. There was always so much to do: on every visit the grass needed to be cut, weeds had started to take over and the damp in the house had got worse, but we made time to explore.

  Not too far away, there’s another very small village, quite pretty with a handful of houses and two commercial buildings. One is a traditional butcher’s shop and sells fresh meat from local farms and charcuterie prepared by the shop owner. The other is opposite, a run-down building with a big car park; it’s a cross between a house and a hut, grubby and worn out. It has a hand-painted sign, strung haphazardly across a window, stating that it is a ‘Club Privé’. Mark and I assumed that this was a sort of pub or club. We’d passed this place several times and thought it might be fun to go there, perhaps with Dad.

  One day, we were working in the front garden and some elderly neighbours wandered past and invited us to come and have a beer when we finished. They introduced themselves as Stefan and Babette, originally from Lille. They told us that they lived in the road by the chapel, which we would know by the gnomes in the front garden. So we headed to their house on a beautiful summer evening, 6 p.m. being the time for apéritifs in these parts. They were friendly and we were soon laughing away as if we’d known each other a lot longer. I mentioned to them that we were thinking of popping down to ‘Le Club Privé’ when we next came out and did they want to come with us?

  An ominous silence fell in the room. Babette looked at the floor, Stefan looked at me open-mouthed. Nothing was said for what felt like several long seconds.

  ‘Look’, I said,‘it was just a thought, maybe another time.’

  Again silence.

  ‘Or,’ I offered, wondering what on earth I must have said to cause such a weird reaction, ‘you could come to us instead. We’ll bring some English beer.’

  Stefan cleared his throat and said, ‘We’re a little old for that sort of thing these days.’

  ‘What – beer?’ I said incredulously, as he was clearly enjoying the glass that Babette had refilled several times.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Libertins.’

  After it became clear that I had no idea what he was talking about, we had a fun conversation that involved the use of a French–English dictionary as I looked up some new words and discovered that libertin means someone who is without ‘moral or sexual restraints’ and the Club Privé was in fact a swingers’ club. Apparently, people come from further away than Paris to party there.

  Who’d have thought it, in middle-of-nowhere France? I didn’t know whether to be more surprised that it was there at all or that Stefan informed me that he’s a bit old for it ‘these days’.

  One weekend, the surrounding towns were plastered with glossy posters advertising a night of excitement in Aix-en-Issart. This pretty village w
ith a pine furniture shop, a church and a clutch of houses was to host a riveting night of entertainment, fabulous food and ‘illuminations’, which we translated in our heads as ‘thrilling, electrifying light show’. Since we hadn’t really seen much evidence of nightlife – the local café-bars in Hucqueliers, as lovely as they are, generally close by 9 p.m. and there didn’t seem to be much else close by – we couldn’t resist it. Thanks to the expensively printed posters, we were excited to find out more about what we thought must be a truly spectacular event. Lyon and its famous Festival of Lights came to mind. We drove the few miles from our house, along a winding country lane, past a wood mill with its wheel turning gently and farmhouses with shutters closed (as usual there was hardly any evidence of life in the countryside) en route to the town.

  Yet on reaching Aix-en-Issart we had to drive right through and out the other side to park because there were so many cars. On the walk in, the main street was absolutely packed with people. We took this as an indication that we’d stumbled on to a really sensational event. Dusk was falling. Just perfect to be able to see the illuminations, we thought. We followed the crowds along the narrow road to the main square, walking alongside a bubbling stream, its neat grassy banks lined with trees through which a few Christmas tree-style lights were hung. It was very pretty, but hardly the grand illuminations we expected. As we approached the square, I almost fell into the water when a man wearing long boots appeared in the stream as if from nowhere. We stopped to watch him fiddle with something along the top of the water line, cursing under his breath and then sighing with happiness as … more fairy lights came on along the side of the stream.

  ‘I think these are the illuminations,’ said Mark.

  He was right. In those days we were still green townies, used to the bright lights of London and unaware of the less obvious treasures of rural northern France. I confess we were disappointed to start with. In a grand marquee we lined up with red-faced French men buying beer and cider to cool down on the hot summer night. We were warmly welcomed and sat on the plastic chairs in the square, watching as people arrived. We had no idea what to expect but clearly some sort of entertainment was on offer. A makeshift stage had been created on the trailer of a lorry parked on the edge of the square, and spotlights were trained on the ‘platform’ where drums and musical instruments were set up. More and more people arrived and the chairs rapidly filled.

  A group of teenagers marched around playing drums and bongos, dancing and laughing. The atmosphere was one of excitement; an air of anticipation began to build, and there was a sudden intake of breath when an announcement was made by a man walking round with a loud speaker that the highlight of the evening, the moment we had all been waiting for, was here. The lights dimmed, a crescendo of drums echoed round the square, and then the lights went back on. Band members and a singer had stumbled their way on to the stage in the dark and were blinking as the spotlights temporarily blinded them.

  The music struck up, French rock style, and the singer began to belt out a number. The audience tapped their feet, nodded their heads, clapped and swayed; a few got up and danced. This region, we were to discover, loves to dance. There are tea dances in many towns and whenever someone starts to play music or a musical instrument – be it in a café or in the street – you can almost guarantee a couple will jump to their feet and foxtrot or cha-cha with abandon.

  Ten minutes in and the singer stopped. The band stopped too, abruptly, and we all heard a mobile phone ringing. The singer glared at a man in the audience who was fumbling with his phone, trying to turn it off. The singer resumed.

  ‘Did that really happen?’ asked Mark, looking at me in astonishment.

  Yes, it did, and the singer halted his act three more times when he felt that his adoring fans were not being adoring enough by giving him their full attention.

  By this time we were not just bemused, we were highly amused, as were the rest of the audience, most of whom were by now tucking into moules served from vast saucepans and frites from a mobile wagon. We thought it couldn’t get much better when, at the end, as the star was getting ready to perform his last number to wild acclaim, those pesky teenagers started playing the drums again: this time the singer stormed off stage, never to return.

  It was, everyone said afterwards around the bar, by the light of the glittering stars and a bright moon, a rather memorable and most enjoyable night.

  CHAPTER 6

  It’s as cold as ice

  IN THE WINTER things were quite different.

  From October onwards it started to get cold. At night the clear sky twinkled with thousands of stars and in the mornings heavy frosts made the grass sparkle. Although it was generally not a bad winter, it was our first experience of the season in France and it was nothing like being in London.

  The first neighbour we really got to know well was Jean-Claude. We would see him every time we were in France as he drove from his home at the bottom of our hill to his mother-in-law Claudette’s farmhouse towards the top of our hill. Now in his fifties, he had been a farmer until a heart attack forced him to take early retirement. He has a ruddy face creased with laughter lines, is short and stocky with a mop of hair combed to the side and thick glasses, and is always dressed in hunting green. Whenever he saw us he would shake hands and comment on the weather. Only later when we became friends with more people in the village did we discover that he is known as ‘Monsieur Partout’ (Mr Everywhere) because he wanders round the village most of the day, stopping off to say hello to friends and neighbours over a beer or glass of red wine (depending on whether it is eight in the morning or six in the evening).

  One wintry November morning, he passed by as we returned from the supermarket in nearby Hucqueliers (which incidentally was where much of the TV series French Fields was filmed) and as usual stopped for a chat.

  ‘I think it might snow soon,’ I said.

  ‘It never snows in this village, not in decades,’ he declared firmly before marching off up the road.

  We trundled into the house. Despite having had the wood fire going since the night before, it was still very cold.

  We had, at that point, no idea what we were in for.

  Our weekend visits had become more infrequent as the winter weather set in, and it snowed despite Jean-Claude’s declaration that it wouldn’t happen, but we were determined to spend Christmas in France. Dad refused to come. ‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘Too bloody cold. I’m off to your brother’s house, nice and warm there.’

  On Christmas Eve, I finished work at lunchtime and caught a train home from London Bridge. We loaded the car with our cases and food and set off for France.

  By the time we arrived in the late afternoon it was already pitch black. All the houses in the village had their shutters closed against the chilly night and it looked like the whole place had been abandoned. Fans of The Walking Dead might have wondered if the worst had come to pass. Our route from Calais had taken us on the A16 autoroute and then through the countryside, passing a dozen little villages. We were surprised that there were so few Christmas decorations – some sad stars strung across the road here and there, a couple of lamp posts with holly tied to them – otherwise you wouldn’t know it was a celebratory time of the year.

  In our village, the only sign it was Christmas at all was at the town hall, where a line of coloured lights glowed in a lone tree, swinging wildly in a wind that was starting to howl.

  We pulled into our front garden filled with Christmas joy. We unpacked bags of luscious food and bottles of wine and champagne bought at the supermarket at Boulogne-sur-Mer, which is on the way to our house, and put the key in the door. Our festive bubble burst when we opened it and were taken aback to find it was actually colder and damper inside the house than outside. No matter, we thought. We had managed to buy some wood for our enormous fire from a man who stopped at the house with a lorry load. Getting someone to deliver, we discovered, is not always easy, as nearly everyone where we lived had tractors
or trailers and collected it themselves, and those wood suppliers who said they would deliver never arrived nine times out of ten. We’d bought 3 tonnes of logs; they were stacked up to the roof in the old pigsty in the garden, enough, we thought, to last us at least a year or two.

  Mark lit the fire and I put the kettle on, which caused the lights in the house to dim as usual. We were to discover that, unlike in the UK where you can plug appliances in and they work, in France you pay for a set supply of electricity. We were on the lowest amount, 3 kW, which meant that when we turned the kettle on at the same time as the water heater and lights, it used almost all of the supply for the house and caused the lights to dim. If you turned the hair dryer on as well, everything tripped out. It took us many torch-lit visits to the fuse box to switch it all back on again before we moaned about it to Jean-Claude and he told us that we just had to call the electricity company to increase our tariff.

  Four hours later and the house felt a little warmer but not exactly cosy. We had no TV signal but we could play DVDs and were huddled under blankets as close to the fire as we could get without actually burning, watching a film, trying to ignore the fact that it was a bit like sitting in an igloo. An early night loomed and, I have to tell you, it was not romantic: the bed felt damp, the room was frozen – in fact, the heat seemed to stop about 20 centimetres out from the wood fire.

  We spent Christmas morning driving up the hill trying to get a mobile phone signal to ring friends and family to wish them well and then returned to the house to cook dinner. As we still had no oven, it was going to be a barbecue with champagne.

  We sat in the garden with a patio heater on and laughed at how different this was to our usual Christmas Day in London. We played shuttlecocks and shot at a broom with elastic band guns and talked and talked. There were no distractions other than the cold, and nothing to demand our attention. We decided, though, that it might be best to restrict visits to the warmer months.