Our ‘Secret’ Life
Another year had slipped through our fingers. While we longed to return, we were also mindful of not wishing our lives away in the intervening months and embracing all that was wonderful about living next to the ocean in our little village on the coast. With just four weeks to go before we left on our next trip, we found ourselves in yet another surreal situation of virtually buying a car over the internet — well, through a flurried exchange of emails. As good luck would have it yet again, in a way that seems too good to be true, Jean-Claude’s friends were selling their Renault Scenic and wanted a decision by the weekend. Stuart had seen it briefly one evening just before a concert in a nearby village that he went to with Jean-Claude — so briefly, in fact, that he didn’t even have a chance to drive it and it was virtually dark. It was just a fleeting glance. I’d not even seen it all. After hiring a car for the past two years, it definitely made more sense to buy a car that we would drive every year. The barn has a tiny stone garage so we would be able to tuck it away safely.
After just a short time deliberating, we erred on the side of convenience. While we love looking at houses, buying cars is not our thing at all. We have very little knowledge about the mechanics of cars and I was also dreading the thought of starting our holiday traipsing around car dealers. This decision would save valuable time, as it meant that, rather than the week we had allocated ourselves to searching for a car, we could actually relax for a few days after arriving and get a head start on installing the IKEA cuisine. It also meant not as much pressure to buy a car, with the clock ticking on the car we had planned to hire for just a week as we looked for a car to buy.
The night we received the email asking for our imminent decision about the car, there was also the first email in weeks from Piscine Ambiance. It simply stated that the concrete had been poured in the pool and politely requested the next payment. More cheques to be sent off to France to pay for our other life. It had become a life that I rarely discussed, for we seemed to be living a life far removed from everyday reality.
Having our little house added so much pleasure to our life at home as well. We spent countless hours talking about when we were there, what we did and who we met. Then there were the hours and hours talking about what we would do when we were there next time. It was so finely tuned that, for our next trip, we had arranged for Jean-Claude to pick us up at the station in Brive on our arrival from Paris, and we even stopped at a supermarché to buy some food. I have to say we felt fairly pleased with our planning and attention to all the small details. We were very close to hiring a car — down to such fine timing that we discovered the car hire company closed a mere ten minutes after our train arrived. Then the offer came in to buy the Renault. If we had paid for the hire care there would not have been a refund, so it all came down to the final ten minutes on a flight and all the connections, from the other side of the world!
On the eve of departure, winter had well and truly started at home. The ocean was grey and angry, and wild winds were whipping the coastline. Once again, we felt profoundly grateful to be setting off to luxuriate in another French summer: one made even longer as it doesn’t get dark until ten each evening. Perhaps though, as last time, it actually meant even longer hours to renovate? One thing I love about the closing of the summer days, when we do return, is our final digestif of the delicious walnut liqueur we had discovered. As with all our meals throughout the day, we know we will resume our place on our curved little steps and reflect, yet again, on how glorious it is to be in Cuzance.
New French Friends
I always find it extraordinary how seemingly chance encounters and apparently casual conversations are preludes to wonderful friendships. There is no hint at the time that they will possibly extend beyond a polite ‘Bonjour’ and faltering chat. And yet, in just a mere three weeks, we developed two close friendships that we are sure will endure for years and strengthen through our emails and each return visit. It was, after all, serendipitous that our petite maison was on the road, for it brought us not only Jean-Claude but also Gerard and Dominique Murat. We called them the ‘French renovating couple’, for we were able to deduce from the times that they drove by each day and from some information — gleaned, as always, from Jean-Claude — that they too had bought a house in the village and were working on it. As with everyone who passed by (hard to know if they were locals or tourists at times) I always enthusiastically waved at everyone. One day, Gerard and Dominique stopped to warmly welcome us to the village. There was an instant bond, despite the language limitations, as they inspected what we had been doing in the little house and had a tour of the property. Our mutual renovating was an immediate connection. The profound difference was our style. On the way home after a hard day’s work, they both looked superbly elegant and Dominique’s chic stylishness was worlds removed from my appalling ripped overalls. However, they seemed to be able to graciously overlook our lack of sartorial style as they invited us for an apéritif at the house they had nearly finished renovating at the other end of the village.
We had read so much about how it would take a very long time — if ever — to be invited into a French home, so we felt hugely honoured to be so readily accepted. However, there had been a few awkward social moments with an English woman from the village who had also dropped in to make us welcome and invited us to her home. We were certainly very grateful and yet we somehow didn’t click with her at all. I think it had something to do with the fact that, when I greeted her at the door in the midst of rubble and paint-stained clothes, there wasn’t a glimmer of acknowledgment of the work we had done in such a short time after arriving. Her intent seemed to be to talk about all her relatives in Australia and where they lived. It did appear that she was perhaps intent on extending the places that she had to stay. Certainly there were none of the usual questions you might expect, like how had we come to buy our house in Cuzance or how long we were staying. So, while we were grateful that she had made the effort to drop in, we knew it was a friendship we didn’t want to pursue — even if we didn’t have any new friends at all, yet you come to a point in your life where you realise it is possible to make such choices. However, it is never our intention to be rude or hurt anyone, and we were mindful that the village is very small. We politely declined an invitation to dinner, stating that we were simply too busy working on the house. It meant that when we visited Jean-Claude and Françoise, and then later Dominique and Gerard, we felt that we had to make our way very stealthily through the village as we didn’t want to offend Betty Miller if she glimpsed us.
Real Estate and Technology
The advent of the internet has changed the landscape of travel enormously for us. Back in the eighties, when I did the classic mid-twenties ‘take a year off and go to Europe’, all I needed was a backpack and a hefty volume of Let’s Go Europe. Now, not only did we virtually buy a house over the internet — well, there was a long flight involved as well, but the Web narrowed down our choices and made it all far more possible — while all our arrangements to meet friends were also made through email. Just like with the pool and buying the car, no phone calls were ever needed.
In fact, without the abundant number of French real estate sites, buying our house would have been impossible. Finding Kim’s website was also a huge advantage, as it made all our communication and the whole process so much easier in many respects. A strange peculiarity of French agents is that the ads for properties don’t indicate precisely where the houses are located. It took us a while to discover why that is. Apparently, properties are listed with a number of agents. The closest they will come to revealing any details at all is:
Set in a charming quiet village a few kilometres from Montcuq. The area is situated north of Toulouse, south of Cahors, within a triangle of major towns such as Agen and Moissac. Popular villages in our area include Touiffailles, Roquecor and Saint-Maurin.
Well, it gives you an idea of the département and surrounding area, but where is it exact
ly? It was a huge advantage to discover Kim’s Century 21 site, for she tells you precisely the condition of the property:
Hope you’ve finished your lunch before seeing this property! ‘Beurk’, as they say in France! They come in all shapes and sizes and some in better condition than others. None so bad as this one! I’m looking forward to meeting the person that is interested in this one.
Kim’s ads will tell you, for example, ‘A spacious house on the outskirts of Souillac.’ So while her ads are certainly very honest and more direct, nevertheless, in keeping with the French real estate way, the exact location is still not precisely revealed.
It was only through a number of phone calls, and the fact that Stuart was flying from Australia, that Kim made an exception and told him the names of the villages for the properties he had shortlisted. It was all very fascinating.
To prevent you from simply driving to investigate whether the house is actually what you are searching for, and then rejecting it from a mere drive-by and cursory inspection, the agents are committed to taking you to see the property in the hope that, as a result of their persuasive charm and extolling the virtues of the house, you will recklessly abandon all the criteria on your extensive checklist and fall in love with the home. Thus, the ad will read:
Delightful old station master’s cottage, some renovating required but ready to live in. Idyllic rural setting, the perfect holiday escape yet with a town just an easy stroll to wander the weekly markets.
The novice will be enticed to make an appointment to look at the property and, like real estate ads the world over, the house will be a ruin literally on the railway line so that the station master can simply reach out his bedroom window to change the signal. It will be engulfed by ivy, there will be no bathroom at all, and the ‘easy stroll’ will not account for the fact that it is up and down a number of excessively steep hills. The market is only in summer and the rest of the year the only facilities are a two-hour round trip to do the weekly shopping. It will take a whole day to view just one or two properties that by no means remotely come close to what you are looking for. Kim’s ads told the exact truth about both the state of the property and the exact location. So this was why Stuart was able to have a very real shortlist, as we were already familiar with the area from our stay there the year before. After just a few weeks the previous summer, we felt that we had truly found ‘our’ place in France. Each time we travelled and stayed in another département, we were constantly drawn back to the area in and around the Dordogne. In just a very short time, the rolling green hills, golden-stone houses and tiny villages had taken a very strong hold on our hearts. In fact, when we were invited by Sylvie to the Pyrenees, it was extraordinary how, as the landscape became harsher and more dry and the architecture significantly changed, our hearts sank, for it wasn’t the France we had come to love in such a very short time.
Stuart was able to see six houses in just two days. Kim’s one strange characteristic was that she must be the only real estate agent in the whole world who can’t drive. She actually confessed this to us later, as her ploy with all her potential clients was to simply ask, ‘Is it alright if you drive?’ Simple question, hard to refuse. And so Stuart found himself driving through the snow on unfamiliar winding country lanes to see the properties.
My Notebook and The Lists
This is an example from my notebook, all very hastily scrawled to construct each day’s myriad activities.
Monday 12 July 2010:Stuart – hardware – undercoat, wheelbarrow, enquire about van hire. BUY BREAD.
Wall.
Ring Erik about bed legs, van?
Ring about grass, call roofer.
Decision re table for Tuesday after Troc visit.
Start measuring kitchen, look at IKEA catalogues, etc.
Thus, this shorthand translates to a full day of activity — again. How does it translate? Well, most of Stuart’s days, despite our meticulous organisation, started with a trip to the bricolage for more supplies plus a quick dash to the boulangerie for more pain for lunch, plus the daily treat. A day in France simply wasn’t worth living without a tantalising pastry every single day. How well I remember our first trip, when the biggest daily decision was which pastry to have that day. Or, would we be extremely decadent and indulge in two? Maybe a breakfast croissant, followed by another pâtisserie delight for afternoon tea? At least renovating is one way to have rigorous physical activity to offset the consumption of French pastries.
The apparently simple word ‘wall’ in fact denoted the question ‘Will we have time today to start knocking down the wall that divides what will be the space between the kitchen and living room?’ This job in itself in a ‘normal’ day would be a huge undertaking, but here, when each day flows rapidly through your fingers, it became yet another task to try to simply fit in. How knocking down a wall can become reduced to just one word in a list is now impossible to even grasp. However, that’s the world of renovating, especially when your timeframe is an absurd three weeks.
Life at Home
I frequently drove to work consumed by my own secret little world. As I drove along the coastline there would be a bubble of excitement inside me. My whole secret world would swell up and engulf me in the joy and sheer wonder of it all. I never lost my sense of extraordinary gratitude to be living such a privileged life — especially because it had all been so utterly unexpected. Then I would arrive at school and be engulfed by the demands of the day. After just one year of having our petite maison, it was no longer just a holiday but what would become, even more so over the years, another whole way of life. As I walked along the corridors at school I encountered colleagues who realised I was about to depart again and they would wistfully enquire, ‘How many more weeks?’ I would raise two fingers to indicate my jubilation that it was a mere two weeks.
Some mornings, when I was up spectacularly early, there would be a hasty exchange of emails between me and Jean-Claude. It was evening where he was, and every single time I had to tear myself away. No matter how early I was up, I still ended up rushing to get ready for another day at school. One morning, just a few weeks before leaving, I checked my email to find that he and Françoise had just seen their friends whom we were buying the car from. When they arrived for their apéritif, the Coronels were in their other car; now that we had bought theirs, they were no longer choosing to drive it. We were quite staggered by their degree of thoughtfulness. In the next email, Jean-Claude told me that the Coronels were also selling some furniture at brocante prices and they wondered if we might be interested in seeing some photos. As furniture was very high on our list — that is, we virtually didn’t have any furniture at all — this was yet another element of our story that seemed simply too good to be true. While the furniture didn’t turn out to be quite what we were looking for, it was nevertheless another astonishing element: the fact that we could have bought furniture so easily and, once again, by email.
The Holiday of Lists
Looking back at my notebook, after just a year, two things struck me. One, what a ridiculous amount of work we tackled — though, in truth, I already realised that, both at the time and on reflection. Secondly, what on earth do all the hastily scrawled instructions for each day even mean? Here are some more examples of the frenetic shorthand checklists that we constructed each day around.
July 13th: BRIVE — Troc, chandelier, table, etc, bedroom armoire 130 x 60 max. Etam. CREDIT CARD. WORK a.m. ERICK — van, bed legs. CONTINUE KITCHEN planning. Supermarché: mop/square bucket, cheese, soap, walnut liquor, lemon. Hardware: white gloss, roller handle.
This entry translates as: Today we will go into Brive, a twenty-minute drive away and my first visit. We had heard about a Troc that had a special sale once a month, and were determined to track it down to find, yes, a chandelier for the kitchen. I remember it was quite tricky to find the shop but we eventually did, only to discover it was the wrong day for the sale and they were getting everything ready. Somehow we talked them into
letting us look around briefly — not quite sure yet again how this worked with my very limited French — but they graciously accepted our request. It was never a leisurely browse on such rare occasions that we actually left the house to shop. No, we would always race around in search of treasure to scoop up before moving on to the next item on the never-ending list. We were excited to unearth a chandelier for only five euros — a complete bargain. Of course, in my haste, I had not noticed there was a piece missing until we got home. I also managed to grab a bargain two-piece stylish linen ensemble for a mere six euros.
A further translation of the list for this day reminds me that just one word, Etam, spelt for me a ‘whole’ forty minutes racing round one of my favourite French shops. I learnt very quickly that, on June 30 every year, Solde season starts. I may not know much French but I do know this means ‘sale’! It was an exceptionally hot day and I struggled in the changeroom to try on masses of winter clothes without the benefit of air conditioning. Conscious that Stuart was impatiently waiting in a nearby café to continue with the day of lists, I frantically asked the assistants to check the sizes and prices as, of course, I didn’t have my glasses. Quite how I accomplished getting sizes and prices checked with my limited French is another source of astonishment for me. I can only say again that my sense of the dramatic is always a significant advantage. (I am also quite sure that I am a source of considerable amusement.) A bag full of bargains and then off to two more huge Trocs in Brive. I didn’t even have a chance to look at my beautiful French clothes for about two weeks. Simply far too busy every single day.
Our House is Not in Paris Page 6