When I moved to rural France I had this idea of somehow becoming “the real me” again, after losing myself – utterly – in the suffocating grip of a teaching career. To be the me that I was in my 20s, but with sunshine and space, and wisdom and experience of life to give me that extra perspective… In many ways, I’ve done exactly that. Being here has helped me to see who exactly I am, at this point in my life, and that can be quite difficult to handle, but at the same time, truly liberating.
When we first arrived – newly-weds, you might say (vintage ones) since we’d only married 4 months earlier. Newly-weds with and elderly black and white cat (I’ve no idea how old he was) and a 7month old Golden Retriever puppy. We’d driven here in a small-ish car, all the way from Umbria, stopping for 3 nights en route, and with 6 weeks worth of clothes and possessions filling the car. The last stop, between notary and new house, was at a supermarket, to buy cat litter, pet food and a picnic lunch. When we arrived, the woodland – our woodland, which we had to drive through – looked stunning. It was a perfect autumn day, the end of October, and the leaves on the trees looked spectacular against the glorious blue sky. I think that’s when it hit me – we had actually done it; we had bought a French farmhouse in deepest Charente. Now, 10 years previously I had bought a small Umbrian cottage in a little hamlet and I have to confess that nothing – so far – in my house-purchasing experience would ever compete with the way I felt on that particular day – when the estate agent handed me the keys of my little Umbrian cottage. However….the feeling I had as we walked into the French house came a close second…
I was expecting it to feel cold, perhaps damp, a little unfriendly even….a little haunted?! I was expecting large beetles, a nest of snakes, a few mice…. It is, after all, surrounded by farmland, with no neighbours, no sign of human life for miles around…and I DO have a rather vivid imagination, at the best of times. So, we walked through the hallway into what the estate agent had called “The Great Hall” a term meant to impress, I expect, but which had initially put me off viewing because of the image it gave me, of suits of armour, dank corners, cobwebs and draughts. Today, though, that was most certainly not true. Today, the autumn sun was pouring in through the windows and huge barn doors. There was no furniture whatsoever, “just” a large stone fireplace, spectacular views, and warmth; it immediately felt homely, despite the grand scale. I should say, to give you an idea of the scale, that this “Great Hall”, this main sitting/dining room, is 100 metres square and has a mezzanine and cathedral roof suspended high above. Leading on from this room – the salon, I suppose, since we are in France – was the kitchen, off to the right at the far end of this room; again, a huge space with high-beamed ceiling and windows/doors on every wall. We let the cat out of his basket in the hallway so we didn’t lose him, but let the puppy off her lead in the salon and she ran up and down, up and down, over and over again until she finally stopped to drink some water…no doubt running off the 2 days journey we’d had, travelling by car from Italy.
We had not a stick of furniture – ours was due to arrive in 10 days – except 2 rickety single beds kindly left by the vendor, a single bedside table and a bench, from Ikea which we found in one of the bathrooms. We sat on the bench in front of the barn doors and ate a baguette each – our first “meal” in our French farmhouse. Afterwards, we made sure the cat was comfortable, bundled the poor pup back in the boot, and set off to purchase the essentials we were hoping to bring from Italy, but which, in the end, didn’t fit in the car:
Vacuum cleaner
Duvet
Portable heater
I’d booked a B&B for the night, expecting the new house not to feel clean enough, warm enough, to sleep in that night, but I cancelled it because it felt so very different from what I was expecting. It felt cosy, despite the size, not too overwhelming at all……though we couldn’t work out how to get the boiler working for warmth as the October evening drew in. We were disappointed to find that the bedroom which was meant to be ours – with a large balcony and east-facing views – had no electric light and it’s ensuite had no light either, plus the wc wouldn’t flush. So, we found another bedroom to settle down in, pushed the two beds together and made them up as one with the bedding we’d brought from Italy, plus the new duvet. We lit a small lamp – also from Italy – and found something to hang our clothes on – one of those metal open “wardrobes” you often find in inexpensive B&Bs. By the time it was bedtime, it looked cosy and welcoming – the dark beams and sloping ceiling and our excitement at finally being there, masked the grubbiness. We took BOTH pets along with us – it was, after all, a huge (30 metre square) room and they had their own beds…and we didn’t want to lose them in the rambling house.