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Renovations
The house we bought when we first moved to France, was in a small village of 65 inhabitants, and a million miles in difference from London, where we had lived most of our lives.
The building was derelict, and in order to stay in the house, we had to buy a tent. We erected it in what was going to be a bedroom. Until such time as we got a kitchen, and at least one room finished, that was going to be our home for the next few months.
The ground floor of the house had earth floors, and the villagers had filled the building with rubbish over 25 years, hardly expecting anyone to want to live there.
Our first problem came, when we ended our first day’s work. Wanting to shower, I made the decision that we didn’t want water running over the earth floors, and making them so muddy that we couldn’t work the next day. It was eight in the evening, and completely dark, and so, I stripped my dirty clothing off, and using the basics of a garden hose, I popped out into the garden to shower.
Our neighbours were indoors having their evening meal, and I was enjoying some cleanliness, when I was suddenly bathed in floodlights. My neighbour halfway through the meal, had decided that she wanted something from the refrigerator, that was kept under an awning at the back of her house. You can imagine my panic to re enter our house without being seen.
Realising the impracticality of trying to shower under a hosepipe in the garden, we elected to buy a bath, but in modern times, it is almost impossible to find an old tin bath, and so opted to buy a baby’s plastic bath, and that served us for about two months. A description of its use would not do it justice, and probably even cause offence, so you will have to use your imagination as to how a man weighing 220 pounds was able to bathe.
We were a lot younger then, and having lived like that once. I would never do it again. When I spoke to Eliane, our neighbour, some years later about my shower in the garden, and the possibility that I might have offended her, so early in our residence, she swore that she had seen nothing, but she was always a very good diplomat throughout the ten years we lived as neighbours.
After ten very happy, but tiring years
we decided that it would be prudent, with regard to the
approach of old age, to move to a larger village where there
was shops. And so we reluctantly put our old house up
for sale and within three days it was sold. That was a huge
problem to us as we had not looked for its replacement. A
trawl through the many estate agents advertisements, came up
with a modern bungalow, or villa as the French call it. It
was only seven years old, but had been very neglected by its
owner a wine farmer from the Champagne area, who had bought
it for his family as a holiday house. Having said we were
not going to renovate another house we started all over
again, and again we discovered that our neighbours were
exactly what you would wish for.
Often when I read the British Press,
they talk about the French, as if we are at war with them,
but our experiences have been nothing but positive. We have
been shown nothing but friendliness and helpfulness. Many
people say that French
bureaucracy
is a nightmare, but once we explain
whatever we had wanted to the French Civil Service they have
been more than helpful. I think that perhaps many ex pats
have problems with French administration because they expect
it to be the same as in their country of origin, and forget
that this is France. We are guests in their country, and
therefore have to do things according to their procedures.
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