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Introduction
Running a holiday business in France was a dream that we have shared for some time. When, in 2002, Richard left his job in timber sales and Ianthe’s freelance work as a management consultant began to dry up, we felt the time was right to turn our dream into reality.
We found our French house surprisingly quickly – the right size and in remarkably good condition, especially as it had been empty for over a year. Despite a downturn in the UK housing market, we had a buyer for our UK house within three months.
So, by the spring of 2003, we were ready to sever our ties with the UK and take a leap into the unknown. With Richard’s sales skills and Ianthe’s management training, and a commitment by both of us to a lot of hard work, we were confident that we could make a success of our venture.
What follows are the highlights, month by month, of our progress in getting our business up and running and our experiences of life in rural France.
The First Year (May 2003 - May 2004)
May 2003
After months of waiting, the UK house is sold and our move to France is on. Three heart-stopping moments occur in the final 48 hours:1. We take our two cats, Freddie and his brother Percy, to the vet for their final check-up and issue of the export licence, but are informed that the paperwork hasn’t arrived from DEFRA. No paperwork, no licence
– no licence, no Freddie so no Chezfreddie. After some searching it turns up, having been filed under a different name.
2. The day before departure, a Sunday, we discover that the brake-lights on Richard’s elderly Volvo, which will be our only transport to and in France, aren’t working. A panic search takes us to the only local garage open, where the mechanic makes it his life’s mission to fix the brakes. Richard gives him £30 for his efforts and he gives £10 back.
3. The morning of departure, we are up at 0500 for a 0800 sailing from Portsmouth. A sleepy Percy is bundled into the boot, but there’s no sign of Freddie. Another panic search takes us nearly to 0600, when he is spotted watching us crawling in the delphiniums from the front window. After a mad dash to Portsmouth, Richard makes the boat with 20 minutes to spare.
Ianthe stays behind to supervise the furniture removal, which by comparison goes like clockwork. On flying out later that week she finds Richard is still a nervous wreck from the journey, and the cats aren’t too happy either. With only a few words of French, Richard had never driven on his own through France before. The two cats howled for the whole 6 hour journey, and he had our computer on board as well.
The first few days seem unreal, as if we’re on holiday. We sit in the sun listening to the golden orioles and eating cherries off the tree. There’s not much we can do until our belongings arrive a week later.
We are invited in for an aperitif by our next door neighbours, a
delightful, elderly ex-farming couple. Despite Ianthe’s reasonable
command of French, the local accent proves challenging. However, our
neighbours tend to tell us everything at least two or three times, so
it eventually sinks in. They have lived in the village all their lives,
are puzzled by the English mania for uprooting. They keep asking if we
are homesick.
June 2003
Our furniture arrives in a huge van that practically drives into our neighbours’ front room trying to reach our house. They are quite unconcerned, and are more interested to know whether any of the contents are worth having. The first thing we unpack is the tool box in order to fit a cat flap. The cats can now venture outside and experience the local wildlife, which they find totally baffling. Even the French-English dictionary doesn’t help.
After three meetings we are now on first name terms with our
next door
neighbours and have sampled Aristide’s home-made ‘Pineau de Charentes’,
which is definitely superior to sherry. He recommends a local plumber,
who turns up promptly to give us an estimate on converting all 6
bedrooms to en-suite and extending the central heating to the back
parts of the house. He looks every inch a professional, down to the
blue overalls, but even he seems taken aback by the scale of the job we
are asking him to do. After he has had a tour of every room, he
cautiously asks: “C’est tout?”
Our first big purchases are a rotary lawnmower (in a fetching shade of
yellow), and a large washing machine. It’s only when you find yourself
washing sheets in the bath that you really appreciate such appliances.
Getting the garden under control is a back-breaking job as it’s
suffered nearly two years of neglect. Mowing the orchard alone takes
Richard 10 hours, which he does non-stop (clearly not into the French
way of doing things yet).
After two weeks, Percy catches his first rat, which he leaves in our
bedroom. Sadly, the following night, he goes out and does not return.
Richard digs out a photo and calls on every house in the village. The
maire’s wife helps him put up a notice on the village board, and at the
same time teaches him a new word he’d rather not have learned: “perdu”,
which means lost.
Meanwhile Freddie, not to be outdone, catches his first lizard and,
finding it not to his taste, thoughtfully leaves the half-chewed
remains in the downstairs loo in case it is to ours.
We experience our first village social, a Sunday walk or cycle-ride
followed by an aperitif under the lime trees by the village chapel. We
discover that such events are an excuse for a general booze-up, with
home-made wine, Pineau and Cognac liberally passed around the table. It
is a good way to get to know the neighbours if you can remember much
about it afterwards.
July 2003
It’s not long before the offers of kittens start coming. After turning down one offer, another neighbour arrives. “Was your lost cat petit?” she asks. Ianthe explains that he was ‘tres grand’, (Freddie and Percy each weigh well over one stone, or 7kg). Nevertheless she is still presented with a tiny, tabby bundle from the car. The kitten is a bag of bones but has a look that would melt the hardest of hearts. Freddie inspects it with no more than mild curiosity, so the kitten stays, and a hugely relieved neighbour departs. She is named Fifi LaBelle.
The weather becomes seriously hot (over 40 degrees during the day).
While we wilt, Fred decides to find himself a new home in the barn,
making his bed in the old manger (thereby bringing new meaning to an
old Christmas carol). Besides, being a dignified old gent of 11 years,
he finds Fifi’s growing energy and enthusiasm for bouncing all over him
is all too much.
Work on the house starts in earnest. Richard demolishes the wall
separating the bath from the downstairs loo, the idea being to build a
new partition to create a small bathroom and a separate utility room.
Before the wall can be rebuilt we have our first visitors from the UK.
They are highly amused by the al-fresco arrangements, and the need to
climb over the bath to wash their hands.
August 2003
After a brief respite the heat wave returns, and we swelter for most of the month. The region escapes the disasters such as forest fires and overflowing mortuaries that affect other parts of France. The worst effects seem to be that our neighbour’s hens, from whom we buy our eggs, are laying smaller eggs than usual. She gives us extra to compensate.Richard’s father arrives to help with the construction work, and amazing progress is made. Our downstairs bathroom now has a wall again, and five of the six en-suites have their framework in place.
To our surprise the plumber, who originally gave us a start date of late
September, arrives mid-month and announces that he is starting the following
Monday. So much for the whole of France being on holiday in August. The noise is
deafening as his team drill holes though solid walls and floors for the pipework,
but by the end of the month a complex network of pipes is in place.
Although our vegetable plot is fallow this year we are kept well supplied with
fruit and vegetables by our neighbours. Our English neighbours supply us with so
many French beans that we are obliged to go out and buy a large capacity freezer
to store them all (our ‘cave’, which will be ideal for storing such produce, is
currently full of half-connected pipes and plumbing tools) .
Our missing cat Percy is not forgotten. One day a couple arrive at the house to
say they have had a stray tabby, “très grand”, living with them for a month. We
show them photos of Percy but they are not sure whether it’s the same cat, so we
follow them to their house in a neighbouring village to check. Needless to say
it’s not Percy and we regretfully decline an offer to take him anyway – Monsieur
and Madame are due to return next week to Alsace, where they live for the rest
of the year, and Madame is getting somewhat emotional about the fate of ‘Fidel’,
as they have called him. We part amidst tears and embraces.
Meanwhile Fifi grows from kitten into small cat, and, having learned how to use
the cat flap and had all her inoculations, now spends much time out of doors.
Fred is having to get used to her standard greeting, which consists of taking a
run at him from a distance of twenty metres and launching herself onto his back.
Fifi is fascinated by the garden wildlife, and we too are fascinated by a colony
of Elephant lime-hawk moths that visit the garden at dusk. They feed like
hummingbirds, which they are close to in size, off the red flowers that the
French call “Belle de Nuit”. We feel privileged to be witnesses to their nightly
display, and do not miss television at all.
September 2003
The month starts with a distinctly autumnal feel: while the days are still sunny and warm, the nights are cool. Fred moves back into the house. It’s good to see the old codger back, even if he does occupy most of the bed. We manage to finish decorating the lounge, so at least there is one habitable room in the house. Fifi approves of our choice of furniture.
There is a change in the work pattern: Richard’s father departs and Ianthe’s
parents arrive for a two-week stay. The plumbers also depart for the time being,
leaving us to finish the walls and floors in three of the en-suite shower rooms
before they return to install the showers and basins. They suggest an interval
of two to three weeks, which is a somewhat daunting prospect given the current
state of the en-suites.
The air of relative calm is thus tinged with a slight sense of panic.
Our next-door neighbour, Aristide, brings us a
cornucopia of peaches, hazelnuts and grapes from his garden. He is heavily
involved in the ‘vendange’, the grape harvest of the villagers’ vines which
seems to be a communal affair and an excuse for much eating and drinking. Even
the fact that he manages to slice off the end of one finger in the harvesting
machinery does not prevent Aristide from hosting the annual ‘vendange’ dinner.
We subsequently pay a visit next door and ask solicitously about Aristide’s
finger. The X-ray photographs are promptly whisked out, and we make appropriate
tut-tutting noises.
After all Aristide’s gifts of food we had felt obliged to return the compliment,
and decided that it should be something ‘typically English’. So after some
pondering Ianthe and her mum concoct a treacle tart. Despite being made with
French bread and ‘paté brisé’, it tastes remarkably good, and is very well
received next door.
October 2003
In early October we receive our authorisation from the Maire to build our swimming pool. There had been a delay, owing to mistakes in the original application, and we had begun to give up hope of getting the pool in this year. We phone the swimming pool rep with the good news, and expect him the following Monday to tell us when work can begin. Instead, a team of ground workers arrive with a low-loader bearing a monstrous CAT excavator. Its manouevres into the garden become a source of great interest: our next door neighbour’s wife, Charlotte, who is house-bound, even has a chair brought out into the street so she can watch the proceedings.The digger starts transforming the landscape with bewildering speed: by the end of the day the swimming pool is dug, and the spoil has created a miniature Cairngorms at the bottom of the garden. A succession of neighbours wander in to watch, give advice or collect the enormous earthworms that are unearthed.
Aristide, our next door neighbour, who arrives with
his bucket, explains that the worms are favourite food for the eels that inhabit
the river. Although the fishing season does not re-open until March, the
ten-inch worms will be released into his own garden and be dug up again next
spring. To what extent the worms co-operate with this arrangement is unclear to
us.
Meanwhile, the race to finish building and tiling the en-suites so we can get
the plumbers back in for their next phase of work. We have a strong incentive to
get the work done as quickly as possible, as we have our first cold spell of the
season, with temperatures dipping to below zero. There is no central heating in
the back bedrooms: part of the plumbers’ next job is to install radiators that
are frustratingly sitting in boxes downstairs. While we work in overcoats and
gloves, Fred, who seems immune to the cold, discovers that wall insulation makes
a cosy bed.
The month finishes with Halloween, which is a well organized event. During the
afternoon a group of children in Halloween costumes are escorted by adults round
the village to collect sweets, while in the evening there is a soiree in the
village hall. Every house is bedecked with hollowed-out pumpkins with candles
inside, and carved faces that vary in ghoulishness. We are invited to make cakes
for the event, so Ianthe decides to produce another treacle tart. This is
greeted by the villagers with some curiosity, but it is all consumed.
November 2003
It’s amazing to think we have been here six months and, so far, are still on schedule to open next May. Real progress is being made on all fronts, and jobs have been completed that, when we started, we had neither the skills nor tools for. With our newly acquired skills and tools, forty sheets of plaster board, sixty lengths aluminum studding, seven rolls of sound insulation, six doors and frames and forty square metres of tiles are being transformed into six en-suite bathrooms and a new toilet.It seems as if for the past few months all we have done is get up, put on our dirty work clothes and get down to DIY. A day off is a visit to a builders’ merchant when we run out of materials (except of course when the rugby World Cup was on – there are limits!) It’s not exactly Peter Mayle’s idyllic France, but this is real life and we love seeing our dream becoming reality. And we did get out enough to enjoy the magnificent Autumn colours in the garden.
Both cats went down with throat infections this month. In Fred’s case, he was sufficiently poorly to merit a trip to the vets for a shot of antibiotics. He made a remarkable recovery, and on a follow-up visit was pronounced by the vet to be “un très beau chat”. Fred undoubtedly understands this, as he officially became a French cat after three months here. Unfortunately we were too busy to mark the occasion: perhaps some kind of swearing in ceremony and playing the Marseillaise might have been appropriate. Fifi, meanwhile, has lost none of her customary bounce.
Our elderly Volvo, that we doubted would even get us down here, is also on the
way to becoming a French car, and we are delighted that she has passed the
Controle Technique (equivalent of the MOT test, except that it only takes place
once every two years). She is a remarkable work-horse, having made many trips
groaning with boxes of tiles, sacks of cement, lengths of timber or kitchen
sinks.
The best news of all is that the swimming pool is almost finished, and we now have an 11m by 5m patch of sky-blue in the garden.
Admittedly, it’s surrounded by a sea of mud – not the
most inviting prospect - but transforming that will be a job for the Spring.
December 2003
The first indication that Christmas is approaching comes early in the month, when branches of Christmas tree appear on every telephone pole in the village. A few days later these sprout parcels in colourful paper (see photograph), thanks to the efforts of the maire’s wife and children.
Apart from the decorations it is hard to feel Christmassy, as we enjoy many days of bright sunshine, combined with the mild climate that avoids the snowfalls experienced elsewhere in France. The quality of the light here is something that we still marvel at: soft but luminous during the day, with stunning sunrises and clear, brilliantly starlit nights.
In the house we have a new kitchen installed. This does not go entirely to plan.
When we assemble the units, which were delivered a couple of months earlier, we
find various bits missing. After the kitchen rep at the store where they were
purchased has been beaten about the head a few times, the parts miraculously
materialize in time for the fitter to install. But we then discover, only after
they have been cut and fitted, that the two lengths of worktop supplied are in
different finishes. This time the store is unable to rectify the mistake
straight away, and a replacement worktop in the correct finish will not be
available until late January. So we now have a half finished kitchen, although
this is still a great improvement on what was there before. We have learned that
getting things done here requires a great deal of patience and not a little
persistence.
Our own relentless work schedule slackens a little
this month, but we still have little time for seasonal festivities. We promise
ourselves that next year will be very different.
January 2004
January is evidently the rainy season: early in the month we are battered by gales and heavy rain from the Atlantic. The river level rises to the point where the ditches round our garden can no longer drain. Consequently, a rather splendid lake appears where the lower part of our garden used to be.
We also discover that two extremely large toads have taken up residence in the
swimming pool. They are summarily evicted and offered alternative accommodation
in the admittedly less salubrious ditch. To our relief, however, they seem to
accept the inferior lodging and do not reappear.
The plumbers return this month and install the radiators in the back part of the
house: we have heat at last! It takes some time to adjust, and we find ourselves
sweltering working in the en-suites. These are also slowly inching towards
completion, with electricity connected and ventilation fans installed. One
evening we discover that the plumbers have left behind a large worm (of the kind
beloved by our next door neighbour – see October 2003) in a plastic pot in one
of the bedrooms. We wonder whether this is some essential plumbing aid or if the
plumbers are in league with the local fishermen. We never do find out, as the
worm disappears before we get round to enquiring.
Fifi has her neutering operation this month – despite hints from some of our
English neighbours that they would love one of her kittens, we feel that there
are enough unwanted kittens in the village already. Besides, if Fifi started
inviting all the local tomcats round, Fred would no doubt feel duty bound to
defend his territory and risk coming off the worse (he’s run up enough vet’s
bills already). After the op Fifi is sparko for a couple of days, but then her
customary bounce quickly returns. So any hopes that Fred might have had that it
would calm her down are short-lived.
February 2004
The month starts with Candlemas, a date when pancakes
are traditionally eaten in France. Our next door neighbour’s daughter very
kindly brings us a plateful to try (à deguster). Needless to say, the French do
not miss the opportunity for more pancakes on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), when
the children also come round in costumes (as at Halloween) to collect goodies
from the villagers.
The weather is back to front this month. In the first week the temperature
soars, we are out in the garden in t-shirts, and the local TV news shows people
in bikinis on the beach.
The garden starts to burst into life and we devote a bit of time to getting it
into shape. Our nearest English neighbours lend us their rotovator: a fearsome
beast which makes short work of the veg patch, and we make a start by planting
some raspberry canes.
When it comes to gardening, much attention is still paid in France to the phases
of the moon. The general rule is to prune or prepare ground during a waning
moon, and to plant during a waxing moon. We attempt to follow this rule,
although a drop in temperature during the month brings hard frosts which make
planting impossible. Right at the end of the month, we have the first snow of
the winter.
Snow is generally a rare event in this region, and it
doesn’t last long. The days are clear and sunny and even during the coldest
spell we can feel the warmth of the sun.
In the house, our main achievement this month is to get the dining-room
decorated. We are pleasantly surprised by how quickly this is done, as it is a
huge room. No sooner have we finished, however, when the wooden mantelpiece
catches fire, blackening the newly painted wall above the fireplace. So another
week is spent rebuilding the fireplace and fireproofing the replacement hardwood
mantelpiece. Despite being unscheduled work, the final result is definitely an
improvement.
March 2004
This is very much a ‘stop-start’ month, both in terms of the weather and progress on the house. Outside, occasional days of warm, spring-like temperatures are following by bouts of cold with sub-zero overnight temperatures. Consequently, plants and trees burst into flower one day, only to go on hold for the following week. So not much gardening is done this month. Similarly, indoors we have occasional spurts of activity followed by prolonged periods waiting for the plumbers to return before we can progress further. They have a habit of turning up when least expected, such as 0800h on a Friday morning, causing us to hastily abandon plans for a leisurely lie-in. By the end of the month we are tantalizingly close to finishing the en-suites, but the final finishing touches seem to take forever. Our regular visits to the second-hand furniture shops continue to produce some excellecnt bargains, although invariably the pieces that we buy require some restoration work.
The lengthening days mean that this can be an evening job after the main decorating work has been done for the day.
We also have our first guests this month – on a non-paying basis, as none of the rooms is quite ready. This is a very useful exercise for us, as the ‘dry-run’ enables us to identify the gaps (small items such as trays, jugs, coffee pots). Our guests also give us some valuable and very positive feedback. We thoroughly enjoy the visit, and look forward to hosting guests on a regular basis.
April 2004
Spring is definitely here. The swifts are back by Easter, wheeling round the
lime tree in the garden, and village lotteries proliferate like the cowslips by
the roadside. The prizes on offer reflect local ways of life: along with the DVD
players and sewing machines, we could be the lucky winners of two half pigs or
an electric concrete mixer. There is also a tantalizing ‘super lot surprise’,
which we speculate might contain sewing thread, a bag of cement and the
unmentionable parts of the pigs.
The builders start work on what will be the pool house. Their arrival coincides
with a period of heavy rain, and their use of a JCB to shift pallets of breeze
blocks quickly turns the garden, yet again, into a quagmire.
No sooner does the weather improve than they disappear, becoming as elusive as
the hoopoe which is spotted in the garden. A phone call to the builder promises
that work will resume ‘fin de semaine’, which we are quickly learning means
‘next week – maybe’.
However the plumbers, bless them, having been told by Ianthe that the work needs
to be finished by the end of April, manage to complete all the work this month –
the last two shower doors are fitted on 30 April.
Even better news is that we have our first paying guest this month, even though
we are not yet open for business. A retired Dutchman, who is on the pilgrim
route to Santiago de Compostela, turns up on our doorstep one night absolutely
soaked and frozen, having cycled through two hours of heavy rain. Our
circumstances are hardly ideal – the second phase of the kitchen refit is
finally taking place so the kitchen is in chaos, and Ianthe is suffering from a
severe throat infection, but we can hardly turn him away. We manage to improvise
a three-course meal and put him up in one of the two nearly completed rooms. He
seems happy with the arrangement, judging by his very positive comments in our
visitors book (in Dutch, but our kitchen fitter who is also Dutch translates
them for us). As he cycles off the following morning, we feel that we, too, are
on our way.
May 2004
After a cool and variable Spring, Summer arrives this month. The days are long
and hot: crickets sing all day and the lime tree is coming into flower, soon to
be alive with the sound of bees as it was when we arrived last year. The orioles
and hoopoes are regularly heard, if not seen, and during an evening bike ride in
the lanes around the village, we have to pleasure of listening to a nightingale
in the hedgerows. Closer to home, a wren has nested in a box just outside the
kitchen window, and scolds the cats relentlessly whenever they venture outside.
Fred has acquired a new summer coat which appears to support the fashion
statement that brown is the new black.
Fifi, meanwhile, is out all night, sleeping during the daytime on her back with
all four paws in the air, with a variety of garden life trapped in her long fur.
We continue work decorating bedrooms, while outside there are more frustrating delays getting the pool-house built and the pool surround concreted. By the end of the month we are still not quite there, but tantalisingly close (see photo).
In the meantime we are encouraged by the steady trickle of paying guests, even
before we have got any advertising organised.
So we have now come a full year. Our target to be up and running and the end of 12 months is more or less met, even though it is a gradual start with much work remaining to be done. We have come to realise that, with a property like this, work will never be finished: we are already identifying possible improvements for the next season.
This is the final diary entry of our year in Deux-Sèvres. After a year of hard work as builders and decorators, our new life as owners of a chambres d’hôtes business has begun well. We look forward to a second year in France as rewarding as the first.
Six month review June – November 2004
With our first summer season is behind us, and the nights drawing in, it seems
an appropriate time to respond to the hints we have received that an update is
due.
And there is certainly plenty of progress to report since May.
After a relatively slow start, due to our determination to get the place
finished before we went to market, our season did not really get going until
July. Then it really took off.
At least by July we had a pristine swimming pool with a tiled surround (well,
except for a small area at the far end that not many seemed to notice), and a
pool-house that was rendered and painted (on the outside, at least). But we
quickly came to realise that guests were not unduly concerned by such details:
with the hot weather, the pool was a huge success and well used by all our
summer guests, including children from 1 year upwards. We loved to see our
guests enjoy the water, and were as proud as the parents of one three-year old
who learned to swim during his stay..
Mrs Cow was popular in the swimming pool.
It was not long before we had our first topless female sunbather. Although the
pool is well screened by fencing, we thought it prudent to ask her to avoid
positioning herself where she was in full view of our next-door neighbour. Now
an 80 year old who behaves at times as if he were still 20, Aristide has already
had one heart attack and we did not wish to cause him another one.
The rapid rise in guest numbers kept us on our toes, especially in high season
when French guests arrived in strength. With some hasty improvisations the four
seater dining-room table grew in length to accommodate ten or more diners, and
despite some scenes in the kitchen reminiscent of out-takes from ‘Ready, Steady,
Cook!’ we managed to produce evening meals that seemed to be enjoyed by all. We
will not, however, be held responsible for the excess weight that some of our
guests complained they had put on during their stay!
The cats adapted well to the comings and goings. Both adored the attention they
received from the many cat-lovers who stayed with us. Fred particularly liked
one guest’s description of him as ‘world-famous’ because of his Internet
appearance, and took to sitting in the entrance hall where he could meet and
greet new arrivals. Some guests would even ignore the offered drinks and help
with luggage on arrival, and insist on meeting their real hosts, the world
famous Fred and his lovely assistant, Fifi. .
The new stove is a big hit.
The new en-suites were much admired and functioned well, thanks to our plumbers.
Even their high standards, though, could not cope with the exploits of an
over-amorous couple on a long weekend from Paris. After their somewhat furtive
departure, we discovered that they had managed to rip the entire shower tap unit
off the wall (speculation on how it happened is still a popular dinner-table
topic). Typically, the room was booked for the same night, and if that wasn’t
enough, the next family arrived early, to find us and our friends Jon and Helen,
who had (perhaps unwisely) chosen that weekend to stay, careering about in
search of a strong, fast-acting fix for the taps. Despite our best efforts the
shower was out of commission overnight, so we offered the family the use of the
shower in the adjoining bedroom which had not been used before. This seemed a
good idea – until they took their showers. Just as we were preparing for dinner,
water began cascading into the dining-room. The resulting scenes were close to
farce as the four of us scrambled for buckets and mops to clean up before any
guests appeared, while still trying to get a meal ready on time. To this day we
like to think that they had no idea what chaos their quick shower had caused
downstairs.
But there were also plenty of tranquil moments, when we could sit outside in the
warm summer nights with our guests, accompanied by two glow-worms who quickly
acquired the names Gilbert and George. Or watch a hedgehog trundling across the
lawn past Fred who, in his characteristic statue-like pose, pretended it did not
exist. Fred would have been wise to adopt the same tactic with a praying mantis
which appeared in the garden during the autumn. On that occasion his curiosity
earned him a sharp smack on the nose, something he is not used to from a
three-inch long green thing.
During the autumn our guests were predominantly house hunters, and we shared
their enthusiasms and disappointments as they returned each day from another
gruelling round of house viewing. Many were extremely curious about the inner
workings of French houses, and we were a little surprised to find ourselves
giving detailed explanations of how our sewage system works - not something we
had envisaged sharing with guests!
So we have reached late autumn. The sun is low in the sky, the nights are clear
and frosty, and in the shops singing Santas lurk in corners. In contrast to last
year, the house is now extremely warm, with a new wood burning stove in the
dining-room proving very popular with the cats. But in other ways we have a
curious sense of ‘déjà vu’. We have resumed decorating the remaining bedrooms,
while outside the garden has been dug up to install a major new drainage system
to cope with next year’s planned expansion. One year ago a large yellow digger
was ripping up the garden to install the swimming pool: the only difference this
time is that the digger is a rather fetching shade of lilac. And there is
Aristide in the garden with his bucket, collecting worms for next season’s eel
fishing. As the French would say, ‘plus ça change’…..
Here we go again..
Six month review November 2004 - May 2005
The last review left us with the familiar scene of the garden being ripped up:
happily, the drainage was successfully installed, leaving a garden that was
reasonably level, albeit looking like a ploughed field over the winter. The only
hitch comes on the final morning, when the terrassier accidentally severs the
mains water pipe with his digger. Within minutes we had a second swimming pool
forming beside the house, and an urgent request to contact the rather grandly
named ‘president of the water syndicate’. It was not a serious enough problem,
however, to interrupt the sacred ‘heure de déjeuner’. The president finally
arrives at two o’clock, maps in hand, and amid much hand-shaking he joins the
terrassier and our next door neighbour to admire what had now become a tributary
to the river Boutonne. Eventually the local plumber is called and the leak fixed
in minutes. The president then pats Ianthe on the cheek, and with a beaming
smile announces that there would be no charge for the repair.
We spend Christmas with guests, which gives us a wonderful excuse to make
Christmas puddings and mince-pies, and to dig out long-forgotten Christmas
decorations. The local choir with which Ianthe now sings enjoys our Christmas
offerings: the mince-pies are declared ‘super-bon’, even though the French are
totally flummoxed by the fact that mincemeat isn’t meat.
Freddie enjoying Christmas 2004.
After a relatively mild winter we suffer an exceptionally cold February, with
the temperature one night plummeting to an all time low of minus 6 degrees. The
early Easter means that Mardi Gras falls in February, yet another excuse for the
local children to dress up and solicit sweets from every household. It is now
standard in French primary schools for children to be introduced to English from
the age of five, and our young neighbours are keen to practice what they had
been taught. “In the morning, you say ‘good morning. In the afternoon, you say
‘good afternoon’…”.
In between visits by our regular guests, we take the opportunity of the
prolonged cold to finish decorating the house: the last two bedrooms are
completed, and then the kitchen. It gives us great satisfaction to tick each
room off the list. Another small but significant step is to get a sign up
outside the house (at long last!): last summer several visitors commented on the
low profile we appear to keep, although everyone in the village now knows how to
direct people to Chezfreddie. Fifi is making a determined bid for a change of
name (see photo), but we remain convinced that ‘Chezfifi’ might attract a
somewhat dubious clientele.
Fifi making a bid for a change of name.
Eventually Spring arrives, and the garden begins to turn green again. Work
starts on the outbuilding that will become our home for the summer, and,
typically, as soon as the old roof was removed we have a week of heavy rain. The
French menuisier and his team persevere, however, refusing to leave even when it
is tipping down, and within a week we have a new roof with beams carefully
sculpted to match the old style. In the interim, the lack of a roof gave us the
opportunity for a unique view of the garden (see photo).
A unique view of the garden.
In late April the sun reappears to lift our spirits. As well as
cuckoos, the first golden orioles are heard. We also have the pleasure of seeing
a hoopoe on our lawn, and hearing a nightingale singing in the hedgerows. By
mid-May the crickets have started their chorus, and lizards are beginning to
emerge, although many are now tail-less after an encounter with Fifi. We are now
in the final stages of preparation for summer lets, and with the rising
temperature the swimming pool is looking more and more inviting…
The pool is looking more and more inviting.
Six month review June - November 2005
Our preparation for the summer rental season becomes a frantic rush as the weeks
fly by, and our list of decorating, gardening and clearing out jobs seems
endless. Help is summoned, both locally and in the shape of Richard’s father,
who does a sterling job getting the garden into shape. When our first guests
arrive, the house is spotless, the pool fully tiled and with a new shower/loo
installed, the drive newly gravelled, and we are in a breathless heap in the
cottage surrounded by a jumble of possessions.
After such a manic five weeks, we suddenly find ourselves with unaccustomed
leisure time. With guests relaxing in the house and garden, DIY is definitely
off the agenda (save the occasional emergency repair), and gardening can only be
done when guests are out. This happens relatively rarely, as they seem to find
the place much to their liking. As one guest put it: “Why should we go out when
we’ve got everything we want here?” So we begin to enjoy the lazy days of
summer, sharing the occasional bottle of wine with our guests in the evenings,
or a morning cup of coffee and joke swap under the willow tree outside the
cottage.
We have many fond memories of the summer, for example the family ‘Olympic Games’
on the newly-grassed play area .
The Chezfreddie play area.
By this time we had accumulated a wide range of outdoor and indoor games, which were enjoyed as much by the adults as by the children (in the case of the Scalectrix, the children barely got a look in). We are also entertained by children’s boat races on inflatables in the pool, and by treasure hunts by ‘Freddie’s team’ versus ‘Fifi’s team’.
Making a splash.
The cats adapt effortlessly to the new domestic arrangements, making occasional
visits to the main house to make the acquaintance of successive guests. Fifi
decides to offer a new service in decorative arts, with tasteful paw-print
designs on guests’ cars.
Fifi's new line in car decoration.
Too soon, however, we discover Murphy’s Law of house letting: domestic
appliances that have worked perfectly all year will suddenly break down when
made available to guests. We are fortunate in being able to summon help quickly:
when the washing machine packs up, our local plumber (who installed all the
en-suites) arrives the same day. His solution is to tip the offending machine on
its side, hit it with a spanner a few times and call it a ‘putain’ (obviously a
technical term). It has worked perfectly since.
August sees a change of pace as we revert to B&B. The first night is the
hardest: apart from finding that nothing in the kitchen is where we left it, we
find that only two burners on the gas oven are working, while the electric oven
has given up altogether. Cooking an evening meal for 14 people is therefore
something of a challenge. We stagger through, and by 11pm have loaded up the
dishwasher with some relief, only to find that it isn’t working either.
Fortunately all these problems are rapidly put right, and we are able to get
back into the swing of things.
At the end of August the guests leave, and we greatly miss the sound of
conversation and laughter drifting through the cottage windows on a warm
summer’s evening. Despite the improvised facilities, we love our ‘posh camping’
in the cottage. We are so reluctant to leave it that only the autumn cold of
late September drives us back into the main house. Ironically, we then enjoy a
glorious ‘Indian Summer’ that lasts until the end of October, enabling us to
sunbathe by the pool in shorts and tee-shirts. We are only sorry that we do not
have more guests to share it with.
Six month review December 2005 - May 2006
Our Indian summer gives way to a long and cold winter, in common with the rest of Europe. We are forced to move back into the main house, as the small stove we have installed in the cottage is unable to compensate for the lack of insulation upstairs. We start work on the cottage in November, repointing interior walls in gloves and overcoats while the wind whistled through the gaps in the eaves.
Unlike the rest of France, we did not have any snow (it is still rare in this
region), but the cold weather did bring some very beautiful scenes of
frost-covered trees.
The Boutonne in winter.
However, by early 2006 we began to feel as if winter would never end. In late January Richard’s father, who had given us so much help and who had spent a quiet Christmas with us, died in the UK. That was followed less than a week later by the death of one of our closest English neighbours, Bill, whose DIY knowledge had been invaluable, and who had unstintingly helped us out on occasions. Bill was buried in the village cemetery, which gave us an insight into funeral procedures in France, particularly the role of the maire. As well as acting as local registrar, our maire was closely involved in the funeral arrangements and gave enormous support to the family. It was touching to see most of the villagers present for the burial, on a bitterly cold February day.
At the end of February comes the annual celebration of Mardi Gras (Shrove
Tuesday). The cold weather does not deter the village children from going round
in fancy dress, collecting goodies from householders, and afterwards burning an
effigy, or bonhomme (fortunately, not of the maire) on the village green.
The village children celebrate Mardi Gras in fancy dress.
The first signs of Spring come at the beginning of April. The first hoopoe is heard only a day after the first cuckoo, and the black redstarts, the male resplendent in his black and white plumage with vivid orange tail, return to take up residence in the garden. During the winter we put food out for the birds and had much pleasure in seeing how many permanent residents the garden hosts. During the spring, the stonework of the open barn hosts nests of redstarts, robins, wrens and flycatchers, who seem neighbourly enough, and unite in a cacophony of warning calls when one of the cats was nearby.
During the winter, the large willow tree on front of the cottage has a long overdue haircut, which is necessary to prevent damage to the roof. Despite a severe pollarding, it very soon grows new shoots, but not before we witness a very interesting silhouette in the spring sunshine!
The willow tree's silhouette.
As the summer season draws near, we have our usual mad rush to get the cottage
habitable and the house ready for guests, although this year the list of tasks
is a little less daunting. The late spring, combined with a wet May, works in
our favour in the garden, as the roses look superb this year, and everything is
fresh and green. By the end of May, the temperature is rising nicely, and the
pool is warm enough for the arrival of our first guests.
Six Month Review June - October 2006
Once our first rental guests are settled in, we are able to enjoy some of the
highlights of
the village social life. Not least of these is the annual ‘vide-grenier’
(literally
translated as ‘empty attic’). In Cherigne this is as much an excuse to chat to
the
neighbours as it is to buy anything. Although these events now feature many
professional
traders, the villagers are out in force, selling everything from outgrown
children’s toys
and handicrafts to any old junk they think somebody else might buy.
Buy your old tyres or rusty bedsteads here.
In late June we welcome a new arrival to the Chezfreddie team, in the small
black and white
(and female) shape of Freddie 2. We had for some time been considering the
possibility that
Fred, our esteemed marketing director and logo, might some day wish to retire,
and so had
been on the lookout for a suitable successor. Little Freddie, who came from a
local vet’s,
bonded instantly with Fred senior. The two appeared inseparable, Fred behaving
like a
tolerant uncle towards his miniature replica, with only an occasional gentle
smack to remind her who was boss. .
Freddies 1 & 2.
Sadly, within a few week’s of Freddie 2’s arrival, Fred senior’s health began to
fail and,
to our shock, he was diagnosed positive for both leukaemia and feline AIDS.
While still
enjoying the summer sun, he gradually faded over the following weeks, and died
in early
August. He has been buried in a spot he chose himself, behind the swimming pool
where, in
his declining days, he enjoyed listening to the voices and laughter of our
guests.
So little Freddie suddenly found herself in charge of the business at the tender
age of four
months. While we would have liked her to have had longer with her mentor, she is
evidently
taking her new responsibilities very seriously indeed.
Paying last respects.
In early September our last rental guests depart, and for the first time since
our arrival,
we manage to take a few days holiday ourselves. In the event, we only manage 4
days, before
we welcome the first of a steady stream of B&B guests throughout the autumn.
They, and we,
are able to take advantage of one of the warmest autumns on record, with daytime
temperatures in the high 20s centigrade. The only clue that we are not still in
high summer
is the early arrival of nightfall.
Six Month Review November - April 2007
Our warm autumn gives way to a mild winter, punctuated only by two or three days
in January when the snow returns - the most we have ever seen here. We are happy
to be able to keep the heating bills down, as we move back into the main house
for the whole of the winter while the downstairs of the cottage is refurbished.
So once again we are back to mess and dust in the cottage as we clean and
re-point the old stone walls, lay a tile floor, put up plasterboard walls and
decorate (the electrics and plumbing we leave to a professional).
The cottage kitchen to be.
However, the hard slog is well worth it and we are delighted with the results. We are now able to start moving all our belongings permanently out of storage into our new home: some of which haven’t been unpacked since we moved here four years ago!
The cottage kitchen - April 2007.
We also make an early start on the garden, but our work here is interrupted as
Richard has a three week spell in hospital with blood clots. Despite the
perception of the French that their medical service has deteriorated, we are
still impressed by its quality. Richard’s after care in particular is excellent,
with weekly visits from the district nurses.
During this period, winter suddenly turns into summer with the warmest April on
record. Our summer visitors return early in the month: the cuckoo beats the
hoopoe by a day or two, the redstart and black redstart seek their usual nesting
places in the barn, and by the end of the month the golden oriole is regularly
heard by the river. Sitting outside during the day, we can watch the buzzards
drifting gracefully in the thermals; at night, we listen to the crickets and a
distant nightingale.
One of our most spectacular garden visitors is a newcomer: an impressive
12-centimetre wide giant peacock moth.
A giant peacock moth - first ever sighting.
These normally live nearer the Mediterranean, but perhaps global warming is
bringing them further north. In any event, the richness of the wildlife here
continues to amaze us, and we look forward to further interesting sightings.
Six Month Review May - October 2007
The premature heat of April gives way to an unsettled summer, with
more rain than we are used to, although our sheltered position
spares us from the extremes of climate suffered by much of Europe.
Our guests cope gamely with the rainy weather, and the indoor games
and videos are much appreciated. Fortunately, everyone has at
least some sunshine, and it is rewarding to see the outdoor games
and bikes being used to the full. We particularly enjoy the
inventive ‘jeux sans frontieres’ of one family group.
Family Games.
The house copes well with the influx of visitors, apart from some
minor plumbing problems. Our local plumber responds promptly to our
phone-calls for help, turning up at 08:30 one morning dressed in a
checked shirt, shorts and bedroom slippers. It turns out that he is
in fact on holiday that week, but still fixes the problem with
minimum inconvenience to our guests. Nor has he lost his sense of
humour: on discovering that long hair was the cause of a blocked
shower, he solemnly advises us only to have guests with short hair.
We respond with equal solemnity that we will amend our booking
enquiry form accordingly.
Little Freddie starts to show increasing independence, spending the
summer nights out, and on one occasion disappearing for three days.
despite being fully mature she remains a small cat: unlike Fifi,
who on a routine visit to the vet’s is declared clinically obese
and required to go on a diet.
Fifi pre-diet - can anyone see the ping-pong table?
Fortunately (for us and for her), four weeks of slimming has the desired effect,
and she
has now regained some of her old agility.
With perverse predictability, as soon as the summer guests depart
the weather settles and we have a glorious autumn. The start of
September brings the return of the hunting season with the annual
‘fete de la chasse’ on St Hubert’s Day (the patron saint of
hunting). As well as displays of hunting dogs and horn-blowing, the
attractions include ‘guess the name of the pig’.
Guess the name of the pig?
One local wit is overheard to comment that it can only be called
‘Sarko’ (the French nickname for President Sarkosy) – a name,
strangely enough, that is not on the list.