So here we are, having a glass of wine and a beer in our home. I am back in France.
We have just signed the documents agreeing to sell our home. It’s time to move on.
I have shed a little tear, I am sure there will be more to come. But for now, despite the stormy weather, it is good to be back in my ‘for now’ home.
Tomorrow we are having a BBQ for all our fabulous French friends and neighbours, and two English friends that we didn’t realise were there, all the time. Here is to a party to celebrate the last five years.
Just a little teaser, I used to swim in this river, right by the bridge.
And I spent many hours under a bridge just like this catching tiddlers in the glen that flowed down from the mountain.
Ireland has so much to look forward to.
Exciting times. But right now, I am going to enjoy the hear and now.
Rosie
Oh! Just to make you giggle our buyers thought we are religious! I think it may be my vintage bleeding heart statue of Jesus.
You can call us many things but religious is not one of them.
😉
Rosie
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Nearly three years ago I wrote this post in which I said how I come to realise how much our home had replenished me. How a house is not a home, it us the people in it. I will need to remind myself of this in the next three hectic months, because we have sold our house. Only the second viewers have placed an offer that cannot be refused.
Life really has shown us the way as we had always said it would. It is time to move on.
The feeling is bittersweet.
RD and I were talking the other day and we both cried. I said how I had realised now, how we had struggled for so long living here that at times we had failed to see what we really had. But then I look back over my old posts and I know that is not the case. There has been do much positivity, and we have truly learned to value the simple things.
The opportunity to move on, given to us so quickly is bittersweet because we had yearned to live in France for so long, it was our dream and now our dream has ended.
But time to start a new adventure.
I cannot wait to go home on Friday and sit in my garden with those I love.
Thank you all for your kind and wonderful comments.
Rosie
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So here it is. Our house in all her glory, now for sale on the internet and generating a lot of interest.
Why wouldn’t it? The location of our house is second to none, set amidst the rolling valleys of the Parc Normandie, at the very end of a dead end road, with no traffic.
God she is going to be hard to replace (a small tear came to my eyes then.)
But as I am writing this I know that selling up and moving is the right thing to do. I cannot be away from my family constantly on a long term basis, and I will have been away this time for weeks. Albeit with a fabulous client.
Even in paradise we all need money to live.
Over the five years I have been writing this blog I have written about change so often, and how we should not fear it, because it is the only constant we have. So I know this change is right for us, using all we have learned from this adventure to enhance the next one.
And boy! Have we learned a lot!
But I know that with my current job I will only have six weeks at home for the remainder of the year, and for me that is too long away from the ones I love. I also believe that life is too short.
I know that there is a high probability that this is the last summer in this beautiful place. That when I left last time would be the last time I saw the bales of hay waiting for collection from my bedroom window.
That it will be the last time we will sit in the late sunshine, drinking wine and watching the swifts teach their babies to catch the insects in the evening air.
So when I go home I am going to enjoy every sunny evening for the two weeks I am home. I am going to cherish that ‘here and now’. I will catch the sunrises…
and I will raise a glass to the sunsets.
And I will remind myself that Ireland will offer me more of the same, only different.
Poignant Times
Rosie
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Seven years ago I took this photograph of the pretty sundial we used as a table at a beautiful gite we were vacating in. I still love this picture today, one of tranquillity and stillness.
At the time I took it I was just about to move from an incredibly stressful job to what I didn’t know at the time would be the job from hell. I didn’t realise just how stressed I actually was at that time, so when I then became ill with stress the following year, to us the obvious place to live in France was the region where this picture had been taken. We made our decisions based on how we felt at that time.
Now, after living in this place for five years the people who ran the gite have moved back to England, in fact many people who we have met along the way have moved back to England.
Over the years we have come to realise that is part of an adventure like this: change, not for ‘change sake’, but because we evolve, and part of evolving means that we move forward to pastures new. At the time we make our decisions they are the right ones at that moment in time, based on how we feel at that moment in time. Just as we did after our fabulous holidays in this region.
When RD and I moved here we were both burnt out, literally. My brain had been addled dealing with high levels of human emotion every day. I needed peace, I needed to step out, I needed tranquility and this place offered us all that; and it healed me. But moving on I am better, despite only realising and accepting recently that I will never go back to the person I once was; and as I write that I wonder why I thought I would, because you can never go back, you can only ever go forward.
So now we are healed we have also learned that we are not ready to retire, and we are not ready to slow down quite this much. Going back to work, and interacting with some of the fabulous people I have met has also shown me that. RD has realised that he misses the interaction with other colleagues, he misses working as part of a team. We miss nightlife, and having the opportunity to interact fully in our community.
Language is a barrier, never believe that it isn’t. Language dictates, to a certain degree, the people who you have to interact with, as opposed to those you want to. I cannot emphasise enough the huge impact not knowing a language will have when you undertake an adventure like this. There is an upside also though: you can (I won’t say will because some never try) learn the fabulous art of improvisation, and the other fabulous art of mime! And the best people we have met during this time have been French people.
So seven years ago, when the picture in this post was taken I was a very different person (not least that I can speak a little French now). I was fighting against my feelings of fear and entrapment. Going on this journey has stopped all of that, I have learned who I was, and who I am, and I know there is a ‘who I am going to be’ somewhere in the future.
More to come.
Rosie
My home in the evening sun
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I go back to work tomorrow. I will probably be away from home again for three weeks. But I am enjoying my job, not just the money it brings, but the freedom, and also that it gives me back a sense of identity.
For the first two weeks the temperatures were over thirty degrees here. So we jinxed it: we put the pool up, and five days later it started to rain and has rained pretty much every day here since! Not just rained, but poured. Our ground is saturated ai think if we got the lawn mower out it would sink!
But on one of the hot, sun dodging, days RD and I were sitting in the garden chatting and I could see him just smiling at me. When I asked him why he said it had been a long while since he had seen me so animated about something. I realised he was right. I have missed working, I have missed interacting with other people, I have missed having responsibility. Since starting my job I have deliberately tried to stay out of any politics, and the beauty of this jib is that I have responsibility only for myself to do a good job, and nobody else. I like that.
What all this made me realise was just how much I enjoy working, I enjoy meeting people, and I don’t want to go back to not having that. Ireland will also offer me more work opportunities, (again it can’t offer me any less than here) and I can continue in my current role if I want to. Those are decisions to be made at a later date.
But it also made me think about just how much RD misses that. He doesn’t miss working for most of the people here, but he does miss camaraderie and ‘the crack.’ As winter draws in and I am not here it will miss that more, although he puts on a brave face and insists he won’t.
I have always said I will be honest and now is the time to say that although we all think we want out of the ‘rat race’ do we? Or do we want to dip a toe in every now and then?
We have achieved a lot, sorted out furniture in many rooms, ready for sale, and I have finally sorted right through our filing and admin. Didn’t quite achieve getting all of the ironing done though.
I have enjoyed by five weeks at home, but now I am getting bored with what we have here and I am ready to go back. I will miss my RD and my puppies and kittens, that is the hardest thing. But once I am there I will crack on.
I am back on Boaty McBoatface tomorrow, hopefully I won’t have to climb down the ladder!
Rosie
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After writing my last post A retrospective blog: Going Home…. the wonderful Ed (more of him in a moment) came down to us all and told us that there were dolphins swimming alongside the boat. Going back out in the sunshine not only warmed us physically it warmed us spiritually as well.
Alongside the boat was a school of dolphins, all female with their calves, it literally took my breath away as they leapt out of the water, inches in front of me. They followed us for at least an hour of our three hour journey and it made me think of just how precious nature is.
Ed explained that due to recent over fishing in France they had not seen the dolphins for some time because sadly so many had been killed. But due to the limitations put into place by Covid 19 the French fishing boats had not been out as much and the dolphins were now back alongside the boat. It was perhaps telling that as we approached French waters the dolphins left us. Perhaps Covid 19 has something to teach us after all.
I decided to stay on deck because the sun had warmed me up, after the freezing cabin below. I just let the breeze blow through my hair, and watched in amazement as the cormorant that followed us, so far out to sea, was one minute floating on the air currents and the next hurtling towards the sea in the shape of an arrow, plunging deep, and coming back up with a fish in its’ mouth.
As I stood on that little boat I realised that if you had told me ten years ago that I would be standing on the deck of a little fishing boat from Jersey, making my way back across the English Channel to France, watching dolphins and cormorants I would have laughed at you; it was so far from my reality at that time. And I then realised that IS the adventure: change, things you didn’t ever think would happen, and how important it has been in all of this to keep an open mind to all possibilities. This is truly the adventure.
But more was to come when we arrived in the small port in the pretty seaside town of Granville.
If you look to the right of this photo you will see the wall where the boat came in to dock. We had been warned that we may have to climb up a vertical ladder, they were not kidding! But more than that they did not warn us that we would have to climb one ladder from the boat across to a platform and then step across a meter gap to the vertical ladder on the wall with the sea directly between you. I don’t like heights, the platform was moving and I froze. Bless the wonderful Ed, he was so patient with me as I started to cry with fear. But it was when I could see my husband, and all my girlfriends who were going back to Jersey to work, calling out encouragement I thought of how desperately I wanted to get home, and I said ‘No, I am going to do it.’ The lovely Ed put one leg across to guide me and held my arm and I went for it.
I have never shot up a vertical ladder so fast in my life, with my wonderful RD waiting at the top to pull me up.
We had to go through the formalities with some very officious gendarmes, I hugged my girlfriends goodbye and good luck, they had to go back down the ladder after all! And with that we were off on our journey home.
Home the most wonderful place of all, with my puppies waiting to see me.
And my long awaited glass of wine (sixty eight days with no alcohol!)
This really is turning in to a bigger adventure than I ever anticipated.
Rosie
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I am still in Jersey. It has been nearly eight weeks now, and I cannot begin to tell you how much I want to go home.
My work had assisted in finding a little cargo boat, that I have taken to calling Boaty McBoatface, to take me home last Wednesday.
I duly completed the paperwork for travel during this pandemic and sent it off. The French immigration came back asking for proof that I lived in France. I duly sent four bills, and my tax returns from last year and the not yet completed (because I am stuck here!) Tax forms for this year. I could have opened a bank account with the amount of documentation I sent! But the good old French immigration department waited until the day I was due to travel to say that because I had mistakenly ticked a box on the form that didn’t apply to me (the other two boxes applied: I was returning to my home address, I was travelling across France to get to my home address) they had refused my application.
I have lived in France long enough to know that because the restrictions are being lifted on Monday they don’t want to do the paperwork. The only problem is if I leave it until Monday I will be cutting it fine to get the boat on Wednesday. As the old regulations apply I have filled in the form again and done it now. I am placed with fantastic people, but I am desperate to go home, and they understand that.
I am not going to lie, there were a lot of tears on Wednesday, as I had to open my case and get some clothes back out.
Add to that in the afternoon I fell over a concrete block, and I fell hard. I actually counted my blessings that at fifty-seven I didn’t break my hip, arm or leg. I guess having some weight on me helped, but I think mainly it was all the years I taught aerobics. (Mental note: I must resume exercising!) On Wednesday I felt very sorry for myself. But the lovely lady I am with told me to have a hot bath, and boy did it help. I didn’t realise how much I was in shock.
I came over with only early spring clothes to wear. Summer is almost here so luckily the garden centre (which has beautiful Italian clothes) had a 50% sale, due the pandemic. Five dresses, five tops, three pairs of trousers and four pairs of shoes later, I have consoled myself with some retail therapy. (It’s been a long time coming!)
But it doesn’t make up for being with RD, who is finding it hard, or my beautiful furries.
They are all missing their mummy, and, boy, am I missing them.
But being me, I have pulled myself back together, but I am going to ask all my readers to send some positive thoughts that I get home next week, because they would really be appreciated.
I however am going to break with my normal approach of thinking well and just this once I am hoping that bumptious official in immigration has a shitty bank holiday weekend!
Namaste!
Rosie
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I am sitting in my bedroom and the spring sunshine is streaming in, something to warm the soul.
Since arriving home from work the thing that has been the most soothing for me is the silence. Calming, thought provoking, thought soothing silence.
I can hear the wind blowing on this blustery day, I can hear the birds tweeting, I can hear my Welshies snoring, as they snuggle up beside me in bed, I can hear the clock ticking, and they all add to the sense of calm the silence brings. but I can hear nothing else: no traffic, no sirens, no motorbikes, no cars revving, no buses…..
The first thing that hit me on my return to the little part of the UK that it turns out is actually it’s own little country, being only five miles by nine, was the traffic. The permanent constant hum twenty-four hours a day; punctuated only by louder revs, the hiss of brakes, and sirens. It shocked me, I have been away from that for five years.
On arriving home the first thing that embraced me was the silence, and I welcomed it.
When we search for our new home the level of noise will have to be considered, that’s now on the list.
Rosie
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I have been away from home for nearly two weeks as I write this, with still no internet as it is not available where I am. When I post this I will be, no doubt, sitting in the terminal waiting to board my boat home.
There will be a series of these posts about life’s lessons because it is clear that I will learn many lessons on this stage of my adventure. But this one is about what I have missed with regard to England and what I have missed with regards to France.
I have not been back to the UK for nearly five years, and whilst I am not on the mainland, the first thing that hit me when I got here was the noise of the traffic. In fact just the traffic.
Whilst I know that returning to England is an unlikely option for me I have missed the food: crumpets, hot buttered crumpets, sometimes with a poached egg on top. Part of my job has been to encourage someone to eat, and adding little things like that to the menu has been a joy. I have missed coleslaw! The French make coleslaw but I don’t like it, and one of the first things I had was a ham sandwich and coleslaw, creamy, thick cut slaw. I will taking some home with me, along with crumpets, tea bags and two thick juicy sirloin steaks. Beef in France is not hung for days, as it is in England, and we have had only one filet steak since we have lived there, because we find it too tough. So on Sunday we will be having steak, with mushrooms cooked in butter with lashings of black pepper and boy am I looking forward to that meal with my lovely husband.
But it is not really about the food, it’s the language, I have missed being able to go into a shop and not have to think about what I am going to say beforehand and rehearse it in my head. To just speak to people in your mother tongue is something to be treasured, take it from me. I have missed that simplicity of life.
What have I missed about France? I have missed my husband, dogs, and cats most of all, and I know RD would understand when I say, not necessarily in that order. Time with our animals is short, and I can speak to RD on the phone, but I do feel as if I am wasting precious hours, minutes and seconds of the time I will have with the dogs and cats.
I have missed cooking in my home, I didn’t know just how much I enjoy cooking until now. But my hope is I can set up a career in Ireland selling hot street food, and doing something that I love. But that is all I have missed. I have missed my house and my beautiful bedroom, and I will treasure the peace and tranquility when I get home. I have missed the birds in the trees, but I have not missed,the evil ex-pats, or the bloody bureaucracy : although I have so much to sort out when I get home, and the more it piles in the more my decision, our decision to move on stands fast. My mind is set now.
More to come.
Rosie
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We are going to move, our mind has been made up. But more of that in a other post. Because of that we are savouring our moments in our house.
Today France has been lashed by storm Ciara, and the winds are getting stronger, with the rain sleeting down. We have embraced the French culture of doing nothing on a Sunday. Last week we sat in our wingback chairs in our picture window reading blogs and Mark Nepo, so RD, after a week of hard work, asked could we do the same.
So here we are with the cats (this one is Diddies) watching the storm go by, and cherishing our time here.
Taking each and every day.
Rosie
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We are going to move, our mind has been made up. But more of that in a other post. Because of that we are savouring our moments in our house.
