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How we got here and a few tips on staying here
Our Tourist Guide (on Paul's handyman site)
3rd January 2010 What we've been up to
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Sharon's glassware site Sharon's glass panel site Paul's handyman site Facebook profile Around Montmorillon Forum
What we've been up to! 2nd January 2010 Well, we’ve been here for over 6 years now and it’s probably been the toughest, yet most fulfilling time of our lives. I’m sure we’ve changed a lot since we’ve been here and I know France has changed a lot. Or maybe it’s just our perception of it. We’re still happy here and have no plans to move back, but the ‘rose tinted glasses’ are definitely off. Much has happened over the past year. We’ve had good friends pass away, I’ve had a spell in hospital and a car accident, another friend broke his back and Jacques Cochin, our friendly Mayor, was not re-elected. Some of the new team at the Mairie (town hall) have very blinkered ‘France for the French’ attitude. There seems to be a change in the atmosphere. Some things have definitely changed. When we came over it was ‘rip off’ Britain and ‘bargain’ France, well it’s the other way around now. We can’t believe some of the prices over here, compared to the UK. About the only thing that’s cheaper is wine. French wine! Clothes are massively more expensive here with a dated or an odd sense of fashion. Food, books, cars, over the counter medicines, CD’s, DVD’s, all much dearer here. Obviously the strong euro and weak pound has had an effect on price comparisons, but the French seem not to be the militant bunch they used to be and are now largely compliant. As I mentioned at the end of our last diary instalment, my job in Poitiers had just finished, but I’d managed to get another job with a joinery company. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and I left after only a few days. Although they’d seen my CV, what they really needed was an experienced wood machinist, which I am not. Learning the job would have been impossible due to the noise in the workshop and my limitations with the language. So it was back to square one on the job front. Sharon has continued to sell her glassware steadily via the Internet, shops and exhibitions. We’ve sent glass to the US, Australia and all over Europe. One of our ideas before we came out was to produce decorative glass for doors and windows. We’ve now added that to our range. We’ve hooked up with a UK based company called Regaled, who supply us with film, lead, glass bevels etc. We had a steady flow of orders last year and with fingers crossed and a few new ideas, hopefully things will continue.
The boys speak French like natives now. They often get taken for French boys. Daniel recently had a stand in teacher who didn’t believe that he was English. He thought Daniel was trying to trick him. It took Daniel’s classmates to convince the teacher that he was English. Luke had a funny incident when he had a sleepover at a mate’s house. When Sharon collected him the following day, she met the boy’s Grandfather, who realising that Sharon was English, became confused. That evening he asked his family why an English family had adopted a French boy! Sharon and I both feel that we should speak better French than we do. We can make ourselves understood, but we make lots of mistakes. We can comfortably call in at the bank and discuss insurance or talk to teachers about how the boys are getting on, but if you can imagine a foreigner talking English well enough that you can make out what they are trying to say, but with a few errors, that’s where we are. We are the ‘allo allo’ Policeman! Our language ‘skills’ can offer us wonderful experiences and leave us depressingly frustrated. For example, I helped with various events in our commune (parish) last year; one was at the 12th century abbey just along the road from us. After setting up the floodlighting, tables, chairs etc, our Mayor brought out a few bottles of red wine, some baguettes and the goat’s cheese he makes on his farm. Half a dozen of us sat in the shadow of the floodlit abbey on a beautiful summers evening and chatted about everything from food and wine to rail fares. It’s one of those warm memories you hope will stay with you forever. At the other end of the spectrum, I bumped into the French builder who carried out most of the construction work on our extension. He looked terrible. I asked if everything was okay and he replied that he was having treatment for stomach cancer. I just couldn’t find the French words for what I wanted to say. I felt such a fool. I ended up mumbling something along the lines of ‘I hope you are better soon’ and slunk away feeling pretty useless. Fortunately we’ve seen him driving around the town recently and he looks to be in good health again. We’ve now got 2 small businesses registered in France. I’m now a self-employed handyman / gardener. I got fed up trying to find a job, especially after working in a temporary position for a company called Amarande in Lussac les Chateau. It was like something out of Africa. I worked for 4 days in a fog of dust with only a DIY paper mask for protection. I honestly didn’t think anything like that existed apart from these disgusting Far East workhouses. That was probably the final straw. It took a little while for the penny to drop, but with the encouragement of our friends Jane and Mary, I decided to go for it, which is never an easy option in a country that seems dedicated to making life difficult for entrepreneurs. I’ve been going for nearly 3 years now and so far there’s not been a day when I’ve had nothing to do. I do everything from cutting grass for holiday homeowners to tiling floors, fitting kitchens and laying patios. It’s hard work, but I’m really enjoying it. I’m doing something different nearly every day, I’m my own boss (if I don’t count Sharon) and I’m lucky enough to have some great clients who I enjoy working for. I’ve got British and French clients, plus clients from New Zealand, Ireland, US, Australia and Holland. It’s fascinating meeting such a diverse selection of people, all with interesting lives. As I’ve said before in these diary pages, one of the things we love so much about living out here, is meeting people who we would never have come into contact with in the UK because we would have been moving in different circles.
We may have the beginnings of a major new rock band at La Villecharault. Daniel has an electric guitar, Luke has a drum set and our neighbours are saving up for sound insulation! In recent months they have lost a bit of interest, but we hope they will get back into it again in the future. We’re so proud of them. Daniel was in a school concert and Luke played in a concert for the music school where they used to have lessons. Hopefully they’ll get back into it soon.
Our veggie patch is part prepared for the coming season. I say ‘part’ prepared because Sharon and Ellen, an American friend of ours, have planted 1,300 unusual variety tulip bulbs down there. The plan is to sell the flowers and later the bulbs at a local market. There will not be a ‘living’ in it, but it’s another project that keeps life interesting out here and if nothing else, the veggie pack should look great in the spring. Quite a few rabbits and chickens have come and gone since I last wrote this diary. Until recently our poultry section was male dominated. We’d bought 7 young chickens from the Les Herolles market and the idea was to wait until they started laying and then transfer the older chickens to the freezer. Unfortunately, a couple of them died within a day or so of purchase and 2 of them turned out to be cocks, which you don’t get many eggs from! This left us with 3 cockerels and 6 presumably very happy hens! Obviously it couldn’t last, if only because of the noise they made from 5am onwards. Sadly, our original big black cockerel was attacked by something in the backfield and although it was still alive, it had been badly mauled and couldn’t move. Pierre offered to finish it off and later brought it over to us plucked and cleaned out. We said thank you, but didn’t like to say that we didn’t fancy eating it after something else had already had a good chew. In the last few weeks, we’ve had a chicken ‘disappear’, possibly taken off by same thing that attacked the cock. I’ve had to dispatch a rabbit with an ear infection and a chicken with a bad leg, plus we’ve killed one of the two remaining cockerels as Pierre reckoned it was too big for the chickens. We’re now down to 1 cockerel and 3 chickens. Which give us enough eggs, but none spare to give to friends. By the way, some people think that chickens have to have a cockerel with them to produce eggs. Not true. They’ll still lay, but they’ll not be fertilised eggs. We’ve tried to get chicks a few times now, but no luck so far. Our chickens are totally free range. They wander through all of the fields around us and sometimes onto our veggie patch, much to Sharon’s annoyance. The rabbits however, are in cages. It’s for this reason that we’re going to stop keeping rabbits until we can look after them in a more humane manner. When I get time, I’ll be building some large runs at the bottom of the garden so that they’ve got grass, fresh air and room to run. In this day and age of cheap, mass-produced meat and veg, devoid of taste, proteins and vitamins, you can’t beat growing or rearing your own. It’s like meat and veg used to taste like. Sharon’s had some interesting orders and enquiries for her artwork. Amongst others, she’s painted a large panel with a daffodil design for a French couple near Dieppe and two door panels for a French couple in Grenoble. At the moment she has a display in an artists gallery in Montmorillon and has just received her second invitation to exhibit at Rencontres des Artistes, a prestigious exhibition of work from about 40 artistes. One of the more interesting enquiries she has received was from a charity in New Jersey, USA. They wanted 10 sunflower dishes to present at an awards evening. We gave them a good price for the bowls, but the postage was too expensive for them, which was a shame, but it shows the power of the Internet. We’ve also had orders from Australia asking for wine glasses to be delivered to Wales and lots of requests from Nigeria, but no orders from there as yet! The handyman business just about provides us with a bread and butter income and Sharon’s glass sales are the cream. Although like most people in recent times, we’ve had to tighten our belts and work harder. It’s been more like me providing the bread, Sharon providing the butter and no cream. Which is probably a healthier option anyway! To give us a little more breathing space, Sharon was going back to the UK from time to time, to work as a live in carer. It’s arranged through an agency run by a friend of ours and involves Sharon living with an elderly person for a fortnight, carrying out household duties and generally acting as a companion. Splitting up the family for a few weeks puts added pressure on all of us, but it was well-paid and helped keep us ticking over, especially when I was unemployed and on benefit. However as the Euro got stronger and the handyman business took off, it became a less attractive option. I think it is a mark of our progress that this time last year Sharon had 3 care stints booked up, whereas this year there are none planned. Daniel is thinking of going into languages as a future career. He hopes to translate novels. He currently has lessons in French, English, Spanish and Latin, which gives me a headache just to think about it. He’s doing well in all of them and wants to start learning Italian when he goes to Lycee (a 6th form college in the UK). As luck would have it, Daniel has benefited from 2 of our customer/friends. One works on the sub-titling of films like the recent James Bond’s. Daniel will be spending a week with her on a work experience scheme. Another is a novel writer who’s books have been translated into a dozen languages. She has given us some pointers and contacts to get in touch with in the translation world. Luke is still not a natural scholar, but he does ok. As with most teenage boys, he could do a lot better. In his mind, mates and social life are far more important. He has got a nice group of boy and girl friends and more often than not we’ve got his friends sleeping over at ours, or Luke is sleeping over at a mates. At the moment he wants to be a car mechanic or a ladies hairdresser. If he can't make his mind up, he’ll need to wash his hands well between shifts! We're so proud of our boys. They drive us round the bend, up the wall and over the hill at times. But we love 'em to bits. They're the best thing we've ever done.
We had an awful start to 2009. Daniel, a farmer who owns the field next to us was killed when he took the safety cover off of the back of his tractor and got caught in the mechanism. He was only in his late 40’s. Then Jacky who had the field opposite us had a brain haemorrhage while driving and passed away after 6 weeks in a coma. He’d only visited us a few days before and was saying how much he was looking forward to his retirement. Then I had a car accident while taking Daniel to school. It was raining, but I didn’t spot the black ice on the slope leading down to the river near us. After coming around a bend the car went sideways. I spent the next 200 metres trying to get control of it before we went backwards down a bank. Luckily we were not hurt, but the car damage came to 2,400€. All of that was followed in March with my health problem. Sharon had just arrived back from a care stint in the UK and I went down with what we thought was flu. I couldn’t move. As the flu symptoms disappeared, I was left with awful head pains and a temperature. Sharon took me to the Doc’s and she said “hospital, now”. My temperature was around 40 and at first they thought it was meningitis. After 5 attempted and 1 successful lumber puncture, they found it was not. Instead I had something called Q fever. I’ll not bore you with all the details, but once they’d found what was wrong and attached me to about 8 drips, I quickly started to feel much better. I’m ok now, but still having to go for check ups to make sure my immune system is keeping on top of things and that my heart has not been damaged. So far, so good.
We had another great evening at the boy’s school dinner dance. When the band started playing a version of the Village People’s YMCA, we hit the dance floor doing the arm actions we used to do 30 years ago in the disco’s. A French lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked me what I was doing. I explained that we were making the the YMCA letter shapes with our arms. Soon after we had the whole dance floor doing it. It’s good to be able to take part in cultural exchanges like that!!! We try and go to the 11th November war memorial service every year because we think it’s good to remind the boys of what happened and also, one of my Great Grandfathers was killed in a WW1 gas attack. We were very touched when our (now former) Mayor asked Daniel and Luke if they would lay the wreath in memory of those who had died. We’ve been on a couple of moonlight walks with our commune. Once a year, on a new moon, they organise a stroll through the local countryside starting at about 10 and finishing around midnight. There’s not much chance of seeing wildlife, with a couple of dozen chattering away and shinning torches everywhere. But it is a chance to learn some local history, such as the local resistance base during the war. We have always tried hard to integrate. But our friends Bobby and Andy seem to have cracked it. Bobby has been working as the playground monitor at the local primary school. Andy has trained and become a volunteer fireman. We think it’s a real honour to be asked to undertake such responsible positions and they should be dead proud of themselves. I recently took the boys to the local cinema. They are as happy watching films in French or English. I just look at the pictures! We were somewhat surprised when we shuffled into our row of chairs, to find that a hedgehog already occupied it. There then followed a short delay as a bucket was found to carry the poor creature out in. I’m sure this happens all the time in the Odeon, Leicester Square.
I’ve built some more websites and I’m teaching myself to make better ones. My latest sites are linked below: www.barbaraewing.com - a writer / actress from New Zealand www.pacaud-claude.com - a local artist (still needs tweaking) www.tredonne.co.uk - an Italian organic lavender farm (again, still to be finished)
So, bye for now and we’ll try not to leave it so long before we update this again. |
