French Times

A visit to the Notairs, signed off all the money issues, price, agents commission, Notairs fees, and tax to our adopted country.

We did however get one little surprise, that at the time we didn’t believe to be important; our buyer was going to have a mortgage. This bit of information was slipped very quickly into the discussion by the Dutch delegate in between our lead inspection and termite report: No the woodworm didn’t start pontificating about the dangers of lead in paint and other bits of the house, but boy the Notaire did!

I said to Elaine afterwards, that I was sure, during my De Gaulle period of “nons” to the Flying Dutchman (remember those funny smoking materials), that he had specifically stated that our buyers wouldn’t need a mortgage.

We had six weeks to get our house in order, in other words emptied!

In France it is normal to sign the final documents for both sale and purchase with an empty house. Quite how this is supposed to work in practice is beyond me, where do you put the cat, dog, tortoise or pet crocodile whilst you are sitting signing the equivalent of the Magna Carta at the Notairs? Probably more relevant and practicable, where do you put all the furniture, especially if it is an early appointment? Stripping the bed means pulling the thing apart not just taking off a few sheets, taking a shower means literally that, and grabbing a coffee includes the cups, and peculator.

So there we were; about to move two kilometres down the road with all our goods, chattels dogs and kids, although the two girls didn’t fancy moving. “Dad, if we move we won’t be able to just walk into town to meet our friends, or go to school, or pop to the shops for mum.”
“ We will need a scooter….each!! Then we will keep our freedom and be able to help mum with the shopping”

We were both a bit shocked because we had always said no to motorbikes. “But, this is France” chorused Libby and Ali. “Everyone has a scooter” or “moto” as they called it. “We will take a course and a test”…..please, please, please etc. etc.

Add two scooters to the sit on lawn mower and this move was starting to get expensive, especially when the quotes arrived from the local removal companies, you would have thought we were moving back to the Isle of Flight, infinity and beyond.

Over lunch one day sitting with half a dozen of Sebastian’s rugby team over a beer or ten, we discussed how it all worked. No one seemed to know, but they all agreed the removal companies were a rip off, especially as they had seen the boss of one company arrive in a fully specked, full leather interior, brand new Range Rover, to hand over the estimate.

“Why don’t we help you move”, suggested the scrum captain. “Pay us what you think we are worth and hire a van.” Now this seemed a good idea to me, but it was something to take to the boss for approval. My view was that a rugby team moved us to France, why couldn’t we do it again. Elaine pointed out that Saint Antonin Noble Val rugby team were not exactly Heineken Cup players, nor trained in removals, nor sober.

The deal was done, a van was hired for two days prior to the signing and a garage was borrowed to store the family heirlooms and everything else, bar the kids and dogs for a couple of nights.

According to our Notaire the signing was to be a Friday at the crack of dawn, (10am to you or me) and Wednesday was chosen to commence the evacuation, think Dunkirk and a fast turnover in a scrum.

Everything went incredibly well. The children kept back all their school stuff as they were starting the new term at schools and college on the following Monday, but everything else was wrapped packed and delivered to our borrowed garage.

They all worked like Trojans on a very hot September day. I called a halt for lunch and took everyone for a very boisterous lunch at the local brasserie, so boisterous that Elaine began to worry about the coffee mugs in the kitchen and terrified for her cut glass crystal in the dining room. Well it was in the dining room the last time she saw it!

She need not have worried; everything went swimmingly, yes we did cool down a couple of times in the pool, until the last two boxes were being brought down the stairs to the van. Our estate agent turned up and asked if he could have a quiet word with me.

“We have a little problem,” he said in double Dutch, “your buyer has a small problem with his mortgage so you will not be able to sign and move house on Friday.”

I didn’t say “oh dear”, I didn’t say “damn”, I didn’t say “hell”, what I did say dear reader, is unprintable on these pages. As you can imagine, I was a little perturbed, nay cross, nay bloody xxxxxxx furious.

Elaine went white when I told her, then promptly burst into tears.

I have never felt so powerless in my entire life. Our entire house was in a borrowed garage at the bottom of the town, Elaine was heartbroken, the kids didn’t know what to do or say and the rugby team had settled down on the floor with a few beers and a pack of cigarettes, staring daggers at our agent of misfortune. If looks could kill that guy would not have been long for this world.

We all tried to sleep on the floor that night and the next day the rugby team (“a remarkable group of young strong fit men”, as Colette, our middle aged divorced neighbour, called them) returned and brought everything back from our borrowed garage and put it in our cellar.

For the next eight weeks the seven of us (you forgot the dogs again) lived out of, and in cardboard boxes and odd bits and pieces we brought up from the cellar, beds chairs, kettle, and for me a healthy supply of cognac.

You know when you lose something around the house it drives you mad, especially when you saw it yesterday; well living like that is indescribable. The kids had their schoolbooks and we had clothes for a few days, but that was it.

Anybody seen the tin opener?

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

Let me start by being honest, in hindsight we were foolish.

OK, all right, I put my hands up; I was very stupid, believing in the honesty and integrity of estate agents. I know dear reader you would have thought over my long years dealing with this anomaly of British society, I would have learned my lesson, obviously I hadn’t.

Within a couple of weeks we had visitors looking around the family castle. Some were just nosey tourists with nothing to do when it was raining; some were locals wanting to have a good look around the “English” house but others were real potential buyers.

We did all the usual, brew coffee, bake bread, clean the toilets, chain the dogs up in our neighbour’s garden, wear proper clothes, make the beds, hoover everywhere, take the washing in, hide the children, clean the pool…twice, and of course smile, smile and smile again.

Between our two agents the battle was on…. who could take the best photos, write the best spiel and drink the most coffee…the Dutch side won.

“Richard I have a buyer for your house” said our Dutch agent. “He only wants to pay half the asking price, but he is serious”

I said “NO”

“He will pay 70% of your asking price and he has no need for a mortgage,” says our man with the clogs

I said “NON”

“He will pay 80% of your asking price and he speaks English,” states the man with the Edam

I said “NEIN”

“He will give you 95% of your asking price and wants to be in within two months”

At that point I bit his hand off and poured us all a drink or three.

It was all confirmed in writing and the date was set for a visit to Piste Notaire. (See Chapter Six)

We were as you can imagine over the moon with such a good sale but a tad concerned, as we had nowhere to move to!

Remember Elaine’s “Urban/Rural” idea, I hadn’t even defined it yet alone got her to describe her wish list, blood from stone comes to mind when I asked her what she was actually looking for. A hermit’s stone sheep shed on the banks of the River Aveyron, a bijou falling down old barn with resident rats in the drains and snakes on the roof, a modern three bedroom glass folly designed by our mad local architect, or an old chateaux with little if any roof, in the middle of nowhere?

I hadn’t a clue and had no choice, but to call up help from my best friend the estate agent with the funny smoking materials.

You know when you go and buy wallpaper, they give you those huge great books that weigh a ton and have every colour, pattern and price under the sky for your perusal, well it was like that, except he wouldn’t let us bring them home.

Now, I’m a bloke and don’t find wallpaper books a particularly good read, the topics are limited, the prose is not colourful enough for me, the subject matter keeps changing and they are very difficult to balance on your knees especially if you are reading them in my favourite quiet spot in the house…the loo. (That's probably why he wouldn't let us bring them home)

His books on the other hand contained my future in their torn plastic bound spines, so they held my interest. It’s one thing to look through a catalogue for computers, children’s’ clothes, tools, underwear (I personally like Bravissimo), or garden seeds, but to do it for a house is simply ridiculous!!

Two hours later we had read the equivalent of the entire back catalogue of John Lewis wallpaper department together with the Dulux and of course Farrow and Ball (that plug is for Elaine) colour charts for the last thirty years.

We had chosen two countryside properties to look at, both within a kilometre or two from our adopted town. They had larger gardens, so I mentally added a sit on lawn mower to the budget, beautiful countryside, wonderful vistas all around, fresh air, mice, that funny squirrel thing that gets into the roof, frogs, snakes, foxes, wild boar, deer, huge spiders and did I say snakes?

With a set of details in ‘Dutglish’ we drove to the first survivor of the equivalent of Cowell’s vote on ‘Kecks Factor’, looked at the house, the grounds, the location and drove away. With the second house…. we fell in love at first site!

That was it, simple as that, we looked around the house, the gardens, the chicken run, the old shepherds cottage in the grounds, the mini lake, the river frontage and put in an offer, adjusted it slightly…upwards and the deal was done. In my entire life and multiple house purchases, I have never bought the first house I looked around; perhaps Elaine was right keeping her definition of ‘Urban/Rural’ from me.

That was the easy bit over, the hard part was yet to come.

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

Across the last few years that joie de vivre has not dissipated but grown in stature, as have my three fantastic kids and wonderful wife.

Libby (aka BamBam) now has to be told to speak English when she is at home, she thinks in French, laughs in French, dresses in French, eats in French?. ("Libby close your mouth when you eating") and is a proper little Mademoiselle.

She is now fifteen and studying for a BEP (a sort of A level) in commerce in Montauban, but says she wants to see the world and get someone else to pay for it so is looking at the opportunities provided by Air France as a career. We have explained to her the issues of the moniker "Trolley Dolly", but her view is she will get a decent set of qualifications first, and then take a gap year or several with someone else picking up the tab. It won?t do her any harm, she thinks Scunthorpe is in India, you can ski in Belgium and swim in the sea in Luxembourg

Alex (our middle one, now 17 years of womanhood and still called Gertie) has passed her BEP and is also in Montauban studying for a Baccalaureate in marketing and commerce. She studies all week then parties all weekend and I mean all weekend, going to nightclubs at midnight and coming home with hot fresh baguettes and croissant straight from the bakers oven at six o clock in the morning. What a life, it makes me feel well....ancient and a little bit jealous. As you can imagine we don't see her very often.

That said it's a tough life for both the girls, as the bus leaves Saint Antonin Noble Val at "crack of sparrows" as the English call it (6.30 in the morning) and they don't get home until "apéro time" as the French call it (after 7 in the evening). Believe me, you don't want to be around here at 5.30 in the morning with two moody half awake pubescent females, silently battling for make up mirrors, hair dryers, curlers, straighteners, clothes and cornflakes, and when they crawl back home all they want to do is eat!!

I know I have already said how good the French education system is, but the girls show an incredible respect for their professors and the school supervisors. Discipline and politeness are the order of the day. They seem to have an ethic, which is work hard, play hard but unlike the UK and US enjoy yourself and have a laugh at the same time. On one day each academic week they have to dress up like grownups in suits and proper shoes to make speeches and presentations and that morning is definitely to be avoided.

As for Sebastian now, 19 years of bulk, he is a rugby playing, hard living student with a bijou apartment in the centre of Toulouse...and that's about all I can tell you, except he is huge. He has played rugby XV (union) for Saint Antonin, and XIII (league) for Cahors and Villefranche and is currently looking at his options in Toulouse. His friends all call him Beef, not I think because of his size, but from "Le Rosbif" as we Brits are called here. He is proud of the title and even has it on the back of his rugby shirts. I cannot imagine a French chap playing Rugby in the UK, (and there are a lot of them), having Frog proudly displayed on his back.

His flat (paid for by us) is a complete health hazard and on the odd occasions Elaine and I have borrowed it for a grown up evening in the "Ville Rose" or as a half way house to skiing or the med she takes clean bed linen and a pair of rubber gloves. We asked him once if he ever cleaned it and he said no I leave that to Celeste, she is incredibly house-proud. We then foolishly asked what she got in return and he smiled and with his south west France accent said "les plaisirs de nature"

As for us, our business "Saint Antonin Noble Val Owners Club" www.saintantoninnobleval.com was growing with lots of villas, holiday homes and gites to rent out and maintain, fantastic holidaymakers, horrible holidaymakers, completely and utterly obnoxious holidaymakers and some really nice people who happened to be on holiday. We have dealt with heart attacks, poorly babies, film crews, Amanda Lamb from a "A Place In The Sun", goats and snakes in swimming pools, wild boar in gardens, explosive heating systems, arguments with neighbours, dog rescue, sun stroke, floods, two day power cuts, frozen pipes, tornados, tempests, and raining frogs!. Alright no frogs.

We have organised full sized weddings, stag nights, hen weekends, birthday and dinner parties, discos, a get you home service when you are tired and emotional (the local wine is very strong with a hidden "je ne sais quoi"), reservations in cheap restaurants, expensive restaurants and restaurants that only highly paid bankers and lawyers (see chapter two) can afford and every morning we wake up wondering what the day and our guests will bring? dull it isn't

It amazes me that people we have never met will post us the keys to their valuable holiday home so something can be cleaned, organised, arranged or killed...no not the in-laws, but rats, mice and some funny squirrel thing that gets into the roof.

At this point I could go into detail and perhaps call the blog "Holiday Villa Babylon", or "Confessions of an Immobliere" but our service is totally confidential and it would be "more than my jobs worth" as they say at Stansted Airport security.

Our French friends and artisans have been incredible. Alain is our digger man, who owns about every digging, pulling, pushing and chopping machine you would ever need, and if he hasn't got the exact piece needed, he knows a man who has.

Pascal is our extraordinary tree man who loves trees and bushes and knows what to cut, when to cut, and, how much to cut. His team swing like monkeys on the trees with their chain saws running on full power dangling from their belts, it looks like a form of aerial ballet, god bless health and safety.

Lyvian is a plumber who is also an electrician and Pierre is an electrician who is also a plumber, so if you ever get a burst pipe near the fuse box...We know two men that can.

Frank is our roof man, who could become part of our aerial ballet troop as he is also like a monkey jumping around roofs some of which are three and four stories high without the aid of a safety net. His teeth need retiling and a little grout, but if you are a high powered lawyer or financier he will make sure you are not also roofless!!

And then there is Claude Linon our carpenter. He can make doors, gates, windows, kitchen units, wardrobes and coffins that are works of art, well perhaps not the kitchen units, but he works in gorgeous wood types, makes them with a loving touch and doesn't charge the earth (coffins excepted). Elaine is so impressed with his work within our family he is called Saint Claude of Linon.

Masons in this area are hard to find and even more difficult to work with. We have two companies we work with all the time, but from agreed estimate to start of work can be as long as eighteen months. Once they start there is no stopping them, no multiple cups of tea and biscuits, no having to go to another work site, no excuses, other than of course lunch!! They start at eight in the morning, stop at midday until two and work through till six or seven in the evening, in temperatures in the high thirties, in pouring rain, and in temperatures as low as minus fifteen degrees C. They tend to be perfectionists and believe their metier/guild is the reason for their existence.

There are several dodgy English/Romanian builders around but the Mairie, townspeople, customs and tax officers and the gendarmes take turns in making life and work difficult for them, they tend not to last too long working on "the black" here in Saint Antonin.

Thierry our gentle giant knows everything there is to know about building and repairing swimming pools including extracting goats and snakes. (See above)

We have gone back to England a couple of times to see our parents, but find three days about all we can take. The motorway system is in gridlock even at six o clock in the morning, its noisy, messy and hazardous and I am talking about Chichester and Cheshire. We hit the shops and buy up English sausages, bacon, mustard, and blackcurrant jam, which are then stuffed into our bulging cases ready for that security bloke at Stansted Airport.. "Sir, this `Tesco Finest` sausage meat looks suspicious and I am afraid I will have to appropriate it for my tea tonight."

We came to a group decision five years into this perfect existence, that as the brood would soon all be leaving home we should tidy up our huge house and think about selling it for something that would better suit us.... well us, but as Elaine dictated "designed to accommodate the kids when they returned".

Elaine fancied a project and wanted something more rural/urban, she never defined this request, but I guessed she wanted a bit more land and a little less town with a hovel included that needed work. I was not too keen on the hovel, (I could see us living in a caravan for months on end and Henry snores and George and Sebastian gnash their teeth) but went along with the plan.

We thought it would take a couple of years to market and sell our existing house so set about talking to the two agents in town. OUR original agent got involved as did his major competitor a Dutch chap.

So there we were, experts in everything French, happy with the bureaucracy, au fait with the law, working and socialising with some great French friends, and advising Brits on everything from septic tanks to getting rid of garden moles, but we had never gone through the selling and buying process concurrently....how little we knew!!

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

It is said by the local French population in these parts, that British immigrants to this beautiful area of the country have a three-year window.

What they are trying to say is that the Brits leave within three years, or divorce within three years, or go mad within three years, or unfortunately die within three years. However once passed that three-year window they stay forever in their adopted country. We are all still here, still together, still as sane as any family that exchanges the country of their birth for another, still alive and half way through our fourth happy year of togetherness.

For the children it is a perfect life and life style, their French is now fluent and it is almost impossible to stop them speaking their adopted language amongst themselves. We have table rules and insist that around the dining room table English is the language of choice, unless they have French friends eating with us....which is most of the time. It took about six months before their French friends were brave enough to actually eat our strange food, but today there is no stopping them.

For me the French language is perfect for the two girls to argue and bitch each other over who wears what, boyfriends, music and which French TV programme to watch?.it is a language crafted for art, affection, aperitifs and arguments.

Henry the crazy black Labrador loves the French life and has been joined now by George an equally mad French Golden Retriever whose relatives strangely enough come from Manchester, proof that even animals are moving out of the land of their fathers.

We have built up a small successful business with incredible help from those infamous French bureaucrats who have moved heaven, earth and the French state to assist us.

Our little venture started out guiding non-French speaking British, Dutch and Danish families through the trials and tribulations of living and working here in South West France, but has grown to include working with a small group of incredible artisans helping maintain permanent and holiday homes around our region, renting out a wide selection of holiday properties to vacationers and assisting in the day to issues faced by people living in and around the town.

Saint Antonin Noble Val Owners Club can be found at www.saintantoninnobleval.com

Sebastian is now studying sales and marketing at Lycee (college) in Toulouse and playing rugby for a local league team, Bambam has excelled in sports and languages now, speaking French , Spanish , Occitan and a little English and Alexandra has passed her brevis (O-level)exams and is now at Lycee in Montauban.

As for Elaine and I, we don't have to face the daily grind of commuting, business power plays, ignorant shareholders, British weather, chemical rich meat and two veg. nor the doom laden prophesies of the British media and politicians. During the summer we lie by our pool and watch the planes flying overhead back to Britain and feel a little sorry for the tourists going home....with a sly smile playing across our sunburned faces.

What started out as a crazy idea has turned into an idyllic lifestyle with fantastic French friends fit and happy children and a joie de vivre I never knew was attainable.

The adventure has only just begun.

So we were the proud owners of a gorgeous home in a wonderful town in southwest France.

All our furniture was in place, the brood had made camp in their allotted bedrooms and Elaine and I went exploring our new home. The living area of the house had been very tastefully decorated with a mix of Anglo-French décor and we felt we could live with that for a while, upstairs was a different matter.

One of the bedrooms had huge pink rose wallpaper everywhere…walls, cupboards, doors and ceiling…sunglasses (and a large glass of wine, well that was my excuse) were needed to look in there….so we didn’t very often.

The hall and landing were painted in a deep red. We could have re-enacted The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pulp Fiction and you would not have noticed the blood stains…that is our first job, announced the Gruppenfueher, we will paint it all a “nice” shade of cream she announced. To cover that red we would need to paint it a “nice” shade of cream at least three times I thought as we trudged around the place making, you guessed it, more lists.

The next day the painting started in earnest with “nice” cream paint flying in all directions trying but noticeably failing to cover the backdrop to Custer’s Last Booth, sorry, Stand. The kids all joined in the project with abandon…well what they actually said was “they wanted to abandon the project”, but I ignored their pleas for clemency and bribed them with lunch at a local brasserie.

That afternoon they asked to be released from slavery and go out into our small medieval town…we agreed.

Elaine and I had spent many hours discussing schooling for the children and had decided that we would register Libby with the local école primaire (primary school) and the elder two for college, ready for them to start school after Easter for the summer term. By the third week the kids were climbing the walls with boredom and we were climbing the walls with them.

A delegation of three young children approached me one evening and put forward the motion that they start school as soon as possible, the motion was unanimously accepted with alacrity.

The next day I wandered over the road to our pretty local primary school hoping to arrange an appointment with the principal, to be told that if I could bring my child over straight away we could get everything sorted out immediately. Elaine quickly scrubbed away a layer of paint from her face and hands and changed into something more appropriate for the meeting. Paint splattered dungarees are just not right for meeting headmistresses. The head of the school came out to meet the three of us. She was young smiling and wearing a “Good Morning Vietnam” t- shirt. Why couldn’t my school heads have been so pleasant?

She explained how it all worked, chatted a little with Libby whose French was negligible, and announced that she could start the next morning!

We were all completely shell-shocked by the informality, efficiency, speed and the t-shirt. French bureaucracy can be a nightmare, but other than Fagin the Notaire this was the first of numerous pleasant experiences dealing with French civil servants. In all the years we have lived here, we have had one disappointing experience, but even that was quickly sorted out at our second attempt.

The next morning, a Friday, a very nervous Libby tightly holding her mum’s hand walked over the road for her first day at her new school. Half an hour later the other two walked up with Elaine and I to the college to see if we could arrange an appointment with the head. Exactly the same thing occurred.

We were ushered into the Directors study, asked various questions, given a brief tour of the school, and within the hour told they could both start on Monday morning. As we were completing the paperwork the head suddenly announced he was terribly sorry but that there was a problem with Alex starting the following Monday. He got up from behind his desk and disappeared out of his office. We kept form filling hoping he wasn’t going to the Notaire for advice, but five minutes later he walked back in smiling and waving more paperwork about.

“It is unfortunate” he said gravely “that the class Alexandra will be joining are all going on a school trip, for three days next week”. “But, there is a spare place if she would like to join them”.

And that is why Ali’s first three days at her new school were spent skiing in the Pyrenees.

Lucky for some, the closest Elaine and I got to powder that year was Polyfilla. It must be said, that I thought Ali was very brave joining her new classmates for the first time at 6.30 in the morning on a coach. She loved the skiing and is now the best in the family, but, on that trip, was very lonely and homesick once she got off the slopes. At one point I had to stop Elaine getting the car out and driving down to the mountains to bring her home.

The children took to French school life, like canards to water, quickly making some great friends, learning the language and the swear words (they had little choice if they wanted to converse with these new pals) and receiving lots of praise from their professors, not of course for their street language.

Talking about the street, Libby loved going out investigating her environment and meeting the local artisans and shopkeepers, she didn’t know their names but regaled us with tales of these people.

Slipper man delivered the local paper (La Depeche) just as she headed out to primary school, on his scooter in his carpet slippers. After a couple of days she used to wave to him on his delivery and from that point to now, every time he passes our house he toot toots the horn to wish us good morning….whatever time it is.

He wears his slippers for all morning delivery activities then puts on green Wellington boots to do his day job as a gardener, then on go the slippers for his afternoon aperitifs. He is very proud of his attire and buys a new pair of fluffy footwear every year after much deliberation at our Sunday market. Within a couple of weeks I was introduced to Slipper man and we have become great friends….he still doesn’t understand the rules of rugby nor any other sport for that matter and Elaine and he argue over what should be hacked to pieces for the winter and what should stand tall and proud surviving our frosty winter month(s). He and I only argue occasionally and that is usually over whether Pastis or Ricard is the true aperitif, as we carry out impromptu marathon tasting tests.

So you have now met one of the locals, next on Libby’s agenda was Smelly man. She came home one afternoon announcing with gusto that she had bumped into Smelly man. We were aghast at her cheek, but were reliably informed that everyone around here called him smelly man…and she was right, they did and he was. Stories abound about him, most of which are unprintable or libellous…. so we won’t delve too deeply but if you are ever in our neck of the woods enjoying a cool beer or cup of coffee at one of the local cafes and are suddenly assailed my powerful wafts of unpalatable odours…you have just met smelly man.

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

Now lets face it, the local legal profession in France is not the fastest nor prettiest thing on two legs. Our local notaire wouldn’t have beaten the tortoise, even with a head start and a following wind. He lives, works (and rumour says sleeps)in his shrunken once black undertakers suit, stained with an exotic mixture of, a couple of months worth of lunches, the odd Ricard and a light sprinkling of powdery off-piste dandruff. Today when we see him counting his money, blessings or eggs from the market, he looks perfectly dressed for a soiree at the local Masonic annual legal lobbying aperitifs in the mayor’s parlour, or somebody’s funeral.

But forewarned in this case didn’t help; we were in for a bit of a shock.

The last goods chattels and teapot had gone into the second of two huge brick built pantechnicons and we had shut the door on our old home and life and taken our last fun filled exotic trip across the Styx, sorry Solent to pick up the brood and dog from my anxious parents.

At huge expense Henry had been subject to a bombardment of the equivalent of military biological warfare vaccinations and some form of tracker had been injected into him with a needle of a size I tend to associate with dentists. He took it all with courage and fortitude but then threw up in the car going home…same as me with dentists. It meant that with the correct drugs in him and the equivalent of the Sunday Times in paperwork he might, just might be allowed to leave the country.

The crossing to our adopted country had been meticulously planned…for Henry. There was no way on this earth that Elaine nor the kids were going to let me book an eight hour luxury crossing with five course dinner, silver service and proper beds from Portsmouth…(very close to where we lived) to Caen…. as close to our new home as you could get on water. Oh no!!! poor Henry would be locked in the car in the bowels of a noisy petrol smelling rolling tugboat…so we took the Channel Tunnel.

About three hours and god knows how many miles later (I could tell you the kilometres, but not the miles) we arrived at launch headquarters. A sticker stating that our party comprised two responsible adults, three hooligans and a dog was indelibly stuck to my windshield and that was that, we were on our way.

Henry was not at all pleased, you could tell from the look on his face….”I’ve been through three episodes of Casualty and the entire series of Holby City to move country and nobody cares”….we gave him a chew stick and the brood a greasy burger with thin chips and everybody cheered up. I just sat thinking about a five course dinner, silver service and a proper bed, well you are allowed to dream.

Half an hour later, which was in fact half an hour earlier, we drove our Renault Grand Espace back to where it started its European tour, it was home and so were we and I was no longer driving in the gutter but sitting tall and proud on the right side of the road, which is in fact the left….confusing isn’t it.

The next morning we set off from our hotel at close to 6am with about two hours drive ahead of us before we reached our new home with three very sleepy children and a dog who hadn’t had breakfast. The weather had changed for the worse and the heavens opened and the lorries just sprayed their dirty water all over my nice new car and every thing else they passed in their headlong dash to delivery…..no I am not quoting the bible but the routiers manual, its the chapter after “where to eat if you are in a hurry”.

We had promised to be with monsieur le Notaire at nine o clock and pulled up behind our two huge lorries stuffed to the gunnels with our stuff and parked just outside the house, at about eight thirty to be met by a very unwelcome reception committee.

The committee comprised the wife of OUR agent, the agent of the wife of OUR agent another agent we didn’t recognise and the French owners of what we thought was soon to be our beautiful home. There was no “welcome to your new home”, no “how was your trip”, no “its good to see you again” not even a “good morning”.

“Your money hasn’t arrived” were the only words that greeted us, spoken by the wife of our agents, second cousin’s agents sister, a bearded women with matching moustache, eyebrows and fortified handbag. I could tell immediately that this was a family and town affair and a lynching was on the cards. I looked to our removal vans and some support in this strange foreign land, but you don’t ask a rugby league team, from deepest darkest Bolton or Bury, for help before they have had their full English breakfast (extra fried bread, black pudding and baked beans) with three mugs of tea…and they hadn’t.

I was bleary eyed from the early start, tired from the drive through the French equivalent of the Red Sea, concerned for Elaine’s sanity and soaking wet from the precipitation pouring down my back. My first thought was that we were in real terms homeless refugees and last thought was I will phone my bank on the mobile, but there was no signal on my trusty Motorola on account, I was informed later, of the terrible weather so I would just have to bluster it out with the undertaker.

The brood and Henry went for a walk for three hours and Elaine and I battled valiantly with the undertaker, agents, agent’s agent, owners, owners agent and bearded lady. We had brought with us all our conveyance paper work in triplicate in a huge Waitrose carrier bag including the final bank transfer to pay in full and final settlement every Euro we owed to purchase the house. The French equivalent of purchase tax didn’t seem to be the problem. The agents rake-off didn’t seem to cause too much concern. The last five per cent of the house purchase we were assured by the embarrassed owners, was not an issue. The final stumbling block apparently was Fagin’s commission.

It transpires, according to funereal Fagin, the Notaire, that such monies Monsieur are paid into a national Notairs bank account in Paris and although the money had left our account a month earlier, it had not yet emerged this side of Paris. “It is always a problem Monsieur, happens a lot to my customers, but I have to be very careful as I am a Notaire with grave and solemn duties and am responsible to La Republique” (and I guess, her indoors, his bookie and accountant) “to ensure everything is above board in this transaction” and everybody gets their cut.

The steam was pouring off Elaine and coming out of my ears! as we sat with the hanging party in the tiny office, in front of a huge mahogany 17th century Louis something or other desk, as this bumptious, jumped up, officious office clerk, sat hidden behind it and profoundly pontificated about the law, the banking system and foreigners buying property in his mother country. I sat thinking; this creature couldn’t possibly have a mother, as another avalanche of dandruff landed on his paperwork.

The upshot of this little diversion was that he got his secretary to start phoning around the various banks whilst he ran through the procedures of sale…just in case they found the treasure. I did point out that on numerous occasions I had had to chase him to let me know what to pay to whom and when, but that carried little if any weight. Later over a beer I asked OUR agent if this had happened before, he looked wisely at me and said “Happens all the time old chap…should have warned you about it.”

Eventually Fagin’s little helper found the money and so the vendors, Elaine and I signed every piece of paper in the Notaires office at least twice, offered up triplicate copies of passports, old utility bills and birth marriage and death certificates for our families going back at least two hundred years thus satisfying La Republique and the funeral director, that we were bona fide British buyers.

After over three hours of hell we owned our home at last.

As we thankfully left the Notairs office and walked around the corner to our new house, we noticed a hive of activity around the two removal lorries, already, one had almost been emptied and the other was only three quarters full, the kettle was on and there were cups of tea in abundance. Apparently the embarrassed, but kindly French owner had left the lynch party at the Notairs an hour and a half ago, whilst Fagin was still holding forth about the way things were done in his country, and unbeknown to us told the children to tell the rugby team to start unloading…. aided and abetted by the children and Henry, they were doing a fine job.

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How do you break it gently to three relatively young children, their relatively old grand parents and a died in the wool, set in his ways, obstinate, black Labrador, that, within a few months we (inc. dog) will be living, breathing and GOING TO SCHOOL in France?….You do it very gently…and slowly….and carefully…and gently!!

It worked…almost. First came the directors cut of the video, then came the verbal description, then out came everything we had nicked from the local tourist office, then came the questions. Not just simple questions such as which bedroom is mine, but slightly more complex issues, like:

When?
Why?
Where?
Why?
How?
Why? And of course why, why and why.

Of course the brood knew our plans but, were, to say the least, a little concerned with the simple issues of life such as making new friends, losing old friends, going to a new school, saying farewell to the old one and their biggest bugbear… television. Would they still be able to watch Coronation Street, Eastenders and A Question of Sport? “Dad, does PS2 work in France”, “Dad, will our DVDs and videos work on French television sets”, “Dad will we still be able to watch Cartoon Network, Sky One, The Sports Channel…………?”

From our parents it was a little more worry and concern. “What are you going to do there?” “How will you earn a living?” “Where is it again?” “How far away will you be?” “Where is it again?”

Well, bit by bit everyone started to discuss this international project with varying degrees of optimism….alright with less pessimism….alright with a little less pessimism.

As good list makers….we made lists, flog both cars and buy left hand drive something, flog televisions, paddling pools, oh and sell the house! The lists got shorter then we added more stuff…..as the list got shorter the things to sell got smaller…sell all the beany babies, sell old uniforms, sell the toys we find under the bed, sell the toys we find on the top of the wardrobe, sell the toys that have not been touched in three years, sell the kids and dog….joke!

I got involved in the currency negotiations, I needed immediate Francs for the deposit and then the dreaded Euro for all the other payments including the notaires fees, agency fees and the final payment on the house. For two or three days I became a Rogue Trader, checking all the spot and forward rates for the Franc and Euro; it was great fun and there were two or three great companies to help with my search for the best deal. Elaine and I had decided we would not speculate on the currency but know exactly what we would get for Her Majesty’s pound. Within a couple of days I had bought my Francs on the best spot market I could find on the internet and phone and bought forward several several several thousand Euros on the forward market for February 2001. The die was now cast.

My beautiful black super sexy Jag with cream luxury leather interior, a stereo that would have done justice to the Albert Hall, cruise control designed for a stealth fighter bomber and a telephone system that GCHQ would have been proud of, was the first to go. Gone but not forgotten. Elaine’s bus went next….her favourite people mover of all time…a Chrysler Voyager with all the trimmings, part exchanged (plus cash back) for a Jeep…which we all loved to bits, even though it had a tendency to over heat at the most inopportune moment, traffic lights, ferry crossings, school runs. We eventually called the RAC and the nice bloke on the bike solved the problem, he removed the thermostat and it ran like a dream.

Then came the car boot sales…if an item, any item stayed too long in one place it went to the sale. My mother in law sat on one of the sofas for a complete afternoon watching the racing and it did give me an idea, one I am afraid I didn’t have the guts to put into practice.

The boot sales were fantastic, the people, the camaraderie, the hot dogs and the early mornings, if you have to flog off the family heirlooms or a load of tat, then boot sales are the place to do it. The clothes that no longer fitted the kids or had suddenly gone out of fashion, most of which were bought in France were our top seller. A Decathalon sweatshirt or sports shorts were as valuable as some of the dodgy rolling tobacco brought into the country and onto the island for personal use by the container load. If you ever do visit the Isle of Light (as in have you got a light for my imported tobacco hand rolled ciggy) you will see what I mean.

We had our last Christmas in blighty and saw in the New Year surrounded by my wonderful brave family inc. Henry, boxes, newspaper adds, stuff that I considered un-saleable at the car boot, and our noisy almost real gas fire. It was, I have to admit, a time for looking back on our lives together and looking forward to a future we couldn’t imagine. For Sebastian and Ali it was a time for adventure and being grown up, for Libby I didn’t know how she really felt then and to this day still don’t.

January fluttered by like a butterfly, in a maelstrom of packing cases, car boot sales, faxes from the notaire, e-mails from OUR agent, and picking up our new car. Yes, goodbye to two very expensive, very flash automobiles and hello to one new left hand drive Renault Espace diesel, imported from Holland. The Jeep went a week later at a small but very welcome profit.

Sooner than we expected and faster than a gendarme going for his lunch, February arrived with rain, St Valentines, wind…(Henry was always to blame but I am not so sure) and the removal people. From the size of the guys involved they would have done justice to a New York SWAT squad, a very powerful rugby side or half a dozen wrestling tag teams. Although they were built like brick outhouses, they were polite with our goods and chattels and very gentle with Elaine or perhaps it was the other way around.

The brood and Henry were packed off to my parents for the two day packing and loading marathon….so Henry wouldn’t get upset and Elaine and I were alone for the first time in months. We had a fantastic afternoon together, away from everything, in the warmth and darkness……….of the local cinema watching George Clooney robbing a few casinos.

By the time Clooney had stolen (in glorious Technicolor Dolby digital surround sound) the GNP of some small African nation, our own private SWAT team had stuck everything into packing cases of varying shapes and sizes, leaving the bare necessities, a bed for us to sleep on, a kettle, teapot and teabags and enough cups to keep them lubricated for the loading the next day.

We sat on the carpet looking at bare walls, chaos, boxes, and all our worldly goods and listened to the silence intermittently broken by our almost real gas fire. It was a poignant moment, because, until then we had always had the kids or dog to distract us…now it was just an uncertain foreign French future and us.

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

The rain didn’t stop that morning, but the shattering disappointment did.

The next property we saw was amazing, as was the one after that. Lunch time arrived punctually with the sunshine and the earlier nightmare was almost forgotten. We had a couple of good eating hours before our next appointment and made the most of it at what has since become one of our favourite gastronomic haunts.

A €10 lunch consisting of a choice of at least three starters, followed by either a little pizza or charcuterie, followed by a choice of four or five main courses, cheese and dessert and the price included a carafe of wine. I have on many occasion since living here sat in this restaurant trying to work out how the jovial chef, working in front of his wood oven, can make any money from a meal like that. Don’t get me wrong I am not that concerned, just as long as he keeps doing it.

We left the restaurant well fed and rested for our appointment with DESTINY……no not the name of OUR agent…but fate must have had a hand in us discovering our home in France that afternoon. The house of our dreams. It was perfect? The right size, shape and well positioned just on the outskirts of our beautiful old town, yes a little work was needed (perhaps the equivalent of redecorating the chairman’s office in Wembley Stadium…). but not that much. The high ceilings, huge log fires, beautiful kitchen and enough room for the lot of us including the dog, it left me in awe.

In the bar the next evening , following another day of rather unenthusiastic house hunting, over a glass or two of Pastis, a Belgian escapee made a couple of very salient points that I have never forgotten.

1 As people from northern Europe we needed the seasons and this area was perfect in that, summer was long, winter was short, and spring and autumn were beautiful times of year. At first I thought this was a bit of an odd thing to say, he was Belgian don’t forget, but since being here I can assure you dear reader he is right.

2 Don’t buy a house in the middle of nowhere unless you were on the run from the law, escaping an irate partner or wanted to live a hermits existence, become a naturalist, distil illegal booze or make porn films.

We took his advice on all counts and told OUR agent the next day that we would like to buy the house of our dreams.

It was the best decision we had ever made, other than getting married, having kids, getting a dog, not putting our money into telecom shares, etc. etc.

At the end of our trip we went back to see our new home armed with a video camera and wandered around like a couple of nosy private eyes, videoing everything that didn’t move and measuring up the huge doors and windows. I thought at first Elaine was thinking about curtains, but she just wanted the sizes to boast about when she got back to her friends…women!

As we slowly moved around the house the owner let slip that she might, possibly, perhaps be interested in selling us some of the fixtures and fittings. I looked around at the burnished mahogany dining room table, the Louis IX dresser, and the 17th century ornate desk, and with a rather husky nervous voice asked what she might, possibly, perhaps consider flogging.

She pointed at several pairs of obscene see-through, 10 denier, curtains dangling precariously about a foot off the floor from some dodgy looking poles, an electric sun umbrella, yes electric, perched on the patio by the pool, a complete set of rusting holey copper sauce pans encrusted with years of culinary delights and to cap it all an horrendous knitted picture of a stag being gored to death by a pack of crazed hunting dogs. If I had shown it to Henry our bold and beautiful Labrador, he would have had nightmares or taken himself off to Bayeaux to flog it, if he didn’t eat it en route. As they say in the News of the World “ we made our excuses” and declined.

So that was that, a new home, a new country and a new language, as well as a new tax and digestive system, a new social life and security system….no I’m not discussing burglar alarms, a new membership to alcoholics and ferry crossings anonymous, and …well a new life.

The widow and I drove back up through France with a million thoughts going through our befuddled brains. Elaine was thinking, how the hell do we tell the kids, parents, friends, relatives, bank manager, hairdresser and manicurist. My mind was more focused on shifting the six of us ( you forgot the dog) into a completely new world…finding schools, health insurance, doctors, dentists, kennels, language issues and finding something interesting to do.

www.saintantoninnobleval.com

The next day we all sat around the dining room table, dreading sorting through at least a forest worth of advertising material and homes bearing no resemblance whatsoever to our requirements. So instead, we reminisced about yesterday’s rugby scrums, sweaty people, horrible coffee and ignorant or perhaps uninterested sales reps.

I suppose at a spectacle like that it is almost impossible to tell the window shoppers from the serious players. I didn’t know it at the time but this situation arises a lot with French agents based in France. They are inundated with bored or wet (it does rain in these parts..even in the Summer) holiday makers with little if any interest in actually viewing a property and no interest in actually buying one. That said at UK exhibitions I am sure that a little more finesse and a few more staff would not go amiss on many of the stalls.

Eventually we summoned up the courage to sort through the woodland of leaflets. As we had thought, we had enough paper to wrap a fish and chip supper for an entire regiment of Royal Marines, but nothing of any real interest, that is except for an Asterix club key ring that BamBam fancied for attacking our local family of red squirrels, a beer mat for a Dutch lager (don’t ask) and a couple of freebie writing instruments..you know La Pens.

The single big surprise, in this entire venture, came two days later, in the post. It was a letter (legibly signed) and an assortment of properties from my favourite sales man, you know the one “a small district in a very small part” etc. The properties were a good range, close to our price range and, of course above it, and correctly positioned in and around the ‘Imaginot’ line devised on the Isle of Blight.

We checked out the offerings, looked at the web site, arranged an appointment by phone fax and e-mail with OUR agent, sent the brood to my parents and jumped on a ferry to the land of our futures.

Well we actually drove onto an expensive ferry to Portsmouth then another more reasonably priced one to France, shame they don’t call in at Cowes or Ryde on the way it would have saved us a fortune. It is cheaper, per mile, to fly to the moon than it is to cross the Solent on a commercial ferry and that does not take account of a cup of tea and a slice of toast, you could probably do Mars if you counted subsistence.

Almost exactly five hundred miles or eight hundred kilometres south of the concrete jungle that is Le Havre is the Tarn et Garonne. It is without doubt a beautifully proportioned and picturesque province in south west France and it was there on that fateful Monday in “a small district in a very small part of a region in a very small department” of France we drove eagerly to the appointment with OUR agent. But it was Monday, and France closes on a Monday and our agent had two diaries, and our agent was somewhere else and our agent didn’t have his mobile with him and, and, and…Oh well lets go and have a coffee at the brasserie over there and see what transpires.

Two very cold and very welcome beers later OUR man arrived and the adventure continued.

It was raining stair-rods the next morning, rain drops the size of quails eggs and it didn’t look like stopping, so we donned our Isle of Wight yachty gear, similar to the clothes that nice television gardener Mr Titchmarsh wears and set out from our Chambre d’hote. Wrapped up like Sainsbury’s chickens in our wet weather clothing we met up with OUR agent and headed off to see our first property.

Now imagine the scene, the heavens downloading their entire liquid content, the wind whipping the leaves and branches from the trees, the roads and fields turning into boggy marshes and our first appointment, to look at a falling down ancient farmhouse…well barn plus a couple of equally rotten woodworm hostels or outbuildings in estate agent speak. You should have seen Elaine’s face peeping out through her Helly-Hansen with the sheets of water blasting at her and this dilapidated dump, just about, still standing in front of her. It was a face that could have sunk a thousand ships.

The place bore very little, if any, resemblance to the description we had been given, it was miles away from anywhere or anything, with the exception of some very wet, very smelly and very noisy cows and it was weathering before our very eyes, as chunks of roof dropped at our feet. I felt gutted and believe me I had no intention whatsoever of a rebuilding project, the size of Wembley Stadium .

The disappointment was palpable… you could have cut the atmosphere with a soup spoon. My immediate thoughts were

1) I need a drink
2) I need another drink
3) Lets go home

We had planned, organised, travelled and dreamed, and like a couple of idiots, made a huge mistake.

A map of France was miraculously produced, and that fateful night we decided where we wanted to spend a good part of the rest of our lives.

We wanted to be below the cold isobar that on every weather map seems to run due east of La Rochelle, yes Normandy, Brittany and other points north are beautiful, but decisions had to be made. We didn't want Mayal's mansions, the expat England of Dordogne nor the Costa del Cote D'Azur.

What we did want was proximity to the Med for summer swimming, the Pyrenees for winter skiing, an airport, a motorway system nearby and a train station just in case we wanted to escape. The kids didn't want schools either but that decision was swiftly over-ruled by the two senior partners.

This irrefutable logic led us to our very own "Imaginot Line", just east of Bordeaux, just north of Toulouse (too much electronics and fertiliser) and south of Cahors and definitely west of Provence. Once that decision had been deduced the rest became decidedly more complex, Henry had eaten the map!

New map and a quick trip to the bustling metropolis of Hammersmith to an exhibition about France with the family; yes the brood came too (Henry stayed at home, mumbling something about rabies and mad dogs on the mainland).

Then things got a bit more serious?.we couldn't find anywhere to park the bloody car. After much cursing and driving around and around in circles we eventually managed to abandon it under the cavernous canopy of the Novotel hotel, the only real French thing in south west London, coincidence or what!

The show was humming, hundreds of eager Francophiles looking for their perfect bijou holiday home along with all mod cons for the price of a bike shed in Purley and the dimensions of the palace of Versailles....in Paris. We were amazed and horrified.

We had brought with us a photocopied list of our specific requirements including roughish location, proximity to a town for junior and secondary schools, motorway connections, airport and the rest of our deluded deductions from our family gathering on Alcatraz.

From what we saw, it seemed to us that, the majority of people there had brought their sandwiches, a French phrase book and granny. Most of them could not speak a word of French, hated garlic, would not be seen dead in a beret and believed La Pen was something you wrote with.

But and it was a huge but, (big enough to keep a years supply of dodgy eau de vie), one little booth as the Americans call a stand, (Custers last booth just doesn't sound right) had exactly what we were searching for.

Once we had drank our cup of luke-warm instant coffee, and then slogged our way around a sea of stalls or perhaps a perpendicular of stands we found the Holy Grail, a small agent based in south west France, whose sales pitch was limited if not to say deficient.

"I only deal in a small district in a very small part of a region in a very small department, what are you looking for?"

I replied quickly, so as not to upset his predetermined routine to get rid of unwanted punters and their granny, "a small district in a very small part etc and here's what we want" and handed over the family's version of the Magna Carta.

To watch a surprised estate agent is similar to watching Jonathan Ross being lost for words, a little embarrassing but absolutely worth videoing.

Having exchanged business cards we left the stand and the heaving mass of maniacal Francophiles behind us and headed home or at least back to the Island, with carrier bags stuffed full of, well stuff.

Nothing meant that much to us so early in our quest and we decided to wait until the next day to have a look at what we had crammed into an assortment of logo'd carrier bags.

Take one tired, brow beaten world-weary business executive with a beautiful wife and three gorgeous kids (more of them later) and pick the whole lot up from a remote desolate island somewhere in the wild waters of the English Channel…well the Isle of Wight actually…. and deposit them lock stock and two steaming baguettes in a small town in south west France.

The result, I truly hope, is a fascinating and often funny insight into the clash of British and French culture, language and attitude.

So let me start at the beginning, the tired brow beaten bloke was me (Ex Director General of Cable TV and MD of Isle of Wight Cable Telephone Company) and my long suffering wife..(known to many as the Cable widow) is Elaine.

With our brood of three wonderful kids Sebastian (thirteen years of puberty), Alexandra (also known as Gertie, eleven years of precociousness) and Libby (AKA BamBam, nine years of breaking things) we sat down around the almost real gas fire in our house just outside Cowes and had a family pow-wow. We also very generously included Henry our mad black Labrador puppy in the get together, he didn’t add much to the debate but did manage to eat one of the cushions.

For years, Elaine and I had talked about moving to France when we had made our millions, somewhere like the Cote D’Azur or Pete Mayal’s Provence, and so, that wind swept evening, we discussed the issue at hand. And no we had not made millions, but had heroically and with great panache lost thousands to the voracious financiers, lawyers and advisors who exist within subterranean caverns in the City of London, only emerging during banking and lunch hours.

The discussion with the widow and the brood was about our standard of life, not politics not the state of the nation, nor Tony Blair’s new conservatives, but us; our life, our existence, their schools, their friends and ….well us.

It was a very selfish discussion, we all admit that, but after years of single parenting Elaine wanted to meet the chap she had married over fourteen years ago for more than ten minutes. Sebastian wanted a playground bigger than the Isle of Slight, Alexandra needed more in her life than a very expensive private school and “boring boys” and Libby needed something bigger to break…Martin Johnson or maybe the entire English rugby team. Me, well I just wanted a different life..no more bankers, no more bored…sorry board meetings, no more indigestion and five o clock in the morning alarm calls..not much to ask, was it?

What emerged from this little gathering was the farting of the almost real gas fire, yet another destroyed cushion and the unanimous decision to shift the entire family operation to somewhere in France.

Nowhere particularly particular or specifically specific, just France.