6. maître d'œuvres

Like for the station, our first port of call after seeing the school has been my dad. Papa is this über DIY guy to whom constructing a central staircase over three floors is no challenge and who only has to think about a skill or craft (upholstery, marquetry, car mechanics, carpentry, whatever...) to annoyingly master it. Seriously.
So we asked him if he would mind going to see the school before we signed the binding primary contract. We had made an offer and it had been accepted, all we needed now was the assurance that what we were buying was worth every penny and wasn't about to crash down.

It was relief to hear a few days later that, although he had repeatedly called the French-speaking estate agent a useless crook to her face, my dad was happy with the building and the price we offered to pay for it. He then went a few steps further and shortlisted local maîtres d'œuvre (project managers), interviewed them and checked references. He then decided on one and made an appointment.

Our offer was accepted and the date for the completion, the signing of the acte de vente, was set. We had an architect to supervise and organise the renovation. In few weeks the school would be ours and our adventure would begin.

5. back to school

Yesterday, I darkened my karma. I couldn't resist writing an email to the greedy notaire that deals with the sale of the station. Officially it was to withdraw our offer, unofficially it was to unashamedly gloat. Not only have I clearly stated the price we paid for our home (€50k less than what we offered for the station), I also attached a picture of it for good measure (see above). I don't expect a reply, but I revel in the knowledge that she must be kicking herself silly as the station still isn't sold (I checked) and with the present economic downturn, it's likely it won't for a while. Unless its price is substantially reduced. Cue evil laugh.

In the end their greed (either the notaire's or the owners' or both) has been a blessing in disguise. Although we were quite gutted we also had a wedding to finish planning and while Fox went straight back into compiling a new list of viewings I was happy to concentrate on tying up the loose ends for our big day. Two weeks after our civil partnership, we were back in France.

the newlyweds

We had shortlisted three properties: a nunnery, a house by a river and a disused school. The nunnery was the front runner, then came the house by the river for Fox, the school for me. Although it wasn't secluded, I had come round the idea that being in the middle of nowhere would mean poor or no internet connection and no help in case of an emergency. So I was willing to settle for being on the outskirt of a village (as long as the villagers didn't chase us armed with torches).
The nunnery was a big disappointment. Huge cracks split walls in two and although the owner was adamant that an architect assured her it didn't compromise the building, we decided to go with our gut feeling, not to mention our common sense, and passed on it. As for the house by the river, it was just a question of time before the river came lapping at its door, and in my opinion, having a public footpath splitting the land and the house wasn't much of a strong selling point.

The school, however, was something else. From the word go it was just right. Within minutes of walking in its playground €20k was knocked off its price, we had the assured support of the Mairie to turn part of it into a B&B and even a possible list of contacts. The Mayor's deputy didn't even bat an eyelid when I told him we wanted to turn this into a family home. We started the viewing by the two huge classrooms, followed by the schoolmaster's house and finally the garden behind the préau (see below). It was beautiful, spacious, private, quirky with its bell still hanging, albeit perilously. It was just the home we were looking for.
And just like that, belle-maman and beau-papa got their jobs back.

4. the notaire

We drove to the station that Saturday, we had barely slept the night before. Cathy came with us for help and support. We parked the car at the front and waited for the owners to come out. They looked a bit puzzled, looking around before finally asking about the notaire.
"Well she's not coming today, she's on holidays" I said.
"No no, she said she'll come" they said.
I thought they were just confused, the way old people sometimes are, and decided not to pay attention to their obvious lapse in memory and asked for the tour to start. It was just great, huge rooms and high ceilings, beautiful vegetable garden and mature trees. On the down side there was shit everywhere in the garden where what could only be called Noah's ark was wrecking havoc.
As we went around the corner on our way back into the house and up the first floor, a forty something blonde with the smile of a shark about to make a kill trotted towards us. The notaire.
"I thought I would surprise you. Surprise!" she said.
The thought of losing the introductory fee had been enough of a motivation to bring back her arse all the way from Royan plage. From this moment on poor Mr C. had no voice anymore. It went a bit like this:
Him: "The render needs to be redone, it's quite --"
Her: "Not at all! You could sandblast the corner stones and expose the rest of the stones it would be beautiful"
Him: "No, it would look awful"
Her: "Not at all!!! Mr C. really!"
Him: "It would, underneath it's half brick, half stone."

We made an honest offer but they were being greedy and decided to sit it out. My dad had come up with the figure, asserting it wasn't worth more than that. We also asked him run the negotiations on our behalf as we couldn't be objective (we were already assigning jobs, belle-maman making the curtains, beau-papa digging up the garden).
After much waiting we decided to carry on looking. Within days Fox came up with another short list.

3. French lessons

I always thought I would leave London at some point and for that reason I had already started to try and learn Spanish. London is definitely not a city to grow old in. I was only equipped with the most meagre of French from my school days which at this point will have been 30 years ago. So off I trot to City Lit to ascertain what class would best suit me. I knew I wasn't a complete beginner or very advanced and said as much to the French Tutor I met there. Her response was to say 'well let's speak french now then, tell me about your summer holiday'. I gulped, bit the bullet and mangled what is supposed to be a beautiful european tongue. I got my tenses wrong and ummed and ahhed through a wincing few minutes. She took my bon mots on the chin and elegantly gave me the name of a class I should join. It must have been the aural equivalent of watching a shire horse attempt a flawless dressage routine.

I joined the class with some trepidation but as there were varying degrees of confidence and knowledge I found I wasn't that bad after all. A lot of my school french did resurface and held me in good stead. Our teacher was just brilliant. She was patient, encouraging and never judgmental. It was three hours every Tuesday with at least a page of written homework every week which thoroughly plunged my brain into gallic exercise. The trouble with not having the spongebob brain of youth is that I find I need to have my sentence ready rather than trusting to making mistakes and engaging in a richly gorgeous flow of banter. But I also think that once we are living there and the flooding therapy begins, there will be no more safety nets and hopefully I will absorb a lot more. In the meantime I have to keep it simmering away like a good pot au feu.

The most important thing for me, and it will be frustrating at first, is being able to be creative and funny in French. I try, but some things don't readily translate from English in French and can seem rather dull and literal in their mundane adaptation rather than the dazzling wit I want them to appear to be. But perserverance is all, which is exactly the same word in French, but with accents.

2. the station

We had a date for the big move but nowhere to move to. Where should we go? How should we do it? Should we follow the general advice and rent first in whatever area took our fancy before committing ourselves to a property? It was April 2007.

Our friend Andrew and his father, generously allowed us to use their house in the Lot that summer. Using it as a base we decided to explore the Albigeois, an area east of Toulouse.
It had everything we needed: close to Spain, to both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, half an hour away to Toulouse airport, with its own micro-climate and a picture-perfect village nearby perched high up on a rock amidst the clouds, it was just right.

Back in London Fox carried on scouring the net for houses. He would keep an eye on properties, which had its price reduced, tracking those we liked on different websites, while I checked crime rates, local taxes, areas affected by termites and floodplains. The wall of our lounge looked like one of the HQ of a military operation. We had a map of the Midi-Pyrenees pinned to the wall with coloured pins marking the houses that caught our interest.

By the time we were ready to go back to France the following summer to start our viewings we had developed an unhealthy obsession with an unlikely house: an old train station built in the second half of the 19th century (see above). It was big, needed a lot of work and was nowhere near the Albigeois, or even the Midi-Pyrenees.

But luckily it was a stone throw away from our friends Dave and Cathy, in the Poitou-Charentes. While I tracked down the notaire dealing with the sale in an attempt to avoid paying the agency fees, Cathy and Dave played detectives and scoured the area in search of the station. Within days we had the address and phone number of the owners and all their neighbours, had made an appointment through the notaire in two weeks time and had additional pictures our friends took from the window of their car.

The thing was, we didn't think we could wait that long to view it and the notaire was on holiday til then. So I called the owners and made an appointment directly with them for the end of the week. And when the notaire called to postponed the viewing for a couple of days we thought we'd better come clean and save on introductory fee. I told her I needed to talk to Fox and that I would call her back. I waited for a bit before doing so: not to worry I then said, we arranged a viewing directly with the owners, we'll keep you posted if we decide to go ahead. Her shock should have been enough of a warning but we were too excited to notice.

1. taking the plunge

I never thought I would come back to live in France, mainly because I remembered all too well how quickly I had packed my bags and fled to London a decade ago and also because although my husband and I were no longer in our 20’s or going out on the gay scene, in my mind rural France and gay men didn’t mix. Besides, mummy dearest was still living there and nothing short of the English Channel could guarantee my safety and sanity.

Then, over a year ago, we went to visit a couple of friends who did just that with their two children. They traded crazy London for a small town in the Poitou, and felt the better for it. Gone were the crippling mortgage, the long working hours and the stress, welcomed were the time with the kids, the cheap quality food and wine and the beautiful house paid in full. In was work to live, out was live to work.
After a tour of the house, the grounds and two bottles of wine we were sold on the idea. It didn't take much convincing mind you. We thought about our full-time and part-time jobs we both had, our tiny flat, our constant commute, the incompatibility of our time-off, my frustration of not doing more photography and his not spending more time at his studio painting, our craving for personal space (see commute)... I could picture us, strolling down our massive garden in the morning to feed the chickens and collect the freshly laid eggs before picking our lunch straight from the vegetable garden, spending our evenings reading and drinking wine by a crackling fire, entertaining friends from England around a big farm table in the kitchen… then with the morning and a slight hangover, and hard on the heels of the initial enthusiasm for the dream came the very real question: could we really do it?

We came back to Britain and thought about what it would actually mean to leave London and settle in rural France. We weighed the pros and cons of such a move, what we would gain and what we would have to sacrifice. The obvious concern was what a rural community would make of a couple of gay men setting up home amongst them. Then there were the questions of making a living, of leaving our friends and Fox’s parents behind, of Fox learning a whole new language.
We quickly realised how unsatisfied we both were with our city life and how much the positives of such a move outweighed its negatives. In the end it was surprisingly easy to decide.
Nonetheless I put three conditions to the move: that we have access to English television channels (French TV is appallingly bad, with the exception of the Franco-German station Arte), that we live at a safe distance from my hometown, and that our house be sufficiently secluded to allow me to stand stark naked on our door steps without risking arrest.
Fox enrolled on a French course and the date for our big move was set to the summer 2009. We were taking the plunge.