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.