OK, so it's been a long time since my last blog, but that's mainly because so much has been happening, but that's the very reason for doing the blog!! I keep on starting with my notes, but not getting it up-to-date so don't post it. Well, no longer, so here's all the stuff I had been saving by the beginning of this year!
April 2015
Well, at the beginning of the year we again started a new life. The change started last September when we received a phone call from Carole Pesquet whilst Paul Oldroyd and Chris Donaldson were staying with us. Pedro and Sandrine used to run a late night pub in St Valery, and have now taken over the restaurant from Carole and Martial in the local campsite. They were living in Fontaine le Dun, but had decided to move out and wanted to rent ours (and possibly buy it - but we'll see if that ever happens!). Of course we said yes, even though it meant lots of trips backwards and forwards to finish all the odd jobs (and some were quite large!) we had been meaning to do for several years! I had promised myself that we would never get a place finished just as we are moving out, as we've done with all our other homes, but of course that never happened. Now we only have one chance to live in a completely finished house since we hope that the only time we leave this house in Vendee is in a coffin!Not only were the trips back and forth for home improvements, but also for John's health. Since we want to keep Normandy as our main house (maison principale) for tax reasons, we have kept the doctor up there, which means when John potentially had prostate cancer, we had to keep on going back for scans etc. - 6 hours each way! Amazingly the hospital was open on a Saturday!! The system here is quite good, you get the paperwork immediately with the results, and then you go to your doctor who will do whatever is necessary after that. Trouble for us was that we left Normandy the day after the first scan, and that's where the doctor is. However, we thought things were OK - it's difficult to tell because it's not only medical terms, it's in French/Latin as well. Still, the pictures were good - though we can't see the baby!! On the next visit it was confirmed that he has cysts, but not cancer!!! However, there is a cyst on his kidney which will need additional attention, so yet more trips back to Normandy!!
And the Vendee house, how's that coming along? You have to ask? Obviously you don't know us well enough! Slowly, and possibly surely, though we're not too sure! We have a new deadline which is always good. The first deadline had been to get all the electrics redone and the 2 bathrooms in the gite sorted out before our visitors from May last year. Now we have our 40th wedding anniversary party in September as the next one. Hopefully we will get lots of people from the UK, so it will be necessary to have ALL the bedrooms usable so we can accommodate as many as possible. We have young Johanne back putting in an ensuite in the spare bedroom. It's really weird, ensuite is a French word, but they don't know what on earth you are talking about if you use that term. Trouble is, now I've said that I just know you are all saying 'well, what do they call it?' and I just don't know! I'll have to check in the dictionary. (I've done that now, and they usually just say salle de bain/douche attenante or attache).
John is continuing with the arriere cuisine (back kitchen), which will hopefully be useable by the end of the weekend because then I can continue to unpack the kitchen boxes. Mind you, that won't make a significant difference given how much 'stuff' we've got!
September 2015
So, since then we had to go back to Normandy for John to have an MRI scan. The results went directly to the specialist since we, as usual, were coming back down south the next day and he said he'd contact us if anything else was needed. He anticipated that the cysts would not be malignant, and therefore no news is good news, since we've heard nothing! And as for the work we've done:- Arriere cuisine usable, with washing machine and tumble dryer, so I don't have to keep on going into the gite to do the washing. Still got some decoration and ceiling to finish.
- Spare bedroom - old sink room taken out, though we made a mistake in telling Johanne that we didn't need to use the room until end July, and so he's not finished his work!! (In fact, he finished the work on 2nd August!) Still, he did at least come back and mend the water pump in the garden, so we can use the water from the well instead of having to pay for town water. Still have to pay for disposal, but that's OK. Apparently, if we use the well water all the time, they'll just estimate how much has been disposed of since the water meter only works on incoming.
- Wallpaper stripped in all the rooms and the corridors. Well as much as we can reach, there's still the top of the wall in the hall that we haven't finished, but since it goes from the ground to the ceiling, it's just a tad too high to reach without major equipment.
- Studio - two walls completed, bookcases brought in and loaded with books. If you don't look at the other 2 walls, it looks great!! And we can actually move a little in the garage now we've got rid of 5 bookcases and over 10 boxes of books (only another 50 or so to go!). (Now finished so it's now not only the bibliotheque, but also the music room with my keyboards and all of John's guitars.)
- Garden - all the trees we don't want have been taken down, though we still are the proud owners of the root base of the pine tree, because it's too large to get out of the garden! Hopefully we'll be buying a barbecue oven next month (No, this year!!) and will need a crane to lift it over the wall, and we can use that to take the root out! That's what Herve, our local saint, says. So who is Herve? He is our life saver!! He lives locally and works for the enterprise in the village which makes games fields for schools etc. so he's got a lot of experience which is useful for our garden work. He chopped down all the trees, dug out the raised garden which will be for the gite, and has made us an amazing base for the pagoda. Even got a concrete base for it, so I can't see us changing our minds at some stage in the future! (Got the whole pagoda finished now!)
What else have we done? Become part of a group of Anglofiles in the village and enjoyed soirees with them. Steve and Liz are the other 2 English, then there are their 2 neighbours (Fred and his girlfriend Mathilde, Valerie and Didier, plus Marie, our French teacher. Her husband is the only one who doesn't speak English! The first soiree was a 'Murder Mystery' evening at Steve and Liz's which was absolutely fantastic, although entailed a lot of work by them. It was based on 'Allo 'Allo. I was Edith and had to sing, but luckily the windows were strong enough to put up with it! John was Rene and looked fantastic! Fred (who was Hier Gruber and the murderer) and Mathilde (Mimi) seemed to find the play-acting quite attractive - apparently didn't return their uniforms for several weeks, can't imagine why!!! The next soiree was just a 'simple' meal at Marie's - nice and relaxed and gave us the chance to chat more. Being typically French, although we got there at 7.30 p.m., we didn't finish until almost midnight! The anniversary party is going to be our contribution, but I think I would love to do them all a 'British' Christmas meal. The French in Normandy thoroughly enjoyed it so I'm sure it will go down well here.
We had a little holiday in May - drove down to see Chris and Paul in Spain. That was fantastic! We stopped the first day in Bordeaux (only 3 hours south, but we wanted to see what it was like). We fell in love with the place. Can't explain exactly why, but it was just so lively. We arrived about 3 in the afternoon so had a good afternoon and evening there. So many fantastic squares with bars and restaurants and people enjoying just socialising. I can see us having many other short trips down there. Don't think we made the best choice for the restaurant, but it was a bit difficult since we needed an 'early' meal (about 7.30 p.m.) so we wouldn't get back too late, and most people seemed to be wanting to eat after 9 p.m.!
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So, that's the notes I had made earlier in the year. To bring us up-to-date, here's the key points since then. We've had a very enjoyable time down here, which got cut back on the day before John's birthday in October. He had an appointment at the hospital to check why he's got the shakes, and it's because he's following his dad's lifestyle and has got Parkinson's disease. Not the greatest birthday present he could have had!! There is still no cure, but there have been lots of improvements since John's dad had the disease, so hopefully we'll have a better life for longer than he had. The good side of this is that the specialist has said that he should be OK for about 4-5 years, after that they can't say what will happen since it's different for each person. No - when I said good side, I didn't mean because it's only 4-5 years, but because it's going to be that long. That's good. We'll take 2 years to get all the work in the house finished, and then we have enough time to do lots of travelling around France. And after that, who knows, it could be good!!Then, at the end of the year we had another downturn - Sandrine and Pedro decided not to buy the Normandy house and moved out at the end of February this year. So we've been sorting it out and got an Immobilier (Estate Agent) to sell it for us. There is a Russian woman who is interested and that would follow the non-French ownership nicely! But everything is still at the starting point and we have to wait until her banker agrees to give the mortgage for the house. We'll know for sure in a few weeks! Hopefully it will all go through (takes about 3 months over here if there is a mortgage involved) and we will, for the first time in 12 years, have just one home!
OK - enough. It's the beginning of June and I have decided that I WILL make a post once a month at the latest, if not more frequently. Next time I'll put more pictures for the current status of the house, so you have something to look forward to!!!
