The 'before' time: 2005 / 2006

When one has been away on holiday, after the first flush of enthusiasm about being back home again, there will often follow a sense of anti climax. This we had. It made us restless and dissatisfied with our lives. We started talking about moving to France, but made ourselves feel even worse because there was no way we were ever going to be able to do so. And, anyway, what we would do there. How would we earn enough money to live on. What about the language..... 

So we shoved the idea away. It was no do-able. 

And then I started browsing the Internet, just to have a look to see what properties were available. It was a most enjoyable pastime, but theoretical because we could not afford to move. But a seed had been planted. 

Over the following months, and after many discussions, thoughts started evolving about maybe running a smallholding. Lester held the line that we would need to have land which had running water on it, like a river or a stream, and that it must be flat so it would be easy to farm. He started talking about wanting to keep animals, like pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats. I was keener to do veggies. I felt very squeamish about providing our own meat. It meant deceasing an animal. Cutting it up. It seemed a messy business. I therefore felt no keenness to have animals, no desire to be involved in the recycling of them, but I went along with Lester’s enthusiasm, and just agreed when he spoke about how what types of animals we should keep: Tamworths, for instance, were to be the breed of pig we would have. ‘Pigs? You must be joking’, I thought. Chickens, maybe. Bees, definitely. But pigs? That was pushing imagination too far. 

Time plodded on.


2006

I found chateaux, lots of them. Big, glorious,.....and expensive. And I found myself talking about maybe running a place of rest and recuperation for people, a place where a person could get off the merry-go-round of their life for a few days. They could join in the running of the farm if they wanted to, or they could rest, it was their decision as to how they wanted to spend their time. Splendid daydreams, but dangerous to our everyday lives, because the restlessness kept on growing. We found ourselves irritable with each other, we argued, then came together for peaceful pow wows about what we would do when we moved to France. 

The months were rolling on. Everything was still the same as it was before France, only we were not the same. 

I started becoming addicted to Internet searching, and stretched out my search for possible homes to embrace the world. For a while America captivated us, then South Africa became a passing focus followed by brief thoughts about New Zealand. Even the north of England, Northumberland perhaps, was thought about. But always, always, it was to France that we returned. 

So where in France... it is a big country with plenty of choices. I began to understand the different regions of France. Perhaps the north coast of France would be best, our thinking being that it would be easy to travel to and fro between the UK and France, and easy for people to visit us as well. Perhaps the middle of France, where we had friends who could look after us as we adjusted to French living. Of course, this was all still theoretical. We had a high mortgage, some collateral but not much, and some savings because Lester was insistent that we should not spend money on the current house, but should save money just in case he was made unemployed. The mortgage was like a noose around his neck, and his fear of having to find the money to pay those monthly payments was a raw and constant worry with him. So money was building up in savings because of Lester’s worry about our finances. This frustrated me because I wanted things done to the house. We argued a lot about this. I wanted to spend the money on the house because I was feeling restless and unsettled so thought making the house more comfortable would solve these feelings, and Lester was worried about paying the bills and wanted a cushion against falling into debt, and so he forced us to save. 

Still I continued to fuel my addiction about searching for a theoretical new home in France. I had a look round all of France, but the area I was always drawn back to was the inland border of Aquitaine. But it was theoretical anyway, it passed the time, but that seed had started to grow roots although we didn’t know it as yet. 

Another addiction, apart from eating, mostly junk food, chocolate, which is what both of us do when under stress, but I suppose it is better than other addictive behaviours like getting frequently drunk for instance, well that other addiction which arrived was the hours I began watching the ‘Moving to France’, ‘Living in the Sun’ and ‘Starting a New Life’ programmes on TV. But here’s a curious thing. Although I watched many of these type of programmes, of which there were several during the day, I never became caught up in the sales spiel of them. What I mean is, that I never put myself in the shoes of the people whose lives were being filmed. I always saw through the story that was laid down by the film makers, never wanting what we saw on the television for ourselves, realising that it was false reporting most times, the programme makers having a need to fill air time. 

But did we have a ‘dream’ about going to France? I don’t think so, because the ‘dream’ would have started before we had that holiday. Most times we didn’t think that we would be able to go. Really, I suppose, during this time the France Project was more a case of, ‘If we could go where would we go. If we did go, what would we do.’ And although we were restless we didn’t wish that we were there already because we didn’t think we would ever go in the first place, but there is nothing wrong with hoping, so to contribute towards the France Project I enrolled us in an Adult Education French language course and bought some French language books. 

We really did try to learn French but could not maintain the enthusiasm to do so, maybe because, as I keep saying, we never thought we would go anyway. As for the French classes, we drifted away from them during the second term, me because I felt silly speaking foreign words out loud, and Lester because he had heavy pressures at work. The books challenged me because I could not keep the words in my head, and I became very good at avoidance tactics whenever I went near them. Lester did not have time to read them anyway. 

This twinning of lives, of feeling the pull of France despite trying to unhinge ourselves from that land, meanwhile continuing on with our life as we knew it, sapped us, making life itself seem an uphill struggle and hardly worth living. Stress built, and kept on building. 

And one question bugged me the most: How on earth could I be homesick for a foreign land. This did not make sense to me, and endlessly I fought hard to keep happy with being a UK citizen. It was not so bad for Lester, although he had other worries, but at least he was being kept busy at work which made the time pass quicker for him. I think, in hindsight, that I probably almost drove him nuts with my constant hunt for houses though. It was driving me nuts as well.