Hi. Calling all writers ! I am an author and am putting together a new book. I am looking for contributions from expat British women. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A PROFESSIONAL WRITER.

 I haven't got a title for the book yet but it is about expat British women, their likes and dislikes about where they are living and .. importantly ... whether they want to go home or not.  It can be funny or serious, pro- or anti- your host country.

The only criteria are that you must be a woman, what you contribute must be true, it must contain no foul language or vicious verbal attacks on your host country (but it can be cold), and it must be accompanied by at least 2 photos that are relevant to what you write. It needs to be 600 - 2000 words.

You will not be paid for your contribution till after the book has started to sell and you will be shown how to maximize your possibilities.  You can put a link to your web site if you have a business or to (for example) your favourite charity if it is relevant to the story

Please contact me via my web site turquoisemoon co uk NOT via here please.

Looking forward to hearing from you !    Catherine Broughton (author)

When you should or should not read or write reveiws

When you should and when you should not read or write reviews.

The reviews system evolved during the 1970s and 80s when hordes of British tourists flocked to the south of Spain for cheap package holidays.  Some of the deals were too good to be true – and that was precisely the problem: they were not true.  Families turned up with savings that had taken them all year, cheap though it was, to find that the hotel was still being built. There was no running water, or perhaps no electricity, or the sound of building work constantly thundering round the pool – which had no water in it.

THAT is why the review system was born. So that people could warn each other.  Unhappily it has got out of hand and people will write bad reviews almost willy-nilly about almost anything.  What very few review-writers realize is that their review can do serious damage.

And that is not fair.  Most business owners have worked very hard indeed to achieve what they have and it is unfair, rude and extremely unkind to write a bad review just for the hell of it. I repeat: a bad review should be only because you strongly feel that the general public should be warned.

Now, it does seem to be that it depends on what you are reviewing.  For example, if 100 people write a review on the same car, saying that the indicators don’t work, that is fine. The public needs to know and have a right to know.  Because of the mechanical nature of cars, washing machines and so on, writing a review because you didn’t like it has no value.

If you read a review about the fridge and it says “I don’t like this fridge at all, the shelves are not what I expected and the manufacturer should have put more thought in to the handle”, the manufacturer and the review-reader will simply ignore it because it is just silly.

But if you write that same thing about an hotel, ie “I didn’t like this hotel at all, the wardrobe arrangement was not what I expected and the managers should have put more thought in to the bathroom” … hey, that is a whole different thing.  You are, in a way, saying “do not go to this hotel”.

I had a bad review for my chateau rental, fourteen years ago.  That review has been there fourteen years and there is nothing I can do about it.  About 50% of what the writer wrote was simply untrue and the other 50% were put right 14 years ago.  To make it worse, because there were several adults in the party, another person wrote a bad review so it looks as though I have two bad reviews, whereas in fact it was the same lot.

In fact it hasn’t affected me because the property is packed out every year and many people come back over and again. But that is not the point: it was rude, wrong, unkind and potentially damaging.

I recently read a book by a well-known author.  It bored the back teeth out of me, I was very disappointed in it, and irritated because it wasn’t cheap.  This is the review I wrote: Nobody can deny that XX is a brilliant writer but this book wasn’t for me. It was just not my type of story, though I can see how many would love it. I’d say that unless you are interested in xxx, which I am not, you will perhaps find it tedious. However, if the subject of xxx interests you – go for it. It is certainly well written.

Mercifully I have lots of good reviews for my books, and just one bad review.  That bad review … no, I can’t say it bugs me … but I wish I could speak to the author of it, an American by the name of Nell.  I would like to ask her what her aim was.  Did she feel she needed to warn the general public ?  That one book has never sold another copy in the US, though it sells well in the UK.  Thanks Nell.  That was your aim, perhaps ?

1)      Bear in mind, whether you are a review writer or a review reader, that most bad reviews are written in the heat of the moment, especially when it comes to holidays.  When people are all fired-up with anger or disappointment, they are far more likely to put pen to paper – or fingers to key-board.  Conversely, people who enjoyed whatever the product was, tend to just go away satisfied and don’t take the time to write a good review.    This means that there are usually far more bad reviews than good ones.

2)      It is not your place to vent your feelings and get your little moment of power at your laptop at the expense of somebody else.  You should never write a bad review just because you didn’t happen to like it – whatever it was.  A bad review should be uniquely to warn the public : there were rats running everywhere, the windows were dangerous, the restaurant smelt of septic tanks – really bad stuff that the public will want and need to know about.

3)      A review, good or bad, once written cannot be removed.  So after your visit it really doesn’t matter how hard the owner works to put things right – that review is still there.  That makes it really tough on the owner.  Consider writing a letter to the owner instead; I mean your aim, one assumes, is to point-out what you thought was wrong. Or is your aim to have a bit of vengeance at the computer ?  Think about it.

4)      In many countries your bad review can get staff fired; likewise a good review can get staff promoted.

5)      It may interest you to know that in the UK a study was done about review-writers and the conclusions were so interesting.  A) Of the 500 reviews studied only 23 were genuine worthwhile complaints; the rest were just people being fussy and small-minded. B) The vast majority of bad review writers were overweight !!!  Isn’t that odd ?  C) eleven of the small businesses in the 500 reviews had great financial difficulty afterwards, some of them even having to close.  The overall opinion of the study was that, with some exceptions, bad review writers were also people who were generally anyway grouchy about life

6)      To write a bad review after the owner/manager has tried to put things right for you is unforgiveable, especially when they have gone out of their way.

7)      Examine the reason why you are writing the review.  Remember that just letting off steam in this way is permanent – it can do serious damage

8)      Try to find the time to write good reviews – we all need them, including you!

9)      Remember what granny taught you: if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing !

10)   Last but not least, there now exist black lists for the use of owners of accommodation.  It is all very well you writing something unkind about somebody else and/or their business.  How do you feel when they write something unkind about you ?  I know a man who owns a small hotel in Cyprus, and in reception there is a big sign: if you write a bad review about me, be sure that I will write a bad review about you!  Somewhat childish to say the least, but I see where he is coming from.

 Catherine Broughton is an author, a poet and an artist

Part 12: Caravan trip through Europe to Cyprus.Albania to Greece.

Greece appeared suddenly.

Lord knows, the broken road over the Albanian mountains had gone on and on hour after hour, and taken (as is always the case) longer than expected.  The car was thick with stone dust, as indeed was the caravan, and I felt that all my teeth had been rattled out of my head with the never-ending jarring.   George didn't seem at all well.  At our last stop he had been sick and had had great difficulty clambering out of the back of the car, and even greater difficulty clambering back in.  He didn't want to eat, though he did drink plenty of water and politely partook of luke-warm milky tea whenever we brewed up.  He tried to wag his tail whenever we spoke to him, but even that seemed an effort, and when we watched him lower his huge bulk down in to the grass we felt that his days were numbered ....

When the border in to Greece appeared, it was like magic.  We rounded a very steep downhill bend, one of those endless downward rolls that make you just have to trust the over-heated brakes, and suddenly, just as the road started to flatten, we were on tarmac.  The poor car didn't know what had hit it.  Tarmac !  It was a miracle we hadn't had punctures up there in the mountains with the wolves and the desolate landscape.

We rounded another bend - and there it was - a good hour before we expected it. The border !  The wonderful, blissful, delicious border in to Greece. Europe !

Goodness, I have travelled all over the world and been in and out of all sorts of odd situations in Africa and Central America, but there was something about Albania that had left me constantly on edge, laced with a hint of fear.  Something I just couldn't put my finger on.  Something to do with menace.  Further north the mountains are called the Accursed Mountains, and perhaps that had something to do with it.  My relief was so great at finding ourselves at the border that I all but kissed the border guard.

  George was such a totally excellent dog, irreplaceable

The nearest town was Ioannina.  Darkness had fallen and we were both incredibly tired.  Had we driven past somewhere to just pull in for the night we would have, but there was nothing, and we sped along the wonderful good road to Ioannina, eyes skinned for campsites or anything half way suitable all the way.

We arrived at the municipal campsite after midnight.  We simply drove in, almost blindly, and parked.  I heated up a tin of soup and buttered some bread while Bruce let down the jacks and unhitched the car.  George seemed to understand that we had stopped for the night, and was more willing to make the effort to go off and do his doings to one side (which we cleared up in the morning), and even ate a small amount of the moo-moo I had bought in the village the previous day (see Part 11).  It was mild and the sky was ablaze with zillions of stars, so we made up a bed for George on the grass next to the caravan, leaving the car open so that he could get in if he wanted to.  He knew that we were doing this for his sake, to save him having to clamber in and out again, and he nuzzled our legs gratefully and said his habitual hrumff.  He seemed so tired and so unwell that, had he not been such a terror for farting, as all the best old men are, we'd have allowed him in to the caravan with us.

  This is the lake of Ioannina, picture taken later in the winter it would seem, or perhaps very early spring - I see caravans there

In the morning when daylight broke, we discovered that we were just a matter of two or three feet away from a concrete edge straight in to a lake.

Three things needed seeing to first thing in the morning.  Bruce had to see a doctor, George had to see a vet and the car had to see a mechanic.  Despite not a word of Greek, and in an area where not a lot of English was spoken, we found all three fairly quickly.  The vet reassured us that, although George was very elderly, he was in no pain and was, infact, in extremely good condition for such an old dog.  Funny how one communicates in foreign languages.  The vet had about 20 words of English and 10 of German; I had about 20 words of German, and between us we worked out what was being said with no trouble.  Some kind of man-thing had to be done to the car, and that was quickly dealt with.  The doctor, who spoke a few words of French to add to his few words of German and English,  was more of a worry for he said there was no eye clinic in Ioannina and that he recommended Bruce go to the main eye hospital in Athens.  This was a bit of a blow, for we were very tired and needed to rest and, against the doctor's advice, we decided to stay put for a few days.  All three of us needed it.  All five of us if you include the car and the caravan.

  Ioannina

We had an exciting time with the 2 men who worked at the campsite coming to fisty-cuffs over to whom we should give the camping money, which was clearly simply going in their pockets. It was most interesting to watch them get angry with each other and yell things in Greek, and we solved the problem by giving them half each, a solution which they found extraordinarily clever.  I used the camp washing machine and got all George's very smelly blankets washed, as well as out own stuff.  There were some fun moments with that too as one of the two same men wanted money for use of the washing machine when I had already put money in the slot ... and so on ... till, on the third day we hitched up and headed for Athens.  George was really annoyed.  Really really annoyed and refused to get in to the car till we threatened to leave him behind.

I think Athens has changed recently, but at that time (2008) the centre of the city was one huge, noisy, dirty, bustly, noisy noisy noisy place.  The camp site was fine, and we located the eye clinic where there was a queue almost five million miles long.  It was at odd moments like this that I was aware that George was a burden in some ways.  I wanted to be with Bruce when the doctor examined him because he is deaf in one ear and frequently doesn't catch what people are saying; add to this the Meniere's problem and the huge language barrier - well, I wanted to be there.  But I had to keep nipping out to the car to check on George and spend a bit of time with him (I would sit in the back with him with my feet under  his ears, which he loved, and do Sudoku).

The doctor pronounced Bruce's eye healing well and we headed south for the beach as fast as we sensibly could.  It was now five days since we had promised beach to George, and he was also five days older....

Part 13 to follow.

 Click here for Part 11.

The English in France, Part 2. Driving through Italy.

  An early sketch of George. I didn't catch the size of him at all.  I've forgotten what he weighed now, but it was something like 70 kgs - over 10 stone.  He was extremely intelligent, as Great Danes are, exceptionally obedient.  We didn't even need to put him on a lead once he'd got past the silly I'm-a-puppy-I'm-gonna-run-after-it stage.  When we walked around, people would exclaim at the size of him and sometimes ask if they could pat him.  He was always very good-natured but considered the car his own property and would bare his teeth quite nastily if anybody other than us or the children approached.

We blew hot and cold about whether or not to set off.  Bruce had been so unwell that I was concerned about driving that huge rig and looking after him and an old dog.  But he seemed generally better and was getting up most days now.  He felt he would be able to drive small distances and we both felt that the trip would do him good.

We waited.  He went through a bad patch.  We can't go, we said.  He seemed better.  OK, we're off, we said.  Weeks slipped by and the summer holiday lettings finished. We closed the gites for the winter and moved from our barn, which was just a tad chilly in the mornings now, back in to the chateau.  It was still very hot during the day, however,  and it was difficult to imagine another bleak winter looming up.  We peered at maps and atlases.  We traced routes across France and in to Italy.  We talked about nothing else.

   We discovered that the dizziness Bruce suffered eased considerably if he was swimming, which he did almost every day if he was up to it that summer.  We told the Meniere's Society about it and I wonder if anybody else has benefitted from that as a therapy ...  (For more about this property go to http://www.holidaychateaufrance.com)

On good days Bruce altered a few things in the caravan - well, a lot of things, actually.  He installed a hot water system (which we never used!) and a microwave.  He widened the bed to accomodate proper mattresses.  He sorted hose pipes and electrics, a heater, a larger fridge, the WC ... and at last it seemed he was feeling better more frequently than he was feeling ill and, excitedly, we packed.  We took a minimum of belongings, and I have stuck to that rule ever since - two things to wear if it is hot, two for if it is cold and two if it is medium.  The bulk of our equipment was tools in case of a breakdown (little did we know what was to happen - that'll be in about Part 8 I expect) and the things we needed for life to be comfortable - table and chairs, parasol and that sort of thing. If we were short of anything, we would buy it.

It was a very hot day, the day we set off, towards the end of September.  That gorgeous weather followed us for months.  Henri and Edith waved goodbye and we knew we left the property in good hands.  George lay down on his mattress in the back of the car and slept.  As long as he was coming too, he really didn't mind.  He could still get in and out of the car by himself and still loved a walk - would even run a few steps if he was on a beach.  He ate well and seemed happy enough.  He was stiff, but not in pain.  We had him checked over by the vet before we left, who declared "c'est un veillard" - he is an old man.

   An early sketch of a windmill, done during that first week away.

However, even in a big caravan like ours there really was not enough room for a Great Dane.  Poor old boy.  He so wanted to come in with us at first, and we had to leave the upper half of the caravan door open (it was one of those split affairs) and reverse the car right up to the door, the boot open,  so that he was virtually in with us.  He seemed happy with that.  We had no fear of leaving the back of the car unlocked because nobody in their right mind would approach a huge dog they don't know, and George had a magnificent - and utterly terrifying - growl.  He was able to get out and do his doings if he needed to during the night, right by the car because he knew he had to STAY.  He'd look a bit mournful about it in the morning and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when Bruce cleared it up with no ticking-off.

We motored down through France, stopping regularly.  I was all right if I could drive in a straight line, but manoeuvring that huge rig, sometimes in to the tightest spots, was only for an expert like Bruce.  We both wanted to get out of France as quickly as we sensibly could - not, I hasten to add, because we didn't want to be in France, but because we were both eager to get gone, as it were, to start on our adventure.

  Blaye.  There are a lot of fortifications all along the coast here, built in the 17th and 18th centuries to keep the English out.  Fair enough!

We spent the first night near Blaye, barely an hour's drive away. We reached it by 10.00 that morning but couldn't go any further.  We talked about turning back and instantly decided against it.  We had a good medical insurance, and Bruce seemed happier than he had in ages.  We went for a gentle walk, tried to relax.  I am not accustomed to sitting around.  During that afternoon of waiting for the dizziness and nausea to abate I started on my second book "French Sand" ("A Call from France" was by now published); I sketched, I did patchwork, I wished I could knit.

The second day we were up bright and perky and made it as far as Avignon, with several stops en route.  It was slow going but it was fine - we were not in a rush ... we had months!

  Avignon is the largest city in the Vaucluse in the south-east of France. It is often referred to as the City of Popes because it was the home of the popes for over 100 years, from 1309 to 1423.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, well worth a visit.

A slow and careful start in the morning, tasking it easy, taking our time, making sure everything was pleasant and stress-free, brought us to the Italian border during the next afternoon.  It was only once we had crossed the broder in to Italy that we felt our adventure had started.

With us we had an Italian phrase book, a big map where I marked in fluorescent pen the route we had taken, and a book from the UK caravan club.  This book told where most - though not all - campsites were.  The details in the book depend, of course, on feed-back from campers.  I always think it is really unkind to submit a bad report just because it didn't suit you; and a bad report written a year earlier and published in the book does not mean that the camp site is no good.  If we feel very strongly about a place being bad, we should write to the owner and tell him, but to have it published where it cannot be changed no matter how much the owner tries to improve things, is really very unfair.

Anyway, that first night in Italy, somewhere near St Remo, we pulled in to what seemed like a very nice camp site.  There was a sign at the gate saying "NO DOGS".  This problem had never occurred to either of us.  Lie down, I told George.  He always stood up, somewhat clumsily, in the back if he thought we were stopping somewhere.  He lay down and put a paw over his eyes.  Don't move, I told him.  Surely they won't mind a nice old dog like George ?

"We don't take dogs," said the man at reception.

"We didn't know," I explained as rapidly as I could, tripping over my words as I ploughed forwards, "and he is very good very good and quiet and my husband is sick and we need to settle for the night supper and stuff and we cannot drive any further and it is getting dark and I need a drink and I have to walk old George no no no I won't walk him I'll keep him in the cravan the car ..."

"That's as may be," said the man, "but we still don't take dogs."

"He's only a Great Dane ... " I pleaded stupidly, as though the man might suddenly exclaim "Oh!  Thank goodness you said !  Great Danes are welcome!"

Part 3 to follow

Click here for Part 1

Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her book s are available from Amazon/Kindle and most usual sources.

  George was getting old.  Ten is quite an age for a Great Dane.   During our travels he slept in the back of the car on a sequence of foam mattresses with a sequence of blankets - all of which got flung out and replaced regularly because it was easier than washing them.  In Dubrovnik I bought him a blanket with bunnies on it.  I swear he was cross!

  Our bedroom. Because Bruce's Meniere's was so bad, we spent many months back in the old house where he could rest.  We rattled around in that huge place.  Most of the property remained empty, and on the whole we used just the kitchen and a bathroom.

Because the barn (see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-22-the-story-closes/) was suitable only for camping in during the summer months, we lived in the Chateau again.

It was odd, rattling around alone in that huge house.  All three children were in England and wanted to stay there, though within two or three years the two boys had moved off - one to Belize (http://thefunkydodo.com/ ) and the other to Amsterdam.   They say that if you have been raised as an expat, as indeed I was, you have difficulty ever truly settling anywhere.  I think that is true.

Bruce was very unwell.  On more than one occasion his Meniere's was so bad that he was taken in to hospital, and on many occasions he'd get himself as far as the sofa and be completely unable to move again.  Sometimes he would allow himself to slide off on to the floor because he said he couldn't fall off the floor.

At the time the treatment for Meniere's in France was SERC and Tanganil.  Neither ever seemed to help and they have since been discontinued.  Xanax seemed effective sometimes, also perhaps aspirin.  There is no known treatment or cure for the disease because, I suppose, it varies so much from one individual to another.

  Logo for the Meniere's Society - though there are lots of self-help groups.  We joined one and received a monthly newsletter for some time, but Bruce found it very depressing reading about how bad it could get, and we both decided it was better to concentrate on recovery

For those who are not sure what Meniere's is - it is a disease of the inner ear and it causes vertigo.  For Bruce it was like living on a boat on a rough sea.  Seasickness, nausea, tinnitus, deafness, headache and the infernal dizziness.  Sometimes it seemed to calm down and he would sit and perhaps watch TV for a while, then at other times it was so awful that I would call the doctor who would have him hospitalized.  The disease was identified by a French doctor called Propser Meniere  in 1861, and although there can be all sorts of triggers - noise, flashing lights etc., Bruce's main triggers were stress-related.

 Prosper Meniere 1799-1862

We had been through such a lot of stress for so many years, and it had eaten away at him.  For myself, though I dealt with a huge percentage of the stressy situations alone, I was less affected.  I am a very positive person.  I love a joke, I enjoy company, I like happy chatty people, and I think any doctor will agree that frame of mind has a major effect on health.

Henri and Edith, (see link as above in the first paragraph) were worth their weight in gold.  They lived in the cottage by the road and gave me such support and friendship at a time when I needed it very badly.  They had also run their own businesses and been through many stressy situations, and could relate to me and my odd situation, alone with a sick husband in a Chateau where I didn't want to be.  I spent many a lovely evening having supper with them and after supper Henri and I would always do the Mots Fleches.

That is a funny thing about speaking a foreign language.  It is as though one's brain operates only in one language, because if I do Mots Fleches in English (I can't think what it is called - like a crossword but with clues in little boxes within the puzzle) I generally find it facile and silly.  Doing it in French, however, presented a challenge because my brain operates in English.  Some years later I broke my leg in a skiing accident and Henri posted Mots Fleches to me, and I sat in bed with a big dictionary and waded successfully, but slowly, through them.

   Henri

These were quiet days.  As we had found ever since our arrival in France, if we invited people round we were usually not invited back.  I have to confess that it was largely because we probably seemed "posh" to a lot of people, with our huge house and big car.  I think a lot of people - the local people at any rate - were put off by that.  Also, I think the French tend to meet in restaurants rather than in each other's houses.  Cetrtainly in this area they stick to family and very close friends.  Not that I minded.  I didn't really want to see anybody anyway and Bruce was often just not up to it.  Henri and Edith were like a thousand friends, and that was all I needed.

I took summer-time bookings for the cottages and the Chateau.  They poured in.  There are not many inexpensive holiday places close to sandy beaches and we have been full every year since we started in 2000.  I did a few tentative water-colour sketches. I kept myself busy also with re-decorating and re-making curtains, re-covering cushions and chairs.  It is amazing what a lot of improvements one can do on a very tight budget!  A bit of gold paint, a strip of lace ... you can change the whole look of an entire room very cheaply in no time at all.

I also started writing my first book, "A Call from France".

I was recently interviewed by a US magazine, and they asked me if it was difficult to write on such a personal subject about something so traumatic.  At the risk of sounding pleased with myself (which was not my aim), I replied that the story just fell out of the end of my fingers.  It was like a catharsis for me and I needed to write it down.  The book emerged in no time at all, though modifications went on and on for well over a year.  The title also changed several times from "Shelter of Wings" to "The Calling Bell" and at least one other.

As Bruce started to feel better we decided to buy a big caravan and set off on a tour.  We have always enjoyed caravanning and camping and, rather than spend another bleak winter alone in the Chateau, we decided to set off on a tour of southern Europe.   Actually, our initial idea was to spend the winter in Cyprus - why Cyprus, I don't know - we had been before, I suppose, and enjoyed the winter sunshine.  But George, who was by now ten years old, could not be left.  And it is simply not possible to take an elderly Great Dane on a flight.  We didn't want to sit there and wait till he died, so we decided to drive to Cyprus.

   We bought a ten year-old caravan.  I suppose it was a gypsy caravan, though the people we bought it off lived in quite a nice house.  It needed to be big because we intended to be gone (and indeed were gone) for five months.   We were able to leave a double bed up permanently and the other end had a table and chairs large enough for 6 people (with a squeeze).    Note the boot open at the back - that was George's den.

Part 2 to follow.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist.

An English family move to France. Part 22. End of the series.

  William eating his breakfast!

We lived in a barn.  Seriously, it was a barn.  There was just one huge room approx 12 meters x 7 meters.  Underfoot was the earth dirt which we covered with a screed of concrete.  Above was just the underside of the roof tiles.  The walls were stone, the same stone as in the cottages but ours was neither cleaned nor re-pointed.  All along one wall, where there are now French doors leading to a walled garden, Bruce rigged up a work surface, some shelves, and plumbed in my washing machine and dishwasher.  We also had an old fridge that was so rusty that Jake and I cellotaped magazine pictures over it.

I didn't mind at all.  It was fine.  We lived in our barn from April through to September, then we would move back in to the chateau as the last holiday-makers left.  In fact I took a kind of pride in living in the barn, which I decorated with left-over bits of fabric draped castle-style over the stone and bunches of dried lavender.  Everything was make-shift.  Our bed was two single beds shoved together, over which Bruce rigged up a timber frame.  Over that I flung a couple of old net curtains and such like, more to keep bat droppings and dust off us than anything else.  The children slept in the caravan.

I didn't mind the bats - the only objection I had was when I woke one night to find a bat drinking out of my glass of water by the bed!  After that I kept water in a bottle with a lid!

At one end of the barn, next to the fireplace (which William restored) we hacked out an opening in to a smaller barn on the other side.  It had almost no roof and one wall was on the point of collapse so we had to rig a kind of buttress affair, which we tripped over regularly, to stop the wall falling in totally.  In there we had a shower, a loo and a basin.  There was so little roof  we had to take a brolly if it was raining - though having a nice hot shower when it is raining is great.   And summer in the Charente Maritime is usually good.

We invited friends round for dinner in our peculiar abode.  Many of them were taken aback by the way we lived and probably thought we were extremely eccentric.  We had a huge table and chairs  (the table was planks over a couple of trestles) and a couple of old wardrobes for our clothes.  All the sheets and towels for the cottages were housed in the barn with us till William built me a laundry room several years later.  It was difficult to keep things tidy - and dust was a never-ending problem.  But as I say, it was fine. It was even fun.

A long week-end in Gibraltar; as has always been our wont, if there is money to spare we spend it on travel.

  Sitting outside with my father-in-law.

It always surprises me when I look at photos like this how bare everything was !  Of course, we had had the big storm, so all our trees were gone and the new ones not yet grown.  That wall has since been raised by three or four feet, and there are now trees all along the edge.

  Our barn ready for the floor.  Why is there a basket hanging there ?  - oh, I have no idea!  I expect there was a good reason for it at the time.  That white section of wall now has a door in it which leads to our bedroom where the workshop was.  We didn't convert the barn for several years, and that wall turned out to be three feet thick.  A staircase now runs up near where the ladder is, and that is now my office up there on the mezzanine.

  My office in the barn days

  The food storage area !

  William's first "real" car about a month after we bought it.  Kids!

  From left to right, Michel's elbow (yellow T-shirt), Edith, me, one of the cleaners, Bruce, Henri.  At the end of the season we always took the staff out for dinner till we realized that quite often they only came because the felt they had to - they didn't consider it a treat at all!

It was at this time that Henri and Edith came in to our lives.  The most unexpected things happen at the most unexpected moments.  Henri and Edith, both from the north of France, were the very best friends anybody could ever wish for, and they stood by me through many many traumatic situations to follow, frequently going way beyond the call of duty.  They lived for ten years in our roadside cottage and acted as caretakers when we were not there, and as very dear friends whether we were there or not.  And we were there less and less over the next few years, as we at last bought a place back in England, and also set off with our caravan on a five-month trip around southern Europe and Turkey, with many more trips to follow.   My lovely old daddy died very suddenly when he was 85, and it was to Henri I turned when I needed outside comfort and opinion as I faced more tests ...

And now ?  Now, as I close my story ...

The children grew up and left home, as they do.  None live in France.   We all meet at Les Cypres in the summer, now with grandchildren and partners of our off-spring.  Bruce and I travel a great deal.  We are residents of France, and France is a lovely country of which to be a resident.  We have lots and lots of friends, both French and British, but will always tend to veer towards British friendships - well, birds of a feather and all that.  I think most expats would agree.  It is just easier, if only from the language point of view.  My great chum in France, actually, is Mexican.

Bruce's Meniere's got a great deal worse for a while, and he spent almost an entire year lying down.  He has since had mild, medium and bad attacks, sometimes so bad that he is hospitalized, but usually more unpleasant than anything else.  Touch wood, he has not had an attack for over a year now, though the tinnitus and deafness never leave him.

I had my first book published within a few years, and the other books followed quickly.  I write regularly for a variety of web sites and magazines about life in France.  I am sometimes criticized for my out-spoken manner, but find that those who can imagine or who have "been there" relate to my story - those who react  negatively to my series (and there are just a few, perhaps less than 1% of my readers) are those who really do not know - they think they do, of course, but they don't.  You know what I mean.

THE END

Catherine Broughton is a novelist.  Her books are available on Amazon/Kindle and book stores.

It happened like this ... an English family move to France. Part 21.

  This is the remains of a bread oven in what is now cottage 6.  I had forgotten there was a connecting door there.  I see the concrete screed is down, ready for floor tiles.  This area was thick with creeper and broken stone, bits of wood, stinging nettles ...

 The interior of cottage 7 - you can just see the upper part of  the manger hanging on the right hand wall.  All the cottages are more-or-less identical so that furniture, crockery or whatever can be moved from one to another if the need arises.

  The exterior of cottage 7 when we started - and William's old car!

  A bedroom in cottage 4.  We kept some of the old stone work (on the right by the window) but we covered a lot of it up because it is dusty stuff and, although people use it to give character, it is really a nonsense because no house would ever have had bare stone work indoors unless the people inside were exceptionally poor.

  The exterior of cottage 5.  Because of the rocky grounds not a great deal will grow, but I did manage to get mimosas growing along the front of these fences, but they were destroyed by frost one very cold winter.  Almost all plants are in pots.  Hollyhocks ready to bloom in the front there.

  The pool is always very popular, of course.  We sometimes use it, but not often.  That first summer a little boy, the son of some guests, learnt to swim in there and years later he became a swimming champion.   We put decking all around rather than tiles  because we had had trouble with the tiles shifting around the pool in our previous house.  Also, of course, decking isn't so unforgiving if you trip over.  We do have to go round with a stanley knife regularly and shave off splinters, and recently all the decking had to be replaced, but on the whole we have been very pleased with it.

   Creating the pool.  I chose the pool liner in two seconds flat.  The man was flabbergasted. "But Madame!  You need to spend time choosing!"  I have chosen, I said, I don't need time.  After all, blue is blue, and whether the edging is diamond patterns or circles or squares, it really doesn't matter.  

  The workshop in one of the small barns - it is still a work shop today

  Bedroom in no. 3

  As time went by the muddy and derelict grounds turned in to lawn.

  By the end of August the lawn is almost always parched yellow.  We are not allowed to water it, not even from our wells, but I don't mind it at all - it reminds me of childhood in Africa.

   Play area for little kiddies.  I painted the lower half of the back wall, which had old concrete over it, with bunnies and ducks and things.  It all needs re-painting now.  I'll see to that in the spring.

 Another small bedroom, this one with a skylight rather than a window because we couldn't get permission for windows on the chateau side.

The guests arrived and many came back year after year.  Then their children got older and they didn't come back any more but are replaced by other families with little kiddies who, in turn, return again and again.  That first year we got some things wrong, of course, but basically it was fine.  Money was a constant problem and we had to buy as cheaply as we could, or make do with re-painted second hand ... that kind of thing.  The remains of what had been a building site, where the concrete mixer had stood and where skips and trucks had passed back and forth, took a full year to grow over, and in every cottage without fail I found a section that I had forgotten to paint or a shelf I had forgotten to cover; or perhaps it was a light bulb missing or a curtain rails the wouldn't stay put ... with eight cottages, you'd be amazed at how much there is to do.

We made mistakes with the chateau too that first year - what to us seemed so wonderful after the derelict ruin we had worked in for so long, was not always wonderful to people who were spending their main holiday there.  But it got righted with time and we have nothing but good reviews.

There is a "type" of guest who complains or writes a bad review.  Mercifully they are few and far between, and nowadays the property owner can retaliate in no uncertain terms.  These "types" are invariably after a freeby of some sort.  It is a great shame.  The reviews system evolved in order to protect people from unscrupulous owners who would advertise something that was not - in the south of Spain there were many very traumatic stories about the dreadful accommodation.  But the review system got out of hand so that, in time, people were writing nasty things about perfectly nice people and places just for the heck of it.  Their little moment of power, I suppose.  People who do that regularly now get blacklisted - and quite right too.

Bits of work dragged on for well over a year and we kept the two Michels on for probably four years.  I found a job for the younger Michel, working on the property of a notaire friend, but the older Michel had become dangerous - climbing on to unsafe things, wielding a pickaxe too close to somebody else, and the final crunch came when he started shooting moles in our garden.  He was furious and very distressed when we told him it was time to retire.

Bruno found work elsewhere and we run in to him from time to time.  His son has become a heavyweight champion - strange when you think what a small, wiry man Bruno was!  The others moved away or moved on.  I kept Francoise for a long time, and I used to say she was my favourite charity because she became undeniably less and less useful, more and more dotty, but she'd have been heartbroken to lose her place at the chateau.  When she stopped coming she was already not really properly aware of what was going on.

Part 22 to follow: the end of my story.

 Catherine Broughton's books are available from most book stores as paperbacks or as e-/Kindle books