Jake when he was about 10.

The children were growing up.  The elder two caused that usual adolescant mixture of joy and fury, temper and sulks, utter and complete selfishness and sudden and unexpected spurts of kindness and cooperation.  And more.  Much more.  I won't say those years were "normal" because they weren't, and some of the events took me years to recover from - in fact, were the greatest tests of my life - but I have written a whole book about it and I won't go in to it here.

I continued with my rounds of the banks. Phoned to see if they had got an answer for me, phoned the next one, then the next.  I saw a financier in La Rochelle who put far more energy in to trying to (unsuccesfully!) get me in to bed with him than dealing with my dossier, and another on the island here who told me that no bank anywhere in the world was ever going to loan anybody such a massive sum.

"It's not a massive sum!" I wailed, "it is the price of a very ordinary house in England!"

"But this is France," he replied with a logic that was infuriating.

Money laundering

My father put up some money so that we could continue with the work.   It was now March.  The first signs of spring were arriving and, if we didn't start to advertise the cottage holiday lets very soon, we would miss the season altogether.  And then another year would go by.  I was beside myself.  We owed so much money to the men, to my father, to the suppliers, and to our very selves.  We had to get this loan one way or another and we even travelled to Paris to see a north African gentleman who, we discovered, wanted to launder his money through us.

" Typical!" I spat. "At last we find somebody willing to put up the money - and he has to be a b....y criminal!"

My mother, bless her, trying to encourage me, said:

"Don't worry about your looks, my dear, they will come back once you can relax again."

Oh, thanks mummy!  I had no idea my looks had "gone" !

  The stone walls.  Each and every stone had to be picked around the joints so that it could be re-pointed, and then cleaned off.  This picture shows about two thirds of the extent of the walls - it was a labour-intensive job.  And just clearing away all the junk ! - there were mountains of it.

And it was that same week that at last we got the loan.  Of all the big nationwide banks I had applied to, and all the local banks, it was a small unheard-of bank in Rochefort.

We have never moved so fast.  We placed advertisements in the UK and very rapidly had bookings for all the cottages for the summer.  Internet was in its infancy and ads went in to glossy magazines.  The phone rang constantly.  We even rigged up a loudspeaker outside for the phone so that we could hear it ring and rush to deal with an enquiry.  We worked day and night, seven days a week, for three months.  And in those three months we created six cottages - floors, ceilings, roof, plumbing, wiring ... all of it, to include raising the roof in two places.

Major building work

There were two really very major works.  One was with the drainage because the land is solid rock.  I spent time phoning round to find the appropriate builder - they call that sort of work terrassement in France - you need to know this kind of stuff because you can waste hours and hours phoning the wrong people.  Initially a man said he would do it with a mini-digger.  He came round to look at the site, but Bruce told him he wouldn't be able to do it, the ground was far too hard. And sure enough the man couldn't and made only a five-minute attempt.   More time wasted. So Bruce hired a big compressor and two road drills - more phone calls, more trips in to town, more time - and it took 4 men 4 days to dig the trenches through solid rock.  We were amazingly lucky that there was mains drainage to connect to in the road that ran past.

 The pool on the cottage side, and also the one on the chateau side, are situated in the only two places in the entire property where there is no rock. When the first lot of guests arrived the pool wasn't quite ready.  Mercifully they all had that good old British stiff upper lip, and they just bore with us till, on the third day of their stay, we were able to fill the thing up with water.  It took an entire day and night to fill.  The "hill" the far side of the pool is, of course, simply the earth that was dug out.  It now has a children's fort on the top of it, built by regular holiday-makers.  Loads of things like the derlict shed behind and the broken wall to one side had to be left for several years till we could afford it.

The second major item was the pointing and rendering of the exterior walls - and some of the interior ones too.   It was a massive job and big old Michel had already started hacking out the old, blackened render.  We had thought we would do this ourselves but mercifully one of our labourers had a brother who had all the specialist equipment precisely for that.  It cost a huge amount and made a serious dent in our budget, but it was well worth it for it saved many weeks in time, plus a great deal of energy and hassle.   Actually, they were a really good team - from Saintes I seem to remember - who turned up promptly every morning and worked hard and fast till the job was done.

All roofs had to come off, already broken or otherwise,  to be insulated and then laid with  flexible waterproof material before putting the old Roman tiles ontop.

Inside partition walls that we built had a  timber frame, then laid with insualtion & plasterboard, incorporating wiring and  plumbing as we went.   I loathe glass fibre - it gets everywhere - in to your clothes and eyes, and it feels itchy and uncomfortable and the only solution is not only a shower but a complete change of clothes too.   The French call it "laine de verre", meaning glass wool.

Some weeks we had up to fifteen extra people on the site, to include Michel's daughter who came to help me make curtains, and Corinne, the gipsy I mentioned earlier with her little girls.  The little girls ran around the site playing in the debris.  I bought a second-hand buggy for the baby and carted her back and forth with me when Corinne couldn't.  We put table and chairs in what is now cottage 2, a fridge and an old cooker, so that the men could make coffee and eat as they wished.  While the weather remained cold they lit a fire on the floor, there in the middle of the derelict room.

These were good, fruitful, positive days.

  The corner barn with a huge hole in the roof became our home for several years till we were able to convert it.  We sort-of camped in there from April-ish to mid-September or so, when the Chateau became available again.  The Chateau lettings went very well, despite several initial mistakes, and it was almost always full.  

All around was beaten earth and that summer was extremely hot.  Jake and I flung grass seed down in all the little front gardens - too late realizing that one packet was wheat !! - and it is surprising how much of it took - both the grass and the wheat!  Grass is good stuff.  It grows in all sorts of places, hot or cold,  and survives all sorts of abuse.  I like grass.

Jake and I were also in charge of buying the wherewithall to furnish the cottages, and we dashed about after I had picked him up from school, frantically ordering beds and mattresses (you couldn't do things on line), dozens of cups and plates and pillows.  We had a Chrysler Grand Voyager at that time and we were able to pile a great deal in, Jake frequently balancing buckets and plants and curtain rails on his lap.  We would unload it in to one of the cottages, where it always got in the way of the workers, and dash back to the shop for the next load.  Back and forth, half an hour in each direction.  Sometimes things were delivered, but usually delivery was too expensive or - more importantly - too slow.

Jake was great company, a smiley, happy little guy who joined in all this activity with as much energy as I did.

Everything had to be inexpensive and serviceable; it also had to be easily replaced.  A year later a really good shop opened in a neighbouring village, where you can buy almost anything and everything needed for a holiday cottages - from teaspoons to floor tiles and more.  But at that time I had to drive to Royan or Saintes and make my way to the relatively few suitable stores there were.

Thundery-looking day that spring. A large part of the roof re-done and the exterior stonework cleaned up. I see there is a new door-frame in place (cottage 5), though none of the windows are in.  Mud and/or dirt everywhere.  When Jake and I were finally able to clear up the grounds, the cigarette ends alone filled a bucket or two despite my constantly asking the men to dispose of their butts properly.  

  Ready for occupation. We made a mistake with that fencing, and once guest said it looked like pig-pens!!!  We cut them down to a better height the following year.  No grass - just scrub really.  It is interesting to look at this picture now when the trees we planted along the fencing have all grown up and the hollyhocks provide splashes of colour all summer long.  It was so bare then.

I opted for either yellow, orange or green everywhere downstairs and blue in the bedrooms.  All crockery had to be easily replaced, bearing breakages in mind, and for the same reason had to be cheap.  The cuttlery suffered from Yuri Gellar syndrome but - despite its flexible abilities - it is still going strong to this day.  Saucepans and bowls, bottle openers and kitchen implements, bins and doormats ... it is amazing how much we had to buy.

The furniture was inexpensive flat-pack pine - much to the fury of the men when they realized it all needed to be assembled.  Amid a hearty mix of grumbles and laughter, they cracked on with it.  William did a lot of it himself ... he'd have been 16 I think.  He was a brilliant help.  Sun loungers, garden furniture, parasols.  Pots of geraniums, curtains, tea towels. Bedding!  That first year - in fact for the first three years I seem to recall - the sheets, towels and pillow cases were all bought in charity shops when we were in the UK, and were an extraordinary mixture of colours and patterns.  It was all we could afford.  When guests arrived they were somewhat taken aback, but very few minded.

  The first few years were incredibly hard work. With little money to spare I did all the cleaning of the cottages and Francoise (here, in red) did the Chateau.  Gosh, she was a tough little thing, tough as nails, hard working and strong even though she was small.  We went hell-bent-for-leather on changeover days.  During the week all the bedding had to be washed and ironed, regardless of the weather.  Nowadays I have an entire batallion of cleaning and outdoor staff and I farm-out the laundry.  But those first few years it was extraordinarily hard work.  But fun.  Lucrative fun.

The last cottage was ready just half an hour or so before the guests arrived.  The previous night we had worked till very late, painting walls, assembling furniture, putting curtains and pictures up.  We decided the simplest thing was to sleep in there and I stained and varnished the staircase as I worked my way backwards upstairs.  In the morning they were still sticky and I used a hair dryer to dry them off!

People could see we were working very hard.  The weather was great and the beach not far, so most guests were satisfied.  That first year there was just one woman who complained - I hadn't thought of coat hangers and she made a major issue out of it.   It is a pity when people make an issue over something small for it sort-of devalues any other issues that may crop up.  Oddly enough it is always the same type of person too.

At the end of that first week we stood in the darkening grounds one evening and looked at the lights in the pool and the barbeques sizzling in the little individual gardens, and listened to the low drone of voices of people as they cooked their meals and talked about their day ... and we felt proud.  Very proud indeed.

Part 21 to follow

 Catherine Broughton is a novelist. Her books are available on Amazon/Kindle or can be ordered from most stores & libraries.

It happened like this...an English family moves to France. Part 8

• William in his home-made go-cart.  Although he was only 11, he wrote an article about it which got published in an engineering magazine.

The land tax office

The letter stated, quite simply, that we owed this huge sum of money and that it should have been paid at the time of the purchase.

I phoned the appropriate office but the person at the other end of the line had no idea what I was talking about and the reference number on the letter didn’t seem to help.  In fact, she said the reference was nonsensicle, even though I read it out carefully two or three times.  She suggested I phone back later, which I did, but that didn’t seem to make any difference.  We went through the same introductions and I finally asked her why she had suggested I phone back later ?

The British Consulate had once given me a good tip – always ask for the person in charge because a) it makes the one who answered your call jump to attention (his words) and b) the person in charge likes to feel s/he is indeed In Charge and does his/her best to have the appropriate information for you.   Thus I was eventually passed on to somebody else (ne quittez pas!) who then passed me on to The Man Who Had Signed The Letter.  All this took ages, and I waited through a variety of tunes, to include the inevitable Green Sleeves.

When The Man came on the line, he explained to me that an “agent” had seen the house and it was clearly worth a great deal more than the 350 000 francs (£30K) we had paid for it.   (Somebody had been round to spy ?!!)

“I should hope it is!” I exclaimed, “we have done a great deal of work on it!”

“At the price you paid, it would mean it was a ruin when you bought it,” replied the man dryly.

“It was!” I said crossly, “it was a ruin and we have done it up, and now it is worth a great deal more!”

“Nobody can do that amount of work in so short a time,” he replied with a sigh of impatience.

“Well we did!”

I made an appointment to see him.  He was off on holiday and couldn’t see me till he got back, three weeks hence.  It was maddening.

• In my brother-in-law’s microlite on a nearby air field.

Frais de notaire

I knew what had happened and had, in fact, dealt with a similar problem for one of my clients earlier that year.  You see, when you buy a property in France, you pay what are usually referred to as les frais de notaire.  This is a misnomer because only a fraction of the fee goes to the notaire; the rest are government taxes, like land tax in the UK.  These taxes depend on the value of the property.  Because Primrose was now worth considerably more than 350 000 francs, the powers that be, in their wisdom, decided that we had given cash to the vendor and only allowed the 350 000 francs to appear on paper, thus saving us thousands in land taxes.  In small village communities and with a people who don’t move house very often, this was quite possibly fairly common practice.  With computerization I expect all this kind of shinnannigans is impossible now, but when you consider that the local notaire was quite plausibly the brother of the buyer or the vendor, or the godparent or something … it doubtless happened more that the authorities cared to admit.

Anyway, it had not happened with us.

Irritated and, of course, concerned, I waited for The Man’s holiday to expire.  We still had the Court case for the Carte Professionelle hanging over us, work to be seen to, irritations and upsets with clients, the children to raise, stuff … you know how it is.  We led busy, active lives.

Emmaus

Finally, armed with a mercifully huge collection of before-and-after photos, I went to see The Man. The office was near the station in Rochefort close to an Emmaus which has since closed down – a pity because it was really good.  To this day the Emmaus in St Agnant, in aid of the homeless, is one of my favourite afternoons out – I love bric-a-brac and old furniture and what other people consider junk.  Nowadays, however, you can only rarely pick up real goodies for a song because, like charity shops in the UK, an expert comes in to value things.  But if you have got an eye for possibilities, it is a fun place to go.  As far as I am aware it is the only charity shop in France – but I may be wrong about that.  Emmaus is Biblical –  it is the name of a hamlet just outside Jerusalem, and a couple of pilgrims saw Jesus there, after Jesus had died.  It features in the gospel of St Luke.

The history of Art is my totally favourite subject; this painting is by Caravaggio, dated 1601, and named The Supper in Emmaus.  It is a lovely example if chia oscuro, ie use of light and shade.

Anyway, I diverge …  I made my way to the appropriate room, up a flight of tiled steps and in to a spacious office overlooking the railway.  There I was greeted by a pleasant-looking man in his forties.  He wore half-moon glasses.  An enormous weariness came over me and I flopped in to a chair without being asked and flung, perhaps a tickle rudely, the photos down on to the desk.  He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I am terribly tired,” I said, and I was.

He didn’t respond.  He probably thought he had misheard.. . or perhaps he thought it was something English women say, the way the French say “bonjour” and kiss each other.  Perhaps all English women sit without being asked and announce whether they are tired or not.

He picked up the packet and tipped the contents out on to his desk.  He looked through the pictures with genuine interest and, to my surprise, said (but in French):

“Yes, I have heard that les anglais are very good at restoring our old properties …”

• The larger of the two  guest rooms.  It was on the ground floor and boasted double doors on two sides, one out to the courtyard and the other to the woods.  When we bought the house an underground stream had seeped up through the floor, which had half an inch of muddy water on it almost all the time.  Bruce, with his habitual savoir-faire, dug a trench to divert the stream; it took a long while to get rid of the overall damp smell.  After a year we moved the beds so that we could make a doorway on that far wall, and that led through to a bathroom.  The bathroom was originally a disused bread-oven – you’d be amazed at how big the inside of a bread oven is!

He flicked through the photos, occasionally asking a question, and was quite interested in which room was which, how we had repaired the staircase, did I think the staircase was original, and he was so glad we’d kept the fleur-de-lys floor tiles in the hall … and so on.  He said he’d love a house like that but that his wife would never agree to living in such an isolated spot.

“It was nonetheless exceptionally cheap,” he said finally, putting the photos to one side.

“You are not telling me that one is not allowed to do a good deal in France, are you?!” I asked.

He smiled.

“No, of course not …”

He handed the photos over to me and told me he would reach his final decision in due course.  And that was the end of the interview.  I wanted to thump my fist on the table and yell … but I just smiled and left … as one does.

About six weeks later a letter arrived from The Man, telling me that all charges were dropped and that we had nothing to pay.

“I could have told you that for free!” I shouted in to the empty room.

• We took on the kind of projects that most people shied away from.  We were both very good at it. In the early days I would sometimes help with carrying buckets of cement and shovelling rubble, but I haven’t gone anywhere near that sort of thing for years now – and don’t intend to!  I can’t remember this man’s name … Jean-Something I expect.

The Tribunal

We finally appeared in Court about a year after the gendarme episode.  It had eaten at me almost constantly, and I had been veering from panic about going to prison to what-fun-going-to-prison-how-jolly-interesting-that’ll-be!  Most of the time that inbred positivity remained with me and I didn’t think for one moment I would go to prison or anything like it.  In fact, in many ways most of me just considered the whole thing massively tedious at a time when I already had too much to do.

I don’t know what I expected once I got in to the Court room – if I had expected anything at all – but one thing that did strike me was that, as each person’s turn came round, there was no notable calling-out of the name: Dupont v. Renaud!  That sort of thing.  Names of people, banks, businesses or whatever were sort-of half-mumbled by somebody sitting at the judge’s table, so when our turn came I had no idea we had started till I saw Vincent, our dear little lawyer, stand up and point to me.

 I couldn’t hear much of what was being said and Bruce couldn’t understand much of what was being said.  It seemed to be a fairly casual sort of conversation and, finally, I saw Vincent smile and he came over to us and said we should follow him out.  Gosh, thought I, are they going to put hand-cuffs on me?  I wished I had brought a camera.

But no.  Nothing quite so dramatic.  Vincent explained that I had been given two days’ suspended sentence.  And that was the end of that.  That was simply the end of that.  It made me really cross. I wanted to storm back in to the judge and shout “after all this TRAUMA, all these months of waiting, all you can manage is 2 days’ suspended sentence ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   What an insult !”

• ile de Re, near Ste Maire

The Ile de Re

We went off to the Ile de Re camping that week-end.  We lay on the beach with the children, and we splashed in the cold Atlantic waters.  We tried to wash it all away in the sea and bask it all away in the sun.  In the evenings we almost always ate out, overlooking the little port at St Martin or the little place at Ste Marie.  We cycled for miles and miles, along the pistes cyclistes that wound past the beaches, through the marais and in and out of the villages.  Miles of cycling.   I needed to work it out of me somehow; I was furious, relieved, stunned, weepy ….I saw a young man bareback on a huge shire horse.  I saw fishing boats pulling lobsters in.  I saw my children play on the sand.   I watched the sun drop over the horizon to the places where I was born and had lived. I listened to the waves splashing on the beach all night.

I felt it was time to move on.

Part 7 

Part 9

Join Catherine on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catherinebroughton2

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available of Amazon/Kindle worldwide or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  They are also available as e-books on this site.

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-8/#sthash.dVkZA1da.dpuf

It happened like this...an English family move to France, Part 2

 1989-1990. Lost in France.

As a family, we were happy in our own world.  We were closely-knit and all got along together.  The children joined in, we had little rituals and traditions that we stuck to, and family life was fine.  I am from a very large family, and both our parents and a variety of brothers and sisters, along with a collection of spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends, came to visit.   The children made friends at school and rapidly learnt to speak French, especially Pippa who learnt French extremely quickly – a matter of weeks.  Little girls are very receptive at that age.  William took  longer.  By the time Jake was seven or eight, he spoke better French than English, but as a toddler he spoke a delightful Franglish that only we could understand.

It is arguably terribly rude to not learn the language of your host country, and for me half the fun of being abroad is trying to speak the lingo.  But some people have a knack for it and others do not – it is like being able to sing, or draw or do Maths.  For Bruce it was very hard indeed and he just could not get his head round it.

• The boys in the kitchen.  The ceiling had started to fall in so we had to put an upright in to retain it.  The previous owners had “modernized” it, and we had all sorts of plans to create a more tradtional kitchen, in keeping with the house.  But we had long since moved on before we could even think of affording it.  All the rooms very huge, except for the bathroom with was pokey, smelly, dark and had no window.

Things were very different

It took a while to adjust to how different things were.  They were very different.  We had come from the most expensive area of the UK – Sussex – to a French backwater.  Even though we had both lived abroad a great deal, to include some third-world countries, we were nonetheless taken aback by the poor standard.  The village was essentially just a collection of dark grey stone buildings with a lorry-plagued road blasting through the middle of it and dangerously narrow (broken) pavements on either side.  The shops were very poorly stocked.  There were no cereals of any sort whatsoever, no tea, no fresh milk, and chickens were sold with their heads and feet still dangling grotesquely.  Christmas, so jolly and colourful in England, regardless of one’s opinions about tat and commercialism, was a non-event with one drab Christmas tree outside the Mairie (town hall) and the local radio blaring out of loudspeakers in the street, loud enough to drive you mad.

Another thing that was so different was the overall look of each village.  A lot of British people comment on it – everything looks so utterly dead, even today.  Shutters closed, nobody on the street.  Even the shops frequently looked shut when they were in fact open.  I hasten to add that this is not a criticism of France, it was just the way it was and I think many French people from Bordeaux or Paris or the Cote d’Azur would agree. It was terribly depressing.

• My office, or the Power House as I used to call it!

Our energies found their own levels, with me doing most of the viewing of properties and taking potential buyers round.  This was partly because I always know where I am – whether or not I am facing north or south, which side of the town I am on or whatever – so I found it easy enough to follow the directions and locate the property.  Also, of course, I spoke French, crucial when discussing the price with the vendor and working through the papers with the notaire.  Bruce worked on the house to make it more comfortable, and he also tended to do the shopping and fetch the children from school, look after Jake and so on.  It was a role reversal that I had no trouble with, but I think he sometimes felt a bit useless – which he was not.

We pulled out all stops to integrate.

We too made a few friends.  Not many. And they didn’t last. We discovered that for every ten couples we invited to dinner we would be invited back perhaps once.  I don’t know why that is.  Just a different way of doing things.  We got the children to join in – judo, ballet, horse-riding and so on, attended the Christmas fund-raiser and the parent-teacher picnic … and remained 100% outsiders.

Well, we were outsiders.

Sales were good and we both worked very hard.  My days were filled with driving people around, showing them in and out of houses, explaining to them how the system worked, pointing out the land boundaries, listening to them talking, smiling and listening some more.  The British snapped up properties on a regular basis, sometimes buying something idyllic and frequently (like us!) buying something completely unsuitable.  It has to be said that the British snapped up all those derelict little properties that the French didn’t want and as a direct result of this (according to an article in a French national newspaper) places like Bricomarche opened – and created employment.  And so on.  All and any business brings in trade, and our business was not an exception.

The red tape also kept me on my toes. I had to drive over to Chateauroux, the main town, about forty minutes’ drive away, over and again to fill in this form and that form.  I tried to do things professionally, properly, be correct ….

But we had been at La Haute Perriere barely four or five months when we accepted that this was not the place for us.  We fought against it for a while.  It seemed ridiculous to give up and move on already, but look at it from every angle as we might, it was clear this was not the place to be.

• There were seriously hundreds and hundreds of grotty little properties for sale.  This one was in a village, though the British usually wanted something out in the countryside.  It sold for the French franc equivalent of £6 000 !  Unlike a UK estate agent, in France you have to accompany your client – sometimes for miles and miles. This is partly because that is expected from the vendor but also because your client would never find the property, down little lanes in tiny hamlets, in a country that is double the size of the UK.  Furthermore, properties in France could be with 10 different agents, so if you wanted to nab that sale you had to keep that client close.

There were a variety of reasons we had to go.  We were very isolated was one.  Although the little town had all essential shops, doctor and so on, it was backward and slow.  The dated telephone exchange still closed for lunch.  Everything closed for lunch, even some restaurants!   It reminded us both of the UK in the 1960s.  In fact, I think that is why the British so loved buying in the area – childhood memories.

Anything that might be entertainment was miles and miles away.  In Sussex I had belonged to a health club, complete with pool and a fully equipped gym, restaurant, huge lawns … but the nearest I could get to it in France was a keep-fit class in Chateauroux, and the keep-fit was so slow and lady-like it was not worth going.

Nothing, nobody.

There was nothing. There was nobody. The climate was dreadful. There was nowhere to go.  Nobody to meet.  Worse, we couldn’t integrate.  There should be a badge available for people like us who tried so hard to build-up friendships.  Part of the trouble was that Bruce spoke no French, and keeping company with somebody who doesn’t speak your language is tedious.  On the rare occasion we were invited out the conversation depended entirely on me, and trying to include Bruce was a chore for all concerned.  And he felt miserable, desperately attempting to join in, and one has to give it to him – he tried really hard and kept up a good, cheerful front against all odds.  But there was more, vastly more to it than that. Even though France is just the other side of the English Channel, the cultural differences are immense and it is foolish to think one can just slot in, least of all in an area like the centre of France where nothing had changed for donkeys’ years.

I missed my friends terribly.  In England the mothers used to stand around the school gate to pick up their children after school, and we would all be chatting to each other, and we would get chatting even if we didn’t know each other.  Here, the mothers stood in silence. One or two spoke.  Nobody spoke to me. I am a very open person, easy to talk with, casual and at ease with almost anybody – but I could never get a conversation going beyond the rather formal “Bonjour Madame”.  I tried really hard, and in the early days I was determined to swing in to the French way of life.  But I just couldn’t.

•   Another house for sale.  I sold it to a Dutch couple who lived in London and who wanted it for holidays. It was a good buy and I hope they had plenty of lovely holidays there.  The lake was part of it and there were grounds of about half an acre.  I can’t remember the price but it was something in the region of £20 000.

In France in those days – and even now to a large extent – it is quite usual for a property to remain for sale for years.  La Haute Perriere had been for sale five years before we turned up. We were conscious that this was potentially a big worry.  We had decided to move on, so move on we must, but the thought of trying to sell the monster we had bought, was daunting to say the least.  But I found, slightly to my surprise, that I was now a business woman; I had experience; I knew the ins and outs of advertising; I knew how to present a property, what to avoid … we did a bit of cosmetic work, vases of flowers, a few artistic draperies, and sold the place within a few months.  The buyers were an older American couple who, years later, telephoned us and told me they had hated the place from Day 1, and asked me to sell it again – which I couldn’t, for I had long since moved on, and moved away.

• A rare moment of relaxation in our garden, that first swelteringly hot summer in France.  My mother commented that the heat was as bad as Nigeria.

In the meantime we talked about where to go.  We discussed returning to South Africa, where I was born, and a part of me will always wish that we had done that.  We discussed Australia, where Bruce had spent his youth.  We talked about New Caledonia where I had lived, or Spain and any number of other places.  Mostly I wanted to go home, but we had lost our house and we knew that raising the funds for another would take a very long time.

And as all parents know, the children have to come in to the equation.  We had removed them from a school where they were very happy and doing well in the UK.  Pippa and William were now fluent in French.  They were part of the French education system.  And we didn’t have the funds for a big move anyway.  Oddly enough a friend asked me just the other day where I would recommend living – where in the world, that is – for we have travelled a great deal and lived in a lot of different countries.  And I replied:

“While you are young and energetic, if you are going to go to the trouble of moving country and culture, for goodness’ sake choose somewhere a bit more exotic than France!”

Odd, isn’t it ?  Although I have come to love France, I still feel that.

Part 3 to follow.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  Her books are available on Amazon/Kindle worldwide, or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  They can also be bought (£1.99) as e-books from http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Click here for Part 1.

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-2-2/#sthash.oQM2hz8v.dpuf

French Writers Part 4 - Voltaire

A few million years ago, when I was a student, I read “Candide”.  I can’t remember whether I read it in French or in English, but I do remember commenting that I thought it was a really stupid story, and getting in to considerable trouble with my Voltaire-loving lecturer.  I started leafing through some Voltaire again a few years ago, but reading it is too much like hard work these days, and the interest has gone.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/french-writers-part-4-voltaire/

French Writers Part 3 - Rousseau

We tend to think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1844-1910) as French, but he was Swiss.  Indeed, he signed his books “Jean Jacques Rousseau of Geneva”.  However, it was in France that he became a writer and thence became famous.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/french-writers-part-3-rousseau/

French Writers Part 2 - Moliere

I must say I don’t go over board about writers of this era, either in France or in Britain.  I’m not very keen on the heavily-flowered vocabulary or the heady innuendo of the Grand Siecle and, although I daresay the quips and double-entendres are very clever, they always leave me feeling somewhat blank.

For this blog in full and more please see http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/french-writers-part-2-moliere/

French Writers Part 1 - Emile Zola

I read “La Terre” when I was at University.  I remember it partly because it is a very good book, haunting and hard-hitting.  I remember it also because the lecturer one day, during a discussion near the start of the book, blurted out somewhat loudly :

” … so you see, he preferred to ejaculate his sperm in to the earth rather than impregnate his woman!!!”

For this blog in full and more please see : http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/french-writers-part-1-emile-zola/

Becoming an Author and Getting Published

Getting your story right.  These are just a few basic guide-lines, not necessarily cast in stone.

I’ll start with the first few paragraphs of my novel “The Man with Green Fingers”:-

Stella crossed over on to the shaded side of the street.

  There was nobody about.  The early July sun blasted down the Skipos avenue and beat against the whitewashed walls of the houses, their shutters closed against the heat, and that heat ricocheted off back in to the air which was heavy with post-luncheon sleep and thick with the feel and scents of Cypriot summer.  Her hand-bag, laden with emergency-repair make-up,  felt moderately heavy slung as it was over one shoulder.  The elaborate scarf she had tied artistically around her neck, with a pretty little butterfly clasp to hold it in place was now limp, like a fadingplant.

Although Stella would have enjoyed a love affair, she accepted with inherent patience that it just wasn’t possible.   That was an advantage to being a bit older – age gives you wisdom, she thought, and she never minded  her forty-eight years.  Only the most unusual circumstances and only the most private and secure position would allow her to even consider a love affair; and while these conditions did not present themselves to her, there was no way she was going out to look for them.  In fact, it could ruin everything.

Now, in the very first sentence I established to the reader that we are talking about a woman.  Within a few lines the reader knows that we are in Cyprus, that it is summer, that it is in modern times (it could be any time between, say, 1980 and today), and the reader also knows a fair bit about the person in question.  The last sentence sets the scene: there is something going on, something she is up to could be ruined.  And so the reader reads on.

Here are the first few lines from a typescript that has just been loaned to me for perusal:-

He got to his feet and stretched.  He grunted as he did so.  All around him the women sat in silence, ignoring him, and he made his way slowly to the exit and stood a while, looking out.

 It was still raining.  Heavy rain that had started the previous day and showed no sign of easing.  It made everything difficult. He needed to go out but didn’t want to get wet.  The land would be muddy and slippery. It was raining so hard that it was even difficult to see.

It goes on several paragraphs in this vein, fairly well written BUT …. where are we ?  This could be in a cave with a caveman, it could be in a modern dwelling, an office or a bank or an airport.  The man could be big, small, black, white, young or old.  It could be in England or Ohio, China or Ghana or Alaska ….. anywhere.

Set the scene first.

You do not have to give all the details in the first paragraph or two, or even on the first two pages, but by the start of page three the reader should know:-

-          The sex and approx.age of the person

-          An idea of what the person is like, or how you want him/her to come over

-          The approx. geographical area

-          The approx. date or time-line

Never rely on spell-checks !

The spell-check on your computer does not know the difference between her and here, their and there.  Rely only on yourself.  Truly, if you cannot paragraph or punctuate, it is essential you learn to do so, or at least get somebody you trust to read and correct your work.  There is not a publisher in the world who will look beyond the first page if there are spelling, punctuating or paragraphing mistakes.

If you are self-publishing it is nigh-on impossible to spot all of your own mistakes and to be objective.  Typos are everywhere – that is inevitable.  Do not try to edit your own work more than once, twice at a pinch, because you will find yourself altering things, improving things, and then finding you have lost the thread or changed the feel, and even repeated yourself.

However, it is remarkably difficult to find a friend who really DOES understand spelling, punctuating and paragraphing.  Lots of people think they do, but they don’t.

Do not allow friends to say “this is very good” – none of them will say “this is dreadful”!  What seems very good to one person will seem like rubbish to another.  Only you can decide.

Questions frequently asked about writing & publishing:-

-          Would you say that it is easier to self-publish or should I persevere for a publisher ?  I’m afraid that, unless you have a specialist non-fiction subject, the chances of a publisher taking you on are about the same as the chances of winning the lottery. However, people do win the lottery and do get published!  Make no mistake, self-publishing is very difficult, very very difficult indeed.  Getting the book in to the stores is one thing, but marketing it is excruciating.

-          But why is that ?  Because the book just BEING THERE is no use at all – unless you just wanted to see it in print.  You will need millions – seriously millions – of people to know it is there.

-          But if I self-publish I am worried that people will think I am being pushy …?  If you are thinking of going it alone, you have to be very thick-skinned.  You cannot worry about what people think.

-          I can count on the support of all my work colleagues, family, neighbours, friends. Can you really ?  You’d be amazed.  It is extraordinary how your family and close friends do not support you. They mean to, intend to, will do so tomorrow … but somehow don’t.  And, just like if you were selling Avon or Amway or similar, they rapidly get fed-up with you too!

-          When submitting to a publisher, there are all sorts of “rules” about double-spacing, length of synopsis, stamped addressed envelopes. I am always very careful to follow these guide lines but they have never made a jot of difference.  Some of those guide-lines are good, the essentials being : double-spacing (or 1.5 spacing), wide borders, short and concise covering letter, short and concise synopsis.  Ignore the rest.

-          But I read somewhere a publisher complained because somebody couldn’t even be bothered to find out her name!  Yes, that happens, but the opposite happens too.  You can waste a lot of time phoning up for names.  I don’t.

-          Sometimes I wonder why I persevere ….  Don’t we all ?  We are artists, after all, with all the sensitivities and fears of artists.  We have to be business people too.  But know this: there is a difference between giving up and changing direction.  If you feel it is time to change direction, do not hesitate. Let the business person in you override the artist in you.