a separate summer

Posted on February 17, 2013 by vicawhite

‘And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation’ Khalil Gibran.

Good morning barn

It was the summer of 2010. Before Kate and Wills got married. Before One Direction and when I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my husband. It was the summer we separated.
The school holidays yawned ahead of us like an eternity. Weeks of telling Arthur, who was now 6 nearly 7, to turn off electricals and go outside and kick a ball about. Then remembering that we live on a relatively busy London street and have a postage stamp sized garden, and its not the 1950s. As Peter was to be sole carer of the children over the summer while I went clipping off to work each morning in inappropriate footwear, he began to hatch a plan.

“What do you think about me taking Arthur to France for the whole summer and you staying here with Sebastian?” he mooted one morning over breakfast. Six whole weeks apart? The longest we would have been apart in over ten years. I wasn’t sure. I’d miss him. I’d miss Arthur. I’d be looking after Sebastian ON MY OWN (you may not have met him, but let me tell you he makes the kid in Home Alone look under-resourceful). Id have no one to work the sky plus if it broke! And most of all, isn’t it weird to think its OK to spend that long apart. Does it mean our relationship is somehow flawed if we are able to live comfortably with only Skype to communicate. We’d been married for 11 years at this point and while there were elements of resigned comfort in our relationship – we get quite excited when there is a BRAND NEW episode of Midsommer Murders – I like to think we are also more in love now than when we met drunkenly at a party fifteen years earlier. (He has no recollection of our meeting – in fact the only thing he claims to remember about said party is that a transvestite porn star was there – he’s right but it was LA in the 90s, there was a transvestite porn star at most parties.)

But it made sense. We had all that space in France, a wood, fields and about ten broken bikes leaning up against one another in a barn. In London, we had a Victorian terrace with an urban decked area complete with olive tree and seating area that we had done pre-kids.

The deck factor

And so it was agreed. Seb and I would stay home with Yvonne our amazing neighbour agreeing to look after him until I got home from work in the evenings. Peter and Arthur would spend one feral summer, wearing the same pants for days, existing on bread with Nutella and making plans for an enormous treehouse they would one day build in the forest.

Now that’s a back garden!

a rooftop pool you say???

Seb was really too young to care where Arthur and daddy had gone, and besides I took him to shoreditch most weekends with uncle Richard and he got sole attention, ice cream and swimming in a rooftop pool, what’s not to love? Our Shoreditch summer was really so enjoyable that we forgot to miss our nuclear family. Our new alternative, child free family who drink cocktails at midday, spend hours shopping for fresh flowers and hang out in private members bars DID have a certain allure….and besides, my boys overseas were happy. Eating their body weight and gaining around 6lbs each, their skin the colour of stewed tea (could have been tan, could have been lack of hygiene) and their smiley faces over Skype telling me of trips to Bricot Depot and the time Arthur found a salt n vinegar crisp the size of a saucer!

Its all gone a bit Dalston….

But on the day we landed at Pau airport, reunited for a two week holiday, the sight of their (dirty) faces through passport control made me realise the best thing about being separated for the summer. The realisation that you can’t wait to be reunited.

My husband and a glass of rose! Back together again (husband – obvs we HAVE rose in London too)

Its not really a holiday though. Is it?

Posted on February 11, 2013 by vicawhite

So who wants another room makeover? Thought so. Enough with the mushy emoting, tales of friendship and the like – what you really want is to see photos of a semi derelict bedroom and then further pics of how it looked once we’d painted, plastered and bought bijou extras from quaint little french markets – right?

To be honest, I think I’m going to have to add an element of jeopardy to this blog because right now its all going a bit too well. Surely we need to run out of cash, have a roof cave in, discover bats that are part of a conservation order in the barn. Like those bits in Restoration Man when he goes off into his round study and ponders ‘how its all going’ and wether ‘they’ll ever get this project finished’. At the very least one of us needs to have an affair or lose our job otherwise its just two smug, happily married people who own a house in the south of France and no one wants to read about THAT!

Well just to move the plot along a bit, I’m going to sleep with Roman the sexy french builder. Sadly not, I’m afraid. But I am going to start getting a bit disillusioned. We’re almost at our first summer and the house is taking some shape but maybe not as much as I’d hoped. The boys are still sharing a room that could be a film set but its that bit of The English Patient where Ralph Fiennes is bandaged up in an old bed rather than ‘Amelie’. And our bedroom is little more than a mattress on the floor. And this does not please me. As I’ve mentioned, I work in fashion and although I don’t mind a bit of roughing it, I do have to hear constant tales about colleagues travels to villas in Mustique, Riads in Marrakech or even just boutique hotels in the Cotswolds and they all sound rather nice. And I, by contrast, am sleeping here……..

Its just like a boutique hotel really

It was around this time, I began to wonder….. was this really what I wanted from a holiday home? Did I even want a holiday home? Was this all Peter’s dream and not mine? I married a man who hates sunshine, swimming and relaxing. His idea of a holiday is to smash down a dividing wall with a sledgehammer. He likes reading books and collecting old junk. I by contrast dream of a Heidi Klein bikini, a white sand beach, a mojito and ideally someone else to do the washing up. My job is pretty stressful and was it madness to think that I would then want to spend my holidays, painting, cooking, lighting fires and all of the above in a run down, dirty house.

I think I may have shouted that at him several times around this period as I tripped over wires that snaked all around the house as we had only about two working sockets and a million extension cables. Or when I trudged through the dark, dingy back rooms of the house to get to the bathroom in my flip flops because the floors were too disgusting to walk on without footwear. Oh and dont get me started on the days spent entertaining the children on my own while Peter was up a ladder painting, plastering or mending. ‘WHY CAN”T WE JUST GO ON HOLIDAY LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE?” I would shout. Loudly and often. And it was this kind of disillusioned moaning that prompted him to start work on project master bedroom. (And not just so he could be on a different floor to me wallpapering quietly on his own – though I am sure this also had a bearing on his decision).

Peter was clearly wise to the fact that the bits I DO like about owning a french holiday home are the shopping opportunities and the interior planning and so it was with project bedroom. As I think I’ve explained – this is a budget operation. In fact the budget is, there is no budget. So I searched ebay and discovered a range of Laura Ashley Josette wallpaper that someone was selling off for only £5 a roll. In many ways having no budget makes all your decisions for you and so it was with this wallpaper. Would I have chosen it if I could pick anything in the world? Probably not. But I love it and I suppose it kind of chose me.

The glass light that was already hanging in the bedroom was cleaned up and I love the fact its been there all along and we’re simply adding to the stories it could tell. The floor just needed a polish and we bought simple white curtains from IKEA. A mirror was sourced on ebay and came cheap because it had some bits missing from it which Peter simply glued back on (it’s amazing how people sell ‘broken’ stuff on ebay that isn’t even really broken, it just needs a bit of tlc) And then we bought a bed. A giant four poster one from IKEA that I’d always like the look of – EDLAND which crazily they have now discontinued -there are entire forums devoted to this online!

And from separate Vide Greniers we found bedside tables that don’t match. Some lights were bought in Marks and Spencer and driven over one trip. And finally a set of HEMNES drawers again from IKEA. I suspect for a more authentic french feel, it could do with some more stuff in it that isn’t from IKEA but you know what – we have the rest of our lives to buy stuff. And Claire Danes’ character in Homeland has IKEA drawers in her bedroom so it’s OK right? (although she is a bit of a looney and in love with a known terrorist and I’m only on season one so please don’t post and tell me it turns out he’s not a terrorist or whatever because I HAVEN’T SEEN THOSE EPISODES YET!)

And so, despite my moaning, I actually rather like going to our French holiday home every holiday. Having jumpers and jeans already there in my HEMNES drawers so I never have to pack to go away. And one day those snaking wires will be gone and we’ll be able to plug stuff into the socket in the same room as the appliance (I know this reader because in real life I’m way ahead of you!) And best of all, I have a bedroom that looks like a boutique hotel. Its a little known place in SW France don’t you know? Mustique – PAH!

Logging on

bedtime

Uncle Ricard

Posted on February 6, 2013 by vicawhite

There are five of us in this French House

So there is someone else you need to meet. Someone who has been our most frequent guest over the last few years at La Maison Blanche. My BFF. My children’s godfather. Karen to my Valene (Knots Landing ref – youtube it) for the best part of twenty years now – Uncle Richard. He’s obv not my Uncle Richard – though he is the older of our twosome – but as my children always refer to him as such it has stuck – or it did until he came to France where he gained a new moniker. But more on that later.

Richard and I met twenty years ago in the kitchen of an unassuming publishing house – well, I say publishing house – it was two magazines housed in a garage down a back alley of an unfashionable bit of central London. But to us it was the publishing house of dreams. It really was. This, despite the fact we had to dodge junkies to get into work each morning and, once, when a pigeon died in our water tank our boss told us just to walk to Habitat to use the loo or wash our hands. And we were fine with this because we were JOURNALISTS! Journalists who ended up buying one of those paper lampshades every time we needed a pee, but journalists nevertheless.

It was our first job in and Richard and I were respectively, features writer and features assistant on Inside Soap magazine. This meant that he got to write about EastEnders and Corrie and I got to do Emmerdale and Brookie! Partly this was some sort of soap hierarchy, but moreover, it was because as the youngest of the two, I had a young person’s railcard and it was cheaper to send me on the train up north. Glossy media London it was not, but as we both came from spiritually and physically miles away from London – to us it was like we’d landed a part in Press Gang – only it was real. And Dexter Fletcher wasn’t in it. But nevertheless, STUFF. OF. DREAMS. We worked hard, we went to every free party going, we got inappropriately drunk with the cast of Soldier Soldier and we made amazing friendships with our colleagues on our sister mag – TV Hits.

We dreamed of working at ‘proper’ grown up magazines with staff canteens and payrises. And somehow, over the years, the entire team of people from Inside Soap, TV Hits and a short lived one off mag called ‘Supermodel’ managed to land ourselves a series of ever improving jobs. Richard in TV and me in women’s magazines. And this meant we could no longer share a desk, the walk to work and our lunchtime trips to Cafe Mania – the local sandwich shop where we once spotted Prince Edward grabbing a lunchtime baked potatoe. But we talked in some form or other, and still do, almost every day. And when I moved to Australia to edit a magazine, he came to visit. And when I moved to LA, he came to visit. And we laughed all the time. Usually over things that no one else could understand – our first boss used to say we were like Dolphins with a language like a series of sonos squeaks decipherable only by us.

Now my children love him as much as I do. And he loves them as much as I do. And these days, he and Arthur send each other text messages every day that make each other laugh or LOL cos its all electric now. And I can’t imagine any part of my life without him in it. So if we go to France – he comes too as often as he can. And as we see the house take shape through his hugely positive eyes it keeps us going even when sometimes we may want to throw in the towel and go on a Mark Warner holiday instead.

And when Uncle Ricard arrives at Maison Blanche, he settles himself in and pours himself a Ricard (he usually arrives in the afternoon – we’re not talking 9am Ricard drinking here!) And he sits down in front of the fire checking his emails and says ‘This really is what life’s all about love.’ And so he became known as Uncle ‘Ricard’ and we amassed a huge amount of Ricard related paraphenelia which the children insist on buying each time they see some at a Vide Grenier. So even when Uncle Ricard isn’t with us – we can recreate a familiar scene using Picachu.

Pikachu loved a Ricard after a hard day of evolving

On, this, his first visit though, Uncle Ricard arrived in a Renault Twingo having flown into Toulouse. I’d never seen Uncle Ricard actually drive having based our relationship for the last twenty years in urban London locations! But as he pulled into the driveway and announced ‘Oh My GOD It’s Chateau Vallon’ (short lived ancient French soap opera – again – youtube it) I knew this was to be a match made in heaven.

Oui oui – c’est un velo!

And we cycled into the village together on rickety old bikes that Peter had bought in a vide grenier. And we shouted Bonjour loudly at everyone else as they cycled past. And we bought baguettes and when they asked if I needed a carrier bag, I said ‘non j’ai un panier’ and we looked at each other and grinned from ear to ear. In fact, we wanted to videotape the moment because we were living a big french life. Right up there with the time we went into the shop on Rodeo that Julia Roberts gets turned away from in Pretty Woman with armfuls of carrier bags and said ‘big mistake. Huge!’ (Cos those assistants must NEVER have heard that before!) Essentially, we were in one of those scenes that if someone had shown us a flash forward while we were blagging our way into parties just to eat the canapes and drink the free drink, we’d never have believed them. C’est pas bloody possible! We’d have said and then died laughing. But we were. And we had the boys there too and Uncle Ricard would take them to the Tabac and buy them french Pokemon cards and a ten centime mix up. And then come home and have a little Ricard. Well it IS a holiday and all that cycling really works up a thirst!

Meet the parents

Posted on February 3, 2013 by vicawhite

Peter looks v pleased to have some help!

creepy!

And I got to do this!!!!

getting plastered

Our first guests – sort of. My parents. Strangers to roughing it, they arrived fully warned as to just how basic our french home still was. I’m not entirely sure they believed us though (my mum had optimistically packed white linen trousers!) but they were kind enough to make the right kind of comments about potential, one day, blah, so much space, blah… In the end, despite the completion of the bathroom we decided it might be best to house them in a nearby B&B so they could retire at the end of the day to a bedroom with en suite and fluffy towels. They stayed with a fabulous Danish woman in a lovely village nearby called Marciac. I wished i ws staying there too for the breakfast buffet alone! Plus, Marciac is a picture postcard french village based around a square that looks how you imagine a French rural village to look. Think ‘Chocolat’ or those ‘Petit Filou’ ads and you get an idea. As a result, it is swarming with English people. On one of our first visits there i spied an entire english family of curly blonde haired children of varying ages, all in matching breton tops plus a dad in white linen shirt and straw trilby – pete had to restrain me from chasing them down and introducing myself. ‘But they would love me. We could be friends, i wailed.’ They probably live in one of those chateaus i online stalk! So, thats Marciac. There is even a french restaurant run by an english chef called Le Monde A L’envers – an amazing place but only open about twice a week.

Le Monde A L’envers (the world upside down)

Marciac is also home to posh shops that sell shabby chic french home accessories and stripey tablecloths! (Bought largely by english people) Its also home to our favourite restaurant (frquented almost entirely by french people just to prove am not one of those ex pats who track down jars of marmite and mother’s pride) Its called La Peniche and was once a boat but is now a restaurant on the lake complete with resident parrot. They serve a a four course meal with wine for around €15 and the kids get duck and chips./p>

La Peniche – floating food

So, each day, during the parental visit – Mum and Dad would drive over and my dad would help Peter to get rid of the climbing vines that were blocking out all our light. Dad then took up the task of white glossing all windows – to put into context, we’ve now had the house for three years and still have about 80% of them still to do as it takes forever! But we were very grateful for his input. My mum kept an eye on the kids so I even managed to steal some time to read books and bake. And the kids played in a wheelbarrow. It was boiling hot and we could eat outside. And we could begin to see the future. a big table in the sun, laden with cheese, bread and tomatoes so big and juicy they look and taste more like nectarines. The boys in stripey tees and Pete in a linen shirt. What more could you possibly want from a holiday?

Chateau inspo

Posted on February 1, 2013 by vicawhite

Chateau rigaud somewhere near Bordeaux – inspo indeed

Quick post to highlight some places I go to when I need inspiration for my own French home – property porn basically. The first is www.chateaurigaud.co.uk a truly gorgeous house you can rent in its entirety or by the room. Click on the link and I promise you will spend at least twenty minutes flicking through all their rooms.

If only they said on the site WHICH colour this is?

I love the way they’ve used bold dark colours in the bedrooms. One of the joys of having a large house is being able to really make a statement with colour. I want our house to have this same feeling of rich colour throughout. We’ve discovered a paint firm called Earthborn paints which are not only more environmentally sound than normal paints but they also let our ancient old walls breathe (like Geox shoes – my kids always question their ‘shoes that breathe’ claims – “how? How can shoes breathe mummy’)

chateau lartigolle – some nights I dream of this place

My second favourite room inspo site is a chateau not too far from us called Chateau De Lartigolle. So obsessed am I with this building that I’ve been tempted to pop over and say hello. But I fear it’s a little stalkerish! How would they react when I tell them I have studied every inch of the Cole and Son wallpaper in their ‘Brook’ bedroom. Or that sometimes in the evenings I sit down with a glass of wine and idly flick through pics of their children’s sitting room?

Maybe they’d be thrilled. Flattered. Or it might end up being like the time I interviewed Olivia Newton John and quoted the first ten minutes of Grease to her ‘I’m going back to Australia, I might never see you again. Don’t talk that way Sandy… But it’s true I’ve just had the best summer of my life and now I have to go away. It isn’t fair…..’ She kept looking at her agent in a slightly scared way. Its why I can never meet George Michael. They’d have to restrain me to stop me singing all of Careless Whisper to him ver-batim!

Would Jimi fit in my handbag?

Anyway, Lartigolle is my go-to site for wallpaper ideas. From rooms totally covered in heavy patterned wallpaper, to feature walls and panels, I love what the owners of this chateau have done with pattern. I also love their sitting rooms. In fact, I love all of it. I am OBSESSED. That’s it I’m driving over there right now to steal their Jimi Hendrix print.

I’d quite like a bathroom now please….

Posted on January 29, 2013 by vicawhite

The house that belongs to the ‘King of the Village’ but what would my mother think?

It is one thing entirely to fall in love with house with holes in the roof and a snake living in the utility room. To see beyond the rats nests and broken toilets yourself. And to then exist in a little bubble of contentment, reassuring yourself that ‘one day’ it will be a palace. It’s rather like falling in love with a boy – you love him despite his habitual refusal to close a drawer after taking something out of it, his manky Ramones t-shirt and his love of You’ve Been Framed. And so it is with a home. You see BEYOND! Mice scurrying away in the room next to your bedroom? Ah, yes that would be the ‘at one with nature’ feature! The inability to have both cooker hob AND the kitchen lights on at the same time? Cooking by candlelight – how romantic! An old tin bath and no shower. POTENTIAL! But when others enter your heavily blinkered world – you begin to see it via their eyes and suddenly you have a broken old house and a holiday that only weird intellectuals wanting to ‘test’ themselves would go on. Club Med it was not. And so it was with my parents impending visit – would they love it? Would they see it’s charm? Thank god parents don’t judge – right?

A hot water tank. Which means - HOT water!

Not the kind of en suite my mother is used to

We needed a bathroom. And we needed one fast. One that not only had a bath, a loo and a hot water tank but maybe a floor. Some tiles perhaps. I’d already optimistically purchased some Missoni towels and a bathmat – oh and a lovely Cowshed soap and handcream dispenser – optimism you see – it even says on the Cowshed website that this set is a MUST for any kitchen or bathroom!

The rotting wooden ceiling in our bathroom needed all the gaps filled and each bit painted at least three times with eggshell. Our arms grew tired from reaching up to paint and our hair, faces and clothes were permanently splattered with tell tale droplets of white paint. Our friendly local pizzeria patron (also called Serge – confusing!) grew used to us turning up in search of les pizza royale (ham and mushroom) exhausted and looking as if we were an installation in Tate Modern so indelibly splattered were we.

Got to be time for a tea break lads?

I think from memory – Peter must have gone again by himself and driven the actual bathroom over to France because although we salvaged the original cast iron bath, the loo and sink were bought at a discount bathroom specialist near where we live in Greenwich. Luckily for me – most people don’t want traditional looking bathroom suites any more – they want Stark toilets that hurt your bum when you sit on them because they are square and your bum is not. They want fancy open spout waterfall taps and don’t get me wrong, I love that stuff too in my London home. In fact, watch out for my spin off blog ‘we bought a wreck in south east london’. But for rural France, I needed rustique, homely and ecclectic. One of the major allures of this renovation project was that I could decorate and furnish this home with lots of things I wouldn’t have in London. I wanted it to feel a little bit countrified and traditional. I wanted wallpapers, pretty light fittings and faded antiques. So, I got myself a Victoriana bathroom suite – unwanted by London urban sophisticates – snapped up by me for a couple of hundred pounds including taps. And the tiles – well B&Q’s finest (cheapest) slate floor tiles and good old white metro tiles with dark grey grout completed my modern country theme.

progress……

When we first went to look at our house – the bathroom was DISGUSTING – like the onewhere Ewan McGregor falls down the loo in Trainspotting – only with Ivy growing on the inside. It was dark, gloomy and almost impossible to enter. But I could always imagine how it would look. And now it does. The walls we painted Cornforth White by Farrow and Ball and then we had just a few finishing touches to add. A cracked mirror and old painting were found at local Vide Grenier’s – I’m going to do a post dedicated to all the tat (interesting local artifacts!) we have bought over the years at Vide Greniers – I just need to photograph it all! Held on a Sunday they are like car boot sales but much much better – and they usually have wine at them even at 10am in the morning! And a cupboard was found in a local Brocante shop and tied to the top of our car and driven back slowly.

Time for a soak

So, our bathroom was finished. We were finally able to retire that bucket! Although by the time we actually had a working toilet, the boys had got so used to peeing in the garden they were a bit loathed to go back to using sanitaryware. And you know what – I was kind of fine with that. Just not while Gran and Grandad were around!!!!

Gained – 1 kitchen. Lost – 1 husband….

Posted on January 25, 2013 by vicawhite

rustic!

The heart of any home is it’s kitchen. Particularly a rambling french house where you hope one day to entertain friends and family. In my head I could already see myself whipping up a coq au vin with copper pans hanging behind me. Sprigs of local herbs stored in rustic tins on higgeldy-piggedly shelves – studiedly so obviously, in fact probably not even real herbs just nice faux ones that never die. I scoured Amazon for French cook books (Ripailles is AMAZING btw and also At My French Table. ) There is an abundance of fabulous cooking ingredients thanks to the dazzling combination of Super U (a grocery shopping monolith), local markets and my neighbours fields. in short, shopping, cooking and eating played a big part in my French plans but my kitchen looked like this…….

flinstones grotto – we still have no idea why?

As everything in the house needed total renovation, it was hard to know where to start. But as the kitchen had our only source of heat – an enormous fireplace complete with iron chain to hang cauldron. Plus it needed little structural work – except for a large Acroprop needed to keep the ceiling in place and the floor above. AND as my parents had promised an imminent visit and would for sure want cups of tea, maybe even somewhere to sit, this was the place to start.

Now, the next crucial thing to note at this point is that we had NO MONEY to do this house up. Nothing. No, slush fund, no contingency money and no cash to employ people to help us out. Nope our beautiful rambling, falling down in fact, french house was a two person, two child fixer upper. And when things got tough we were possibly going to have to auction the two kids on eBay to raise funds.

So, how do you furnish a 4×4 metre kitchen on no pence? Well, enter two well known cheap renovating buzz words. Two brands who were to become our closest allies and indeed friends – IKEA and EBay. Funds were so tight that we couldn’t even afford new IKEA (this is not one of THOSE houses on Grand Designs where a neurotic woman gets upset that French builders have ruined her hand-made-in-Italy marble topped kitchen – ‘Oh My God NOT the Gaggenau!’) So, unlike normal families who drive to IKEA, maybe have a nice lunch of meatballs and chips, then drive home with their spanking new units, Peter bought used, old Varde units on Ebay via saved searches and trips to the outer reaches of the home counties. We lucked out when he discovered a cooking school that was closing down who sold him not just a couple of very large units which would become our ‘island’ but also a barely used Smeg range that they had several of and needed to sell. Result! And then it was all driven down to France, by Peter on his own, in the back of our estate car. And several gallons of white emulsion later, it slowly began to take shape….

A tidy kitchen is a tidy mind, right?

THAT acroprop!

My favourite place in the world

We missed Peter in the months that followed as he drove to and from France in cars laden with increasingly large loads. And when he sent us pics of himself covered in paint and dust – we looked on jealously as we continued with our daily commutes to work and school. Dreaming of our house with a bucket for a loo. Skype meant I could still bark instructions from the other side of the channel, making sure he put everything just where I wanted it. Ensuring, he placed my island unit in exactly the right position so eventually I could oversee all kitchen related activities like a conductor with his orchestra. And I spent several weeks poring over colour charts to establish the perfect shade of green for the walls. In the end we went for Overtly Olive by Dulux on the main walls with Farrow and Ball’s James White on the wall with the windows to add some lightness to it all. Huge lampshades were bought in IKEA and some open shelving to store the lovely rustic looking crockery donated by my parents (BHS Lincoln – still to be found on Ebay – we had four gravy boats last count as Peter insists on buying every piece of it that comes up like my granny used to buy up sugar in case of another war). And it became a room. A proper room that you wanted to spend time in. I could use Serge’s bountiful courgette crop to make courgette quiche, courgette cake and courgette risotto – we haven’t eaten a courgette since. Sitting in front of the open fire, with a glass of wine, reading a book is still possibly one of my favourite places in the whole world. I eventually found a fireside chair but will save that story for another blog post as it involves a fight, in french in IKEA!

By that first Easter and a trip down there together with our several weeks absent husband/father and it was perfect. Really, perfect. We had a room! A finished room! And we spent all our time in there. Eating, playing board games and trying to avoid bumping into that flipping acroprop!

Smeg range via Ebay

The remaining thing from the old kitchen – painted up and its now a telephone table

Crockery courtesy of Mum and Dad

And from another angle!

Seb makes himself at home

ta da!

renovating a la mode

Posted on January 23, 2013 by vicawhite

Seb and I hit London Fashion Week

So one thing I forgot to mention so far is my day job. I edit a fashion magazine for young women called Company. Swilling out toilets using a dirty bucket is not my usual day to day (well there was that time that the plumbing went – the Facilities Dept had no idea they had a secret weapon sitting on the second floor in an editor’s office!) My readership are young, fashionable and cool. A second home in rural france is not something they relate to. Other than something their parents might do. Which is probably one of the reasons that from my first visit to Gensac village – I fell in love with it. No pressure to be seen in this season’s clothes (though Serge the neighbour I am sure appreciates my love of a Breton stripe. Plus, I lucked out the first year there that Espadrilles were one of summer’s surprise fashion hits – ‘les chaussures paysannes!’ (peasant shoes) exclaimed Serge in horror when he saw I had dressed the entire family in them. While in France i have no worries about listening to obscure indie bands or electro pop duos – I can, without shame, dance around my kitchen to Olly Murs greatest hits (eldest son close to disowning me though). And I can EAT – carbs, fat, wine – it’s your basic fashionista food nightmare. There is absolutely no chance of bumping into any ‘media types, in our local big village, Maubourguet. But then, a holiday where I find myself in conversation about breakfast prices on the up at the Wolseley just isn’t a holiday if you ask me. In short – imagine Anna Wintour in a slanket and you get an idea of how far apart my two lives are. And that’s how I like it.

So back to visit number one and I think it might be time to introduce you to Serge – our neighbour. The tale of La Maison Blanche and Serge go hand in hand. Like a French version of Corrie’s Norris Cole but with a kind heart, NOTHING escapes Serge. And when you have a vacant property you only visit ten weeks a year, this is a godsend.

Doesn’t Serge look like Woody Allen from behind?

His mother worked in the washrooms of our house many years ago and he has grown up watching our Maison de maitre slowly fall down around its inhabitants. He has an immaculate house across the road from ours where he lived at the time we first visited, with his mother. Like a French version of Sorry – with Serge in the Ronnie Corbett role. (Readers under 35 – ask your mum!) so thrilled was he that finally someone had come to rescue the ‘Maison du roi du village’ his words not ours, that he gave us a much harder sales pitch than the estate agent. In fact all the villagers of Gensac have embraced us with les bras ouvert! From invites to the village fetes to providing us with summer fruit and veg from their farms, they are all a little intrigued and excited by Les Anglais. And although we sometimes worry about the noise of our children playing in the garden in the summer, I suspect it makes a nice change from the relative silence of Gensac’s ageing populace.

And so Serge has become a bizarre constant in the lives of both Peter and I, and our children. A funny old Frenchman who speaks not a word of English, and even his French is so locally accented that we struggle to pick up some of his words. But he makes us delicious cakes, leaves fresh flowers from his garden in the house for me before I arriveand makes sure no harm comes to our beloved house while we are away.

les fleurs des serge

It was on this first visit, almost three years ago however, when a strange, Serge related incident occurred. As we had no hot water we had been unable to wash. Which is kind of fine when it’s just the four of you and at first we treated it as if we were at a music festival only without the music, fake tattooes and jugglers. But after four days we began to dream of a shower, some soap and a towel. And Serge, seeing our discomfort – or possibly getting a waft of the smell even 200m away, offered us the use of his shower. Which, it turned out, was in an outbuilding in his garden. In we all trooped like the wolf leading chicken little and his compadres into his hut to avoid the sky that was falling. Serge closed the door from the outside and all four of us showered. And it was blissful. And we were happy. And then we went to open the door and it was locked from the outside. Now, bear in mind this is the shower block of a man we had met only three times at this point. In the middle of nowhere. Pulling at the locked door with relative force, Peter said breezily, “I’m sure it’s fine. Serge must have absent mindedly locked the door.” But the look on his face told me he was thinking the same as me and it involved Kathy Bates and a Sledgehammer! We shouted and screamed to Serge but he was all the way over in his house and couldn’t hear (although at the time we suspected this was part of his dastardly plans!) so in the end, Peter squeezed out of a tiny window and unlocked the door with the key which Serge had left in the door. It turned out that Serge was so flustered to have us there he’d locked it without thinking and was mortified about the whole episode. And we were clean. And then he helped us chop down a tree with a massive chainsaw. I didn’t like to ask if he had a sledgehammer too? Best not to know probably.

And now our tree is a spaceship!

Come on kids its like Disneyland but with no water. Or heating. Or Mickey

Posted on January 20, 2013 by vicawhite

Look what Mummy and Daddy bought

So I won’t bore you with the year it took us to actually buy the place. There were unusual french laws, strange bank demands and a bizarre incident where Sebastian pulled the 1970s style lace curtain down in our solicitor’s office (a child with taste – obviously). But almost one year to the day after we put in our offer – we had the enormous, Scooby Doo-esque key to the house!

From memory I think Peter went twice before us on his own taking down Calor Gas heaters and some thermals to get electricity and water connected and all that sort of thing. He has his own ‘building blog’ with the deets on it http://www.gensachouse.co.uk

Anyone for scrabble?

And then we all went for a holiday. And there was no water for loo flushing so I learnt how to do this by pouring water down with a bucket. We had a fire to keep us warm in the kitchen and nowhere to sit except for four old wooden chairs we’d taken with us.

And it was AWESOME! We discovered the joys of the local Super U – ate out – A LOT, met our neighbour Serge – more on him later, discovered the joy of the vide grenier (literally translated it means Empty Attic and is the french equivalent of a car boot sale but with the odd hidden gem!
And we spent our evenings in front of our fire, drinking wine and planning. Planning how we would transform our new french home. Thinking of how we would redecorate each room and how to best utilise the space. Dreaming of a time when we would come here and it would be warm, comfortable and chic. And until then we were happy as it was. Happy with Scrabble and a bottle of Madiran. A steak cooked on our Smeg range we had driven down with us in the back of our car bought on ebay. And happy to go upstairs and see our two boys sharing a room with a fireplace big enough to climb into. Like something CS Lewis would have written about. And if you think I’m exaggerating about just how bad it was…

One day this will be a dining ro

flinstones grotto – we still have no idea why?

the only working (ish) bathroom

Its just like a boutique hotel really

And then we went to look at it

Gallery

Posted on January 20, 2013 by vicawhite

This gallery contains 4 photos.

So how DO you end up buying a house in a tiny hamlet in SW France? Well this involved a lot of ‘bookmark bar dreaming’. You know the thing. You see a house you love for sale by trawling french … Continue reading →