The real thing...

We arrived here for good in Mont Saint Martin just behind the removals van on the 6th January with ice still on the ground, adding a certain excitement to the procedure of moving in. I don’t think I have been so exhausted since the children were small. Having had a week of entertaining at Christmas (and the week before that of preparing food, shopping and catching up with old friends), and then the constant packing into boxes and the agony of decisions to keep or throw, even at that late stage, I don’t think I had much in the way of physical emotional or even spiritual reserves for the long drive south and then opening up the apartment ready for the reverse process.

Our removal men could not have been nicer. Cheerful and resourceful, they made no complaints about bringing everything up the dog-leg stairs to our first floor apartment. They even brought in bacon for lunch while Ralph went to forage for baguettes and pains chocolats.  It made a very cosy picnic round the kitchen counter.  

Thanks to the help of friends in the UK, our breakables were well wrapped and cared for; the only breakage so far seems to have been a garden pot.  All the Edinburgh crystal is now carefully placed on various shelves and in cabinets. Fantastic! All that remains to unpack are the dozen large boxes in the second bedroom. I am in denial about these; they all seem to contain large items and I cannot imagine anywhere for them to go. In Coventry we had an attic, five sheds and a greenhouse. Amazing how much those held. We gave away so much and yet we are still overwhelmed by “stuff”. The temptation before moving was very much to throw everything away and start again, but now that I have found some old treasures in books and photo albums, I am glad I didn’t. I have unearthed some Gothic novels from university days, some F Scott Fitzgerald paperbacks and pictures of the children playing with their Nana. I have also found the Elizabeth David classic, Provincial French cooking and in the spirit of the film “Julie and Julia”, am attempting to cook my way through a number of the recipes. Yesterday, a lovely “Poulet roti au beurre” accompanied by “navets a la Bordelaise”. both of which would have had the fat police after us with a big stick. Yum. Ralph says that a hot topic for debate at work amongst his Belgian colleagues is the preparation of food and its sourcing. I take notes.

Last week was wet, cold and overcast and I did not leave the house except for one incredibly cold and rainy walk around the roads across the field from the chateau.  But brighter weather is here this week. I may even be tempted out to the Mairie to register my existence, although I feel a little rebellious at remaining an illegal alien ad infinitum.

It takes a while to get a feel for the rhythm and character of a place. Who comes and goes? When does the place wake up?  And how much should I stare out of the window? We overlook some of the other apartments, so it isn’t easy to look out without seeming to be peering into other people’s homes. But there is also a pretty view over the park and the lakes that used to belong to the chateau before the owner had to sell up following the collapse in the steel markets in the 1980’s. The town council bought the property, intending to turn it into a retirement home;this never happened and a local farming family bought it up and restored it to its current glory.

Today I watched the cat belonging to the people in the old carriage house. It leapt into the air over and over again batting something with its paws. It is too early in the year for butterflies so I watched more closely. The cat threw a small grey object (could have been a dead mouse) into the air, playing “keepy-uppy” with it, suddenly stopping to look round to see if anyone was watching its return to kittenhood. Charmant.

I have given in to internet radio to enjoy my daily fix of Radio 4. Disappointingly, two of my treasures, my DAB Radio and my atomic clock radio do not work here. Well, the atomic clock radio works, but has not adapted to local time, and I can only get medium wave UK radio with lots of squeaks and whistles. So, I shall have to practice my French more to understand local media.  This moves me on to my next obligation, the “Rosetta Stone” language course, which I am working on from the beginning, and which calls me now.

A bientot.