Well, it’s been a crazy start to 2019 for me, that’s for sure!
Moving house is always stressful, and I am not a person who moves for any reason but necessity. For me, my home is my sanctuary. I am like a tree; I must put down roots and stay there until I am no longer nourished by the soil.
Ettington is an amazing village. I made many friends and had some memorable times there: my acting appearances with the pantomime group, the book club crowd, the trip to London to see Gary Barlow’s musical “The Girls”… I could go on. It was hard to leave, I have to say.
But when opportunities knock upon your door, and you reassess your place in life and your situation, sometimes you just know it has to be done. Out come the boxes and the packing tape, and your heart sinks as you realise how much rubbish you have accumulated over the time you have lived in your current accommodation. (It is a useful time to declutter though!)
So, on the 16th January, with a packed car and two extremely disgruntled cats, I set off for Le Shuttle at Folkestone, and for La Belle France. It was a very long journey.
After 11 hours in the car, we finally arrived at our overnight stop, and I got the cats out, along with my overnight bag, and proceeded to relax as much as possible so I could get a restful night’s sleep. Turns out this was wishful thinking – the cats wanted to use all the time to explore the gîte, which of course meant jumping on and off the bed all night!
However, I did manage some rest and, despite being tired the following morning, I knew the second day of driving wouldn’t be too arduous, having already driven a fair way past Paris. At around 4pm, I rolled into Sorède, the village that I now call home.
It seems fitting that my belongings arrived on the 31st January, the day before Imbolc, the Pagan sabbat (known as Candlemas by Christians), a time for looking at the plants and flowers around us for the first signs of spring. Mother Nature is waking, snowdrops carpet the ground and the crocuses and daffodils are not far behind. Here in south-west France, the sunshine is warm enough to be without a coat in a sheltered spot, if only for a short time.
As the earth begins to awaken I, too, am embarking on a new beginning. I have to get used to the new culture – the bakery closes at 12.30 every day, for example, and doesn’t open again until 16.00, except on Sundays, when it doesn’t reopen at all. Most of the village shops operate a similar routine. A long leisurely lunch with friends and family is what is called for – a habit I am more than happy to take up!
The wine is, literally, cheaper than bottled water to drink. It would be very easy to spend the rest of my life here is a state of permanent drunkenness, but I have books to write, and my handwriting suffers from an overindulgence of alcohol like you would not believe… so I’ll stick to a glass or three in the evenings.
It is the simple pleasures that I am enjoying the most. Spending an evening staring into the fire is becoming something of a routine. I have a TV in the house, on which I can even watch UK TV channels, but… why would I want to do that?
I prefer to listen to the howling of the Tramontane wind as it whips across the village rooftops, whistling through the tiny gaps between the shutters, because I know that when it is done, the sunshine will seem all the warmer, and the stillness ever more beautiful.
The wildness of the weather is one thing that drew me to this part of France. Having spent most of my adult life thus far in and around a large urban conurbation, I felt I had lost my connection with nature. I look forward to reigniting that relationship.
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