Tuesday 12 April 2011

The Beginning

This is the story of the Little French House.

Last September, after my stint with the circus, I came to the Limousin to get some perspective on a turbulent personal life. Today I am the proud owner of the most amazing little house in the whole of France. Or at least it will be when I have finished renovating. Renovating whilst trying to maintain a flourishing acting career back in England.

I am not French. For this I blame my parents. Had they moved to France when my mother became pregnant, I would be French, and this whole thing would be a lot easier. Some might call it selfishness on their part but I’m not one to bear a grudge. Eh? Maman? Papa??

Furthermore, I have never renovated anything in my life. For this I cannot blame my parents. They did their best. Most of the places we lived in started out as draughty ruins and once they’d attained a basic level of comfort and warmth were sold on, before our expectations got too high. If I’d known what lay ahead, I’d have paid more attention.

So I’m sitting in the Notaire’s office, with a slight sense of being outside my own body, wondering if I have in fact bitten off more than I can chew. The Notaire takes his job very seriously but is also, I suspect, a frustrated actor. He hammers home the salient points with a stern demeanour but is also prone to cracking jokes. My French isn’t good enough to keep up. He doesn’t signal the joke until it’s over by which time he’s laughing his socks off and I’m left to chuckle along nervously, hoping there isn’t a sub-clause in French property law that forbids the sale of pretty village houses to stony-faced bints with a sense-of-humour by-pass. I’d like to tell you that he’s wearing a toupee but that would be a lie. His hair is, however, an alarming shade of brown and his teeth are very scary.

A big thank you to my lovely Immobilier (estate agent) who has made this purchase sail through with minimum stress to me. I don’t feel that I have done anything, but I suppose somewhere along the line I must have, as find myself the proud owner of a gorgeous little house in need of a great deal of TLC. For anyone else contemplating doing what I’ve done, I’ll try to itemise the stages involved but I suspect that it’s a bit like child birth… having come through it I’m in denial about how painful it actually was.

If this doesn’t interest you, please feel free to scroll down to the bit with power tools and pictures of people doing things.

Lx

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