Writing this today, with the first frost gently disappearing as the winter sun rises over the oak woodlands, it seems hard to believe that it really won’t be that long until the days start lengthening again.
Eleven years ago today, we drove down through France to our new life, me in the car and Simon in the truck. Our cat Bobby, screamed from the moment she was confined to the safety of her plastic travelling box, but there were so many belongings muffling her protestations, I thankfully couldn’t hear her.
The two dogs Ruby and Arnie, who were also our travelling companions but in their own separate crate accommodation, looked sheepish. Very, very sheepish indeed. Arnie was the most pathetic looking - he suffered from terrible travel sickness and hated the car. It was nearly 1200 kilometres down to Lot et Garonne in South West France and our new house. A very long way indeed.
Our overnight ferry from Portsmouth was booked for 22h30. We had only ventured out of the next door village, some three miles, when I had to stop. Overcome by sobs and emotion, probably fatigue too, I knew I had to get it together and a hug with Simon was the only way. Luckily he had stopped too. From that moment on, we haven’t looked back.
The long drive down the following day was broken with pit stops for the dogs and us to stretch legs and much incredibly loud singing. Arriving alone, save my four legged friends, in the late afternoon November gloom, the enormity of our adventure hit me. The quaint, rickety old farmhouse looked particularly pretty but my, oh my! there was more than a small project here. We had plans to first renovate and restore the old animal housing into the gite that was to become Le Perchoir. This was our initial goal - work on the farmhouse would come later.
As darkness began to embrace the silent countryside, I set about finding the animals in the bowels of the car, making a fire and rustling up something to eat. Happily, especially for Ruby who was in the crate with him, Arnie wasn’t sick once and never has been car sick since.
Luckily we had brought bottled water with us as with a groan, I discovered the water had been disconnected.
We were going to keep the cat in for a couple of weeks but she escaped between my legs within the first five minutes of arrival. Sadly, I thought “that will be the last we see of her then!”.
Simon had taken a detour to collect a satellite dish for the internet and arrived some three hours after me and my travelling companions. Only a few miles from our new home, he had had a near miss when turning back out onto a main road onto the left hand side, not the right. He was lucky the oncoming truck was far enough away for him to take effective evasive action.
By the time a shaking Simon arrived, the dogs had been fed, I had pumped up the air bed, set up the chemical toilet, emptied the car, lit the fire, opened cans of beans and sausages and had them precariously perched in a blackening saucepan on the reluctant flames.
Tucking into the finest that Mr Heinz 57 could offer, we were tired but elated too, knowing full well that this was the start of a completely new chapter in our lives.
With mattress already pumped up, we positioned it on the cold, tiled floor in front of a rather pathetic fire. When Simon flopped down onto the bed atop the vastly overinflated air mattress, I bounced up in the air on my side. As I bounced, so then did Simon. And so it went on. We were in fits of laughter and letting out some of the air did little good, because by that time we had been joined by two small dogs, eager to be part of the joke. In the midst of this merriment there was a tentative miaow outside the door.
The frosty night air hit me sharply as I opened the door to let in a rather fluffed up black cat. Bobby was back and we were five again.
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