by Janine Marsh
Dad’s birthday was 1 April. As dusk fell, we sat in the garden after a hard day of planting seeds, and, as we watched the pale spring sun dip behind the buttercup-covered hills of the Seven Valleys, we drank a toast to his and Mum’s memory. Although they have been gone for a few years now, I think of them every day.
It’s always out here that I feel the memory of Mum the strongest. She loved her garden and, when she died, we spread her ashes around her favourite tree – Dad could see it every day and feel that she was still there. I sometimes hear her voice in my head saying, ‘Don’t be like me – and never quit your dream.’ When she found out she had terminal cancer just months after retiring, she was angry that she wouldn’t have a chance to realize her dream to travel the world, or to be a writer, or to achieve so many of the others things that she’d planned for her retirement. I didn’t even realize I had a dream before we bought the house, or even for a long time afterwards. It just simply felt like discovering the house was meant to be, and the fact that somehow I’d subconsciously always wanted something like this life for myself crept up on me.
Originally a cow barn with walls made of straw and mud, the house was extended over the centuries with concrete blocks. It’s a real mishmash of rooms built on a hill. The longère, as a low farmhouse-style building is called, is 100 feet long. At one end, at the top of the hill, it’s on a single level with low ceilings. The other end, down the hill, is on two levels with higher ceilings. Over the years it has developed from a one-room barn for animals (now our bedroom) and simply spread down the hill. No one before us seems to have thought about levelling the land. Ever. We essentially built a box within a box. Mark always said it would probably have been cheaper and quicker to knock it down and start again but we went with our hearts and have spent years renovating. After laying tons of concrete, replacing every window and thirteen doors, reinforcing an end wall that threatened to bring the house down, doing all the electrics and plumbing, fitting two bathrooms and a kitchen, building internal walls to create bedrooms, plastering, painting and shoring up sagging beams, it bears little resemblance to the neglected, filthy building we first saw.
It never occurred to me then that I wouldn’t be working in an office until I was so old and worn out that I’d likely be too tired to do or be anything else. I still had twenty-five years ahead of me before I reached the official age of retirement. My dad was old-school working class, and his influence on me was strong. His mantra was you went to work and that was your purpose in life. You did whatever was necessary to put food on the table and pay the bills. He often worked two jobs at a time, jobs that he hated, but he did what he had to do. And he expected his kids to do that, too. Mum also worked hard: she was a home-help worker, looking after the elderly, but she taught herself maths and became an accountant at a library. Both were uneducated but intelligent and unfulfilled. Dad accepted it was his destiny. Mum was never happy about it. Throughout her whole life, she felt like she had missed out. She didn’t give up on her dream, she just never had a chance to make it happen.
When the chance came along to do something different with my life, give up my day job and renovate the house – even if it was only planned to be for a short while before needing to return to normality and a job to pay the bills – I was scared and reluctant. It was Mark’s daydream more than mine but he gave me the courage to take a risk – although on days when it was bitterly cold in our first winter and we had a deficient fire, I cursed him as we breathed out frost patterns inside the house! It was only when I started blogging that I realized that, buried deep, I did have a dream after all, a longing to write. My mum was a prolific writer, though she would hardly ever let anyone see anything she wrote. What I was allowed to read was wonderfully dark and full of magic (she was an Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King fan). When she discovered she was dying of cancer and didn’t have long left, she deleted from her computer everything she ever wrote, saying she wasn’t a good writer. It was heartbreaking.
I found that once I started writing, I didn’t want to stop. I knew I had realized my raison d’être. It opened up a whole new life for me, and with it came the opportunity to discover more of France than I ever thought possible. A part of me feels like I’m fulfilling my mum’s dream, too. And, in setting up a website for me to blog on, Mark also found his calling. He loved learning the technical skills needed, from understanding computer language to designing websites, search-engine optimization, what Google loves and a whole heap more.
We felt that we had plenty to celebrate as we sat there under a pink sky watching our chickens jump into trees, ready to roost for the night, and listening to pheasants squawking and cows mooing in the field at the bottom of the garden. We were all but finished renovating inside the house, and just had the outside to do. It had been a long, hard slog but we were so close to finishing.
April Fool’s Day is known in France as poisson d’avril – April Fish Day – because it’s customary for kids to stick a paper fish on your back. Their hope is that you’ll walk around all day unaware of people tittering behind you! Some historians say that April Fool’s Day originated in France when the calendar was changed from the Roman Julian style to the Gregorian style in 1582, making the start of the new year 1 January instead of 1 April. Those who were slow to receive the news, who must have been plenty as it was mostly circulated by word of mouth, continued to celebrate the new year at the wrong time – the fools!
There are occasionally some fun prank stories in the papers but on the whole they’re a bit lame. The best one I recall is reading that the French government was going to make it obligatory to carry a picnic basket in your car alongside the usual paraphernalia such as a high-viz jacket and spare bulbs. It was claimed the emergency picnic basket had to contain a bottle of wine, cheese and a baguette plus, of course, a red-and-white checked tablecloth. With all the madness that’s going on in the world today, that’s a law I could definitely get behind.
This time of the year is generally a little early for picnics in the north of France, unlike the south, but the village is always a hive of activity as villagers seemingly come out of hibernation to cut the grass, trim the rose bushes and tidy their gardens. I’m a morning person and like to get up in time to see the sun rise and listen to the birds sing. From the start of April, cuckoos were calling and every morning a blackbird sat in the sycamore tree outside my office in the former pigsty and whistled a whole raft of tunes. Sometimes he made a sound like a fire engine’s siren, sometimes like a telephone ringing; he even trilled what sounded like the opening bars of Vivaldi’s Gloria. Occasionally another blackbird joined in, copying the first one so that they sounded like a whistling tag team.
Not quite so beautiful a birdsong came from Fred and Florence, our rather rotund and very unfriendly Canada geese (named after Mark’s grandparents who were lovely and not like the geese at all). They had been given to me by Jean-Claude along with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, two Embden geese with bright blue eyes and mean tempers. That was before I realized that one day I wanted to live in Paris and that geese can live for more than twenty-five years. I am not sure that Parisians are ready for a neighbour with geese.
Every now and again stories crop up in French newspapers about city dwellers with holiday homes in the countryside taking their neighbours to court over noisy animals. Sometimes, it’s the animal that’s in the dock, as in the case recently of Maurice the cockerel, whose constant crowing drove the people next door crazy. He became something of a cause célèbre in France: thousands of people signed a petition to ‘save Maurice’ and T-shirts were made, sporting Maurice’s photo and the words ‘Let me sing’. Thankfully the judge ruled in the cockerel’s favour – he was allowed to stay and is happily crowing away each day. Other cases have seen donkeys, cows, ducks and even frogs with loud croaks come under fire. All I’ll say is, if you think country life is going to be silent, you’re in for a surprise.
At this time of the year our geese are very territorial and early
in the month both girls and even one of the boys started nesting on a pile of twigs (which looks very uncomfortable) under a laurel tree. If we venture anywhere near them, even to put food in the pen, their panicked cries echo round the valley. On days when our Parisian neighbours were in residence, the cackling cacophony set off their dog, which set off our dogs, which then set off the entire neighbourhood of dogs. And since pretty much everyone has a dog here, the howling and barking made it sound like the village of the damned. Although we still had not seen the humans, the dog had escaped several times under the big wooden gate they had erected. Jean-Claude is convinced the Parisians did this ‘so we can’t see in’. He seems to believe that they were up to something worth seeing. Quite what that might be, he is not able to say. He’s only been to Paris twice in his life and the last time was thirty years ago. ‘I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now,’ he says. In vain I tell him Paris has changed, even from ten years ago. People are far friendlier, partly as a result of an effort by the tourist office to coach employees involved in the tourist industry to be more hospitable and to learn English. But mainly, I think, due to a number of tragic events that have brought Parisians together and made them thankful to the visitors who continue to come.
The dog, which to everyone’s disappointment is not a poodle but a big-eared, pug-nosed Bouledogue français, likes to run down the alley from its house, into the road which run through the village, and confront the admittedly rare cars and tractors that pass by. ‘Typical Parisian,’ said Jean-Claude.
The geese found plenty to shout about when one morning I discovered that Mariah Carey, the Barbary duck with a high-pitched squeak, had hatched some eggs. This is something the geese have never managed to do, and neither had the chickens at that point. Since the end of March, after a relatively mild winter, some of the birds had started nesting in earnest as the weather improved. There were broody chickens hogging the coops, and ducks sitting on eggs under hedges, in the big flowerpots and in the field at the bottom of the garden. Sometimes I saw them sneaking back in for food and water or scuttling onto the terrace to pinch the cats’ food. They weren’t alone in this pilferage – a hedgehog family visited every night, scoffing and snorting and pushing the cats out of the way. They have been coming for a few years and bring their offspring every year.
We didn’t take much notice of all the nesting activity as we’d seen it all before and it had never come to fruition. So when I went down to the pen to feed the birds one morning to be met by the sight of Mariah Carey proudly leading three very cute yellow balls of fluff around, I was thrilled. We put them all in a closed-off part of the pen for protection as male ducks can be quite aggressive. The chickens went into a frenzy of clucking, almost as if they were welcoming the newbies. The geese were vocal in disapproval, perhaps disappointed. In previous years they had sat on eggs for anything up to three months, losing weight as they didn’t eat properly while nesting in all weathers, but never giving up and never getting the reward they so craved.
To our surprise, more babies followed shortly afterwards. We were out walking with the dogs and admiring the April bluebells in bloom in a forest that lines a hilly road running above the village. Ella Fitzgerald started barking excitedly and ran off, followed closely by Bruno, who tries never to let her out of his sight. Churchill was trailing behind, always keen to get her attention. When they didn’t return, Mark went off to get them and returned with his coat pocket squeaking – he’d found two little chicks next to two sticky eggshells and the body of their mum, a hen who looked like she’d been mauled by a fox or a wild cat. The little birds had clearly only just hatched and were very lucky to have survived. One was pale yellow; the other, a boy, was black with yellow markings. We took them home and put them in a cage with a heat lamp to keep them warm. They were friendly and tame as anything. We called them Barbie and Ken and for the next four weeks they stayed in the house with us, being pampered and spoiled, until they were big enough to go into a nursery pen in the garden and get used to the fact that they weren’t alone.
It was Easter by now, so they weren’t the only eggs that crossed our path. It’s pretty much the law to eat chocolate at this time of the year in France. Chocolatiers all over France display fabulous chocolate concoctions in windows and the delectable scent inside the shops is enough to break the will of the most fastidious dieter. Legend has it that on the Thursday before Easter Sunday, French church bells fly to Rome to see the Pope, and no bells ring during that time. On the way back to France, aiming to arrive in time to ring for Easter Sunday, the bells collect chocolate goodies and drop them for children en route. And so it’s the chocolate bell, rather than the chocolate bunny, that’s the star here. We headed to the town of Montreuil-sur-Mer where the artisan chocolate shop in the square was packed with little old ladies buying their Easter treats, and children who were allowed to choose just one thing: it’s about quality not quantity here. Each year, there are handmade chocolates, intricate chocolate sculptures and huge blocks, some with nuts or fruit, which you buy by weight with the server taking up a small hammer to chip off a piece. The lady who works in the shop always gives customers the choice of one of her handmade chocolates when they have made a purchase. It’s a tradition I really like!
With the more frequent blue skies of spring, we turned our attention to outside jobs and working off some of the calories from the chocolate. The house had to be rendered, a job we’d been dreading. Many of the older houses in the village use lime render, a building material that dates back as far as Roman times. But in the nineteenth century, more modern materials such as cement and mortar mixes became popular. Luckily for us, the fact that our house is enclosed by cement blocks meant we didn’t need to use lime render, a slow process to make and apply. With our long house, it would have taken many months to do.
For years we’d discussed having smooth cream-coloured walls. Half of the house at the front had dull grey blocks and half was already rendered in a grey stipple, which we intended to smooth out. Confronted with the reality of the long wall of the house, however, we decided just to cover the blocks and paint the stippled render. Even that was a big job. I mixed the render in a big bucket, and Mark applied it to the wall. We started as the sun came up and finished when the sun went down. You can’t have joints when you’re rendering, and it dries quickly so it’s a race against time, and we only had around half an hour per bucket. There were three coats to apply and we started with the biggest wall, which is 30 feet long, knowing that we would run out of energy.
On the first day, Monsieur Martel went by on his way to see Madame Bernadette and stopped to watch for a while.
‘Doing a nice job there,’ he said admiringly. ‘My place could do with a new coat, you know.’
‘No chance,’ said Mark without stopping to raise his head from the sweeping of plaster to wall.
‘I had a man come and do my walls once, it took him three months,’ said Monsieur Martel. ‘It was in 1967,’ he explained.
‘I don’t care if it was 1867,’ said Mark. ‘When I’m done with this lot, I’m done.’ I couldn’t blame Mark. It was back-breaking lifting heavy buckets of render, moving the scaffolding along, reaching up high to the top of the walls and bending down to the bottom.
Monsieur Martel laughed and carried on his way with an easy smile. It had been worth a shot.
Shortly after, Monsieur Henri, Thierry the farmer’s father, came wandering along, dressed in his pyjamas and slippers as usual. He has Alzheimer’s and the family care for him at home, with the help of a nurse from time to time, but every now and again he escapes and goes for a walk. Not very far, thankfully, and everyone knows him so he just gets taken home when he’s spotted.
As he came into the garden, he stopped to watch Mark working. After a few minutes he went and got one of the garden chairs, placed it next to Mark and sat down to make himself comfy. ‘Hold on there for five minutes,’ said Mark, ‘and I’ll take you home.’
Monsieur Henri
just smiled. Sometimes he says nothing, sometimes he talks but he has a very strong accent and often mixes up his words. We don’t understand him and he clearly doesn’t understand us either, but he seemed pretty happy sitting there quietly.
As soon as Mark finished, he took the old man’s arm and we led him to the gate to take him home up the hill. Thierry’s mad sheepdog barked as we approached and the nurse came running out of the house. ‘Mon Dieu,’ she said, ‘again with the walking off!’ and took his hand to take him back home.
At the end of three days during which Monsieur Martel and several neighbours stopped to watch, we had the first wall done and knew we’d made the right choice simply to paint what we could.
We had permission to paint the house and to instal shutters. There aren’t any rules about colours in our village as there are in some places. On the Île de Ré, for instance, you can only choose from a palette of sixteen shades – eight blue and eight green. But we did have to notify the mayor and the town-planning authorities that we intended to change the appearance of the outside of the house. Thankfully not all the windows needed shutters but there were still thirty-two to paint, four coats of Wedgewood Blue on each side, adding a little Provençal-style colour here in the north. As Mark rendered, my job was painting and I knew it would take me the whole of the rest of spring and summer to complete if I started now.
Jean-Claude, who keeps a very tidy house and garden with plenty of instruction from his wife, walked by while I was painting and gave me an approving nod. Our house had been an eyesore for decades but, bit by bit, it was changing.
Spring is when the flea markets, called brocantes, marchés aux puces, vide-greniers (literally ‘empty your attic’), réderies and braderies, begin in earnest. They are a way of life in France. In my department alone, there are more than three thousand flea markets a year. Most take place from March to early autumn. Some are small affairs, just a couple of meagre stalls with a few locals selling their unwanted kitchen utensils, clothes and kids’ toys outside their homes. Others are huge, like the Lille Braderie, with around ten thousand stalls. This thirty-six-hour, non-stop event has a party atmosphere and bargain hunters come armed with torches to carry on through the night. It spreads for miles, through cobbled streets, down wide avenues and onto squares large and small. At the same time, restaurants hold a competition to see who can sell the most moules dishes, proudly piling empty mussel shells outside as proof, sometimes a mountain of them. About 2 million visitors descend on the city, and if you like flea markets, you’ll be in seventh heaven at this one.
