Finding me in France

by Bobbi French

  HOUSEBOUND

  As much as I fantasize about being one, I’m not the kind of girl who hops on a high-speed train to Paris with a moment’s notice, and yet this week that’s just what I did. While I’d love to say that I had a fitting at Chanel, the purpose of my travels was almost as good.

  About a week ago, we had seen a truly magnificent apartment here in town. Quite simply it was the French apartment of my dreams. It’s located in an ancient convent and after passing through the enormous exterior gates, past an enclosed gravel courtyard, I found myself in the building’s foyer. It was like walking into a treasure cave. The floor was covered with ancient mosaics that led to a curved marble staircase, a work of art with its gold handrails and elaborately scrolled ironwork. I could have just camped out at the foot of the stairs and been happy. But once the agent led us through the apartment’s towering ornate doors, I actually had to remind myself to keep breathing. Perfectly preserved herringbone oak floors, 13-foot ceilings, intricately carved mouldings that snaked their way from wall to ceiling, an antique marble fireplace, and a three sets of floor to ceiling French doors offering a view of the river below. It was as if it had been secretly plucked from an elegant Parisian address and then gently placed in the centre of this unassuming town. All my life I had longed to see one of these apartments up close, and now it was a signature away from being my new home.

  The practicalities, however, were another matter altogether. The kitchen was literally the size of a closet, the bedroom was located right next to the main door of the building, there was no private outdoor space and the heating system was entirely inadequate for an apartment that had a living room, or should I say salon, with the dimensions of a ballroom. Not to mention the dilemma of furnishing a palace on an Ikea budget. But, like politicians in a brothel, we were so seduced by beauty that any drawbacks seemed negligible. We were about to sign the lease when during a lesson my French teacher just happened to say, “I know a guy who has a little house here coming up for rent. Let me call him.” A visit was arranged within minutes and I prepared myself for the inevitable letdown I feel after seeing French houses. They’re always drop dead gorgeous on the outside, all stone and shutters and gravel courtyards but one step inside and la catastrophe. Twice during our search we’ve encountered the much desired indoor doggie doo area.

  But this house was a miracle. Sure, tiny but well designed and newly renovated (Neil, step away from the hammer) with two toilets (divorce team, stand down) and the tallest shower I’ve seen in France. The clincher was a completely private little jardin (currently a patch of weeds) with a stunning view of Semur’s ancient church, all for less than we’d pay for a one-toilet studio in downtown Halifax. It was a long way from the grandeur of the elegant apartment, but in our hearts we knew we belonged there.

  The house is an investment property owned by three Parisians so, loaded down with stacks of paper, we hopped on the first train to Paris to audition for the role of renters. We met two of them at a café and nervously began the story of how wonderful and reliable we are. One owner clearly thought we were a safe bet but the second, just off the night train from meetings in Rome, was harder to read. Their impressions of us were to be offered later to the third owner, who was in Vienna on business. Of course she was. What do these people do for a living? Anyway, now there are three more people in France who know every detail of our lives, down to the last euro.

  I’m not used to all this being judged worthy business. What a sorry sight, two middle-aged people who have bought and sold ten houses between them checking their email every five minutes to see if they’ve been granted the title of tenants. Several harrowing days passed until we got the call to say we’d made the cut, and much rejoicing followed. I knew this whole moving to France idea was pure genius, which means it must have been my idea. I was ecstatic, swirling about in joyful rapture, until a dark wave of reality swept over me: I’m moving again. Psychiatrist, heal thyself.

  LOVE AND THE CITY

  Last week, after the meeting with our landlords, we took a long stroll though the streets of my favourite city. And as I gazed upon its beauty I thought it’s likely a good thing I came to know Paris a bit later in life, now that I’m bitter and twisted—I mean, older and wiser. Who knows what effect it would have had on me when I was young and impressionable and single? It really is true when they say that Paris is ridiculously romantic. Of course they also say that the Frenchmen have the market cornered when it comes to sweeping the mademoiselles off their stilettos, and I’ve got it all figured out. It has nothing to do with ze Frenchmen at all. They just have a lot to work with. Take any guy in Paris, say this one, way off to the left …

  I have no idea who he is, some random guy who could be the world’s biggest jackass and yet I guarantee that he could have any woman he wants in a state of rapture within three hours in this city, and here’s why. He’ll start off right where he is and pick up a few things for his mission …

  After he’s secured the posies, he’ll go on to the next stall …

  Here, he’ll pick up a strand of chunky pearls that he’ll just happen to have in his pocket when she answers the door because he knows she’ll be wearing a little black dress. He also knows that as he’s artfully closing the clasp around her neck, she is two martinis away from believing that she’s Audrey Hepburn. And we all know where that’s going.

  Then he’ll move on to the next stall …

  He’ll select the freshest and finest for his pre-dinner spread because he knows that the secret to snagging and snogging is all about his ability to cook. And then he’ll suggest a midnight supper at this little place he knows …

  I mean who could resist all this? Any schmuck could come off as suave with all this available to him. But one thing I know for sure: a man in a rundown bar in Nova Scotia, wearing a T-shirt full of holes while charming a jaded woman right out of contented singledom, he’s got to be the real deal, and he knows it.

  DEGAULLE TO DOG DOO

  Maybe it’s a desperate search for stability with all this moving lunacy or maybe it’s the fact that I just have too much time on my hands, but for whatever reason I’ve decided I need a better understanding of this foreign land. Lately I’m getting more than I bargained for from a book written by two Canadian journalists, Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow, called Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. It’s an intelligent study of what makes the French so French, as if they should be anything else. Paid to travel all over France and write a big book report, where’s that job now that I’m looking? While the book’s cover suggests a light discussion of berets and baguettes nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an enlightening and riveting (for geeks like me) treatise on every aspect of French history and culture. By the way, the authors do acknowledge the title borrowed from a Cole Porter song as fundamentally sexist. But blaming Porter and his era is a bit like me blaming France for my state of doughiness when it’s quite obviously Neil’s fault, but I digress.

  I’m quickly becoming an expert in French culture:

  History: complicated

  Etiquette: fairly complicated

  Judicial system: quite complicated

  Education: significantly complicated

  WWII and Algerian War: ridiculously complicated

  Government: complicated beyond measure

  Commitment of the French to loving, hating, defending and

  condemning France: simple

  It’s been incredibly useful for me to learn so much about this country. I now know more about France than I’ve ever known about Canada, which is embarrassing for sure. But then really what’s to know? Beavers, maple syrup, saying you’re sorry, recycling, hockey, hockey and more hockey, done. Canada’s not hard to understand. It’s a culture about ten minutes old, based on respect for any culture that happens to present itself, hence the marvelous Vietnamese, Thai and Indian restaurants from coast to coast. But one thing I’ve learned from living here, now solidified by this book, is that for
eigners (me included) often forget that France has a culture as unique and strong as that found in Japan or Ethiopia or Nepal. The French have always been here and, as the book suggests, they are their own aboriginals. There’s been no break in their long history and it seems there’s only one way to truly become part of French society: adapt.

  I suspect this is the beginning of a long education but I figure I’d better know what I’m getting into if I want to truly assimilate, one of the core principles of French culture. Of course it might have been smarter to read this book a little earlier, perhaps before deciding to discard my entire life and move here. For all I knew, it was custom for all unemployed psychiatrists to be publicly stripped naked and pelted with rotten fruit the first Tuesday of every month. Lucky for me, so far all that’s really required is proficiency in the language. On second thought, I’m free on Tuesdays.

  YOU CAN’T

  TAKE IT WITH YOU

  Actually, in France you can. When we first saw the little house soon to be our new home, it was filled with another life. An enormous red sofa, toys, dishes and knickknacks, all the things that have now been stuffed into dozens of boxes and carted away. Today we’re going back with only a measuring tape to see how our life will fit. While this is business as usual for most, for us it’s a complete novelty. Normally we’re dragging a group of contractors with us, deciding which walls are coming down, where to put the new kitchen, how to turn a closet into a bathroom, with plans to completely transform a house that was compelling enough to buy but not good enough to stay as it is. I’m absolutely overjoyed with this doing things like a normal person concept. Since seeing the house for the first time I’ve been basking in the glow of it, dancing about the countryside and congratulating myself on my undeniable brilliance.

  But yesterday, I had a thought that stopped me cold as it dropped into my brain with a resounding thud. The kitchen. Now I know this seems incongruous to say the least. Why the hell am I concerned about a room so foreign to me that I knock before entering? Well, at our first visit the current tenant was kind enough to give us the full tour. And when I say kind, I mean nine months pregnant, choking with a cold, scrambling after her sugar-fuelled toddler, trying to pack as two Canadian strangers asked her every detail of her house.

  Here in France, rental properties don’t usually come fully loaded. Of course now that I have become a sophisticated European I knew that she’d be taking all the appliances with her. But I forgot to ask her if they were taking the kitchen as well. I can hear a collective “say what?” Non, c’est vrai. The French often take all their cabinets with them when they move. How they make that work remains a mystery to me, but the point is I was trying to take up as little of this woman’s precious time as possible, so I left without this vital information. Now all I can think is please, please, please let me see cupboards when we open the door this afternoon. Apart from the obvious issues of time and money, designing, purchasing and installing a whole kitchen will totally offend my new “no renovation allowed” sensibilities. No, I’m serious, it will really disrupt my serenity and GODDAMN IT, NOBODY SCREWS WITH MY SERENITY!

  CLOSE QUARTERS

  I wonder what percentage of my life has now been spent on the business of dwellings. Of course, I blame it all on Neil and his love affair with tools and dust. It seems like the last ten years have been nothing but measurements, drywall, paint colours and appliance dimensions. Overall it’s been loads of fun and profoundly educational, but make no mistake, it’s a huge amount of work to renovate houses year in and year out, and that’s not what I want my life to be now. I couldn’t be happier about moving into a place where any form of destruction is actually prohibited by law.

  As for our petite maison, or the housette, as I like to call it, I think when I first saw it I was so enchanted with the second toilet and the view from the terrace that I forgot to notice that it’s the smallest house in France. The good news is that the kitchen cupboards are staying. The bad news is that there are only four of them. There’s a sink and countertops but for everything else we’re on our own. Neil, perhaps the only man alive who gets excited by ovens, has spent days researching French appliances. Yesterday you could have cut the romance with a hacksaw as we lay in bed talking about washer drum sizes before our eyes were even open. Next we’ll move on to The Great French Furniture Hunt. We have some cash tucked away from the sale of our Canadian goods so we’re fine on that front. The problem comes in trying to find things like a bed that fits a giraffe yet also fits under a medieval roof slope.

  I suspect the majority of my time will now be divided between the hour-long drive to Ikea and the three hours it takes to find a parking space. It would be nice to romanticize all this and invent tales of picturesque drives to antique shops all over France but the reality is that we have about three weeks to get this together. Neil needs to have as little interruption as possible to his work and I need to have as little interruption as possible to his ability to make my dinner. Really what I want is to walk into one store, buy the contents of a house, have it all delivered that afternoon and sit back with a cold, congratulatory chardonnay. I’m trying to stay positive despite feeling slightly overwhelmed with it all. Utility and Internet setup in a foreign country, signing a lease in a foreign language, figuring out how to furnish tiny, awkwardly shaped rooms. Probably all of this is the least of my worries. What I should be working on is a plan for living in such a tight space with Big Red without causing bodily harm. At least when things get rough I’ll have my own toilet to fall back on.

  MIDDLE AGED

  With all the house mania going on around here lately I’m more and more convinced that I’m a total masochist. But it’s Semur to the rescue as just when I need it the most it brings me a fantastic diversion from all things connected to moving. Every year at the end of May this sleepy town bursts into life with a vengeance with Les Fêtes Médiévales du Roi Chaussé, and I’ve never seen anything like it. The locals go all-out for this festival and it’s the most fun I’ve ever seen a whole town having at once.

  But what re-creation of ancient France would be complete without reminders of the bubonic plague? Enter Les Gueux, a group of dedicated locals who are devoted to being authentically disgusting.

  They go about the streets, yelling, harassing the crowds, subjecting each other to various instruments of torment and sometimes throwing eggs and smelly cheese at folks. Anyway, I know something about medieval torture myself. I spent Saturday at Ikea.

  STILL MIDDLE AGED

  I was born and raised to this alarming height in St. John’s or, as we like to say back home, “town”—famous for fog, a neighbourhood called the Gut, Ches’s Fish and Chips and the longest continuously running sporting event in North America, the Royal St. John’s Regatta, which is definitely impressive. But it pales in comparison with the oldest horse race in France. Right on the heels, or in this case the hooves, of the medieval festival, comes the Fête de la Bague, right here in my little ville. Since 1639 they’ve been at this, 1639!

  Paris may indeed be mired in dog merde, requiring one to carefully watch every step, but in horse-infested Semur last night a deep inhale would’ve been warning enough. It’s a big event here with the streets filled to capacity with people from all over France. There are hundreds of stalls selling the usual type of market fare but also ones offering the somewhat unexpected. I suppose no medieval horse race would be complete without these …

  Oh, now this is right up my alley. Screw finding a hairstylist (still no luck on that front), all I need is a couple of these and I’m good to go. And speaking of manes …

  These enormous beasts are run in the nod to history race. They charge down a two-kilometre esplanade lined with ancient chestnut trees that has been the course for 373 races. But it’s the second race that is truly fierce.

  They run so close to the sidelines that you can feel their heat as they zoom past. Absolutely breathtaking. All this majesty and a successful haggle on a very fine linen shirt at on
e of the stalls, pas mal. But I’ve got my own race to run. Tomorrow is Fête de Sign A Lease In A Foreign Country. “And they’re off! As we head into the homestretch, it’s Rusty on the inside with Giraffe pulling up the rear …”

  JUNE

  A NEW LEASE

  ON LIFE

  They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but this old bitch has been fetching and rolling over like there’s no tomorrow. While the language study has been all but abandoned due to maison madness, I’m making up for it in knowledge of the complexities of French tenancy. I’m a woman who has signed on the dotted lines. Now I say lines because there were many. I’ve bought many houses in the past, two before I even met Neil, and I can safely say that I’ve never been asked for my autograph as much as for sealing the deal on the housette. The lease itself was 60 pages in length, and the diagnostic report, as in the house is not suffering from termitis infestationus, was even longer. Renting a house is quite official here, done at the office of the local notaire, a debonair gentleman straight out of a French film. Surrounded by his antiques and elaborate mouldings, he explained the lease line by line. Unfortunately, this little scene was sorely lacking in subtitles. I underestimated how much smiling is involved in pretending to understand page after page of French legalese. My face was frozen into The Joker position for the rest of the day and still hurts.