A Year at the Chateau

by Dick Strawbridge

I grew up spending most of my time outdoors and enjoying nature. Back in the 1960s, it was not considered wrong for a boy to have collections of butterflies and moths or one of a wild birds’ eggs, each collected after spotting a bird, following it, locating the nest and then taking an egg home, blowing it and mounting it. Such fieldcraft gives you an appreciation of nature and I couldn’t help pointing out things to Angela and the children. I think my excitement must have been infectious because now all the family will point out anything we see. In our first year everything was new and, more importantly, everything was ours to look after. There was so much to remember that I started a book of wildlife: our sightings. It wasn’t exactly a survey but I noted down all the birds I saw, including our herons, sparrowhawks and even kingfishers.

  One time, I was fortunate enough to have been watching a kingfisher cross the moat (they fly like a vivid blue and orange arrow from A to B with great determination and no messing around) when a sparrowhawk swooped to try to take it out of the sky. The kingfisher dived straight into the water and, within seconds, had flown out from the same spot it went in, with equal haste but in exactly the opposite direction. The sparrowhawk had no idea what was going on. Well done, the kingfisher! I was so astounded I wrote about it on Twitter and was delighted to have a response from a gentleman who had been studying kingfishers for the best part of twenty years and had felt privileged to have seen a similar escape trick once himself. Our little piece of France is truly magical.

  Back home, we know that the grey squirrel is a bully that has driven out the more petite red squirrel, which is now rarely seen. I did a double take the first time I saw one of our red squirrels – we have red squirrels! That explained what appeared to be a couple of random walnut trees growing in the ‘meadows’ to the left and right of the drive – unclaimed squirrel caches. My first glimpse of one was in the trees above the marshy area to the east of the château. I was to see them regularly but not often. I only ever saw one at time, above the marshes and then scampering across the driveway to the ‘enchanted’ woods by the orangery. I did a little research and apparently boy and girl squirrels only really spend time together when they are being … frisky. It all made sense

  I had really got into my rhythm now. Although my rhythm changed by the second because, with the kids growing, their needs were developing on an hourly basis, and the château’s needs were also changing constantly. I suppose change was part of my rhythm. But my constants kept me settled in this hectic time.

  Looking back, our life was a little different, but maybe it’s like seeing photos of an old hairdo and thinking: wow. Because at the time it seemed very normal. And, in between it all, Arthur and Dorothy kept me very grounded. They needed routine, so my days revolved 100 per cent around them. Every day, after lunch, I would take the kids for a drive in the car. With the two of them strapped in safely, we hit the peaceful roads. Dick loves the rolling hills and on our initial searches it was this that drove us to this part of France. The country lanes have a lovely curvaceousness to them, so with the added whisper of white noise and the counting of crows, Arthur and Dorothy would always settle quickly. At this point I would drive back to the château and park up under a tree until they awoke. Then I would sit on the steps of the château and get some work done. Every now and again one of them would stir, but then they would see me, feel safe and doze off again. And I was always thankful of a few more minutes to get work done.

  When Dick was away, the best constant of the day (apart from the daily trip to the boulangerie and the special time with Arthur and Dorothy) was our 6am phone call. I called it my ‘Love Sandwich’ call:

  Bread

  Me: Darling, I miss you.

  Dick: I can’t wait to see you. How are the kids?

  Filling

  Dick: What’s on the list?

  Me: Paint removal, scrubbing, painting, shopping and getting ready for the wedding. Trying to find tiles, paint, lights … and fly removal.

  Bread

  Dick: The wedding?

  Me: I love you. Have a great day … Don’t get eaten by an alligator.

  Dick says that we never discussed our big wedding in detail. He may be right, because I don’t have enough memory of the initial discussions to disprove his outrageous statement, but we both know that I would never have gone ahead with an enormous fairy-tale wedding without us both agreeing and being excited. For a couple of weeks, my twenty to ninety minutes of work that I got done each day when the kids were asleep was spent on our wedding invitation and wedding list. More and more weddings are now paperless, which reflects how we live and work. It’s much easier having a wedding website with all the information in one place that you can easily manage and keep track of who is coming – and it’s easier for guests too, having access to all the information they need to book flights and hotels. Technology really does make everyone’s life much easier. But I could just never come to terms with the idea that our guests would not receive something physical to touch. It’s the very beginning of the whole process – the ceremony of opening something and feeling the excitement that you are at the start of a journey. So I decided to do both: an informative website and something beautiful to send our guests in the post.

  I have been planning events for over a decade so I was determined my own wedding would be perfect. I wanted it to be magical and for all our friends and family to have the time of their lives. Simply bringing everyone together is magical in itself – this is something I tell all the brides or grooms that get married at the château now – but, as there are so few occasions in life when it happens, I wanted it to be extra special. And I started like I meant to carry on: over the top, handmade and with an attention to detail that made everything unique.

  I’d been going to Emmaus * shops for some time as they are great for second-hand bargains. I had recently discovered there was one just thirteen minutes away in Laval. Like most Emmaus, the Laval branch is only open on Wednesdays and Sundays, from 10.30am to 12.30pm and then again from 2.30 to 5.30pm, so when it’s open it’s very busy, especially if you get there early.

  Every Emmaus is carefully and systematically organised. In Laval, you have a kitchen area on the left as you walk in. This includes everything from pans to utensils, all stacked high like they will fall. There is no division of quality; you’ll find a copper pan inside a tin pan with the handle about to fall off inside a Le Creuset. And shelves after shelves of them. Next there is an entire wall of glassware with over a thousand pieces at any time: champagne flutes, wine glasses, tumblers, dessert glasses, port glasses, gin glasses, whiskey and brandy glasses, kids’ glasses, gold glasses, red, blue and yellow glasses, and even tiny glasses. Then there is a central reservation of plates, platters, cheese boards, decanters, butter dishes, teacups, coffee cups, teapots, coffee pots, milk jugs, jars … Everything you could ever imagine, in epic amounts and virtually for free. I didn’t see anything for more than one euro.

  Opposite the kitchen area are the books, which includes maps, vinyls and old magazines. Then food is luckily by the entrance to the kids’ area, which is great for a quick dash on the way to what feels like an incredible cosy library. After the kitchen area on the left there is lighting, then a miscellaneous section (which is where Dick always disappears to after the kitchen), then it’s toys. On the right after the books are pictures, clothes and linens, and then at the end is furniture.

  Who I was with and what we were looking for defined my route. However, whatever route you take, Emmaus has ONE system (and you see the wrath if you get it wrong!): you shop by category. After you’ve found what you’re looking for, you queue at the desk in that area and receive a ticket. Then you pay at the front desk and then go back to that area to collect your goods with a stamped ‘paid’ receipt. This seems simple, but sometimes I’d find something I wanted in every category, which means you can end up queuing ten times. Not great when you have two small kids …

  With the wedding approaching, I started going every Wednesday. First,
I bought chairs for the orangery. They were around €3 each – for a solid-oak dining chair! As long as I left the prams at home, I could squeeze four in the car at a time. But we needed eighty chairs, so that racked up a lot of visits.

  After that I was after linens, for the guests to delicately dab the sides of their mouths after they ate. The clothes and linen section is every crafter’s dreams: piles upon piles of French linens, napkins, tea towels, bedding, buttons, threads … What made me so happy was that every batch had been starched, ironed and tied with a little bit of string. I could never work out how they would only cost one or two euros. and I had this picture of someone getting total satisfaction ironing them and knowing the likes of someone like me would pick them up and stroke them. Also in this area were the clothes and the kiddies’ section was always filled with adorable handmade items from the forties and fifties, and hangers upon hangers of hand-knitted cardigans and jumpers. I always bought everything I saw that appealed to me and added any items that didn’t fit Arthur and Dorothy to my gift drawer for our friends yet to have babies. Then there was also a dress-up section. History has shown me that this is where I always find my best outfits: from oriental dresses and kimonos to the perfect Cinderella and pirate costumes.

  With my collection of French linens growing, I got inspired by seeing a lovely French tea towel with lots of writing on. It was my ‘that’s it!’ moment: serigraphed French linens. I decided to get a personalised screen cut and handprint all the invites on French linens. It was perfect: all our guests would then have something unique, French and handmade.

  To create a screen for print you expose your photo or image to a special emulsion and lamp in a dark room. This basically burns it onto the screen. I had planned to do this myself but watching all the videos I thought it was easier to go with a company that knew what they were doing, even though I usually love knowing the process of things and find it fascinating to learn. I ordered my screen from a company in the UK; when it arrived it was exactly what I was looking for with all the details from the invite burnt out perfectly. The trick to printing (so I taught myself with the help of the internet before I started) is to be firm and even and to ensure the screen does not move on the linen. Dick knew this was his chance to get involved, so a quick trip to his workshop later I had a handy frame that would ensure I got the best outcome for each and every linen.

  Somehow I knew about our wedding before the invitations were produced but I don’t know when or how the decision was made, and I categorically deny all knowledge of the scale of the planned event. It was probably when the invitations were being made that I realised that the clock was ticking and counting down to a really big party. Angela asked me to help build a frame to make screen-printing her design for the invitation easy and repeatable, so I did. Then she asked me to help iron the vintage napkins that she was going to print the invites onto, so again I said yes (I was taught to iron when I joined the army so I am competent). Then Angela gave me the bundle of napkins and all I could think was, Shit … There were hundreds of them, literally hundreds. It was then that I knew I was in the poop!

  I was quite restrained during our subsequent discussion and Angela made the point that, as we were in France, ‘What was the chances of everyone coming?’ Duh, I should have known better. Angela was renowned for the events she has staged, so why would anyone not come and see us and celebrate?

  I used black ink for the printing for maximum contrast and the first one came out even better than expected. It felt very exciting! But after twenty or so prints the screen was getting a bit clogged, so I decided to wash it. What was I thinking? I immediately lost all sharpness. I ended up having to order another screen. But, as I always say, the best way to learn is to make mistakes.

  On many of my walks I would daydream about our guests opening up their invites. What was going to put them in? A Jiffy bag? I’d put so much love into them. I did not want to fall down on packaging. A quick rummage later, I decided that all the linens would be wrapped in envelopes made from the old newspapers found amongst the treasures in the attic and sealed with a wax seal with our initials and the date of our wedding on it. So then I had to look for companies that make these seals. I vaguely remember Dick saying: ‘Just get them out.’ But I wanted them to be perfect.

  It added a month on to sending them out, and lots more work, but I really enjoyed the process: the smell of wax, the way it flows onto the paper and the fact that each was different, sealed with a delicate detail. I was very proud of our wedding invitations and I also happen to know that all the guests kept them. But thank goodness for the website.

  By the second week in May, Angela’s mum Jenny had wrapped up her affairs back in Essex and she and Steve were ready for their next big adventure, which involved moving lock, stock and barrel to France – a country they didn’t really know, hadn’t spent much time in and where they definitely couldn’t speak the language. The latter was going to be an issue as they are both independent and wanted to go and explore as well as help us. But it didn’t take very long before Steve was conversing with the best of them in a wonderfully English way, which involved him pointing at his chest multiple times while saying very slowly, ‘Inglesi, no understand.’ It was almost too stereotypical to be believable but because he always smiles, and is so gently engaging, no one seemed to mind – and nine times out of ten he got what he wanted as the locals invariably found some fragment of English in their memories and understood what he was asking for.

  Every morning, before the kids were up, I got a small window to catch up on work. I would grab a coffee, sit in bed and check my emails. Love letters and to-do lists from Dick were the most exciting thing in my inbox, but on one particular day I received something else exciting: a picture of the first version of the wolf. Jon is such a talented artist. He had created the wolf in clay first and, although it clearly was not the finished article, it got me very excited that this was happening.

  Many months earlier we had narrowly avoided Jacques clearing out the attic and the outbuildings before we moved in. The exact scale of the disaster that had been averted became clear over the first year in the château. If ever we needed inspiration, we’d go and look at our collection of goodies; if ever we needed any materials to make or decorate something, we’d have a rummage around. It is almost unbelievable the number of items there were left in the château, but if you imagine collecting anything that is no longer used, wanted, serviceable or required over a period of more than a century and tucking it all out of the way, that is what had happened here. There was no rubbish collection in our part of France and it came as a bit of a surprise to us both that there still isn’t today. Obviously, there was less consumerism in those days, and we would expect those running the house for the family to be frugal, but still the Bagliones would have been materially wealthy. The collection of magazines alone was impressive and showed that as family they were creatures of habit. There were complete sets of informative magazines dating back to before the First World War, and from after the Second World War there was an abundance of fashion and ladies’ magazines, and even collections of hunting magazines.

  There were numerous items of furniture that had migrated five floors up to the attic and were heavy enough that no one had any desire to bring them down again. There were bed frames, daybeds, huge wardrobes, broken armchairs, bathroom furnishings, religious artefacts … the list goes on. And then there were many other bits of real treasure: a side saddle, old books, pictures, Victorian clothing, even the remains of French muskets that could easily have dated back to before the battle of Waterloo. And there’s actually a whole corner of the attic that we have not even cleared out yet. Angela gets quite excited thinking about all the treasures that are still hidden up there.

  And it wasn’t just the main château that had relics of the past tucked away. Every outbuilding was also full of items left behind and, like the attic in the château, there are still some areas yet to be explored.

  The owners of the h
ouse would have lived in the high-status rooms. Everything above and below would have been occupied by the servants working and living with them. It is not difficult to imagine that in the liberated post-war years, when servants were no longer the norm, it would not have been easy to carry lots of unwanted items back down the ninety-two steps from the attic. It would have been much easier just to leave everything where it was and ignore the fact it was there unless someone wanted something.

  The attic always felt like my special place and not just because of the endorphins running through my veins by the time I got to the top. The light was hazy up there but it was the one floor that I had no issues with being full of dust. In fact, in the right light, the floating particles looked like fairy dust.

  One afternoon, when Arthur was playing pirates with my dad, Dorothy and I went for a nosey. I had been up there a number of times before, but never for long enough. Dorothy was in a papoose, so was very content, and I had time to explore. The first thing that struck me was how dry it felt in the attic. Considering how long things had been sat there for, nothing felt damp. As you walk around the final staircase with the lovely cast-iron rods still featuring intricate details, you approach an old grey wooden door. It always squeaked – I suppose you would expect that – and it still does even now.

  The ceilings in parts of the attic are twenty-feet high, and the same shape as the château below, which is breathtaking. The attic has a couple of workrooms as well as these high-vaulted spaces. When you look up, you can see the thousands of pieces of wood put together once upon a time to make the roof. I can’t but wonder at the craftsmanship that went into this, with none of the technology we have today. It’s beautiful. The first thing you notice in the room is the very large storage wardrobes. They are most certainly twelve-feet tall and made in hardwood; they were built to last. The wardrobes were full of old clothes, Victorian underclothes, sailors’ outfits. I was fascinated by the wonderfully shaped hangers. A couple of them looked like they were faces. I had never seen anything like it and the variety was exceptional.