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‘Oh, but Paris isn’t for changing planes, it’s … it’s for changing your outlook, for … for throwing open the windows and letting in … letting in la vie en rose.’
— Sabrina Fairchild in Sabrina (1954), Starring Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden
‘There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home,
and in Paris.’
— Ernest Hemingway
Unless of course … it’s a petite maison in Cuzance in le Lot.
To Mumma — Bonne eightieth anniversaire
and for all your love and support, in every possible way.
A glossary can be found at the end of this memoir
Prologue
‘'I really enjoyed the domesticity and innocence of it. I loved Enid Blyton as a kid and I wanted to live in an Enid Blyton novel. I feel like I’ve read a very sophisticated adult version of her in the sense that I would love to be in that French world; it just seems so idyllic and innocent. It really is like magic.’
Our House is Certainly Not in Paris — Ros Mahon
These words are a wonderful evocation of our time stolen from life, when we return each summer to our petite corner of France. It conveys a sense of a time long past and encapsulates our other life perfectly. It is indeed like a life long gone, one that we have somehow captured and for one summer each year, revel in removing ourselves from what we have come to call ‘the real world’.
Yet at the same time, our seamless days of solitude, wrapped in our country life, still hold elements of sadness, humour, drama and tragedy. For our petite village is but a microcosm of the world at large, that laps at the edges of our carefree days.
* * *
As you get older, the years pass more rapidly. So it is that our fourth visit to our little house in le Lot in south-west France comes upon us in a rush. After all, life at home is a renovating one, and we work full-time. Yet now we also have an old farmhouse that we renovate on our annual working vacances, on the other side of the world. Our French life has absorbed us so seamlessly and happily that it is no longer just us who refer to it as our ‘other life’, but all those who know about Pied de la Croix.
This year, though, is the first that I have felt so fully, and indeed quickly, absorbed into our other life. We have worked so tirelessly and relentlessly during our past three French summers that now we are reaping the rewards, for the rénovation is almost fin — though the crazy paving is not and the jardin will long remain a rambling, rustique one. This year, not only does our petite maison fling wide its shutters to welcome us back into its warm embrace, under the stone heart encasing the date ‘1882’ above the door that tells the story of truffle farmers long gone. So, too, our village Cuzance has come to quickly embrace the return each year of the rénovation Australians.
The endless days of golden French sunlight march into autumn during our summer sojourn. There are reunions with our French amis, many apéritifs, déjeuners and dîners, friends and family who will stay with us, our treasured weekly visits to vide-grenier, and the drives of delight through the rural landscape. It is one that only changes with the seasons, rather than time, when you feel like you are transported back to a quieter, gentler way of life.
It is still with a sense of wonder and astonishment that this will be our fourth French summer in our petite maison. The south-west region of France made an indelible impression on us on our first visit together to France five years previously. The rural landscape, adorned with sentinel rows of walnut groves, the charming villages with maisons glowing in golden stone and adorned with an artist’s palette of wooden window shutters, the towering limestone cliffs, the thickly canopied forests, the smooth gliding rivers, the tight-cornered, winding country roads — all of it reached deep into our hearts. It was a tug on our heartstrings of such strong emotional resonance that within six months, Stuart had a fleeting visit back to France in the icy, treacherous depths of winter to inspect a short-list of possible houses to buy. Within a mere matter of days, our fanciful dream became a French reality. Never in our wildest flights of fancy did we ever imagine that after twenty years of marriage, life would lead us to a small corner of rural France, just across the Channel, in fact, from where we were both born.
Life’s fascinating journey meant that we met and married in Istanbul within seven months of meeting. From a childhood in England and immigration at the age of five, a year’s working holiday in England and travel through Europe in my twenties as a young teacher, a love affair with Turkey and a personal one a few years later when I taught English there for a year, the early days of marriage and all its inherent challenges, to an old farmhouse in France.
At home, as the moon dances and skips across the waves and the whales leap in life-affirming arcs, it means that in my personal calendar, the one set by the seasons in both hemispheres, our other life is marching steadily towards us. Life is indeed an amazing adventure, for just like the precipitous bends on rural roads in France, one never quite knows what may lie round the corner. And now, the renovating pattern of our married life has extended to a rénovation project of grande proportions in Cuzance.
I fling open the shutters and sunlight floods the dusty corners. Drum roll for another French summer full of enchantment on our working vacances.
Part One
PARIS
Packing for Paris
A nouveau amie — yet like the gesture of an old friendship. Are there any words that have a more resonant ring than, ‘An apartment in Paris’? Patrick’s apartment in the first arrondisement is so petite that he moved out to stay with an amie for our four nights in the most exciting city in the world. The photos he sends before our visit add to our frisson of excitement. Our eagerness builds when we plan our itinerary and discover that the glorious Paris Opera House — a must-see this time — is on his doorstep. Next in our planning is the all-important question: Where is the nearest boulangerie to slip out to for a croissant for our petit déjeuner? Not that it will be me going out to buy our breakfast pastry in Paris.
The first thing a woman usually thinks when she is heading for Paris is, ‘What on earth will I wear?’ After years of travelling — make that decades — I aim to finally get it just right.
First, the right bag. Now, while we had an embargo in our household on luggage-buying, I vetoed it — yes, again. And so the bright red Samonsite swivel case was bought. It is the travel bag of dreams. Next, the definitive backpack; must be smart, must be capacious. IKEA, of all places, provided the solution. It was Stuart’s exultant find and he graciously gave it to me. The stylish zip-off day pack is truly the pièce de résistance.
Luggage sorted, it’s on to the perfect travel wardrobe. This from the woman who trudged round Europe with the biggest portable wardrobe in the world on her back. Truth be told, I
