This post was started almost a year ago, June 29, 2017, and a lot has happened since then. But we wanted to include it in our adventures
Good Meuhning! Good Meuhning! Every morning Eric greets us in his attempt to sound sort of “Francish”. Eric and his sons, Mark and Nicky, the Lanchester troisome, have been basically living with us for the last 10 weeks (Good God has it been that long!?). Eric moved his whole family, including adult children, over to France six years ago to escape the British weather and equally dreary British economy (unlike the Brexiters they wanted to become more intimate with the EU).
It is an interesting phenomena that there is a big constituency here of British refugees. They fled England for various reason and have been very good for the local economy here. They are the ones who are revitalizing old farms and dying little French villages. It is a big mystery to me why the majority of imports into the area we live are non-French, mostly Brits, and not French. In The Netherlands, for example, you saw a big influx of retirees from western Holland buy up delapidated farms in east Netherlands, but that is not happening here.
But I am digressing. The goal of this post is to give you a more realistic picture than the one we have given you so far. it is not all walks through bucolic country sides, sipping wine while watching another magnificent sunset and delicious meals made from produce grown here around
us. On the contrary. Most of our time is spent on getting supplies for the lads (and us) at the various bricos (-depot, -rama, -cash….). There is nothing idyllic and beautiful about these places. In fact, it is as bad as any strip mall in the US. See the pictures.
So far Rick has been posting all these stories about beautiful adventures in our neighborhood, watching glorious sunsets with wine, lovely meals on the veranda. The perfect La Vie en Rose. But it is not all sunsets and wine. There is plenty of hard work and disappointment, not to mention the waiting, waiting waiting to get things done. But we are glad to be here, and we are excited about completing our work and being able to have guests at long last.