Well, all the best intentions - and all that!

Apologies for the delay in posting. I was a little shocked myself when I saw that my last post was made in October! Life has been more than a little bit crazy, what with lockdowns and moving to another country, getting all the paperwork necessary sorted and trying to keep up with work and do some of the work on the house!

Much has changed and much has stayed the same since then! I will try and summarise it, but may (if I remember to) write some more in depth posts about the more fun parts of the story since October later on!

Well, the first thing to say is that when I returned to France after my trip home in October to pack and get stuff done, I had to set off 12 days earlier than intended due to the lockdown that was imposed in the UK, so after a bit of a mad scramble to get ready on time, I officially made the move to France on 4th November, rather than the 16th as planned.

The journey back was relatively uneventful, until I got closer to the house as we had snow! And while it makes the area look as pretty as a christmas card, the roads locally were pretty icey, so me and the bus took things as easily as we could. Bob was brilliant. He seemed to know that I needed him to stay calm and quiet, and we were both delighted to get home, get the lights and the heating on and get settled back in.

I spent much of the first week resting once we got here and then set about making my room more habitable. Given I'll be in here a long time while we get everything done, making it feel homely seemed like a good idea. I'm not naturally the tidiest of people, but I like to know where things are, and so sorting out definite places for the important things in my life seemed a good idea. when you only have one room, it would be all too easy to end up in chaos - and I was determined to make sure that didn't happen!

With us comfortably settled, it was time to get started on the house. I started on stripping the wallpaper off the walls in the other rooms upstairs and clearing out the clutter from the first floor. This was rather therapeutic in some ways, and certainly helped me to keep warm - which was essential as even with my ancient radiators on at full blast I didn't exactly have a warm house! I think the highest temperature I achieved upstairs was a balmy 18 degrees in my room, and downstairs I had to buy a small heater for the fridge-freezer so it would actually work as the ambient temperature down there was just too cold for it to function!

But Bob and I made it through with the assistance of an excellent duvet and each other, and are now out the other end, where having a cool house is a good thing. Temperatures have recently been up around 30 degrees C, and with the house only getting up to about 20, I'm actually pretty comfortable most of the time - which is great for the dysautonomia which can be the devil when it gets too hot.

When we first saw the house, I despised the wallpaper in these tiny bedrooms, but as I've lived here, they've rather grown on me! In a stroke of luck, I found a couple of rolls of both up in the attic when I cleared that out, so can find a way to incorporate them into the new house - a little bit of the old in the new!

The house hadn't been lived in for 25 years, but before that it had been a family home for many generations. As I've cleared out the clutter I've found lots of letters and documents, photos and personal items that I am hoping will shed light on the history of the house. I'm not letting myself look too closely at it all right now, though, as I know what I'm like. Once I get caught up in a project like that I won't surface again for years, and I have a house to renovate! I am really looking forward to when the house is done, so I can dig in and get researching.

But I digress from my tale. Aidan and I spent a nervous time, wondering if restrictions would be lifted enough to go back to the UK for Christmas and to bring another loand of stuff back in the bus. Thankfully for us they were, and so I booked my Eurotunnel crossing and prepared to head back on 15th December. Unfortunately, the bus had other ideas.

I pulled off the motorway, somewhere near Bourges, with a cloud of steam billowing behind me into a rest area. The engine cut out just as I did and I somehow managed to coast into a parking spot, where I opened up the bonnet to find the chaos above (please click here if it doesn't load properly for you!). I tried pouring water in as i was totally out of coolant, but it just poured out onto the tarmac. I had a split or broken hose somewhere. So, I called from the French motorway assistance telephone and tried to explain - but in my anxious state my French deserted me. Thankfully a very nice man with ginger hair and a very neat goaty beard took the phone from me and spoke with the operator. He assured me someone was on the way to pick me up.

About half an hour later a very handsome young man with a tow truck appeared, and raised poor Armande up onto the back. I got in the cab with him and we headed off to a nearby Volkswagen garage, where I was left for four hours before anyone even looked at the bus. By the time they did, Bob was frantic and we had missed any hope of getting to Calais for the last train. Thankfully my AA cover put us up in a hotel. A very friendly cab driver took me there, telling me about his family in the UK. The staff were friendly at the hotel, and I put in my breakfast order and Bob and I settled in.

I woke up in the morning covered in bites, to the stalest breakfast I have ever eaten - and I sobbed down the phone to the lovely people at AA Europe that I could not stay there again, even if the bus wasn't yet fixed. Thankfully they agreed and another taxi ride took Bob and I into the centre of Bourges, which was actually lovely and a place I'd like to visit again once restrictions are full lifted and museums and things are open. a convenient takeaway pizza place down the road meant I was able to get a hot lunch while I waited for news fromo the garage. When it finally came, late that afternoon, it wasn't good. Armande's head gasket was gone - not just the hose that we'd all expected. The insurance company decided that her value wasn't sufficient to warrant bringing her back to the UK and so my lovely bus had to go to the scrapyard.

But that still left Bob and me in a hotel room in Bourges. The AA put me up for another night and then organised a hire car for me the next day. I had to take an hour and a half long taxi drive to go and pick it up, then drive an hour back to the garage to pick up the stuff in the bus I needed for the onward journey, and somehow try and get it all into a Clio! That managed, and Bob and I were on our way. we drove direct, without any stops to Calais, where I had to swap the car for an UK registered one, so had to unload and reload again, and then I was off to the Eurotunnel. Calais during lockdown, at night is a strange and eerie place, I can tell you.

I booked Bob in at the pet reception and the lady there tried to change our booking, but as it was so close to departure, she was unable to (I'd been on the phone with Eurotunnel each day and they told me to just get there when I could and they would get me on a train). She urged me to hurry to the main gates as they might still be able to get me onboard. I did that, even though Bob was suddently being stroppy about going back in his travel carrier! Thankfully, we made it - and I finally made it back to Chelmsford in the early hours of 18th December.

Christmas was lovely, though a little hectic once my quarantine was done. We fitted in dentists, opticians, a fab walk with my big sister and a visit to see Mum through her window at the care home once she was home from hospital after a thankfully mild dose of COVID - and Aidan's birthday. When I set off again on 15th January I had no idea how long it might be before I'd see Aidan again, or my Mum. We knew that lockdowns could make things very difficult in the New Year, but really hoped they might have improved enough by my birthday in April.

Once back, with the heating on and my room suitably warm enough for habitation, I settled in once more. We had more snow and I stayed put most of the time, though I had to deal with all the bureaucracy required to become fully legal in France. Thankfully, my Carte Vitale (access to french healthcare) was in progress as it was automatically set in train by my registering as self-employed back in October before I moved in November. It took until April for the card to finally arrive though, and when it did it had the wrong social security number on it so I had to send it back for a new one which arrived just last week!

I put in my application for my pre-brexit carte de sejour, which was super easy and printed off my attestation to keep in my passport, and then started the process of registering the car here. The first thing I needed was a quitus fiscale. But the local prefecture said no, I needed a certificate of douanement (customs clearance). I knew that wasn't the case, as I had checked it with customs and because I had moved to France before Brexit, there had been no customs clearance required. The nice lady at customs had put it in an email for me, which was very helpful now. I forwarded it to the prefecture who grudgingly then issued my quitus fiscale. 200E for a certificate of conformity from Hyundai and almost 400E in taxes and fees to register later and I was in a two month queue to get my new French registration.

I started tarting up the old dresser in the corner of the kitchen, as it's a beauty and we want to keep it - though it was often a bit cold down in the kitchen doing so! I've still only managed to do the top part, but hopefully I'll get round to the bottom soon enough!

It took us a while to get the mortgage agreed for all the necessary work that we can't do ourselves - the electrics, new staircases, a fosse septique, plumbing and so on. We also decided that though I could probably dig out the floor downstairs ready for the planned underfloor heating, that it would probably take me the rest of my life - and probably ruin what is left of my physical capacity in the process - so, we have hired a builder to come and do it for us! There is more than enough work that we will still have to do ourselves, so it makes sense to get at least some of the tricky stuff done by others if we possibly can.

The house as we bought it was small and dark. It had potential, but we weren't thinking much more than making it functional and habitable to tell the truth. But as we started to knock down walls and clear out the mess, we began to get more adventurous with our plans. The attic had always been a space we loved, but after our application to change our windows and doors just a tiny bit needed quite a lengthy argument, backed up with archaeological evidence and a bit of disability access needs for good measure to get it agreed, we weren't all that hopeful that we'd get the permission we needed to put in roof windows in order to convert it into living space. But whatever happened, the attic needed to be cleared out.

It wasn't a fun task, and I had to go masked as there was so much dust and old grain lying around on the floor up there that my MCAS would have been a nightmare. I overdosed on antihistamines and got cracking over the period fo a week - making sure I took plenty of necessary breaks. It was pretty cold up there, and getting warm once cold without a hot bath or shower is pretty tricky!

But with perseverance I got it all sorted, into a pile of stuff for the dechetterie, another to keep and try and upcycle, and some wood that may be useful for the projects we have ahead. I must confess I was pretty proud of myself!

And, did I say, I found some pretty cool stuff... 3 bee skeps, some incredible french demijohns - and some letters from a German POW camp, a hand grenade with its pin still intact and some bullets, all from WWII.

The grenade caused a bit of an uproar. Neighbours offered for me to go and stay at their house while I waited for the gendarmes to come and check if it was safe - but I figured it had been up there since the war, it was unlikely to do anything now unless something extraordinary occurred. Everyone back in the UK was either amused and intrigued (many toddling off to do research to let me know they thought it was likely to be a No36 British Mills) or were petrified on my behalf! I waited for the gendarmes to arrive and was first asked for a spoonful of sugar as one of them was a bit wobbly. I did offer her something more substantial, but it seemed the sugar did the trick!

They were very nice, an older lady and young woman and young man. They took photos, then told me I'd hear from the bomb experts in Bordeaux soon. I did not hear from them for almost a month! I was clearing out the attice just before my birthday on 10th April. I finally got a call on MAy 3rd saying they would be with me at 10am the next day to come and collect it. Two very jovial bomb disposal men arrived on my doorstep at exactly 10am the next morning, and la bombe was gone. I rather miss it now.

However, I have completely glossed over my lonely birthday, a day upon which I basically just ate cake and zoomed with Aidan all day. We had hoped he would be able to come over for it, but lockdown in both countries meant it was impossible - and we needed to save our pennies to ensure that he could come out to sign the mortgage. The best gift I received was given to me a day early, when the bank called and Jane, our wonderful personal adviser, told us that the mortgage had been agreed! So, in between watching films and eating my gorgeous birthday cake, Aidan and I planned his trip to France to sign at the notaires office on 12th May.

May finally came, and while Aidan was here, I put him to good use - helping me chip off plaster, knocking down walls and numerous trips to the decehtterie. When we were done, all our plans for the house had changed! We had really struggled to decide where to put our living room. If we could convert the attic we would have more options open to us - but we had to assume that might not be on the cards following the arguments we'd had about knocking through the windows at the back and reinstating the doors that had once been there. Living within the boundaries of a registered monument does not make for easy planning decisions!

We had plans for all contingencies. If we weren't permitted to convert the attic at all, then the liviing room would have to go downstairs in the salon des trucs, off the kitchen - though neither of us were entirely happy about that idea. It would mean we'd only be able to have a tiny office and just 2 small bedrooms. If we could put roof windows in on just one side of the attic (facing away from the chapel that causes all the concerns!), we could perhaps make that our living room, with a small bathroom and a workshop on the side of the house where we weren't allowed windows. If we got permission for windows on both sides, we could create a bedroom up there as well as the open space living room.

But it still wasn't sitting right with me. I didn't really want to have to climb 2 flights of stairs from the kitchen to the living room. Some days even climbing a couple of steps is more than my poor bendy joints can manage, so though I spent hours trying to work out the best configurations on my planning app I just wasn't happy. We'd come up with an idea that we wanted to make the salon des trucs into our office/bike space, and it had rather lodged in both our heads - and it was making planning the rest of the house difficult. This continued to nag, as it was just so practical. The space is big enough down there for two desks, a sofa and the bike racks and will have access directly onto the road and the garden, plus a shower room for post bike rides. it is the perfect use of the space (until we can afford to do something with the barn to create secure space there for the bokes and a workshop for me - but that is a long way off!)

Then we knocked down the walls and everything made sense - especially once I heard that Madame l'architecte des batiments de France was going to let us have all 6 veluxes in the attic!

Just like that, we had a living room.

And so, our original plan to just move the layout of the walls on this side of the house, putting in a bathroom and a slightly larger bedroom than the ones previously there, became an open living space, with the stairs coming up from the kitchen and up into the attic at one end, chimney at the other, and lots of space in between.

We switched the plan for a double bedroom (though this may become my craft space) and bathroom to the other side of the house, solving the issue of what exactly to do with the room I'm currently liviing in, and made plans for a wow factor bedroom up in the attic, puls a luxurious spa bathroom and a 3rd, reasonably sized bedroom - big enough for a king size bed!

I love this little house. I knew it could be homely and comfortable for Bob, Aidan and me. But what we are heading towards now could be a truly incredible home, one that may even make a few people just a teensy bit jealous!