Lately, the other half and I have been thinking about moving. I’m not really sure I want to, but then I’m not really sure I don’t want to. The trouble is, there are so many gorgeous places to live in France and so many fabulous houses and the other half has his heart set on a chateau with a sweeping drive.
I’ve told him “It’s all very well wanting to live in a chateau but who’s going to clean it eh?”
It won’t be him of course. We have an agreement. He does the cooking and I do the cleaning. He does the chopping of the wood for the fire and all the macho stuff, I do the painting. I already can’t cope with cleaning the house I’ve got and it ain’t no chateau I’ve got to tell you. But it is big, well I think it is. Compared to where I used to live in London it practically is a chateau – but without the tower, the grand entrance, the lusted after by the other half sweeping drive or anything that makes it actually look like a chateau. Okay, it’s a farmhouse not a chateau, but it does have an enormous garden and lots of rooms, most of which I don’t clean very often on account of the fact that I don’t like cleaning and I always have something better to do – like talk to you. That’s much better than cleaning, or cooking.
We went to Normandy recently to visit Monet’s gardens in Giverny and we drove around the area a bit and it really is lovely. We stopped for lunch in a place called Evreux and Mark (the other half) decided to look in the estate agent’s windows and of course he saw a chateau that cost the same as a caravan. Well, no it didn’t but, it didn’t cost more than a 2 bedroom house in London. And then he got all excited because if we sold our house, and no doubt our souls, we might be able to afford it.
“I don’t know if I could stand packing up 6 cats, 3 dogs, 4 geese, 25 chickens and 40 ducks” I told him.
“We’d manage” he said firmly.
“What about all our stuff” I have to confess I was a bit addicted to brocantes and flea markets when I first came out (alright I still am) and there is considerably more stuff in the house than there was when we first arrived.
“We’d manage” he said firmly.
Now after several years of marriage I have learned to keep quiet when he gets enthusiastic about something we can’t afford. If I point out the bleeding obvious, eg we can’t afford it, he will just come up with idea after idea as to how we can afford it and frankly I’m getting too old for most of them.
So… he is now scouring the internet for a chateau that we can afford (he likes the one in the top pic which is on the website of Leggett Immobillier in France) and meantime I am getting on with repainting the kitchen which we have almost finished after 8 long years of renovation.
I don’t know if I could bear to move now after all this work but then again… a chateau eh? Wouldn’t that be something!
More about owning a chateau by those who’ve done it
Read the inspiring story of an Australian family who fell in love with a chateau they saw on the internet and are restoring it to its former glory – all 94 rooms of the Chateau de Gudanes.
Another Australian family who upped sticks to bring a chateau back to life – Chateau le Mung, doing everything themselves from mending the roof to plastering the walls!
