Bonjour,
Hope you had a great week.
Spring really seems to have arrived this week in my bit of rural France. There are buds on trees, a green haze over the forests, birds are returning and trilling out a beautiful chorus from the rooftops and bushes, the cats are lying in the sun in the garden.
And – new neighbours have sort of appeared. At the end of last year my lovely Belgian neighbours moved about 2km down the road to an even smaller hamlet but a bigger house. They sold their old house to Parisians. This is big news apparently. Marie-Claude, my octogenarian neighbour says “the last time we had Parisians here was nearly 50 years ago… I remember it well, they wore high heeled shoes to walk their poodle round the village – the ladies that is not the men…”
The last Parisians lived in my house. During its 400 years or so of being, my house was an animal barn, a peasant dwelling, a café, the village telephone exchange and then in 1971, the poodle owning Parisians bought it. They left the telephone exchange signs up but built around them – they’re still there! They lined the walls with newspapers dating from May to October 1971, they’re still there in some places though I’ve covered them up with new internal walls. They put hideous wood panels up everywhere including the ceilings which sucked all the light and life out of the place. Long gone now but the memory haunts me still.
No one has actually seen the new neighbours to see if they are wearing high heeled shoes on our muddy, cow trodden rues. But their car has been spotted, lights are on in the house and I’ve noticed Monsier Partout (which means Mr Everywhere, a villager who likes to knows what’s going on!) has been wandering down the little alleyway where the Parisians’ house is, the only one in that section of our tiny vilage!
I love that the most exicting, dramatic and newsworthy thing to happen in the village this week is the possibility of spotting inappropriately-dressed-for-the-middle-of-nowhere-rural-France city slickers who live just 2.5 hours away by car!
Wishing you a very bon weekend,
Bisous from France,
Janine
Editor
ps Photo is Caen, Normandy, a lovely town!
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