2007 Has been a momentous year of change for this little branch of the Porter family, because around this time last year we left the comfort of our London home, finally sold after around 14 months up for sale. Fleur and Franca went to live in Rotterdam with Franca’s mother for 3 months until in March our new house in France was finally ours.
Franca and Fleur enjoyed their time in Rotterdam and at the end of it Fleur was fluent in Dutch, she understood Dutch before she went, but never spoke it that much so needless to say we were very proud of her.
Darren moved back to Westcliff (with his parents) to sleep on the dining room floor, on a comfy bed! We hasten to add, for what we all thought would be 6 or 8 months. Before we left we offered ourselves to a couple of lifestyle TV programs about families moving abroad, however it appeared we were too sensible and under control to make good TV. How wrong they were….Well without going into all the details this is roughly how the year has progressed. For the first couple of months after we arrived in France we concentrated on finding our feet, buying essential items like a car for Franca, internet and telephone connections, sorting out a school for Fleur and a somewhat enforced introduction to the local doctor, when Fleur managed to knock Franca over on some steps in Jarnac, but after a month of treatment and a couple of injections everything was back to normal.
In June we started getting the builders in and after about six weeks work and a lot more money than we first thought the first guest room was ready, and very good it looks too, even though Darren had to finish off the room himself as our builder had a stroke and was confined to hospital and home for a few weeks. Whilst he was off another team came in and started the unexpected roof refurbishment which we had planned for around 2009 or 2010, however the existing roof was not strong enough to support the velux windows we wanted to put in the second room, so we had no choice but to carry out the refurbishment. After the main section of the roof was complete we went back to the first builder to get the second room completed in double quick time to get our building plan back on track, the builder thought he was 100% fit again and ready to start work. Sadly despite bringing in extra help they could not get themselves organised and they ended up taking almost 9 weeks instead of the planned 3 and Darren still had to finish things off, so Franca decided we would try another builder for the third room and that is where we are today. As we write it is week one of the room 3 refurbishment which we hope will be ready by mid January.
Darren is still a regular commuter from South West France to London and is likely to remain so for another year, Fleur has just celebrated her 5th birthday with her new French friends and pretty soon she will be fluent in French, her 3rd language in 5 years, not bad at all, and we are all very proud of the way she has coped with all the changes. Franca has been fantastic at holding the French end of our dream together, acting as a building manager, French translator and single parent during the week. It has been a tough year, but as we have said quite a few times, if it was easy everyone would do it. We still believe it was the right thing to do, and life in Sigogne is great, especially when the sun shines, we are not living the dream by a long way but we are on the road and I think we can see the end.
So much has happened this year it is difficult to compress it into a few short paragraphs but, for those with internet access you can keep up with our exploits in more detail on our blogs, we have one in English and one in Dutch, the Dutch one has more pictures on it as Franca looks after all our photos. There is also our web site at www.aubellefleur.com which is already on the internet however a new more professional one will replace it some time in January.
Hopefully we will see some of you during the coming year at ‘Au Bellefleur’, but most of all we wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous and happy new year.
Darren, Franca & Fleur
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten