THE HOUSE IS A HOME

-
These are perfect Autumnal days, beginning close to freezing and ending with warm afternoons where a heavenly light bathes everything in a warm yellow. The afternoon sun illuminates the hillsides where goats graze to the melodic ringing of their bells and poplars stretch up like brush strokes of a golden tumeric.

There are moments when the light is so perfect that the scene before me appears so fragile that if I reached out into it all it might crumble to a fine dust. Moments where the girls look up to the sky, delighted by aeroplane trails or peer down to the ground to examine an acorn in their path. This ephereal light catches in their hair or eyelashes, casts shadows across half of their faces or dances in the leaves in the trees behind them.



 
We carved two small pumpkins for Halloween and then, as a necessary sacrifice for our frugality, cooked them the next day in a soup. I suspect this will be a trauma that Little L rebukes us for in later life. How she had to bear parents so cruel and financially inept that a lovingly created decoration had to be eaten the next day...

I realised the other day that I hadn't posted for over a month. This is in part because we finally moved into the house (!) and also because I returned to England for a visit with the girls. So we have been really busy and the ever promised 'day-for-myself-without-the-girls' has been postponed continuously.

Moving into the house felt like such a celebration. Despite the lack of comfort, the sense of satisfaction of finally being able to live here is immense. We're slowly getting through our 'Absolute Priority' list, almost as fast as we are adding new tasks to it. We are living on one floor in the bedroom with a soon-to-be bathroom with the landing hosting a temporary kitchen. We have heating, running water, a toilet (flushes with a bucket), a bath and the trusty camping stove is back in the game. Perfect!





Returning to Somerset to see family and friends felt really special and equally left us excited to return here. The trip put a helpful perspective on what I am missing and what is, in fact, pretty good here. Perhaps these returns home are always a part of building something new elsewhere as we are able to shake off some of our rose-tinted pinings as well as dose up on time with much missed loved ones.
 
So, as the nights draw in, we're all holed up in our little house ready for what the winter has in store for us and it feels great.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHEN FRIENDS ARE FAR AWAY...

-
Image
We've lived here for three months (and half of that was in a tent in some woodland out of the village) so I know rationally that it is fine not to have made friends yet. I know that just because I have not made friends so far, that it doesn't mean I will never make friends here. However, who considers these things rationally when they are missing their friends from home and life as a family of four needs some serious fresh air ? I am prone to emotional responses to most things in life, it's what led me sob whilst listening Nadya Hussein on Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago, as if I had forever forfeited the opportunity to bake cakes or reminisce about the Backstreet Boys with friends simply by moving to France. It was perhaps also the repetitive task of chipping plaster off a beam combined with a lunch of tinned mackerel that led to the emotional outburst but the bottom line is, if there's an opportunity for teary melodrama, I generally take it. When we first ...
Read more

SNOW AND SCHOOL

-
Image
Snow was forecast for the beginning of the month but it didn't fall here in the village. We tried to head to one of the nearest places to ski for some snow shoeing but roads weren't accessible without snow tyres or chains. I'd naively imagined that the roads toward a ski resort would be gritted but apparently that doesn't always happen. We were so painfully aware of how we are definitely still tourists, as we chugged along an icey road, gratefully following the municipal snow plough. The bus got us far enough to play in some snow which made the girls very happy until they were very unhappy! Despite my best efforts to layer them up so much that I thought it impossible to get cold I think the freezing gusts of wind penetrated the gloves and their hands got them before they had chance to sledge. The drive was incredibly beautiful. The Plateau de Sault, as it's name suggests, is a large flat expanse, quite bare and surrounded by hills and mountains. There was a strong...
Read more

TWO WHOLE YEARS OF FRANCE

-
Image
Spring this year has been a collection of storms and showers, swollen rivers and lush green. Everyone is waiting for summer’s heat to burst from the sky and the perpetual damp to steam heavenward. The house is filled with wet washing and waterproofs and wellies stuffed with newspaper after over enthusiastic river wading or splashing in the streams that race down our road when a thunder storm hits. This month Little I turned three. Our funny, happy, loving, energetic baby girl. I carry her less and less, more and more I find myself holding the hands of two little girls walking by my sides with no one in my arms, listening to the chatter reaching upwards. It’s a new phase of motherhood and all at once it is liberating and yet it feels as if time has slipped through my fingers and in the blink of an eye my babies are big. We bought ingredients for Little I’s birthday cake, lots of chocolate, and as we walked back along the road we looked up to see somebo...
Read more