Rust In Peace

I guess you think you can see where this is probably going. The bride was thinking that I was impressed far more by the significant garaging space than anything else on this dank morning and I do seem to remember receiving a slap for verbalising my thoughts that we could acquire more old cars, but my mind was enjoying itself as it could hear inquisitive, yet not unfriendly French voices talking to us.

Leaving a broken Renault and a white van to rest in peace in one of the garages, we gazed at the house. It was displaying some fine tuffeau detailing at the higher levels, away from several successful attempts elsewhere to deface the facades with replacement white plastic double glazing, which unfortunately is infecting France at an even more alarming rate than McDonalds, although still a very long way behind the UK on both those fronts. The aspect of the windows on the courtyard façade had been changed from the correctly proportioned portrait format to single paned landscape units which I’m sure were a very popular price and also lets in light, but there any similarity with proper and correctly proportioned windows suitable to the building ended. A great pity. Inside however, we forgot all about the racing car and yacht wall paper in the bedrooms, as the salon was a wonderfully well kept treasure of a hundred years or more with an imposing stone fireplace and chimney and a patterned tile floor to drool over, which we certainly did.

We then both fell for the charm and character of ‘pretty house’ a small and perfectly formed two storeys of stonework and tomettes and a stone external staircase which took you back to the days of D’Artagnan as well as the first floor and just perfect for a gite, but so far, a precise location for a second gite, other than somewhere in the long row of dependences, was eluding us and in all fairness, the property was not yet speaking to us both.

So after an interesting morning including some interconnecting cellars with history and stocks of wine to be explored hopefully at a later date, we were about to leave and in preparing to bid Madame merci and au revoir, she asked if we would also like to see the garden. There is a garden we asked with genuine surprise? The agent’s details had so far failed to mention the extensive garaging, despite his manly gender, so we supposed a mere garden was even less unimportant to him. We unwound the locking wire from a hidden gate and wandered into a sizeable west facing plot, which paced out to about 550 square metres and overlooked nothing other than vines more or less as far as we could see! Imagine the scene, says me to the bride . . . a warm summer evening, the heat just going out of the day with the sun sinking slowly towards the golden horizon and there we are, sitting on the poolside deck sipping gin and tonics and wondering why we hadn’t done this years before.

Sounds like a plan!!!

I'm dreaming of a pool deck!!

LC