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Moving to France – first views of the Pink House

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Note: As you can see, I actually wrote this blog post some time ago, but I thought I would reproduce it here for those who have not yet seen it, because it shows a bit about the Pink House from Sell the Pig, when we first saw it.

If anyone’s thinking of moving to France just for the weather, think again! Today is just like the weather we left behind in Wales, only with nicer scenery. It’s cold, it keeps raining and hail-stoning, and the sun is nothing but a fleeting visitor.

Time to update the blog and probably high time you saw some pictures of the “pink house” as we saw it first, although it wasn’t really pink at all, anywhere other than in the estate agent’s online pictures!

“Both on paper and in the flesh, so to speak, this one looked very promising. According to the internet details, it had seven bedrooms and three bathrooms, was on three storeys and had a good-sized garden. We nicknamed it the pink house, as the photo showed the rendering as a pale rose pink, although in reality it was a lot paler and more washed out.”

Our first view of “the pink house”

“They do warn house viewers to try to see past existing décor to what the place will look like once you’ve stamped your own mark on it. Sound advice. The decoration in the pink house was truly hideous. Very nineteen seventies. The sitting room had two very strong contrasting patterned wallpapers, which didn’t go together, neither of which was very nice even in isolation and in unison presented a full frontal assault to the senses.”

The retro sitting room

“But the layout was practically perfect for what we wanted. On the top floor was a bright, light three-bedroomed apartment with shower room and loo and some open space to create a small cooking and dining area. Ideal to let as B&Bs or a self-contained flat. It had very nice south-facing views, and the possibility to create a sunny roof terrace on top of the roof of the room below, which jutted out in front of it.”

View from the top floor flat

And, just because it’s a very cold day today and there’s still a lot of snow on the volcanic peaks all around, a view of what this part of France can look like in winter!

Don’t forget, kind readers, I’m relying on you to tell me what photos you’d like to see. Hope you will enjoy these, will post some more on the next rainy day, which won’t be too long, if the weather forecast is anything to go by! Do leave me your comments here, about the book, or the blog, or France, or Life, the Universe and Everything.

Press Releases: An Idiot’s Guide – Free Publicity Through the Media

I like to try to help people if and when I can. An Indie author friend had not had much luck drumming up publicity for her book by contacting local papers.

Now it just so happens I used to be a journalist. What’s more, in my current job as a freelance copywriter, I often write press releases, sometimes for market leaders in retail. So I whizzed off a quick general press release for said friend which she sent out.

Almost at once she was contacted by the local paper from her former home town (she’s now an expat, like me) who ran a nice big piece on her, with pictures. Within hours of that appearing, she was contacted by a press agency who are now trying to sell her story to the highest bidder. So it proves that the method works.

So I thought I would share the knowledge, and I’ve just published a mini guide on writing your own press releases. I’m charging just 77p for it in the UK, of which Amazon gets the lion’s share. But us Indie authors need all the pennies we can get.

If you’re interested, you can get a copy here. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Press-Releases-Idiots-Publicity-Through-ebook/dp/B00HPX50XW/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1389120505&sr=1-3&keywords=tottie+limejuice

No, you don’t have to be an idiot to read it. The title is intended to show how simple a guide it is. But it should give you all you need to write your own press releases and get results from them.

It’s written from an author’s angle but the great thing about it is it adapts easily to anything you are trying to publicise. So when you are trying to drum up interest in something, it’s the perfect guide to reach for. Best 77p you’ve ever spent?

Leaving home in the UK to move to France

Just to prove I do listen to my kind readers and respond to their requests, here, especially for Carl, are some of the pictures of my “grottage” near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. Affectionately known as “The Hammer House of Horrors” when I bought it because it was in such an appalling state, having been largely lived in by animals for years.

As ever, photographs are accompanied by relevant text from my book, Sell the Pig, for the benefit of those who have not read it and to link things together for those who have.

“I wasn’t particularly thinking of buying a property at this stage in my life, and certainly was not certain that that area was where I wanted to put down long-term roots, having been there barely six months. But, like the Elephant’s Child, I am full of “’satiable curtiosity”.

“So when a neighbour told me horror stories of a cottage in the hamlet that was coming up for sale, I simply had to go and take a look at it. She told me it had been repossessed by the mortgage company when the former occupant, who apparently had some mental health issues, fell behind with payments and became unable to live there on her own any more.

“According to my source, the house was in very poor condition, as she’d kept all of her animals indoors for years – and I do mean all. Apparently the menagerie included dogs, cats, chickens and goats.”

Main bedroom

“It’s hard to say which of our senses was assaulted first. The smell was indescribable. But my eye was immediately drawn to the tell-tale dark brown stains all over the floors and the door frames, wherever we looked.

“Before we’d even stepped over the threshold Mother was already saying “No, oh no.” But Auntie, who was surprisingly intrepid, was bumbling about peeping into rooms and cupboards and following me up the stairs and round the bedrooms – very brave, as parts of the upstairs floor boards had been rotted away with presumably several years’ accumulation of animal urine.”

First impressions on entering – the “kitchen”

….”I loved my cottage, now promoted from grottage, with a lovely garden, all created by my own hands. My predecessor there obviously had some very serious issues as, once I started digging in the mass of nettles and runaway lonicera nitida which was all there was of a garden, all I came up with was endless pairs of tights inside Walkers’ crisp packets.

“Not sure which flavour. The blue bags. I only like the plain ones so I don’t know the colours of the different flavours. But whatever the former resident had been trying to achieve, I can tell you that no matter what soil you plant that combination in, it simply doesn’t grow into anything.”

The garden, as I saw it first

That’s your lot for today, but I promise to show you some of the “after” photographs, after the promotion from grottage to cottage. Do please leave me your comments and as ever, this blog is driven by you. What yea ask for shall be given unto thee, or something like that.

Moving to France – why the Auvergne?

Faithful readers of Sell the Pig will already know that my decision to move to France’s Auvergne had a lot to do with a certain drinks advert.Back in the 1970s, Dubonnet was advertised with a slogan of, I think, “Way up there” to the sound of the achingly beautiful shepherd’s song Bailero from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne. This link is far from being the best ever version of the song but it does have the advantage of showing you some of the stunning scenery of this very green region with its hopefully extinct volcanoes.

Having listened to the music, I’d long held a desire to visit the region and as soon as I did, it captured my heart. So I was amused on a recent guided walk round a little local town, Cunlhat, (and if you think it looks hard to pronounce, I can tell you the locals pronounce it nothing like it looks!) to come across this painted gable end, advertising Dubonnet!

It’s rather ironic, as when I first began work as a cub reporter in Manchester, my editor was nicknamed Pissquick – you can guess why – and his wife was an alcoholic, whose favourite tipple was Dubonnet.

But that’s another story – perhaps for the sequel to Sell the Pig!

In memory of a dear friend in ‘Billinge Lump’

‘Is That Billinge Lump’ is the second book in the Sell the Pig series and continues the story of what happened after my mother, brother, my dog Meic and I moved into our new home in France.

Shortly after ‘Lump’ was published, I received news from the UK that a very dear friend of mine, Peg, whom I introduced in ‘Billinge Lump’, had died, aged 94. I had known Peg and her husband Bob since the mid-1970s, when we all lived in the same area of South Wales. Their youngest son’s girlfriend came to work on the South Wales Guardian, where I was a reporter.

Despite being of almost exactly the same age as my parents, Bob and Peg seemed to have a much younger outlook and we got on really well. In particular, I loved Peg’s wicked sense of humour.

They came and visited us in France several times and Mother was always pleased to see them, as they had all become friends over the years, although she never remembered who they were to begin with. They were staying at the time I was buying Tottie’s Grottage, so they were one of the first people to see it, in all its shambolic glory.

I’d taken them with me on my little R&R trip, and we had all stayed with great friends of mine, Geoff and Christine, at their lovely bed and breakfast, about an hour from the grottage at Chabanol.

Bob and Peg at Chabanol with Geoff and Christine and their dog Bounty

Bob and Peg with their eldest son Bobby, with Geoff and Bounty

This post is by way of a tribute to my great friend Peg. One of the things for which she will be best remembered is her rather risqué limericks. Some of them were just not repeatable in polite company, but I did reproduce the mildest of them all in ‘Lump’. So if you have not yet read the book, here, just for you, is Peg’s limerick.

‘There was a young man from Aberystwyth

Who took his girlfriend home to play whist with.

But instead of that,

They sat on the mat,

And played with the things that they pissed with.’

Peg, you always could make everyone laugh. RIP, my friend.

Living with elderly care – the lighter side of dementia

Dementia has sadly become so much more commonplace, as people are living longer than ever before. One of the reasons I decided to write the Sell the Pig series of books was because although my mother had vascular dementia (mercifully not Alzheimer’s) she was still very amusing.

In fact, the more gaga she became, the more she would have us all in stitches, herself included, on many occasions, at some of the funny things she said. Those of you who have already read ‘Sell the Pig’ and ‘Is That Billinge Lump?’ will know that she became rather like a naughty child and loved to say ‘bum’ and ‘bugger’ as often as possible. Some of her favourite sayings and poems are reproduced in the books. If you’ve not yet read them, here’s her most famous of all, which gave rise to the title of the trilogy, ‘Sell the Pig’:

‘Mother, mother, it’s a bugger, sell the pig and buy me out.’ It’s an old saying, about a young man not enjoying military service and writing home to persuade his impoverished farming family to cash in their only investment to secure his early release. Mother always claimed that it was an uncle of hers who had first used the phrase, although there is no way of knowing if that is true or not.

When she could no longer manage on her own because of her dementia, and when home care proved totally inadequate, Mother had to move into a care home. She went to stay in a lovely one, in her native St Helens, where her elder sister was also a resident. She was extremely well looked after there. She was happy, we were happy.

Mother in the care home, with her favourite toy dog, Baby,who gave the carers many a fright, thinking he was real!

Sadly as her health declined she was in need of a higher level of nursing care, for which we moved her to a home in Wales, nearer to where my brother lived and where I was temporarily staying. Things there were not a huge success and she was clearly not nearly so happy.

Mother on a visit to Carmarthen Museum, after she made the move to the nursing home in Wales

When my brother and I first started mooting the idea of us all moving to France together, all the staff at the nursing home thought we were completely insane and would kill Mother off before we even got as far as the channel tunnel. Only her GP was supportive. His attitude was very much ‘she’s 89, with not a very brilliant prognosis. Why not give her one last adventure?’

Mother had always been quite adventurous. She had often visited me when I lived in Germany, usually making the long journey by coach herself and being quite undaunted. We told her we were taking her to France for a holiday, rather than worrying her with the thought of it being a permanent move. She was apprehensive about the journey itself, but not about the adventure. She said if she could just go to sleep and wake up by magic in France, she would love to go.

So the idea for her last big adventure started to take shape and my brother and I were to spend many hours plotting and planning to bring it all about. When we finally found a suitable house, and brought pictures to the home to show Mother, she suddenly started to recover some of her spark and show a bit more of an interest.

*Planning the great adventure with Mother, at the nursing home in Wales*

This is a brand new blog, to support the Sell the Pig series of books, with the idea of sharing with you some of the photos of the people you have read, or may read about in the future. So don’t forget your input – who or what would YOU like to see photos of?