Oops. O.K, so I'm not exactly a prolific blogger at the moment. But hey ...
There's been so much real life stuff going on. We've (almost) sold this house and (almost) found another. The France house is (almost) on the way to being ready. We've (almost) got the worst of the packing done - certainly all the sorting and throwing stuff out bits done. A big Freecycle posting is coming up!
The new house is smaller, and on a main road, but with a much nicer garden (bigger, private, green and leafy), which makes up for it. Also we've got far too much furniture for the new house so we're having to send some to France, nicely solving the riddle of how we're going to afford to furnish two houses. In a way we'll have two half houses. The garden in the new U.K house is big enough for a studio room, so Big M and the girls will be able to be as creatively messy as they need to, without having to clear it up every suppertime. Our workroom will be the smallest of the 3 (small!) bedrooms but there'll be enough room downstairs for all the books (O.K, *half* the books) and so all we need in the workroom is a desk and computer. We can go and have a coffee in the garden when it gets claustrophobic.
The girls don't seem to be worried about this potential half/half lifestyle. We've all done a lot of talking about what can go in which house, and what we can do where. Instead of having two sets of stuff we're going to try and do different things in each house, instead. The France house has a great 'field-like' garden for kicking balls, and running, and swinging and bouncing. The U.K garden is better for twiddling about with plants and flowers and stuff. The studio room in the U.K will be good for painting, and crafts, while the big barn in France will be great for building, and bashing, and hammering, and sculpting. The downstairs of the U.K house has more space than upstairs, so we'll be well set up for cooking, and eating, and doing stuff by the fire. The France house has no sitting room but the bedroom has enough space for our big screen and projector, so we'll move our dvds over there, and listen to story cds in the U.K.
Sounds like a plan? ... we'll see.
4 comments:
Helloooo!
Sounds like a great plan to me xx
What's the journey like between the two then? Nice, or not so nice? AND did you see that recent bit of news about quarantine? Now, can I find a link..?
No, but it's going to be a lot shorter, for some convoluted reason. You probably saw it?
Hellooooo!
The France house is about 8 hours drive from calais or any of those northern ports, about 4 hours from the overnight ferry port in St Malo (but that's a much more expensive ticket). The Derbyshire house is, I reckon, about 3 hours from the ports. Not a particularly nice drive on the French side, as the best way is the autoroutes. The drive from Derbyshire to the ports isn't too bad, though, as there's some nice A roads instead of the M1.
But the naughty cheap flights go from East Midlands (20 mins drive) to Limoges (40 mins drive) ... FAB for visitors if you fancy a cheap hol??!
So it depends on whether we're driving or flying, really.
Most likely we'll do a big family (and dog) drive over for long stays a couple of times a year, with M or I flying back in the meantime if we absolutely have to for work meetings.
It still seems *mad* that we're going to be flitting between the two houses, but necessary for our peace of mind wrt the girls, really. I really don't feel confident with fending off the inspectors until we're all fluent in the language, and with the culture, and until we can be sure that vaccination is not an issue, then we don't feel we can take the risk of being permanently based there.
The tricky thing is going to be ensuring we don't trap ourselves into having to work more, in order to keep the two houses ticking over.
And yes, I saw the rabies dog thing, thank you for thinking of us! Looks likely that they'll change it from not being able to enter the U.K until 6 months after a positive blood test, to 3 months ... which will be helpful, but prolly won't come in soon enough to be *really* helpful in the short term, for us. Our dog has almost got his passport (just waiting for the blood test results to come back) so could go to France at anytime, but he won't be able to re-enter the U.K for 6 months from the date of his blood test. :-(
Oh it's a pity about the job. Hey thanks for the cheap holiday offer! I wasn't hinting, honest ;-)
The journey sounds fine for you twice a year then - of course I knew it would be or you wouldn't be doing it.
I think it's all a great idea: the ideal lifestyle really. When you get sick of one place, you can just go to the other!
Job??
I really need more sleep.
I meant *dog*
^^
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