'The stuff that dreams are made on'..
Shakespeare.The Tempest .
Did you ever stop to think what it was that got you up in the morning? That thing that forced the first probing toe out from the security of the cosy duvet and bravely ventured onto the long shag rug? Sometimes, it’s difficult to decipher or even remember when it all started and what your motives were in the very beginning, what sparked the actions for what you’ve taken on in life and your emigration to a new world.
For average folk, a yearning for new beginnings and dreams of a simple, more relaxing life emerges out of your daily habits . Habits, which are forced upon you under the guise of necessity or offered up as a collective ‘normality’ .. those things we all do to make a life,a living and meet somehow, the invisible benchmark of accomplishment !! Yet, whilst you sit in your hire purchase car, in static motorway traffic .. everyday .. everyday.. a small voice from the very depths of your ongoing discomfort whispers if… only …When you’re forced to queue for 20 minutes to pay five pounds for a glorified coffee. The little voice chimes what if ? This little voice raises an octave on finding little Spanish towns for a week in the warm..trawling past paint-crackled, sun-bleached estate agents and gasping at cheap properties that, 'after all, only needed a little work'? And then, of course, the orange-faced TV presenters gushing on the joys of buying homes abroad that flood our reality TV viewing times. It seems quite natural to caress the idea of leaving it all for a life in the sun; mortgage free and full of fat wines and fatter cheeses…
So, hanky on stick and a spring in your step, you pack, you sell up and you chase the fulfilment that all your chosen future has to offer. With boundless excitement and energy you sail into the sunset hoping never to return to the drudgery and stress you have left in the dust.
However, embarking joyfully on the exciting journey to said better life...further down the line, after unseen financial outlay, the barrier of bureaucracy and peeling ancient wallpaper glued with something you could build houses within the third world with.. you, of course, realise that your dreams and your plans may have snowballed into a chaotic mess of paperwork,building regulations and having dirt .. on everything .. all.. of .. the .. time . The cherry on the gateaux is, all too often hearing NON ..to halt any progression on your eager developments. Accepting this, now, the possibility of being ambushed by that stray piece of Lego left in that shaggy bedroom carpet is enough for you to retract your toe and hide in your blanket cocoon for the remainder of the day. Who on earth thought leaving family and friends, king and country to renovate a beaten up, three-story house in the middle of France was a good idea .. much less a dream?
We must be mad, right? And yet, every year, hundreds of thousands of people migrate to France and set up new lives, new homes, new families and businesses. Can we all be wrong? We must of course, accommodate the motives for departure for those fleeing countries in search of safety. But making a pilgrimage to France to follow a dream is a selfish and voluntary mission..this monumental decision to upheave ourselves was ours alone.
Does the dream burn in our hearts as brightly as the mirrored ski glasses we don once arrived? Do we in fact, spend all our time whimsically choosing cheap wine and visiting our neighbours for 'aperos'?.And is it possible that one can spend languid afternoons lounging in cafes, approvingly nodding to jazz and pondering if smoking is sexy again?... Or, does the clichéd idealism fizzle out as quickly as the log fire because you were oblivious to the fact that you needed dried logs and not the young green ones they delivered several tonnes of ?...and that you may not, under any circumstance, romantically pull water up from your well on a bright and misty morn to drink ..without chemical testing and serious risk of death.
Do these rookie mistakes enhance the rich tapestry of our new French life .. or do they serve as a non-exhaustive battery of assaults that only serve to weaken our resolve, bank balances, relationships and .. well .. hope?
Let's then take a journey. Follow my one-woman invasion of France armed with fervent tenacity, a tiny budget and enormous dreams!
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