'Country' Column - Newcomers

Over the last six months I have been writing a series of columns for theFrenchPaper. Each published was a simple vignette that summed up my new life, at that particular time, in the French countryside - through the eyes of someone slowly unfurling after London city living.

The columns followed me on a journey, which turned out to be the most significant of my life. I have ended up in a place I never thought I'd be geographically or mentally and have increasingly become the most centred and well I have ever felt.

This column is for you if you want to follow the adventures of a wine-loving, meat-eating, party-going girl who, at the end of it all, discovers alcohol-free living, the healing spirit of animals, a thirst for sustainable living and veganism...and that the unknown is actually something close to heaven.

The first column appeared in the June issue of theFrenchPaper and is copied in below - the second will be published on this site soon.


Newcomers

Later this month my husband, Ross, and I will be introduced by our mayor to the 200 inhabitants of our small village in the Lot. Over aperitifs we, and the other newcomers, will get to know each other.

How different to my previous London life where no one cared if you had moved in or not! Since I arrived, swapping my green leather knee-high boots for pea green wellies, my life has changed - a lot.

In London I had thought that renting at the end of the Northern line was as far out as I could bear. However, ten years on I felt like a hamster stuck in a spinning wheel. I was working on films, tutoring school children as well as writing to pay our spiralling rent. Ross also worked non-stop.

We had both holidayed in France and knew that here we could live a simpler life with animals and nature. We could also buy a home of our own - and we wanted one that needed TLC. There are three of us now in our relationship: me, him and our pretty hillside house - our devotion to which will settle any row while we get used to having a less of a social life and living and working together 24/7.

We now have horses, dogs, rabbits, hens and a cockerel called Lucky - and at the market I ask for poules vivants instead of the prêts a cuire variety. As a result my wardrobe has morphed from pretty dresses to many-pocketed functional jackets.

My French is improving, although the other day while I thought I was chatting to my neighbour about my mare, he was wondering why I was referring to a pond!

There are good and bad France days - and there are certainly more ups and downs than I would have imagined to 'the dream'....

Publishers interested in reprinting this column, please email: frances@francespenwillcook.com.

If you would like to read more details about the journey, you can read my personal blog at: France and the Unknown.