Choosing a village

 How did you end up living where you’re living? I feel like very few people truly choose where they live, I think most people either live where they were born even if they went away for a bit, or people move to be with a partner, or they move for a job, or they move for uni and then stay. All of those do involve some choice, maybe you want to be near the grandparents or be in a city for a good job, or in an area with affordable housing, but I think not that many people look at a map and think “where do I want to live?”

I lived near Coventry for my first 19 years because my mum went to Warwick uni and then met my Dad who moved to Coventry for a job, he and only intended to stay a few years but they go sucked in for 30ish years. Then I went to Liverpool for uni because my ex-boyfriend went to chester and so I only applied to places near there. We were together at the time, otherwise that would be slightly unhinged behaviour. In my second year of uni we broke up but I stayed another 15 years in Liverpool.

Then we had the privilege of actually decided where we wanted to live thanks to Dan being an EU citizen and a pandemic making remote working a thing. So we looked at a map of France, for the hottest and most affordable bit of France by the sea. And maybe we went a bit too hot, currently only the ground floor of our 3 story house is really habitable for sleeping. Last night Percy couldn’t sleep, he first tried cuddling up to an ice block wrapped in a bag, and then went to sleep on the sofa down stairs when he was asleep Dan carried him upstairs so that the sofa was free for me to sleep on. I bet halfway down France on the Atlantic coast is lovely right now. But anyway my point is we did choose this region based on location we didn’t have any personal connections, but the village we live in is pretty random.

View from our current bedroom window

The village is just a village that had a good house free on the random weekend Dan came to look for a house one month before we moved here. And now that the 3 years is up on that house, and we are in temporary housing, and Percy is about to start secondary school and we know all the areas well, it seems a good time to actually choose a location. I’ve written about this a bit before, we went to see a few places and decided on Thuir being a good place, that’s got a good amount of amenities but still a villagey feel. 

It’s not easy to find houses though, and Dan’s trial period isn’t over until mid august, so in term of getting a house the official normal way that’s a bit late. We started researching Thuir to see if we could get some house views and negotiate something. At the same time a house came up in our village that was very similar to our old house except a bit worse and for 300 euros more a month. That’s how much rents have risen in the last few years. This house also didn’t have an oven, a dishwasher, a fridge or a washing machine. Which is quite standard in France. The walls were perfectly white which most people would love but after not getting our deposit back for our walls not being perfectly white after 3 years, I never want to rent a white house again. This was the only house up for rent in our village and nothing was coming up in Thuir either.

My work is fizzling out at the moment, my school work is only November to May because the school can’t afford a whole year, and everyone keeps cancelling their private lessons for various reasons. I’m trying to just make the most of being here, and chill a bit before I having to look after the boys on my own for 2 months. So I was at the beach having a swim and a roller skate along the promenade, just living my best life and then came home and was in the shower when there was a loud knock at the door. I opened it in my towel and it was the mum of one of Percy’s school friends who told me there was no school this afternoon,  and that while I was frolicking in the sea I should have been parenting. She also asked for Dan’s number because she didn’t trust me to understand stuff, which is fair. (She didn’t say that but it was obviously the reason.)

So Percy had no school because his teacher had a meeting with the secondary school, and what they always do when a teacher is off, instead of getting in a supply teacher, is share out the kids between the other classes if you’re parents are working or ask the parents to get them if they happen to be just sea frolicking and roller skating. Later on that night she came round to talk to the responsable french speaking parent about the thing which I wouldn’t understand.

Recent sea frolics

She wanted to fill in a form so that her daughter and Percy could be in the same class, but you have to do this together and sign a form to say you both agree they are friends. She also told us some useful information about getting the school bus and the day you have to go in to register for school. At first we said “well we’re still considering trying to move to Thuir.” But over the next week we just kind of thought that moving somewhere else and then trying to get into that school is going to be too complicated and too expensive and there was a growing pressure to get on with the Millas school application stuff that he was already sign up to, he had to choose an extra curriculum sport, (he’s considering outdoor cycling, climbing or acrobatics on a Wednesday afternoon and table tennis as a lunch club)  and he had to  decide if he wanted to study Catalan and decide what level of freedom he could have about whether he could make his own way home, its on a traffic light system from do what you like and leave school whenever you have a free period to only be picked up or get the school bus.

It wouldn’t have been impossible to move to Thuir, I’m sure they let kids in last minute, it could all work out, but I didn’t want it to all be last minute, I wanted him to be able to tell his friends where he was going, and I wanted to give a difinitive answer to the mum of this girl. So we decided let’s just stay in this house and let Percy go to the school he wants to go to, and give this mum an answer. Once he starts that school we ideally don’t want to move him so we might end up living in this village for the rest of our lives just because this mum pressured us to fill in a form! 

We still have to move out over the summer though because the house will be an air bnb to holiday makers so were busy moving all our stuff in to storage again, half of it is already there, the furniture and winter stuff like skis we moved to storage the last time we moved house in April, but we have to move everything were currently living with which does include some 3 chest-of draws, 3 bikes and 2 big desks up to the loft stage in the house and put everything back to how it looked 3 months ago. It’s hard work in the ridiculous heat.

I also went to take down my exhibition last Friday, and it was so hot that my phone was overheating and didn’t want to use the sat nav. The air con works ok in normalish heat but above about 34 degrees it’s just pumping out warm air. My friend Hawa who is Spanish/ Sénégalaise came with me to see the exhibition and help me take it down, she offered to put her sat nav on which was Spanish so then she was translating the Spanish into French (we can only communicate in bad french) we were both sweating buckets we gave up on the air con and had the windows down, the car said 43 degrees, it was not a relaxing way to travel but I did learn the Spanish word for roundabout.

I’m so happy that I sold some of the paintings a couple to friends and a couple to strangers. I also did a workshop which was so fun, art workshops was my main job in England and I miss it a lot, and this was a lot easier than when I’ve done schools workshops because everyone had chosen to be there and everyone had enough space and good quality materials and no one threw a chair at me (that once happened when I worked in a pupil referral unit.) 

If anyone in England (or anywhere) wants some of the left over very post-able art let me know and I can bring it to England when I come next week. Here’s a few examples they’re all A4 20 quid including postage. You can see the full options on my Instagram (@artisthannahjones)

I’m coming to England on Saturday, and I’m pretty excited about seeing lots of people and being a normal temperature. Dan is a little less excited to be staying to work. He’s hoping to do a few fun things at weekends, the first 3 weeks he’ll be right in the south and he’s going to see if he can hire a mountain bike and cycle to Spain, its really just the other side of the mountain. Imagine that is your normal life, and then for the one week he’s got a holiday in August he’ll be spending it in Preston.