“Bon Courage!” is something people say to us A LOT in France. Literally, it means ‘good luck.’ However, in the context of our renovation project, I think what people actually mean is, “you’re going to live to regret this.” The first time I realised this was last Autumn. We had just endured a very long Spring and Summer confined to our home in East London, feeling frustrated and cruelly taunted by the idea that we owned a property in the country where we were desperate to go, but weren't allowed. So when the first lockdown eased in September, we wasted no time booking a gite on a nearby property where we had stayed before, jumped in the car, and crossed the English Channel. The night we arrived we made pasta, opened a bottle of wine, built a fire in the woodburner and dialed in to a weekly video call we had been having with some good friends in America. Despite being in the middle of a global pandemic, things were looking up. The next day we bought tools and work clothes at the Bricolage (builders’ merchant) and set up some shelving in the old barn adjacent to the structures. From the start of the pandemic, work with our architect and her team of builders had ceased to exist so we couldn’t really do anything we would consider useful. But what we could do is try to make the property look like a place where a person might actually be living. We spent two days ripping out the overgrown brush in the little North-facing walled garden. When that was done, we went inside the old farmhouse and started hacking away at the walls in the front room. We thought this room would have been a bedroom at one time, until we found an opening in the back wall that appeared to have been a door or a window. Extension? Pigsty? After several days chipping off decades of plaster one dusty bit at a time and shovelling the debris onto a pile in the adjourning barn, the original stone wall started to reveal itself. Finally I could begin to imagine this place, if not yet our home, at least a house. One day as I was standing in a cloud of dust, head pounding in tune with my strokes, sweat beading up on my face, a car pulled into the East garden. Thierry, one of the sons of the former owner, walked in to a hearty chorus of Bonjours! Earlier that day we had texted him with a question and hadn’t heard back. His vineyard is a few miles down the road and we know now that ‘stopping by’ is an appropriate reply to a text message. We chatted for a while about finding people who could help clear some brush and got information about the electrical account. Finally he waved goodbye and on the way out the door I heard him laugh and say, “Bon Courage!“
