We may be in the throes of doing something reckless.
We just might be doing something irreversibly mental.
We might be about to purchase a wonderful house, with nine acres of land, a lake, a duck pond, some trees and a swimming pool.
I have not even mentioned the enormous workshop, the garage, the six bedrooms and bathrooms, and the hot tub. Also there are the sunny terraces, the log burning stove, the enormous driveway and the two kitchens, three if you count the one in the workshop.
Suffice to say that if we can sell our house we will be able to buy it.
I am trying to feel over the moon with excited happiness, but actually what I feel is utterly nauseous with terror. Really sick, as if I had the world’s nastiest hangover after fourteen Jaeger Bombs and a kebab with cheesy chips from the Charcoal Grill.
In fact I have just had a kebab and chips, although without the cheese. This was because it was the middle of the night when we finally left the maybe-about-to-buy house, and we were just weak with relief when we passed a neon flashing sign which declared that the purveyors of French kebabs dwelt therein.
France is not big on night life. It is not very big on day life either, and it has been a source of some curiosity between us as to where the French actually go during the day, because everywhere is utterly deserted. Every single French village could very easily be used as the setting for any zombie apocalypse film, cast as the place where the innocently pretty young woman is wandering about by herself, investigating darkened corners with girlish curiosity, just before the music has built up to a squealing violin climax and the ravening ghoul leaps out from behind the war memorial.
Anyway, in such an atmosphere we were profoundly relieved to find a place where we could be the ones doing the ravening, and where there was food on offer which was actually identifiable and almost even predictable. We dived in and were completely silent for about fifteen minutes whilst we devoured our way in great gulps through some mayonnaise-smothered animal corpse. Neither of us could be sure what it was, and cared less.
We had looked at another house in the morning. It had been a house for which we had great hopes, being an old water mill, still with its wheel intact, and which Mark had felt he could probably turn into home-generated electricity.
We explored it with great interest, because we badly wanted to like it. It was cheap, and a bit run down, and was in fact a combination of three houses, an enormous garden, and a couple of sheds.
The houses were quaint and full of the sort of character that you bang your head on.
We walked around them and talked and talked, and drove away scowling with concentration. We stopped a little way away and dug out our mobile camping stove and picnic and thought hard.
We knew after a little while that we did not want it. It was beautiful, but needed more work than we could possibly manage, because we are not getting any younger, and we did not want to be ploughing out stinging nettles nor re-roofing sheds.
We had just been arriving at the first place when something had happened.
The agent for the very first place, the one pictured in these pages, called us, wondering what time we were going to arrive.
We had dismissed it as being too far south, and probably out of our price range, but some insane demon whispered in our ears and we agreed to go down.
Of course we loved it.
We are currently considering it. The chap who is selling it has agreed not to sell it to anybody else until our own house sells, so we could possibly, maybe, perhaps, be the owners of a massive house in the sun.
I am feeling absolutely sick with the shock of it.
I will keep you posted.
