March-October 2011
We returned home to Sydney like triumphant warriors: exhausted but satisfied and with a whole lot of superfluous-to-requirements adrenaline coursing through the veins.
Family and friends tried to match our enthusiasm, peered at the photos of the property etc., but quickly resorted to wiggly smiles when the topic of The Barn came up. Family, especially, seemed bewildered about the implications. Had we decided to move to France, then, or what was the plan? The spectrum of interest ranged from the faint to the moderate, with most people lurking in the lower reaches. When we spoke of our excitement that it could be something we could ALL enjoy one day were met with blank looks or shifted gazes.
In reality, this was always our dream, and no amount of wishing or shoving and pushing was going to make it a shared passion. Our kids, at least, were chuffed, even if they said they were chuffed 'for us'!!
When the dust had settled, and we'd received the requisite info from the agent, we arranged to pay the deposit for the purchase by direct transfer, and the sale was secured.
There began a long period of several months of waiting for the sale contract to arrive from the estate agent. We went from talking manically about the project and the barn to settling into a rhythm of daily life interspersed with the odd email or letter to which we needed to respond. During this time we asked questions about the property and began a long negotiation which would result in our swapping the field which came with the barn (and which was 'one field over') with the field right next to the barn, so that we would have a contiguous piece of land.
Needless to say, our written French was being tested all the time. The whole sale transaction was conducted in French, since neither the agent nor vendor speaks English. G is my hero; he handled the entire thing single-handedly.
We had been told that the sale was likely to take about 3 months and, allowing for the slow-down during summer, began to anticipate that the sale would be finalised in late August/September. With this in mind, G planned a trip over to France in early October to coincide with a business trip in Asia, and it seemed to us that this would allow plenty of time for the documents to be lined up for signature. In the meantime, we found some local English-speaking building contractors' names on the internet and began to make connection with them. Our reasoning here was that, since we live so far away from the build, we do not need another potential communication complication in the form of a French-English misunderstanding. Also, it would appear that the English contractors in France are accustomed to dealing with off-site owners and with keeping them up to date via email etc.
As it turned out, the wheels only really began to turn when G's trip was imminent. Early in the morning on the day of G's departure, we got an email from the agent telling us that she needed my signature on a form that G would sign in her presence. My signature had to be verified by the French Consulate; noone else would do. I dropped G at work and raced across town to the French Consulate, where I had to wait in a nearby cafe until it opened. I was the first through those doors and managed to get the document signed and delivered back to G as he was standing waiting on the pavement for his taxi to the airport... Breathe...
