G met Veronique, the agent, first thing on the Monday morning and asked for permission to access the barn during the week, in anticipation of the actual exchange of ownership later in the week.
During that crazy week, G found time to meet with Thomas Moore, an English builder with whom he had exchanged a few emails. Thomas was able to provide a strong post to hold up the rotting huge oak lintel over the barn doors - obligation-free! He and G discussed our embryonic ideas for the barn, and intimated that it would be the kind of job he would happily take on. He and his wife live in a similar barn not far away.
Thomas's wife Eleanor would prove to be an invaluable resource. She prepares plans for submission to the Mairie and, being bilingual, is able to smooth all sorts of bumps in the road along the way...
G also found the time to speak to the Mairie in Chabrignac regarding the permis de construire, and the powers-that-be in Vignol about the fosse septique and came home with the requisite forms for both. He also measured and re-measured the barn, inside and out, so that we could begin to design the renovations.
On the second last day of his trip, G met with the agent, finalised the last-minute paper work, and then drove with her to Terrason to meet the vendor and the notaire. At last, the paperwork signed, the barn was officially OURS! G went to the barn immediately and texted me the news. I had been watching the clock and calculating his movements, and it was a wonderful shared moment of joy for us both, despite the time difference.
In his new capacity as home-owner, and wearing new gardening gloves and wielding new secateurs, G spent his last afternoon at the barn clipping back and pruning ivy. The apple trees were cloaked in it and the ivy had started up the outside walls of the barn too. He picnicked on the grass, with his back against the warm stone wall, ate an apple from our tree, and picked up one of the fallen walnuts to bring home for me.
Perhaps all the unusual activity at the barn attracted the attention of the neighbours in the petite ham eau of La Fromagerie, since, one by one, they found an excuse to come out of their homes and wave of peer in curiosity at the stranger. G met Jean-Marie, the adult son of the neighbours across the way, and he met his elderly mother, "Mme l'Echelle", as we would christen her (having borrowed a ladder from her husband on our first visit and not having been introduced).
We texted back and forth like mad things that day, and I'd seldom heard G sounding so happy.
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