Change

I always thought I wasn't very good with change. I like stability. I like security. I like what is known. But looking back over some of the decisions I have made in my life, I realise that this might not be true.

When I was a child, I attended piano lessons from the age of seven. When I was eleven, I discovered the guitar and at fourteen, the classical guitar. By the age of seventeen, I took the risk of changing from piano to guitar as my first study instrument. I was no longer a pianist, I was a guitarist. I chose an arts college deep in the Yorkshire countryside rather than a well-known traditional University course. This decision changed my life. I loved my time there, and, at the end of my three year degree course, elected not to take my place on the Post Graduate teaching course, but to leave, and start my own business with my then teacher. We ran that business from a rented studio in Chester. This was so far from the plan I though I'd had- to get a degree in music, do a teaching certificate and get a nice, safe job in a school. Although I did eventually go back and get that qualification, I never did teach in a classroom. I became a peripatetic teacher, and have taught in corridors, cloakrooms, gym changing rooms, school kitchens, cupboards, school libraries, the head's office in one tiny, two-class primary school in deepest Cheshire (they had an infants and a juniors-that was it!). But never in a classroom, never with any guarantees of students year by year, term by term. No salary, no sick pay, no paid holidays. I played, I ran courses, I sold instruments, music, accessories. It was precarious but amazing fun.

In my 30s I met a man with two children. I did not want children of my own but I fell in love with this man (and his children) and tried to imagine moving my whole life to where they lived (my home town, so somewhere I knew well). But still, all my teaching, my pupils, my friends, were in Chester. I imagined trying to make his house work for us all. We tried to buy somewhere with the space we needed, but failed. So we extended his home and it became the place we needed it to be. From thinking that my whole life was centred in Chester, here I was, back in Manchester. I loved it. I loved them. I loved this new life, and making my professional world move to a new city too.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the boys had grown, the house was too big, our itchy feet were sending us all over the world on adventures, travelling together. Then came the biggest risk of all. We decided to sell the house that had become such a wonderful home to us all, buy an apartment nearby, and a house in France. This was 2015, nine months before the referendum. We looked at twenty six houses in a week and chose the last one we viewed. We bought it. We worked on it until it became our second home. We stripped wallpaper, we painted, we had a small second bathroom installed, we had an electrician come and earth the building (EEK!). We embarked on our split lives-six months in the UK, in our beloved Manchester with all that city life has to offer, and six months in rural France, the (sometime) peace and tranquility, and the stream of visiting friends and family, all coming to find out and experience what it was that had prompted us to make this move.

Then, on the morning of 24th June 2016, that all changed. And yet it didn't.  We awoke to news that we thought we would never hear, and feared the worst. The reality of the end of our freedom of movement became a constant background hum of anxiety. We were staying in France for up to six months at a time, whilst exercising our treaty rights-to be self-sufficient, to have appropriate health cover, to not be a burden on the State or a threat to it (!). The loss of these rights would mean that we would be able to stay in the Schengen region for only 90 days in 180. We would not be able to stay for six months whilst letting our apartment in Manchester. In short, this was a change that would alter the rest of our lives. Worse, it became more and more clear over the months and the years, that it would damage the UK in ways people had not imagined in those years before 2016, when Farage and his party were just a cult-ish party of nostalgia-ridden extremists of whom nobody really took notice.

Since then, we have lobbied, marched, engaged with our MP and MEPs, joined twitter storms, basically done all we can to try to mitigate the damage that brexit is already wreaking on our home country and its economy (even thought we haven't left yet). With every twist and turn of the saga that Brexit has become, we have waited and waited for the worst to happen, and yet, it hasn't. We have not left the EU. I hope and pray that we never will. 

And now, we are waiting for the next instalment. We will, within minutes of my posting this, have a new Prime Minister. If it is who everybody is expecting it to be, he will be capricious, dishonest, childish, cruel and dangerous. We can only begin to imagine what changes may come from this eventuality but my reluctance to embrace change has never been more challenged. I find that I am, quite literally, holding by breath.

See you on the other side.

Left

We are in Manchester. We are here for three reasons. Jack has a work meeting-a meeting he attends monthly, most months of the year, whether or not we are in France or the UK. It holds his interest, and is important to him. It involves making decisions about the things that have been important to him all his working life- housing, people, the city he loves, the direction the developments take, how they are funded. It is exciting and worthwhile, for lots of reasons. Next, chronologically, not in order of importance, Jack's God-daughter, a wonderful, vibrant, bright and lovely woman, is marrying her partner, an equally lovely, connected, and thoroughly decent human being. The God-daughter is the child of dear friends. There will be people at the wedding who are from the most ancient history of my husband's past. People who make me, his wife of 17 years, seem like the new girl. And it will be a blast. We will come together from the various parts of the world, and our lives, and celebrate this union. Finally, next Saturday, we are going to London to march. The march is in support of a so-called "People's Vote"-a vote on the terms of Brexit, if there are actually any terms, or indeed, whether to leave or not. Between these events, we will see other people who we love and who we miss.

We left behind (as usual) a beautiful, autumn Dordogne day. Impossibly blue sky, glorious reddening and browning vines, a simple lunch of cheese and charcuterie at a market, with friends we love. We arrived in a cloudy, blustery, but not cold, Liverpool. We took the bus and train to Manchester and arrived, as usual, in another world. At around 7pm on a Saturday evening, Manchester is getting it's sparkle on. There were girls, leopard-print, banter, swagger, noise, fumes, traffic, trams, horns, sirens.... The first few minutes of this were an assault. I kept looking left instead of right to cross the roads. The noise and the people and the sheer city-ness of it all was overwhelming. But by the time we arrived at our friend's apartment, a ten minute walk from the station, I didn't want it to end. I wanted to follow the fabulous girl in the leopard-print coat to wherever she was going, to dance with her, drink with her, and, possibly, to fall over with her at the end of it all!

However, we were Mr and Mrs Sensible. We were buzzed in by our friend, who had prepared a feast of lovely food and wine, and we ate and drank and talked and decompressed.

The following day, we met friends in the bar across the road. We thought a quiet Sunday afternoon glass of something would be nice. Oh dear. There was a band on. There was dancing, singing, wine. The Dordogne seemed a very long way away as the afternoon passed in a blur of talking, singing, laughing and crying and generally putting the world to rights.

Shadows

It is the first of September. The days are still long, the sun is warm and we live mostly outside, still. We swim, we meet friends, we take our visitors canoeing. The markets are still busy with tourists, but slightly less so. The shadows are lengthening, the sun sets further and further along our terrace, the shade arriving closer and closer to our chairs each evening as the church in our hamlet strikes at seven o'clock.

It is the last week of the local night markets. We will go and see each friends. There will be fewer stalls selling food, fewer people attending-mostly now the people who live here, rather than the holiday-makers. We love going as much as the visitors do, and in a way, I miss them-the strangers who fill our villages with laughter and noise and fun. But there is something special about these last night markets. We see our friends who live here, who, in the height of the summer, are busy with visitors of their own, showing them how to navigate the stalls, the best duck, the yummiest crepes, the crunchiest chips. But now, we are able to sit together and chew the fat (sometimes literally!), talk about our summers, our friends, our plans for the winter and, in many cases, the dreaded "B" word. 

Brexit.

There it is. Always. Affecting us all. Casting its own shadow on our lives here. There are the British who live here, worrying about their rights to remain, how their businesses will be affected. The retired, worrying about their health care, access to their pensions. The mixed French/UK  couples who are concerned about their rights, the rights of their children, some UK born, some French born. The ones who are other EU/UK mixed, who are hoping that this will give the non-EU spouse safe passage through the coming months and years. The French, who, in our area, rely so much on the British tourists who come and spend their ever-depleted pounds (friends who have stalls in the markets have noticed the decreasing number of British customers this year). The 6-monthers like us, who will be restricted to 90-day stays in any 180 consecutive days. Yet it is still all speculation. Nobody can actually plan. Our government is trapped n the headlights of what we now know to be an illegally funded and run campaign that has resulted in a vote that will undoubtedly be catastrophic for the UK and its most vulnerable, for the NHS, for business, for research, for education, the arts....

This shadow has been upon Jack and myself for the last three years. We are living our lives to the full here, savouring it, loving it, trying to ignore the background hum of worry that is constant. It is never off. It is always there. Will there be a deal? Will there be a transitional period? Do we jump, get residency? If so, can we afford health care if the reciprocal arrangement is lost due to a no-deal brexit? Will we be able to access our pensions if passporting rights are lost?

And amidst all the worry, the constant background drone of it, the sunflowers droop beautifully in the fields, ready soon, surely, to be harvested. The plums in the fields on the outskirts of our village weigh the boughs of their trees down, the pallets piled up on the verge, ready for the harvest. The leaves on the vines are starting to turn from green to their gorgeous reds, yellows, oranges. I have made the first of my blackberry and walnut crumbles from the wild fruits that grow all around our hamlet.  Dinner with friends tomorrow evening will end, we have been promised, in a bag of fresh figs from their tree, which is producing far more than they themselves can eat. Our own fig tree, bought last year, when we had greater hopes for our future here, is not yet fruiting. We are planning to collect walnuts from the ground beneath the trees on nearby villages, to be eaten next year after they have dried out . Yet we don't know if we will be here to see our fig tree fruit, to eat the walnuts we collect this year for next year's blackberry crumble.

We will be in the UK in October. Jack's God-daughter is getting married. We will also go to London for the march in support of the People's Vote on the terms of Brexit. It may be futile but I can't just do nothing. 

I become angrier. I love this place and I love Manchester. But I am being forced to chose. I cannot choose.

The shadows lengthen.

Double

I saw your double today. She was standing on a pavement in a bastide town on the Dordogne. She had her back to me and her silhouette in the late afternoon sunshine, the way she stood, her jeans, her hair, they were all you. She turned around and suddenly she became someone else. But she had reminded me of all the things you were to me. You started off as a colleague in the next teaching room along from me, but soon became a friend. I could hear you greet your little pupils as they came though your door, or, if you had to go and get one who had forgotten to come, I would hear you singing some refrain from the last song you were teaching- absentmindedly but beautifully- and it always made me smile. You were irreverent, naughty, rude, kind, exuberant, pragmatic and wise. Your brought me cake. We shared laughs and nightmares, counselled each other about our darkest fears. You made me a better person. I hardly see you now, but we keep in touch, have lunch sometimes, and when we do it's as though I only saw you yesterday. Just today I commented on your dog's facebook page (for you are the kind of person who's dog has a facebook page). Within my comment was an encouragement to come to see us in France- you will always be welcome. But I know that, amongst the many things we have in common, you are an avid traveller and I may have to wait some time for you to have a space in your diary for France! You travel for music, for your sons, for the sheer joy of it. The food, the drink, the people. I hope that one day you will come here.

We are now both in very different places from when we first became friends. In many ways, we are in much better places. Our boys are becoming happy, successful and independent. We are less concerned about many things. The stuff that initially bound us, the things we were struggling with then, have seemingly passed. Now, when we meet up, we talk of other things. Where we've been. Where we're going. We laugh about some of the schools we know, the characters- staff, kids, the politics of it all. Yet I know, should I need to, that if life throws something at me that I can't work out, you would be there with your calmness and your thoughtful way of just listening and waiting, then making a comment that somehow makes it all seem like it is something that can be dealt with.

I think of you often, especially when you are not posting online- I hope that it is because you are doing something so interesting- so fun, so naughty, so life-enriching- that you are just too busy to tell us all about it! You commented, yesterday, cryptically, about the power of gin. I would love you to come to France and drink gin with me. Or wine. Or beer. But, wherever you are, whichever time zone, I will think of you when I am drinking my gin, and I will drink you your health and happiness. And to cakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPCjC543llU

Shots

I have an ear worm. It's from Hamilton, the musical. I started listening to the soundtrack in January. I've never really connected with this kind of music. Hip hop, rap...I don't hear it, I am deaf to the subtleties of the genre. Or at least, I was. I know many would say that Hamilton is 'hip hop lite', a little sanitised, mainstream, the acceptable face of it. But we all have to start somewhere. I am learning that there is real wit in the poetry and word play, and some beauty in the harmonies and dissonances. What started off sounding, to me, like number after number of very similar-sounding tracks slowly distilled into very different pieces. I am now singing, and sometimes rapping along to the soundtrack. Each time I listen to it I hear something new-another clever rhyme, another nuance. Having now seen the musical, I'm so glad that Jack's eldest bought us the CD for Christmas before we saw the show. It enabled us to become familiar with a form that was alien to us, gave us time to fall in love with it.

So, back to the ear worm. It's not the lyrical, heartbreaking "It's Quiet Uptown" with it's mournful 'unimaginable' refrain (which, as I type, Jack has randomly just sung whilst watching the Antiques Roadshow- don't ask-there is probably no connection, but clearly, he has an ear worm too!). It's the rap "My Shot" ('I am not throwing away my shot, I am not throwing away my shot, I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy and hungry and I'm not throwing away my -beat- shot!"). It's punchy and full of energy. It's a hymn to youth and ambition. It's joyful, but when you know the story, you understand that it is prescient too- of a darker side of the many interpretations of 'shot'.

Last night we made dinner for two very dear friends. I was at primary school with J. We go back a very long way, in years and in life stuff. She knows where the bodies are buried, as do I. I hope that she and her family will come out to France again this year, but I really needed to see them before we left....just...because. We always have a blast. We drink. We shout. Sometimes we argue. There is often dancing. There is laughter and eating and fun. We started the evening, at J's suggestion, with cocktails on one of the best roads in south Manchester, which happens to be a five minute walk from where we live. It has bars, delis, clothes shops, restaurants- mostly independents, quirky and lively. Our bar of choice had "Like a Virgin" blaring from the old-school juke box in the corner. Cocktails ordered (whiskey sour, espresso martini, caipirinha and, of course, a French martini!), the group a couple of tables down from us were clearly on not on their first. Or their second. They were singing along, badly and very loudly, to Madge. My ears were bleeding. Next up, the late great George Michael, and Elton John-Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. The loudest and most enthusiastic singer of the group, a woman on a mission to involve the whole bar, picked up a candle from her table and conducted the entire clientele whilst belting out the song along with George and Elton. She apologised for not knowing the words. I observed quietly that she appeared to be struggling somewhat with the melody too, but she seemed not to be cognisant of this fact. Sensing that she may be spoiling everyone's quiet enjoyment of this shared space, and by way of an apology, she ordered shots all round. Limoncello, as it turned out. Well, at this point I felt compelled to forgive her. We all downed our shots in one. Everything started to seem extremely agreeable. The singing lady put on some Blondie (Parallel Lines-one of J's and my favourites when we were still at school), told everyone that we were only allowed to play 80s stuff for the rest of the night, and then left, along with her mates. I've said this before, and I'll say it again-only in Manchester.

Remembering that we had four courses to eat back at home, and one more round of cocktails later,  we went back to eat. First course-hot beetroot shots with yogurt and tarragon ice cubes. There was a small amount left over which wasn't even one serving. This evening, whilst going through the leftovers, we realised that there was no real value in having saved such a tiny amount. Jack threw it away. And there's that ear worm again....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic7NqP_YGlg

Donegal

I'm at Cornbrook tram stop, the coldest, windiest Metrolink station on the network, two seats along from a girl who seems quite quiet. There's an eight minute wait for the tram. It feels like forever. When it arrives, the girl springs up,  beats me to the door, opens it, then lets me on first. I aim for a seat not too close to the door, forgetting about the girl in my quest to get warm.

The carriage is nearly empty but the girl joins me on the seat next to mine, plonking down with a slight sigh. She puts her head on my shoulder and says hi. I am surprised. I say hi. She says she's shattered and I say 'me too'. I say that I'm cold, freezing. She says 'is your arse cold, those seats, huh?' and I realise that she is absolutely spot on. The metal seats at the tram station are bloody freezing, and so is my previously referenced arse. I agree that it is cold, very cold. She is wearing navy opaque tights and dark blue docs. She has amazing legs, a flawless completion, shiny, curly hair and an Irish accent. She says she isn't drunk but if she's not then it's something else. But she seems fairly coherent though. As coherent as me, anyway, on the way back from a reunion of school friends, some of whom who were probably younger than she is now when we last met. I feel a bit old. I ask her where she's getting off and she says West Didsbury. I say me too but then I remember that I get off at Withington as it's slightly closer to where I live now, and say so. I admire her docs, tell her they're a gorgeous colour. She says they're new, she's wearing them in. I say I'm wearing little heels tonight. She advises me to look at the Doc Martens website. She tells me that that you can get docs with heels now. Can this be true? I wonder in my head, but I don't say it out loud. I ask her where she's from and she tells me Donegal. She says it's beautiful and gets out her phone. She says she'll show me a photo. I tell her I know some bits of Ireland but not Donegal. I tell her I went riding in Connemara. She looks incredulous. I insist that it's true, I went riding there once, suspecting that maybe she thinks I don't look like a person who goes riding. Then she realises that I said 'riding' but she thought I'd said 'hiding'. We both think that this is hilarious.

By now we are approaching Chorlton. She hears the announcement and she looks at the station display sign. She says she has to go now. She gets up, goes to the tram door, and gets off. For some reason, I don't stop her, don't point out that it's not West Didsbury. I never got to see the pictures of Donegal, but it can't be as beautiful as her.

Time

It's that time of the year again. Time to think about time. The clocks go back this weekend, so we will have another hour in bed on Sunday before we go to the local, weekly market in our nearest village. It'll be the penultimate one we go to before we leave for Manchester in a couple of weeks. Suddenly, time is contracting before our very eyes. I can almost see it getting less and less. We thought we had all summer. We thought that we would paint the radiators and put some gates in and visit Sarlat and Duras and Carcassonne. I was going to play more, once I had the ok from my hand surgeon after my trigger finger and thumb operation back in May. That was about three weeks ago, surely?

The summer has, yet again flown by in a flurry of visitors, friends, oysters, markets, a couple of road trips, oysters, thunder storms, power cuts, and did I mention oysters? And seemingly overnight, the weather has gone from glorious sunshine to mist. The trees are suddenly looking less leafy and the vines are turning to gold and red.

It's nearly time to pack and leave. This process takes time, naturally, as we start to think about what we need to take and what we can leave behind. The journey to the UK, unfortunately, is not so leisurely. When we drove down last spring, for our first summer here, we came by ferry. We stopped twice on the way to Newhaven, and saw some family and friends. We stopped twice more in France, spending time looking at the cathedrals of Rouen, Chartres, Orleans and Tours. It was a time to transition, to adapt. We shed our Manchester lives and gradually slipped into our French ones. It was painless. More than that, it was necessary, but until we flew back the following November, I didn't realise that. It was almost brutal, that re-entry. In the morning we left the hazy sunshine of Bergerac and by the afternoon we were in rainy Liverpool, feeling, it has to be said, a little stunned. I missed the gradual change in the landscape, the weather, the culture, our lives. As we traveled by train to Manchester, there was a disconnect. I felt somehow lost, that I had left something behind, forgotten something. We entered our Manchester world with a roar-the theatre, the city, the Christmas markets, exploring new bars that had opened during the summer, catching up with friends. I soon lost that strange feeling but I remember it now, as we plan our departure. I feel that driving back would be gentler. Time would make the move back a more fluid, less jarring experience. This year, again, we will leave autumn behind in the Dordogne and arrive at Christmas time in Manchester, all in a matter of hours. The city's festive lights will already be on, and the day after we arrive the Christmas Markets will start. The gradual change in seasons will be replaced by a two hour flight. Gone will be the midday and 7pm bells of our hamlet's church, which have always rung at these times to tell the workers to come in from the fields. They just ring twice- the important hours of the day to pace a life- lunch and dinner-work, eat, rest.                        

This year, the journey back is slightly more complicated. We have to fly from Limoges, because  Ryanair has stopped its Bergerac to Liverpool flights over winter. It takes more than two hours to drive to Limoges airport from our house, rather than the ten minutes to Bergerac airport. It seems that I will be getting some of my wish to have a longer journey after all and it is a lovely drive. But then it will be a matter of hours before we are back-city dwellers again, at least for a while. I can almost taste the Mancunian air, feel its buzz, its energy, the possibilities it offers. And, in spite of myself and my wish for a slower experience of moving between my two lives, I am excited. The city is waiting and, in a way so am I.