Читать книгу Our House is Not in Paris - Susan Cutsforth - Страница 6

Before I get to that moment of utter devastation, why was it that we didn’t go straight to Cuzance and our own petite maison? After the usual exhausting flight from Sydney, we arrived in Lyon to pick up our car that Stuart had organised to hire for the following six weeks. Mind you, this was after waiting an additional two hours at the airport, as, yes, our luggage was lost. Just what we needed after the interminable flight. As we arrived to collect our car I noticed a magnificent, sporty-looking car. In fact, much to my delight, it turned out be ours as Stuart had arranged it as a surprise. Amazingly enough, I had my camera ready to capture the moment. A brand new Citroën — it had only been on the market a week and it was absolutely superb. Everywhere we drove in France it attracted a lot of attention, and people even came up to us to enquire about it. It was all quite extraordinary to be foreigners with such a deluxe car.

Despite being exhausted from our flight, we couldn’t get the keys to our apartment in Lyon until 6pm. So we had to wander around for quite a few hours in the damp and drizzle to simply fill in the time. Fortunately, the apartment turned out to be great, newly renovated, with a marvellous view of Lyon — especially the assorted rooftops — and a cathedral on the horizon. Luckily, our luggage arrived at 9pm, just as I was about to stagger off to bed. However, what was fascinating was that the apartment was on the top of a very old building, and there were 196 steps to reach it. It reminded us of our home in Australia in Austinmer and our fifty-nine steps to reach the house. A rather ironic touch.

Following our two days in Lyon, we rented a house in a very small village, Puymule, for two weeks. It was a much-needed break from all our renovating in Australia and the hard work that was to follow in Cuzance. At times, both then and in the following year, I’ve had many moments to wonder whether we were utterly mad. It seemed like our life was just one long renovating saga: finish one house, look around and ask, What’s next?

As if buying a house, moving and renovating hadn’t been demanding and exhausting enough for the past ten years, we also had to buy a holiday house that just happened to be on the other side of the world. I wondered when there would ever be a real holiday and felt constantly torn between the romance of it all and the — at times — what felt like utter madness.

Despite having our own petite maison, we decided that going straight to Cuzance would mean the whole six weeks would be consumed by endless renovating. And we needed a break from renovating. This should have sounded alarm bells in itself. Part of me also thought this was a foolish decision, to rent a house in a country where we now had a house, but it turned out to be an inspired one.