Sunday, September 16, 2012

Little boxes


…and big boxes and bags of all shapes and sizes. Suddenly I can’t see the living-room furniture for all the clutter. Yes, the Transit household is packing up and heading north again and another summer in Normandy is rapidly drawing to a close. Of course it will be good to see Wales and our family and friends again, but that doesn’t stop me feeling the usual pang at uprooting myself from what has become a much-loved home and area.

After getting up well before dawn on Tuesday, we leave France on the early morning ferry and by that evening we will be having supper with DS and his family. The next day will be spent with DH’s mother and by Thursday evening we will be home in Wales, rapidly taking the weight off the very small campervan’s uncomplaining suspension.

I plan to while away some of the almost six-hour Channel crossing drafting the post I’ve been promising you all for ages. It’s just been so busy here recently, with friends to visit, the village soirée or evening meal and social to attend, and a hundred and one neglected and now last-minute jobs to finish, that writing has had to take a very back seat. But the nights are drawing in and once I’ve unpacked and put everything away again, that will mean much more time for quieter occupations such as blogging.

So it’s au revoir to Normandy until next year and soon we’ll be welcoming each well-known landmark, as we make our way back over Offa’s Dyke to the green hills and quiet valleys of our beloved Mid-Wales. I am so very fortunate to be able to spend my life in such beautiful places.

Image via Google

48 comments:

  1. Hello Perpetua:
    Oh the bitter sweet feeling of summer drawing to a close and leaving your cottage in France. But, as you say, you also have somewhere beautiful to welcome you back to the UK. It is indeed a huge privilege to be able to live in such wonderful places, we feel the same ourselves.

    And, as the nights draw in, how we shall look forward to your posts written from the glorious countryside of Wales. Even worth welcoming winter for!!!

    Safe travelling!

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    1. Thank you, Jane and Lance. Yes, it becomes harder every year to leave Normandy behind, but Wales still has a very large and long-established share of our hearts.

      Even without the temptation of blogging, I always welcome the change of season, as each has its peculiar beauty and charm. How very boring it would be to have only one kind of weather - even sunshine.

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  2. No Perpetua it really isn't boring...at least not to me who has a brain spasm if the temp. falls below 75F. We do have our fair share of rain and cooler days too but I'm grateful they only last for a short time before the sun comes out again. But your Normandy and the beautiful greenery of Wales must be beautiful too. Perhaps one day I'll get to see both. So happy you'll be filling us in on what's been happening while you've been away.

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    1. I'll have to take your word for that, Astrid, as I doubt I'll ever experience it for myself for longer than a few weeks at a time. :-) 75F for me is a warm summer's day and we don't get so very many of those over here. If I'm honest I would really miss cool, misty autumn mornings and crisp, cold, snowy winter ones. I'd better stay where I'm planted, I think.

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  3. Welcome home - and yes, fortunate indeed.

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    1. Thanks, Mark. I never forget to count my blessings where landscape is concerned.

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  4. I find it difficult dragging myself back to the UK after only two weeks in France, so I can only imagine how you must feel after a few months.

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    1. It's the transition, I think, Jean. Once I'm back and seeing my family and friends and enjoying our different but equally lovely countryside, I'm fine until next time. It's probably because three months gives my lots of good memories to take back with me.

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  5. Hi there again! We got back to Southport on Saturday -- horrible drive through England on M1 and M6 -- grrrr. Sad leaving France, but nice to see green grass and even to have a rainy rainy day! Great to be back online and to have my trusty laptop waiting for me! And so great to be back in regular touch with my blogging friends. Safe travels to you both...

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    1. Hi Broad and welcome back to blogdom. You have been missed. Sorry to hear your return journey was so awful We're taking it in stages, so should find it easier to adapt to the increased traffic levels. Just a hint - we will be in Southport again in late October....:-)

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    2. Well, I hope to see you then!b:-)

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  6. Wishing you a safe & pleasant journey back to Mid Wales Perpetua & looking forward to reading that post you're planning to draft whilst on the ferry.

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    1. Thanks, Ricky. Just taking a break from packing to reply to comments before my laptop is packed away for the duration. Interestingly I'm starting to have more than one idea for a post as autumn approaches. :-)

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  7. Travel safely. As my mother in law always says 'suffer fools gladly'.

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    1. Thanks, Rosie. We're not in a hurry, so we should enjoy even the journey, letting the fools overtake and get out of our way. Your mother-in-law is right. :-)

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  8. It's the time when the adage 'Better to travel hopefully than to arrive' doesn't quite cut the mustard, I suspect. But a journey is always necessary between one place and another, so I do hope it's a safe one that passes as quickly and smoothly as it needs to.
    Axxx

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    1. Thanks, Annie. I actually enjoy the travelling itself, it's the packing and unpacking which are the chore. Still, it's so worth it. :-)

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  9. You feel sad to leave but it's a sweet sadness because you are going to another lovely place where you have another life and friends. Take care on the journey, and I hope you come home to a sunny day. There's nothing quite like a sunny day in Wales to make the greenness glow and the colours come alive.

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    1. You're so right, Sarah. One of the costs of this lifestyle of ours is having to say goodbye at times, but then there will be the hellos at the end of the journey. Sunshine in Wales would be great and I really do think people are entitled to some after the summer they've had.

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  10. I really don't envy you the packing and organising...but how lovely is it to be able to enjoy three very different places through the changing seasons.

    The heavy rains are setting in here....so I'm laying up stores of clean laundry for the two or three weeks next month when only light stuff can be sure to dry between the downpours.
    Makes me think of the days of the six monthly wash in the 'good old days'.

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    1. It's undoubtedly a chore, Fly, though one which in some ways is easier because we're so used to it, but harder because we tire a bit more quickly than we used to. But as I've already said above, it worth it for the reason you give.

      I don't envy you your wet season. At least we usually have wet and dry alternating at much shorter intervals. Hope you manage to get some laundry days.

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  11. I don't see how you can do this every year. We are surrounded by boxes for the first time in six years and I'm already going bonkers.

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    1. Ah, but we're not moving everything, EF, just a selection and we've become much more efficient at all the packing and unpacking with so much practice. I think it's a price worth paying to spend the summer in Normandy. :-)

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  12. Dear Perpetua, yes, you are fortunate, and the wonder and gift is that you recognize that and are grateful for it. Living in and with gratitude seems to me to be the elixir that gives and restores contentment.

    It will be so good to have you posting regularly again.

    I've started a second blog--on writing. Whenever you have time to stop and visit my first blog--coming home to myself--you're see the link there. Click on it if you have the time to view still another blog! Peace.

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    1. Thank you, Dee. I knowe it may make me seem rather Pollyanna-ish, but I do try to count my blessings regularly and be thankful for them. :-) I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of posting more regularly, though I'm afraid I slept through the ferry crossing rather than drafting my next post.

      Thanks for the reminder sabout the new blog, but I'm ahead of you and have already signed up to follow it.

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  13. Your French stay seems to have flown by, but I love the way you enjoy each element of being in your 3 homes and the getting between them. You are my role model for being in more than one place, and I am trying to appreciate each bit, rather than spend time planning for the next bit. I hope your staged return to Wales is enjoyable, and I look forward to hearing more about your time in Normandy over the next few weeks. J.

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    1. Gosh, Janice, I'm not sure I can live up to being a role model, but I'm glad my hard-won experience is proving useful to you. :-) In the past I used to spend far too much time looking forward and not enough just living in and appreciating the present, but learning to do the latter has made the whole of life so much more enjoyable and contented. What a shame it's taken me so long to learn the lesson.....

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  14. It will be lovely to have you back and perhaps better able to stay in touch on a routine basis, but I can imagine how hard it will be to flip the switch back to "every day" mode--even in your lovely Wales! Travel safely and as always, so good to hear from you! :-) Debra

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    1. Thanks, Debra. Interestingly, I don't think there is a switch to flip nowadays. Because we spend such a long period in France, we don't think of it as a holiday, but rather as living our everyday life in another place, and the same is true of Scotland. The great time-devourer in Normandy is the garden, which I just love working in. No mowinmg equals more blogging. :-)

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  15. Safe travel as you and your DH wend your way back to Wales, Perpetua. As another has said, bittersweet is the parting and journey, but, to return to your beloved Wales just the antidote for the next chapter and season. I'm just back, myself; from my visit up north, glad to be home, sad to be so far from our MN limb of the tree. So it goes. . . we enjoy those moments we have.

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    1. Thanks, Penny. You know all about long journeys and partings, and about finding the good things in different places. I left France and our friends there with a big pang, but it's good to see family again and I'm looking forward very much to driving up the long hill home tomorrow afternoon. :-)

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  16. Safe journey back to Wales, and looking forward to reading your long-promised post :-)

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    1. Thanks, Catriona. The post is written in my head - all I need now is time to get it down in print once I'm home. Watch this space....

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  17. I'm not Welsh by birth, and there are many places in the UK I could happily live, but I've realised lately that after nearly 18 years coming back to Wales feels like coming home now. I just need to move further in and do the job properly! It must be a wrench to leave Normandy, but how lovely to have Wales to travel to :D

    Safe journey :D

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    1. Thanks, Annie. I'n not Welsh-born either, but a Lancashire lass through and through. But we've lived in Wales for 40 years now and I can't really imagine calling anywhere elso home in the same way. Mid-Wales is very special and getting back there makes up for the wrench of leaving our little cottage in Normandy.

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  18. Safe journey Perpetua. Looking forward to more blog posts from you now that winter is on it's way xx

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    1. Thanks, Ayak and the same to you for your return. I have a feeling we're both in the same county for once. :-) I'm actually looking forward to the darker evnings and the pleasure of drawing the curtains and settling down at my desk....

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  19. You must be well on your way 'home' by now. Where is home? Is one place more home than another?

    It's chilly already here, you'll need those thermals soon.

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    1. Friko, when you wrote, we were at my mother-in-law's and arrived back in Wales on Thursday, to find we had no phone and therefore no internet. Sigh.... Being now back in touch with the outside world I can answer your interesting question.

      Fundamentally Wales is home. We've lived here for 40 years and wherever we go, I think it will remain so. That doesn't stop us feeling 'at home' in France and Scotland, if that makes sense.

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  20. Oh, bless you, Perpetua! I can't imagine dealing with all those boxes and moving from one place to another on a regular basis. On the other hand, each of your homes sounds so wonderful. Like Friko, I wonder which one feels most like home?

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    1. Thankfully our pile of boxes is rather smaller than the one in the photo, Kathy, except when we come back from France with 3 big boxes of apples to see us through the winter. Being honest, the packing and unpacking is getting more tiring as we get older, but so far it's still very much worth the effort. As I said to Friko above, Wales is truly home, as it's where we brought up our children and spent our working lives.

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  21. Boxes! I still have some unopened from our move to Turkey in January. I hope you are more organized than me.

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    1. Since January is nothing, BtoB :-) Be warned, we still have boxes not yet unpacked from when we moved back to Wales on my retirement 5 years ago. Some of them may even date from our move to the vicarage 11 years ago! :-) The relative handful of boxes from our travel to and fro is nothing like the nightmare of a house move.....

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  22. You must be an expert packer by now! There's no place like home .... so where would that be? Sue

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    1. LOL, Maa! If my pension ever stopped, I reckon I could get a packing job with a removal firm by now.

      Fundamentally Wales is home, but after 5 years of this lifestyle DH and I are able to feel comfortably at home in both France and Scotland for as long as we're there. It may sound odd, but it's true.

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  23. I had an idea and made one little adjustment. I thought I'd see if it works and allows me to leave a comment. Let's see if it works! :-) Debra

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    1. Wow, brilliant! You made it, Debra. Welcome back. :-)

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