We arrived in France a week before Christmas in 2001, we signed for the house a few days before Christmas Day. It was such a strange feeling, we knew no one which felt odd, but Christmas day was a gloriously sunny one so we started the day with morning coffee on the large stone terrace running along the front of the house.
We had the most splendid front door which we later found out had come from a local ruined church. There we were, coffee and croissants, followed by a bucks fizz, when our tall, regal neighbour from the chateau seen for the first time came to introduce herself. Therese Guiral was a truly gentle, impressive lady, very welcoming and she sat and passed a lovely morning with us. We were more than slightly perturbed when she warned us about the neighbours who lived in the school house, on the otherside. Robbers, thieves, liars, nothing good I can tell you, in fact it was a bit alarming. Then off she went and not long before she had closed the portail doors our neighbours from the school house appeared. We then had a pleasant hour trying to understand them, whereas Madame spoke perfect French the schoolhouse neighbours had thick impenetrable accents of the South. They proceeded to tell us how mad the lady from the chateau was and how she was convinced they had stolen from her wine cellar (which she was).
By the time they left we did not know who to believe but we did know we were in for an interesting time. It was not long before we discovered poor Madame had alzheimers and the strange family from the schoolhouse were certainly not robbers, but were not the brightest on the block.
For the first year these were the French we had contact with and so assumed all French folk were like this. Fortunately now 12 years on we have many French friends who we realise are just like us ... but speak French.
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