Getting bored is not an option as I age. I recently came back to the UK from running a travel business in France. When I say running first we built our small hotel ourselves and then ran a tour business from it. When converting a three hundred year old farmhouse and barns into a small hotel the most difficult bit is finding the right bits in the builder’s merchants to put together. Not only did we renovate the place but we put an extra block in of three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a lounge. Short of a few minor problems like my wife catching fire doing the plumbing and me finishing up in a French hospital with a hernia it was a very successful operation – the hotel as well as the hernia operation. One thing to bear in mind if you are rushed into a French hospital in the middle of the night is to remember that the plastic things they give you are to put on your feet not on your head.
Forget all those American hospital television programmes where the staff are wandering about with plastic head coverings these are in fact shoes. How a nation could get it so completely wrong is beyond me. I entered the operating theatre with a plastic shoe on my head and the last thing I remember before being ‘put out’ was the surgeon complementing me on my choice of head gear.Even putting a staircase in is achievable if you can master the art of buying a staircase speaking no French. If you are considering ever putting a French staircase in here are a few tips. First you cut a hole in the floor where you going to insert the staircase making sure you are not standing on it as the cut out portion crashes to the floor below. Then you get a very strong French man to stand with the new staircase on his back and hold it place whilst you screw it to the wall. One of our fireplaces was ten foot across and in the winter it used to snow in the lounge; you did not need to go outside to determine what the weather was you just looked at what was happening in the fireplace. One of the more interesting confrontations with the denizens that inhabited various parts of our property was with the rats. Rats are extremely cunning creatures and do not take kindly to being poisoned. The opening round in the struggle involved leaving a small open tin of poison in a strategic position in much the same way as a General would have deployed his artillery in battle. Both the tin and it’s contents disappeared. Our next effort was to use one of my daughters Frisbees upturned as a receptacle for the poison. This would be moved seemingly effortlessly into another part of the loft. Next we nailed the Frisbee to the floor and the rats carefully tore pieces of paper and placed them across the poison. What finally finished them off was a scattering of poison across the floor and we could then sleep without the constant noise of seemingly hob nailed booted rodents holding nightly war games in the loft.
In those days (I am not sure whether it happens now) you could wander round the builders yards selecting whatever items you required and they would be delivered that day without payment. This was a slightly unnerving experience the fact you as a foreigner could just be trusted to pay up later. What may have helped was that the staff of the builders merchants were also the local fire brigade and at Christmas they would knock on your door for your monetary contribution to their fire fighting endeavours. If you coughed up sufficiently generously you earned their co-operation for the year.
If you did happen to employ French tradesmen you could not count on them turning up on time. When I say turning up on time what I mean is coming within twelve months of being booked not a couple of hours late. Our chimney was in urgent need of repair because it had a large hole in the brickwork. Over the many years it had been standing the brick work had perished from the water pouring down. The chimney in part supported the roof beams so we felt it needed urgent specialist attention. The builder turned up and told us that what he would do was wrap the whole chimney in chicken wire and then cement over the chicken wire. He said he would do it in three months unless the harvest was delayed. On one occasion our friends ordered a gate and then twelve months later after they had forgotton they answered their door bell and low and behold the long forgotten gate man appeared. The important thing is that you must be relaxed about these things. Some rather posh English people in the next village got upset with their builder and not only did he stop work a duck was left to die in the house whilst they were back in England. We wanted one of our window frames replacing and the local joiner came and gave us a quote on a piece of plywood. The quote simply gathered dust for three months and the joiner appeared. He rushed in the house and hid behind the door – he was hiding from another of his clients who had waited for a considerable time for him to turn up. The next time he arrived one of his tyres and punctured and he came in to borrow the jack. On one occasion a chap popped in simply for a rest and he told us how in the past he had been a self employed horse drawn plough man and at the age of eighty five he would still go out for a ride on his bike.
One of the saving graces of France is the abundance of cheap alcohol. At one time mobile stills used to go round the villages turning various concoctions into spirits. The French being very pragmatic about these things decided that the mobile stills should be replaced by making nearly pure alcohol available via the local chemists. Provided you sounded right and were able to show that you were not blind drunk at the point of purchase you could fortify your wine with the chemist’s alcohol.
One of the most remarkable people we met was our neighbour who lived in a couple of rooms in the Town Hall. He had been a prisoner of the Germans during World War Two and they had let him go on account of his ill health. He lived in the Town Hall with a few pieces of furniture and never complained about anything. He was cheerful despite his bad health and was inspiration to everybody. When you die in France certainly in the villages the undertaker brings round a refrigerated slab and you are laid out for the village to come round and pay their last respects. He died after the exertions of the Saturday night dance in the village hall. I used you tell them if I died they were not going to lay me out on a slab and tell jokes about the English. Sometimes the ashes of the deceased would be put into an urn and placed behind the bar in their favourite café. Our friend’s brother was the most taciturn individual you could ever meet. In the war he to had been a prisioner of the Germans and had specialized in making shoes for his fellow prisoners. I would be standing on the top of a ladder trying to hold onto a bucket of cement rendering endeavouring to patch another hole in the wall and he would appear out of his gate intent on telling me in the patois of that part of rural France how to do the job. He walked very slowly and he wore the traditional French clogs, berry and blue overalls. When he arrived he would by gesture and incomprehensible word direct me. The more he would instruct me the more cement used to fall out the holes. He used to turn me into a nervous wreck.
Of course you could tell endless funny stories about life in France but after twenty years of owning the property we came back to the UK.
We got tired of running our tour business which was a seven day a week job and sought pastures new.
Our web site http://www.euro-traveller.com underwent a change of direction. We looked around for a new interest and thought about some of the old artisans still making metal products in Sheffield in the North of England. Families many of whom have survived through generations making fine products such as scissors and knives preserving the old handed down skills.
Sheffield as early as the 14th century was noted for it’s production of knives and by sixteen hundred had become the main centre of cutlery production in England. Sheffield was involved in major innovations in steel making and a few workshops still operate producing fine quality items in much the same way as they did in Victorian times. The city itself has seen better days and the bulk of the mass produced cutlery manufacturing trade is now in the hands of Far Eastern producers.
It’s a major change from out tour business but at least we speak the same language as the natives and it keeps us busy as we age.
A Few Tips on Hotel Building which I strongly urge you not to Adopt