May the 4th be with us....

I'm starting to think I've started, or more likely become a member of a secret society rather like the Free Masons but more cheese and wine orientated. Before you think I've bought a new pinny, I'm at pains to point out that it's a club of people who've moved to France or who are contemplating it in secret. People keep coming up to me in places like the coffee queue at work and letting me know they're thinking about it, they've got French property websites squirreled away in their favourites. Other people stop me whilst out walking the dogs to tell me about their friends who've done it and who are enjoying it massively. I am collecting names, numbers and email addresses. There seems to be common themes to the gallic exodus. "They wanted a different pace of life", "they wanted to downsize and enjoy the countryside" - no one seems to be moving to large city France. No-one seems to be doing workwise what they did in the UK. The "truth" which is spoken through innuendo, metaphor and occasionally body language in the form of Les Dawson-esque expressive lip movements is that the escapees were seeking a more values based existence. They were seeking some kind of spiritual re-energising .One in which agriculture, eating a local harvest and being content with less material goods is the norm. It's a bit like going back to the 1950's without the ricketts, spam and smog.

Forget whether the destination for all of these people is France. What is it we're all running from and what are we all seeking that we're not getting where we are? Maybe we're the new hippies and France is the new commune. Ipad the new tambourine. Armagnac the new wacky backy.

My bit of the commune will still have a dishwasher. I asked my electrician this week whether we can take British appliances to France.. "just change the plug mate"..

Well thereby lies a problem. Plug fitting is my Star Wars. I've never done it. Never envisaged it either. I know Alec Guinness was in it but I cannot do it. And in the same vein I will have a house full of adaptors you buy at the airport... 23 at the latest count.... the Empire does strike back, three pins rule....

By the way we have an initial completion date of May the 4th....

For richer for poorer in tiredness and in the bargain aisle

David has sent the contract recorded delivery to France. Now we wait to hear if we've signed all the right bits. There is a fortune to be made in France from those little luminous stickies that lawyers in UK use to helpfully show you where to sign. Those apparently haven't made it across the channel. A bit like rabies but in reverse. I don't think it would be a fair trade either. We went a bit signature-tastic in the end with a spray and pray approach to signing just to be on the safe side.

I'm starting to get a bit money focused ie for the first time in a long time I am facing the prospect of no monthly cheque coming in and I am switching lights off and shopping for two for one offers as if they are going out of fashion. I've come to the conclusion that having a regular pay cheque actually makes you lazy. I can't honestly remember thinking so carefully about how I spend my money when it comes to simple things like groceries and every day items. That regular pay cheque also makes you complacent. I now look to see how much things cost and I value them more. I've been handing over money in a haze for years. When you give your credit card they always say "check the amount and enter your pin".. I never check the amount. Who does? I now know diesel on the motorway commands a significant premium, a trip to the cinema is actually about a quarter of what a single unemployed person has to live off a week. And thinking about the cost of the cinema meant I valued the experience more. I also had to think about whether i was going to the cinema or going to do something else like have a take away. I couldn't justify both. So being poor makes you richer because you don't live life in a hypnotic state and you stop to think about what you're doing and what you're getting out of things.

So... what cost wealth and what value being a bit poorer? I'm still sweating it though worrying whether we're going to sell the house and when. I'm thinking of getting Christine a sandwich board and a different patch to pound everyday.

If I'm honest we're a bit worn down at the moment as we deal with the mountain of tasks related to our new lives. So I'm feeling like we need a trip to France. It's been more than a month and as things get tough this end, we could probably do with an injection of standing at Le Monteil hearing nothing but wildlife and breathing the air, so rich and pure you can chew on it. Then popping down to the village for stewed coffee and cheese at the village cafe. Reminding ourselves why we're doing all of this

There's no joy to be had from the exchange rate. 1.19 and too many 0's. It slipped in positive response to Greece as it found itself being bailed out more times than a leaky pedalo at Southend. If I was a betting man though I would reckon there's a few undeclared invoices and pawn slips under the sofa cushions in Athens waiting to surface when we least expect it; that's unless Iron Girdle popped round for a robust rummage whilst they were all out of the country signing the loan agreement.... I hope she didn't damage it though because even DFS have limits about who they'll lend to....

Piddler on the roof

Sometime between lats and delts at the gym this morning I received a simple text to say that the new roof would be going on the house very shortly. I was so excited I was worried a little bit of pee might have escaped. This is such a distinct milestone in a world paved with seemingly endless milestones. It will hopefully be followed very shortly by milestone sceptic tank and milestone kitchen... seemingly unconnected but so very vital in terms of being able to live at Le Monteil comfortably so we can chunk through things like taming the 7 acres of wilderness which surround the house, tackling the barn which will be converted to double our living accommodation and then erecting a new wooden barn to house an array of wilderness taming kit....some of which I admit I am quite intimidated by. I will have no clue what I am doing with most of it and nervous I will convey this when I go to buy it. I am even thinking what outfit will reduce the chance of me looking like the potentially dangerous amateur I inevitably am. Wellingtons and overalls must surely do the trick. Anything with lambswool and matching corduroy will look like a weekender.....

I've been busy with the dying embers of my career this week, it doesn't officially finish until April. As David Mees has also been madly busy my animal husbandry has gone to pot. Tubby dog has developed an obsession for the chickens' food. He busily scoffs their corn and seeds as they squawk in vein protest. His little doggy brain doesn't equate his illicit snacking to what happens later. I've never been one for granola bars but never less so after seeing something similar being ejected with great determination and something of struggle from the rear end of a hairy French hunting dog. I will need to improve how we separate creatures from nature's all you can eat buffet when we're building compost heaps with free ranging wild boar and deer at our back door.

The endless and slow paperwork for Le Monteil has changed our overall thinking slightly. Not a complete deviation but certainly a commercial adjustment. The whole buying process will likely take 9 months (if we're lucky) that's before we've hoola hooped through the planning permission process for the building changes and then found someone to do the work. Building our gites empire may take a backseat for a while. It's too slow a burn to get them up and running for income and we cannot afford that. Our adjusted plan is to divide our time between a UK bolthole and France for a while, both fulfilling freelance projects. I'd always wanted to do some project work anyway to keep my hand in and keep my brain going. It felt like we'd softened but actually it might be good for our sanity and long term success. The posts have changed but the goals haven't. We're ploughing on... figuratively and literally.... well we will when the rotavator has been mastered

I'm a bit worried about Iron Girdle, she's not been seen for a while, she's not in the headlines. How does she motivate herself if she's not got a summit to see over? Did they not have one this week? They usually do. However the exchange rate is hovering at a steady and tiresome 1.2 and some change.... she must be exerting some influence....

The pen is hopefully mightier than a farmer

David and I have in our possession a contract! Le Monteil is about to exchange, well when we work out where to sign... the ipad has been the scene of swipy frenetic activity as he google translates a hefty document en francais... Of course after we've done that there is the quaint (irritating) French law that says all the local farmers have to be written to and given first refusal to buy the house at the same price...and they have 8 weeks in which to do it or forever hold their silence. Hopefully they're not averse to two homolulus from Britain moving in with fabric swatches and endless colour charts so they don't club together, sell one of their wives, a cow and the henhouse made out of a 2Cv in order to protect the neighbourhood. I am not going to worry. Just like I am fairly sanguine (notice the odd French word slipping in there) about whether our house sells, if I can learn to drive a tractor and if we ever get the planning permission we need. I have noticed that worries which originate from other people's actions and which spring up on you when you least expect it (mostly what happens in an office) eat away at you more than worries orginiating from your own deliberate actions. ie "I've taken on a crumbling French wreck with more personal implications than getting a visible tattoo whilst drunk" is quite alright versus "the board are going to give you six additional deadlines and halve the time in which you need to do them" Maybe it's about being more in charge of your own destiny? Living your life for your self? Living with your own actions...

Madam mayor still hasn't passed judgement on the roof renovations so they cannot go ahead. What is she doing? By her own admission she only has 85 constituents some of which must be livestock, if she wants constituents 86 and 87 she needs to do a man from Del Monte on our polite request.

I need to pay closer attention to the upcoming election in France. It has more implications to me now...Apparently Sarkozy is in trouble but Iron Girdle is going to pop over and campaign for him.. is she going to leaflet houses? How will she do it? Will she get a new chocolate brown suit for the occasion? I rather think she's too busy getting bank notes printed on Greece proof paper....

Exchange rate back over 1.2 thank you Greece but if it and Rangers go bust in the same week there will be some unhappy kebab shop owners in Glasgow and I don't want that on my conscience for the sake of a petrol strimmer

Get me to the Greek, I will do a bit of coaching

Following an altercation with yet another concrete post I dragged what remains of the battered Volvo up to Staffordshire this week. I spent a massively rewarding two hours with a dozen young people who in a non Daily Mail way are pillars of their community, having chosen to run their own community enriching projects. I'd been asked to give them a talk on how to communicate well, how to build their own personal brands and sell their projects to maximum effect. The true test of that talk will be in a few months when I have to sell myself and build my brand in order to gain a few days consulting every now and again to pay for agricultural items. If I get nervous about selling myself, my rotavtor-motivator is these young adults who are doing braver things than I. As I left that residential course, undoubtedly spewing bits of Volvo trim across the car park in the process, it dawned on my as to why I was on more of a high than I had been at work for ages. These guys gave instant feedback through their energy, their body language and frankly through direct feedback, in real time. At any given moment (and on Twitter afterwards) they were saying how they rated what I was doing.That feedback was my fuel to keep going and to keep improving at any given moment in those two hours. I think part of the reason I tired of corporate world was spending too long not knowing whether I was doing a great job, a sh1t job or even the job I was expected to do.... I suppose it could have been worse they could have resolved the issue with getting me a coach. Coaches in corporate world are senior exec status symbols... "Now dear, I've got a wheel embedded in a jahari window and a venn diagram for you to fill out... I want you to capture the timeline of your career and what you think your goals are for the next five years".... that would have been fun. Poor love might have retrained to be hairdresser with me sitting in front of her flipchart.... can you get a goat into a diagram???

Iron Girdle must be doing something behind the scenes during the current Greek tragedy apart from handing out the bourbons at half time during the talks. Greece is erupting like Victor
Meldrew on esctasy and the exchange rate has dipped! 1.19! Bye bye fluffy towels. I feel like I'm on the generation game and am watching all the good stuff go by on the conveyor belt....

The wheels on our bus keep falling off, falling off...

We had a dose of reality this week akin to a suppository shaped like a butter nut squash. French bureaucracy. On steroids.... work at Le Monteil ground to a standstill when our vendors realised our new chum Mme Mayor needs to approve even the most basic roof renovations and the siting of the septic tank.... we're still waiting to hear what the outcome is but it's pushed the completion date back to May..... Even the dogs looked a bit forlorn, probably because they may have to wait to give their new passports a whirl... "we had those rabies shots for what exactly?" yeah boys but you did get your nails done at the same time so it wasn't all bad was it?

everything else at the house, like converting the barn from a derelict nativity scene into a swish sitting room will require full planning permission. We managed to download the 15 page planning application form from the government website, realising that our French needs to dramatically improve in areas of vocabularly beyond "Marie Claude and Jean Francois" which is the Gallic Janet and John. More butter nut squash...

Christine the estate agent is waiting to put the house on the market until she's got the perfect exterior shot for the brochure. I have to say it summoned all my resolve when I saw the amazing interior shots her professional photographer had taken. I was so proud of our house and what we've achieved here at Greenwood, the people we've welcomed here and the fun we've had. God children coming here days after they were born., holding a riotous impromptu wake for our best friend. I also had a major pang of guilt, wondering if I am selfishly dragging David Mees to a land of forms and delays rather than croissant and large open spaces...he says not..

With his usual ability to cut through the doubt in a wise way he cleared it all like this "Tom, if the next twenty years are merely a repeat of what we're doing now, what's the point, what would life be for?"....

Well the Euro has rallied a bit against the pound today... The Iron Girdle must be exerting her influence over the endless Greek discussions.... she must have sent in some Lebkuchen at half time to keep them going...damn. It's cost me a set of pans

I have a new boss, he's called David

So when I'm no longer on an organisational chart, am not a name on a box, have no job title, am not running a team... who the hell am I? Stripped of rank and function, a diary of up 12 meetings a day and everything scheduled from the moment I get up to the moment I run out of steam about 12-14 hours later, how will I cope? (by the way was I the only one who'd occasionally put fake holiday days in the diary just to get some work done?)

Well the answer to all of that became abundantly clear this morning when discussing how we were going to heat the farmhouse in France. I naturally had romantic notions of wood burning stoves fueled by our home grown wood, smelling all lovely and enticing. That's probably as far as my thinking had progressed. Big picture, low on detail. David ipadding the current temperature there and discovering it makes snow clad Britain look tropical, pointed out all the inefficiencies of wood stoves as a sole heating source. Within ten minutes he'd discovered all sorts of French government grants and discounts for those who are building wood fuelled central heating systems (up to 40%) Wood incidentally is a really low carbon way to generate heat. He'd found a way to supplement my wood vision and turn it into something practical whilst I'd already "progressed" on to wondering how many goats we needed.

So it's official. I now work for him. I rather like the idea. It did make me realise that for too many years I have been coming up with big ideas that others have then had the difficult task of making work behind the scenes as I reach for the next Starbucks and mad idea. Can I apologise to wonderful people like Iain Lumsden, El Portis, Andrew Robins, Sunny Harrar and many others who've in effect been sorting out my "wood" issue in corporate world for years. Incidentally they've worked miracles....and I am massively grateful.

Euro is hovering at the 1.2 mark...not bad... Apparently though old Iron Girdle is off to China on a visit? Is that allowed? Can she leave the beleaguered continent just as Greece is about to get all it's credit cards chopped up? If it slips to 1.25 I can buy a rotavator... that will need lessons too as I doubt it comes with parking sensors and automatic gearbox. A cup holder would be nice though....

Angela and Nicolas Wallpapering services

OK failed miserably on Euro update yesterday, sorry.. it ended well folks. Down enough to get some bed linen too. Angela and Nicolas are papering over the canyon like cracks in the Euro crisis... "oh those naughty Greek people are having some lovely lovely chats it'll be fine..." meanwhile Portugal is teetering like great Uncle Will in the receiving line at a wedding having been on the sherry since breakfast. In my head I see poor Angela Merkel playing with one of those children's toys where you have a big rubber mallet and things pop up that you have to bat down as quickly as possible... they are popping up faster than the poor love can wield that yellow blue and red mallet and there's only so much action that particular 24 hour girdle can cope with even if it has been engineered specifically by BMW.

Pivotal day for Le Monteil renovations, will Mme Mayor let us repair the roof without three months of planning permission...amongs the new skills I am learning through our French voyage is patience. The liberation of knowing the world doesnt come to an end if something doesnt happen this moment, this instant and certainly not by lunchtime. The calm and serenity is amazing AND it lets you focus on other things rather than obsess on the thing you think has to be done Now. Here. Immediately. It also makes me less ranty....

Let them eat cake

I think I've attended and organised my last ever Top 50 event today... unless in future it's the Top 50 goats or suchlike... I had a moment where I thought "damn I'm going to miss this" and then a board director asked me to get them some cake... next person who asks me to get them some cake will be paying me for the privilege, in France, I will have baked it and it will feel fantastic...and I will be thrilled to get it for them.

The train into London takes 45 minutes each way, you dont get a seat and it costs £90 pounds to come in for the day. I should stop now or I will turn into my grandmother "where have the days gone where you could go to the flicks and have a fish supper and all for 3 and 6". In reality my grandmother never went to the cinema nor had a fish supper she just liked to use that as an everyman metaphor for the cost of gin and cleaning ladies.

David gets back from a client trip to Berlin tonight. I shall be thrilled to see him and my welcome home news will be I've been researching chainsaw classes online. We will have lots of wood afterall and a fire to fill. I'm not sure he will be that excited, my sell will be that responsible chainsaw ownership comes with a "dress up costume" ie chainmail everything.... trousers, gloves....

Our current pre France livestock extends to three ageing chickens and the dogs. Archie (fat dog) was extensively sick in the garden yesterday due to eating something putrid on his walk. All I will say is that the chickens thought it was an all you can eat buffet. I am wondering what earthy delights goats will bring....