#1 - A podcast about France

An introduction to The Good Life France podcast – everything you want to know about France and more. Meet author Janine Marsh an ex-Londoner who lives in rural northern France, and Olivier Jauffrit from France who lives in London. Entente-cordiale – upside down!  

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Transcript of The Good Life France's podcast. Main feature: the guest interview.
--> Janine Marsh, editor of The Good Life France's website and magazine. //

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
Let's start. So something I'm interested to know. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. How did you end up living in the middle of nowhere in rural northern France? Tell me more.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
How long have you got? Well, it is quite a long story. But I'll give you the short version, which is - it was unplanned. And a big surprise to me as much as anyone else. Because what really happened was I came over to buy wine from London, because it's not too far from London, actually. You just drive to Dover and you get on the train or the boat and you come over,  it takes about three hours door to door from where I used to live. And I brought my dad with me because my mum had sadly died and my dad drank too much whiskey, and I thought wine would be better for him. So we came to buy some wine together with my husband on a really horrible cold, February day with a gray sky and sleet falling. And we bought some wine. And then my dad said I'll take you for lunch. And we decided to drive inland for about an hour. And it was really cold and windy. We drove to a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. We didn't know where we were. It was just potluck. We stopped there. And it was also potluck that when we got there, all the restaurants were shut because in France, they are religious about 12 till two for lunch, at least in the rural areas anyway. And so we had no lunch, we wandered the streets. My dad was really miserable. Actually, we were all really miserable. And we just passed an estate agents office, you know, real estate agent. And we were looking at all the houses in the window just for something to do and the estate agent come to the door and he said, Would you like a cup of coffee? And my dad said yes, before anyone else could say anything. And he invited us in and then he basically tried to sell us a house and I just said to him we haven't got any money. We're not looking for a French house. And he was really persuasive, really wily salesman. And he gave us his three cheapest houses, particulars to look at. And we left there assuring him that we weren't going to look at them. But then when we got back in the car, we had like four or five hours before our boat went back to the UK. And so I just said to my dad and my husband, why don't we just look, you know, got nothing else to do. And we'll see a bit of the countryside. And that's what we did. We drove around for about an hour to find the first house because it’s quite hard to find your way around. There are lots of country lanes with no names or anything. And we stopped at the first house.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
And it was really, really awful, partially burned, in a little village with nothing around it, and it was flooded as well. So we drove on to the next one. And in the next village, we stopped and it was quite a pretty house. We got out of the car, we walked up the path and I was thinking it was quite nice, actually. But then when we looked through the window, there was plastic flooring everywhere. It was not just on the floor, it was on the walls, it was on the back of the doors, and it was on the ceiling. It's a bit like a bit like a  serial killers den, you know, from Dexter, the TV show. So we got out of there pretty damn quick. And then we stopped at the last village. And again, it was horrible. It looked a bit like a prison. It was big walls, big breeze-block concrete walls all the way around. No bars, no shops, no people. And my dad said, let's just get home, you know, let's just leave this. And I was just about to go. And I looked out of the window and this man came out of the house. And I said to my dad, we're gonna just tell him that we you know, we're just looking because the house is on the market. Not that we're looking to burgle it or anything. And it turned out the man was English. He came over to us and he said, Oh, would you like a cup of tea. It was just such an unexpected surprise. So we went in had a cup of tea. And I just fell completely in love with it. Even though it was an awful house, it was a wreck. There were dirt floors, there were holes in the ceilings, it was water running down the walls, it was so damp in there.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
And when you walked across the floor, your feet sort of went squish because they stuck to the damp carpet. And there were corrugated iron doors because it was basically an old barn and animals used to live in it. But I just completely fell in love. I looked out the window to the garden and there was this beautiful big garden with a sheep in it. I don't know why there was a sheep in it. But there was. And some of the rooms had flintstone walls. And there was some big old outbuildings and beams across the ceiling. And I just got that feeling when you think oh, God, this feels like home. And it really did. And I just looked at my husband and he shook his head slowly. But by the time we left, I pretty much bought the house. And it was very cheap as well. I mean, you couldn't buy a decent, posh trendy Hermès handbag for the same price as we bought the house. And it was a big surprise to my husband, my dad thought I was mad. But I just I just knew I had to have this house. I didn't anticipate living here ever, but as a holiday home, because I didn't actually see how you could live in it with the  dirt floors and all the rest of it.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
But we did buy it and then a few years later, it was 2009, and my husband said why don't we just go and take six months off and go and do the house up.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
But then the dream grew about living here and living a different life. And I thought it would only ever be for six months. I didn't think I would last here for forever. And we came out in my mind for six months and 12 years later, I'm still here. So yeah, that's what happened. Told you it was a long answer didn't I.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
It's such a nice story Janine. I love it. Because usually, those stories, that kind of adventure are usually about how easy and idyllic it is, etc, etc, etc. But in the end, I believe that the real question is, what kind of challenges have you faced when you started your proper new life in France?

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Well, that's a good question. I mean, we've all watched the TV shows, and it does look so easy, doesn't it? Yeah, but the reality is, well, certainly for me, it wasn't actually that easy. I mean, we had all these grand ideas. We had a motorbike at the time and we were going to travel across France on our bike and get to see it. And then almost within months the first cat turned up, Winston, we call him and he was a tiny kitten we found under the wheel of our van in the town. And he was in an awful state. He was only four weeks old and we didn't think he'd make it through the night but he did.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
And then, two months later, we took in a stray dog and then another stray cat. So that was the end of the motorbike plans. And we thought we would live a more simple life out here. And that's what we really wanted. We wanted to grow our own fruit and veg, and we wanted to keep chickens and ducks and geese and be self sufficient. Actually, that's how the website got the name because there was a TV sitcom series in the UK about a couple who wanted to escape the rat race and try to live the good life. And it was called The Good Neighbours in the States. And so, and some of that did come true. We do grow our own vegetables, and we do grow fruit. And we do keep chickens, but we tried to eat one once and we realised pretty quickly that we're actually still townies at heart, we couldn't do it. So now we're kind of fairly overrun by birds. Actually, last weekend, I had to rehouse four male ducks, because we just, we're getting to the stage now where if you have more than 50 birds, you have to register as a farm in France, we don't really want to do that. So we took two of our ducks to live with a vet in the local town and two ducks went to a really nice man who's got a big lake. And they just wandered off without a backward glance, they were really happy.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
But no, it's not. It's not all easy. I mean, I've had electric shocks, I've broken fingers and toes from dropping tools and breeze blocks on my feet. And there was one time when Mark dropped a tile on my head when we were renewing the roof. And that was quite painful. But Mark probably has it mark my husband, he has it much, much worse than me. He he's had lots of injuries out here, but nothing too life threatening, apart from electric shocks, I suppose. And we've learned so much we couldn't afford to get builders in to do everything. So we just basically learned to do everything ourselves. We've done YouTube tutorials, Mark’s really good he went on courses and learned how to do plumbing, how to do brick laying, how to build the roof, electrics, absolutely everything. So in the end, we just got on with it. And I have to say we bought this house in 2004. We're still doing it up. So it's been a long, slow slog. But it's also been really, really exciting. Yes, hard work. And I think the worst thing though, is the cold. If you live in rural France, you pretty quickly realise when winter comes that you have to take care of making sure you stay warm. We only have one wood fire to heat the whole house. In fact we pretty much still do. But this wood fire works and that one didn't. And I do remember the first year I sat in the greenhouse, which was the warmest place there was. And I cried because it was so cold. And I was so fed up and I really didn't think I was going to make it here. And I thought about divorcing Mark and I thought about going back to live in the UK and get my job back and you know, earlier than six months. And then we met one of our lovely neighbours and he just said you don’t know what you're doing? You need wood. We hadn't ordered any wood and we couldn't find any because we left it too late. And he organised for wood to be delivered and we lit the fire. You know, basically it was back on no divorce. No going back to London. And yeah, we're still here. So yes. It's it's not as easy as you think it might be from the films and the TV. But if you're pragmatic and you're prepared to work hard, it's perfectly doable. That's what I say.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
I have tons of questions for you. I'm very curious about you, your life and your story. I was about to ask you. How did it go? So now I know. But, just to go a bit deeper. How did you expect French life to be and has it turned out that way?

Speaker: Janine Marsh
I suppose like everyone, I had bit rose coloured glasses, and I had visions of rose arbors and clematis growing around the door. And I thought you know I would keep chickens and collect eggs in a pretty wicker basket each day and pick a few vegetables for lunch. But the reality is, you know, you can do that. But there's also cleaning out the chicken coops and that's not fun, especially in the winter or when it's raining and the birds get out and eat the vegetables sometimes. So you don't always get the vegetables you're expecting to get! They’re like chicken ninjas they just scale high fences and they can even creep along the branches of trees. They sleep in the trees. I mean everyone thinks - I did anyway - that they sleep in coops but they don't!  My chickens sleep in the  trees so they can get out pretty much when they want to. And they eat all the flowers and you know sometimes they munch those rose petals that grow around the door!

Speaker: Janine Marsh
So yes, I would say 'Did it meet my expectations'? Absolutely. And then some… totally…more brilliant than I ever thought it would be to tell the truth.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
So, Janine, it's been a few years now: what has been the best thing about moving to France?

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Oh, I could write a book about that. In fact, I might.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
There's just so much. There's nothing really that I don't like about living in France, maybe the administration, you know, yeah, a lot of paperwork you have to fill in here. But for me coming from London, especially a big city with, I don't know, 9 million people maybe, to live in a rural village of 142 people and 1000 cows, the air is fresh. There's so much space. I love French people. They're so friendly. I love how everyone's polite and everyone says, bonjour, we went to the local town hall at the weekend, it was our harvest party, they call it a ducasse here, which is a Flemish word and, and I walked in with my friend and everyone shook our hands or we got kisses on the cheeks. It's just so lovely. I really love that. I love the bread, you know, baked by artisans in the shop. I love the croissants. I love the pop of a champagne cork and champagne. And it can take a while to make French friends. But when you do, it's for life. And I really love that then they're not sort of so outgoing, straight away in France, but you have to work up for it a little bit. And I love how everybody French loves heritage, and patrimony and they support the arts. And that's just a French way of life. More… I Love cafe culture, and people watching. I love that that's a way of life.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
I love cheese, Camembert and Comté and I even quite like Epoisse, although it's a bit smelly.  Where I live is quite near a place called Boulogne-sur-Mer and they make the officially smelliest cheese in the world. And I promise you, if you go to a cheese shop, and they've got it in stock, you can smell it before you even get in the door. I love cakes. French cakes are the best in the world. I really believe that they look like little jewels, you know, so colourful. I love the Eiffel Tower, the fact that it was meant to last for 20 years, and it's still here over 130 years later. And it's one of the most photographed and loved sites in the world.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Two hour lunches being normal here, I think is brilliant. The language. I don't speak French as well as you do Olivier. But you know, I can speak some French like, 'Croquer la vie a pleines dents'.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
Oh joli. Very good.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Did I say it right? Yeah. It literally means bite into life with all of your teeth. Or we might say in English you know, to embrace life to the fullest, but I just love that expression. Because it just makes me think of you know, seeing people just bite into life. And for me that means cakes and cheese and bread. And I love baguettes too you know. I love coming out of the bakers and seeing my neighbours with their baguettes tucked under their arm or in a basket and everyone just nibbles the end of a baguette. That's just the law in France. And I think as well for me, which is specific to where I live, maybe the community spirit, the whole, you know, life in the countryside getting together at the town hall once in a while. It's just amazing here and along the way. I've met so many people through Facebook, through Twitter, through Instagram, through the website, through the magazine… like you I mean how I met you is a Facebook follower called Gordon who lives in America. And he said 'have you ever heard of Paris Chanson', they play amazing French music. And I wanted to learn everything about my new country when I came here, especially music, because I think music is such a great common denominator for everyone. And I started listening to your show, and that's how we met, but it's another thing that I love about my life here and about France is the people overwhelmingly and the people that you meet through doing what I do. So a long answer again.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
The beauty of podcasts is we have all the time we need. And there's something else people need to know on top of all this, that Janine just told us, You have the best job in the world. You've traveled extensively around France. So my next question is apart from where you live Janine, which is your favourite place in France?

Speaker: Janine Marsh
So sneaky. People do ask me that a lot. And I mean the answer is obviously I love my region best which is 'Nord' of France, which is 'Le Pas de Calais' and 'Picardie', so three departments that make up the region and I do really love it here and pretty much everywhere I go I ring my husband and I say to him, I really love it here. I want to live here.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Like, I really love Aix en Provence. I'd like to live here or, you know, Burgundy, Bordeaux, the Alsace region, Charente-Maritime..., wherever I go. He says to me, you're just so terrible, you bring it up all the time, and you just say I want to live here instead. But when I go home, I'm so happy to go home. I know it rains a bit where I am in the north. But I do really love it here.

Speaker: Janine Marsh
Having said that, I did actually go to the island of Corsica this year for the first time. And truly, it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. The food is amazing. The wine is terrific, the people are great. So yes, I think if I were actually to consider leaving my village, I might seriously consider Corsica as my second choice. I think - well at the moment, because I've just come back from Corsica - but I'm going to the Loire Valley tomorrow. So I might say the Loire Valley tomorrow.

Speaker: Olivier Jauffrit
Well, thank you very much for that Janine. It's nice to know a bit more about you and your story.

End of transcript. The Good Life France's podcast is available on all podcast platforms, on TheGoodLifeFrance.com