25 June 2015
Brits in Brive
by Robert Rhodes
We are now immigrants in France – for the next 5 years. The brief was to rent an old stone house with a large, cultivable garden on the edge of a quiet village no more than 20 kms from Brive-la-Gaillarde. We had ventured across the Channel in December to look at the house of our dreams but had found that neither the landlord’s photos nor Street View had revealed the horrors that lay inside that ancient dwelling. So, where are we? In a dilapidated 1960s villa with a vertical garden on the heights above Brive. True it has got a swimming pool … though previous tenants did nothing to stop ivy entangling and destroying the pool’s heating system. Are we mad? Probably. But this has got us out here and we can now explore the area at our leisure and prod the local ‘immobiliers’ into finding the perfect house. Meanwhile, after nearly letting our house in Bath to a feckless charmer, we have tenants who have spent the last 17 years in New York City and the Hamptons but want their children to have a British education.
For the geographically-challenged, a term which seems to cover most Parisians and all Brits, Brive is 2.5 hours drive east of Bordeaux, 3 hours north of Toulouse, 3 hours west of Clermont Ferrand and 1.5 hours south of Limoges. It is socialist, rugby-obsessed and the place to go for walnuts and foie gras. My wife, Sarah, translates “gaillarde” as “ballsy”, which seems about right. There is a story of their women hurling marrows down on the heads of ‘les Anglais’ in one of the many sieges during the 100 Years War. The town also houses the Museum of the Resistance.
The gods have been with us so far. We were only the second plane out of fogbound London City on the day of our departure. The owner of our holiday cottage had got the internet box up and running by the evening of our arrival so I was able to deal with the world other than via my iPhone. Nearly all shops were closed that Monday (Monday, it transpires, is the closing day here) but one was open – the one which could offer us a bundle of broadband, fixed line, mobile and TV, for which we are now duly signed up. The driver of the 5-metre high lorry bearing most of our worldly goods failed to follow our repeated requests that he be guided by us on which route to take. Hence the plaintive phone call at lunchtime on Tuesday to say that his hugely sophisticated satnav had brought him through the middle of Brive and up to a bridge with a 3.4 metre maximum height and that he was now being badgered by the police. In fact, the police (all women) were superb and escorted him back out onto the motorway and off it again, along the exact route that we had advised him to take in the first place.
The policewomen were charming and helpful and, having told us that we had infringed about 17 different local rules, persuaded their bosses and the town hall officials over the phone that the movers’ lorry could stay parked outside for a night…provided I escorted them off Brive’s premises when they were finished. We have met nearly all our neighbours and, like every other local we have encountered, they have all been warm and welcoming. It helps, of course, that Sarah speaks such beautiful French. The best moment of all was on Saturday when we watched Max the postman come up our street…singing…with words for everyone he met, including, in English, us.
One reason why Chippenham Mike, the driver, had got lost in Brive was because he was suffering from awful toothache (or “tufache” as his mate, Corsham John, called it). His (Latvian) dentist had spent an hour on Saturday trying to dig out an infected molar but had left him with the roots still intact…and still infected. So, he had driven a 10-ton truck from Wiltshire to south central France swallowing painkillers all the way. This meant that one of our first jobs was to get to know the local pharmacist (yup, another charming and helpful woman) to get more on his behalf.
Pain sorted, Mike and John unloaded 1800 cubic feet of Rhodesworld, including 60 boxes of books, files and photo albums .“Time you got a Kindle, Rob”, advised Corsham John. We escorted them out of Brive a few days later. I had to use Chippenham B & Q’s best apple picker to lift a hanging telephone line over their truck. It was only whilst doing so that I saw the small sign which informed me that the road down which the police had led the 10-ton truck, and along which I was leading them out, had a maximum weight limit of 3.5 tons.
