Country living

"S", true to her word, moved us into another house today.

And true to her word, it has both a yard and a phone line.

It's in a village called Villecun, and we don't like it very much at all.

First of all, there's the house itself, one of the many many cinder-block constructed villas which so mar countrysides around here. All crisp edges and no character at all. There is such a proliferation of these things here in Southern France, it's really an architectural atrocity that the French have allowed these horrors to so completely devour the building market, and so overtake entire regions. But I rant. Here's the house:

We were told it had a pool. True enough, but:

Not so useful to us. Nor is it useful that we're a 15-minute drive to the nearest shop, a winding road all the way down and around the hill to Lodève. After feeling so sort of included in the village life of Soubès, this feels like total isolation.

In the house's defense, the view is a magnificent panorama of hills and vineyards stretching into the distance.

And it is certainly peaceful up here. The only sound of the outside world is the clonking of the sheep's bells in our neighbor's field.

But is that enough to justify living with such horribly ugly furniture?

I mean, who buys furniture like this? This chair is just one piece of an entire set.

But the final straw came with the TV. The British owner had fitted out the house with a British dish, and so we get British TV here. After convincing Kepler in Soubes that Dora and Bob and Clifford are all French-speaking, and having seen him learn so many words from them in French, we feel reluctant to let him discover that these characters can also speak English as well as he. Suddenly education TV is reduced to pap. Alas.

So we called "S", and talked to her about our reservation regarding staying here for very long. "You can move back to Soubes," she told us, "but in four weeks, it's been rented out, so you'll just have to move out again."

We told her we'd call her back. And we decided that we'd give this house a try. Not because we like it; it feels like we're living isolated in rural England up here. But in the interest of our property search, it makes sense to give a fair try to a gamut of lifestyles, and since we see lots of property listings 10 minutes from the nearest town, this is our chance to find out how we like it.

And as for the TV, well, at least we get Channel 4. The British are good for something.