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Britts leaving France in great numbers?


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Well, I am an anti-social B at the best of times so living in a small village suits me fine. I have plenty of entertainment.

The only England I could be attracted to would be a similar place in deep country on the Somerset/Dorset border where I could become a grumpy eccentric and write letters to the Times and watch the young girls walk by in the Saturday market.

Hmmm, nothing new there then!

Were it not for the kids, I could be attracted by Italy and Portugal of a few very private places in Catalonia.

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I find Coops' answer the most understanding and the most balanced:  no surprise there then as I am a huge fan of my dear Coops.

Simon, you make a very good point.  Why indeed shouldn't you give it as you find it?

Well, I am still to evaluate my "life in France".  It's just under 4 years since we moved over and it's been totally different here as I had to give up my job to come here to live.  Therefore, everything felt different, no work, no income, no libraries, no Tesco....

All was well for a couple of years and then I started getting very depressed, especially in the winter.  I decided to move house and area, just to give myself another chance, as it were, to get to know France.

Now I have moved (for all of about a couple of months) but, now I love my new house, my new village, my new area.

How long will I stay content?  Who can tell?  All I can say is, the first signs are good.  I wake up in the morning, feeling glad to be alive. 

Wooly did say to me once that you have to feel at ease with the whole area and evironment and, do you know, I think the old curmudgeon did get it right.  There is a "feel" about the place (call it intuition, gut feeling, what you will) but I genuinely believe that you either find your niche or you don't.

I hope that goes a little way to explaining the diametrically opposed views of idun and Simon.

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[quote user="Simon-come-lately"]- I'm simply contributing to an open Forum - that's the whole point. I don't know you and you don't know me. Would you like to hear my life history? I doubt it! [/quote]

Actually Yes Simon!

It would be interesting to have an idea of your age, what brought you to France and how long ago.

I can relate to most of what I have read here regarding isolation, lack of things to do, and also not moving back but moving on.

After 6 years people are still sking me will I stay in France, I guess they always will, it shows perhaps that we are viewed as transient visitors, initially my respones was a definite, No! this is my home and I will stay here.

That has changed and whilst my home remains where I lay my hat I doubt that I will remain in France, if I do it will certainly not be where I am now, I also feel more strongly than ever that i dont want to return to live definitivement in the UK, I still have a foothold and financial interests there and when I return for more than a week the reasons I wanted to leave soon reappear. 

So like Richard I will probably move country at least one more time in my life, the next one will most likely be somewhere unsuitable or impracticable to remain in in old age so the final one could even end up being England or France!

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 â€¦the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.  …what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.  [8-|]
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I also sort of agree with Simon-come-lately and Chancer and Coops... so I wonder why I'm posting as I'm not adding anything new [:$]

We moved from rural Devon to rural Dordogne so there wasn't a huge change in lifestyle for us.  We've been here nearly 4 years, we've seen some two families move back to the UK for different reasons.  It's taken a while but we do now feel very settled... I have quite a busy social life, a good mix of family time and friends time and just a very little bit of work... my diary is pretty full and I never seem to have any spare time.

I miss old friends and have considered moving back to Devon - but it's not for me at the moment.  When I learned about my cancer I considered moving back... because I missed my closest friends and I was worried about possible language problems... however, even this wasn't enough to send me back. 

I love returning for holidays - I do miss Devon  and the seaside... but we moved to France because we love being in France... and for us its enough.  If that changes, we'll re-evaluate... as someone already said - never say never. [8-)]

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Sweeping ??? Hang on a minute Cendrillon - lets just look at what idun actually said......

> too hot - for 27 years!
> didn't like living in a village
> village life was 'dull'
> mind numbingly boring
> had to drive somewhere for 'life'
> only Brits in the Village

I feel SORRY for idun being so discontented for so long. Dedication beyond the call I'd say!

Still using the Complete France forums though and joined up after leaving France....interesting......

 Nobody is saying everyone has the same experience, but Simon is posting from a position of ignorance of another persons situation. (and through no fault of his own has wrongly sumized that idun only joined the forum after leaving France) Over the years change....also if you have a plan in mind as you get nearer to the finishing post there is less and less point in changing the status quo

Also one of the things idun used to say is that she wouldn't want to live as a widow in France - things that may seem attractive when there are two of you may not be so great as a singleton......I know another couple who are hoping to move back to establish themselves in a UK community before the inevitable happens...a bit morbid but practical never the less. Of course some people are happy to stay or move elsewhere - each to their own.

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I am not trying to convince anyone of anything at all. Everywhere changes, who would have thought that Le Grand Cafe in the centre of our local city would become a Macdonalds and biensur the UK had changed in all the time we were away, well ofcourse it had, just as I expected. We did not make a retrograde move, we moved to a country that had well moved on in our absence. New things to learn, changes in in philosophy and 'envies' to get to grips with too. Language not a problem for the most part!!

The motives for all the moving to France in the last 15 odd years always confuses me. We moved on a whim and for an adventure, simple for a couple with no kids. Could have been anywhere on the planet really, but we moved as we would have done anywhere and that in this case as it should have been, to a good job for husband and to a glorious part of France.

Apart from the education system which was a black hole we had a good life in France and even the last few years, not mentioning education were not 'bad' per se, I knew where I lived in France, the habits of my fellow villages and acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, which in my case once the kids had gone meant that our social life on an evening was severely restricted. My popping round to see a friends at night, around 8 was a non-non. Things had to be organised and were pretty inflexible and going out proper, was a drive and for all we did it, we never did that often.

I outgrew rural, love visiting it, holidaying in it, cannot live in it anymore. I ended up bored, very very bored.

I have really good friends there and one friend has just recently stopped crying everytime I call her, after three years it was about time.

If it makes you feel better that you never go back, well so be it, my philosophy is that everything moves on and no matter where you go,or even who you know you have to try and join the game at the state of play it is at.

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A whim and an adventure about sums up my move, I didnt expect anything more, so it will never be the case that I say I regret it, I made a wrong decision.

Its what I wanted at the time and life is what you make of it, if you really cant make it work or are not willing to adapt then move on, just like a relationship that is not complicated by children, some can move on, some cant and suffer the consequences.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

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Chancer a whim and adventure are great reasons for making a move.

Simon starting to wonder if you live in France, I'll be polite and simply say 'mon oeil' at the implication that there is no aggression in France, verbal or physical, what an odd idea that there isn't!

POST SCRIPT

As I have just seen another of Simon's posts.

I like winters, I don't have to like the heat and I don't and I hate the canicules. Me, I even like rain.

If you think I stayed in France for all that time and whinged or was unhappy, well, that is not me. I just wanted some 'life' again in my life and rural hadn't got it. We have friends and her parents have given her their house in a tiny village and moved into a little appart in a city, and her mother had lived all her life in that village. My dentist was moving from his village to a city too. It is not just me.

And being on here, well, I am at the moment, but may not be in the future. I used to enjoy posting on quite a few boards, but I gave them all up over time.

The other thing about us is that we will be linked to France for the rest of our lives as all our income is from France. We watch TV5Monde most days, we may have 'left' but our ties remain, also one of our son's lives there at the moment too.

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I like that.. 'a whim and an adventure'...

How many people never get the chance or simply don't have the courage to change their lives? So many on this forum (and so many we meet around us in france) have fascinating stories to tell. France may be a part of europe and accessible to all, but there is still a big spirit of adventure in so many of those who have made the move - whether that is temporary, long term or backwards and forwards.

And a whim and an adventure can just as easily work the other way - taking some adventurers to their original home or on to somewhere else.

Variety is the spice of life eh?

Good on all of you!
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Just reading a book which says:

"Some things in life you have no control over.  They are the way they are, and they will be the way they are.  Call it fate.  Then there are other things, the things that are yours to decide.  And one of the strangest and and saddest things in life is that some people cannot differentiate between the two.  They spend all their time punishing themselves for things that have happened and which they can't change, and whilst they're busy doing that they fail to see life's opportunities.

Something perhaps we should all heed.

I'm not saying there is no going back, though if or when I do return to the UK permanently, which would be my choice if I did decide to leave France because of social, language, family  and other ties, it would be for the same reasons that I came here - it was the right decision to make at the time I made it, when I was no longer tied by those things I had no control over.

How does anyone know what will happen in the future - and as long as you make the decisions based on what you can change, and because you do want to change it, there is no right or wrong.

I do think it is important to live for the moment (certainly the older we are the truer that is), and make the most of what you are and where you are, but once you realise that what you have is no longer what you want / can afford / want to change etc, it is only sensible to take decisions on actions which you can control to improve your life as you see fit.

Fortunately we still live in a world where we retain that freedom of choice, and we should all be grateful that we can exercise our choices freely, without undue criticism or worry.

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Whenever I talk to my mother, if ever I remember something from the past, she always responds with a "pity we left there" or a "shame we didn't do this" or "I shouldn't have let your father do that."  What I truly hope is that when I'm 88, I never look back at my life with that attitude.  No wonder she's always been miserable.  Even if  France had turned out not to be right for us, I hope I wouldn't just have put up with it then moaned about it afterwards, but that I had got out when I could.   And  if I ever want to return to England in the future, then I hope I'll have the guts to do it if I want to. 
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[quote user="cooperlola"]  What I truly hope is that when I'm 88, I never look back at my life with that attitude.  No wonder she's always been miserable.  Even if  France had turned out not to be right for us, I hope I wouldn't just have put up with it then moaned about it afterwards, but that I had got out when I could.   And  if I ever want to return to England in the future, then I hope I'll have the guts to do it if I want to. [/quote]

I had wanted to get out of London for several years before I managed it, even trying other jobs in England, but I kept being forced back to London for various reasons - mainly because that was where most of the work was.  I had wanted to move here and find work instead, but when I realised the difficulties of getting a job here and moving before I retired, which was then in sight, I decided instead to do the research, work out what was feasible, and move on when the time was right, ie when I could control the circumstances, and make my choices.

As you say, Coops, moaning gets you nowhere but more miserable.

In hindsight - a wonderfully useful thing which we wish we'd all got before we needed it - the only thing I wish I had now done differently (other than move to France in my 20's and work -  even more difficult then than now, which is why it never happened), was that we had rented rather than buying first.  We certainly thought about it, but we reckoned that we would not be able to tell if we really liked it and could live here without actually owning property and finding out what it really was like to live permanently in France. 

We kept our bolt hole back in London until I too retired and moved here, selling up completely, enabling us to be able to move on before we had sold the old ..... which is a nuisance, but one of things you can't now change, so we sit tight and wait for it to sell. If we had rented, we would not have had the problem, so it one of those things you can't change, so it's use letting it get to you and making you miserable.

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My mother was miserable and mean with money, however she had great plans for when Dad retired and actually when he died, she would tell him her plans for her future when he had gone, she was a sort of egotistical optomist, who loved having a chuckle at other people's misfortunes. BUT as it happened she got ill and died and Dad is still going strong at 86.

The thing she taught me was not to be mean and go for things as you never know what the future holds, as they say,'it isn't a rehersal'.
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[quote user="cooperlola"]Whenever I talk to my mother, if ever I remember something from the past, she always responds with a "pity we left there" or a "shame we didn't do this" or "I shouldn't have let your father do that."  What I truly hope is that when I'm 88, I never look back at my life with that attitude.  No wonder she's always been miserable.  Even if  France had turned out not to be right for us, I hope I wouldn't just have put up with it then moaned about it afterwards, but that I had got out when I could.   And  if I ever want to return to England in the future, then I hope I'll have the guts to do it if I want to. [/quote]

''…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either '' Don't be too hard on your ol'mum; despite all the best planning and commitment, life gets in the way and changes more than you might bargain for. I know it's not always easy to sail through life with the sun shining on you and there isn't always an easy out, I think everyone's entitled to a few 'if only's'; as long as they're not a Meldrew and have a few good times too of course[:D]

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