Friday 2 October 2009

Interesting Visitors

Late this afternoon, just as Ben was opening the gates to go off to La Ferte for some DIY stuff, a car arrived with two unknown occupants. They explained something to Ben who then told them that his French wasn't very good and that they should come down to the house and speak to me. So the first I saw was this older couple following Ben down the drive with Ben mouthing that he had no idea what they wanted.

Anyway, it transpired that today was the couple's 49th wedding anniversary, they had been in La Chapelle du Bois at the chiropractor, and that the old man's Grandma used to live here at LPM in the 1950s and he wondered if he could visit his old memories. And it turned out to be very interesting.
Our bedroom used to be two cow byres and the other downstairs bedroom and bathroom was a cave (a darkened store room for preserved foodstuffs and drinks). Our living room encompassed their entire living area of bedroom, kitchen, dining room and bathroom! The patio doors hadn't been there. All the fields were in cultivation and the old man used to come over to work in the fields - he'd lived with his mother and father 6 miles away in St Germain de Coudre. He would ride over on horseback, but walk home over the hills along public footways that are sadly no longer passable due to brambles having taken over. The lady used to live at Le Soucheray at the bottom of our fields and that is how they met.

They were SO touchingly grateful to have been allowed to visit and have said that they would find some old photographs and bring them over.

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