French Pension

My car's trip-meter insists that it's a journey of a mere one hundred and thirty-five miles (plus ferry crossing) from home in Sussex to our house in France, but in reality it is a life-altering journey back in time to a calmer age.
A year ago I had no notion of buying a house abroad. Had the idea ever entered my head it would have been dismissed instantly as something that other people do. Rich people. But then two things set off the chain of events that led Husband and me to Lonlay L'Abbaye, an impossibly picturesque village in the heart of Lower Normandy.
The first was that I found myself hurtling towards my fiftieth year, and realised with astonishment that I was not, as I had previously assumed, immune from ageing. Along with visions of cheap motor insurance and Saga holidays, came the uncomfortable realisation that I had no pension. Barely a minute's consideration of this terminally tedious subject was enough to tell me that it was too late to start saving now.
The answer (if such it proves to be) came from an unexpected quarter.
Mike had been a friend of Husband's for three decades when he suffered a sedate nervous breakdown, went bald in a matter of weeks and moved to France. The butterfly that emerged from the cocoon of Mike's former self was of a species unknown to us, and we watched impotently to see if his fragile new wings would support him, or if he would crash, tattered and defeated.
He's still flying over a year later and, tellingly, quite a lot of his hair has grown back. I have wondered if perhaps Husband studied his own receding hairline in the mirror and decided to try Mike's baldness cure. Whether it was that or something more prosaic I don't know, but shortly after a visit from Mike during which he waxed lyrical about the peace and serenity to be had for the asking in Normandy, and the far more civilised property prices there than here, Husband raised the subject of a holiday home in France as a possible solution to my pension predicament.
To explore the idea's viability, he went to stay with Mike for a week and came home full of unwonted enthusiasm and eloquence about France's lack of the UK's less attractive aspects, such as graffiti, litter and the M25. Impressed by anything that can raise Husband's enthusiasm to a detectable level, I arranged for us to meet with some Normandy-based estate agents - 'Immobiliers'. We were shown around twenty houses in four days, and received quantities of largely conflicting advice from every British person we met during our stay. We consequently arrived home dazed and confused, but with a definite decision made; we definitely wanted a house in France, and we definitely knew which ones we wanted.
I lost my heart in an instant when we were shown the house at Passais. It had been allowed to fall back into the earth for many years, until a brave English family decided to restore it. Sadly, like so many enthusiastic amateurs, they ran out of money. At the time we viewed it, it had a new roof and all the wiring and plumbing was installed, but that was as far as they had got. The ground floors were still of earth, with pipes and cables draped across them, ready to be embedded in concrete. The upper floors were accessible only via a wobbly stepladder wired to a scaffolding pole.
My imagination immediately saw the twenty-five foot Christmas tree that I could have in the hall that stretched from floor to roofspace, and I coveted the gargantuan granite fireplace in which I could have roasted chestnuts (or indeed a whole ox, were I not of the vegetarian persuasion), had I been equipped with an asbestos body suit. Husband's imagination, however, saw our bank balance descending to the seventh level of Hades and himself spending much of the rest of his life up a rickety ladder with a paintbrush in his hand. Our visions vied, and I thought I was winning, but the next day we went to see a house near Lonlay L'Abbaye.
As we hared into the village, desperately trying to keep Florence-the-Immobilier's car in sight, we exclaimed at the beauty of the place. Like most French villages it has grown organically, but if a really talented town planner had sat down with a brief to design a stunningly beautiful place to live, with just the right number of shops, cute stone houses and even rivers, a better job could not have resulted. It even has a biscuit factory.
With Florence apparently in training for the French Grand Prix (and with a phone clamped perpetually to the side of her head), we had little opportunity to take all of this in before the village was a memory. A couple of sharp turns, of which we could ideally have had a little more warning from Florence, brought us to a gap in a hedge, through which she disappeared at speed. We followed, and found ourselves outside a stone cottage with a terracotta tiled roof, surrounded by trees.
Mature reflection tells me that the trees have grown up around the building over the years, but my first impression of the cottage was of a sleepy brown mushroom that had pushed its way up through the forest floor one day, and liked it so much that it decided to stay.
The peace of the place was almost palpable, and the view from the bottom of the garden over a valley of fields and trees left Husband incoherent with admiration. The only sounds were of birdsong, leaves in the wind and Florence gabbling incomprehensibly into her mobile phone. We showed ourselves around the house.
The front door led into a big room with the ubiquitous Norman corner kitchen. The original chimney was still there, with stone corbels pushed through the walls to support it, but some vandal had removed the bed of the granite fireplace. The room was dim and cool, with age-darkened beams and rough, whitewashed walls. At one end an empty doorway led to the rest of the ground floor; a bathroom, a utility area and a wooden-floored room which still held the remains of equipment that had been used there when it was a nail-maker's forge two centuries before. I could feel the years of heat and toil seeping into me as I stood where the anvil used to be, before it was moved to the garden to be used as a bird-bath.
Up a steep flight of wooden stairs (best descended backwards, we learned) was a light, airy attic bedroom, with lovely views of the garden if you were prepared to lay on the floor. I've never seen such a low-slung window.
We were fascinated to see what was above the main room, but couldn't fathom any way of ascending, until Florence, still chattering cheerfully to someone else, reached up and pulled down a trapdoor and an attic ladder from the ceiling. Thus was the master bedroom achieved. Tricky in the event of a call of nature in the small hours, I thought. We later learned that the previous owners had a small covered bucket each, for this express reason, which they also kindly left behind. I shall be investing in a flight of stairs at the first opportunity and sleeping on the ground floor in the meantime.
Outside was a big pile of well-seasoned firewood, which Florence referred to mendaciously as a garage. The ribs of the decrepit building still bear traces of ancient wattle and daub, which looks lovely when in fine fettle, but less so after two repair-free centuries of rain and snow.
The garden is mainly at the front of the cottage, where a number of very large trees give the place its 'foresty' feel. I imagine that Red Riding Hood's grandmother would feel very much at home here, as indeed did we on that first visit.
The next week back in Sussex was spent in a turmoil of indecision. I still hankered after the Passais house, with its ancient potential and lower asking price. Husband still hankered after an easy life, sans scaffolding. What clinched it in the end was the view, which the first house lacked, overlooking as it did the side of a very large and not particularly attractive barn.
So we bought the house at Lonlay, with a mortgage to be paid back over the twelve years between purchase and Husband's alleged retirement. All went smoothly, and after a meeting conducted in French, during which we signed a great many documents that I can only hope do not commit us to anything of which we will not approve, the cottage was ours. Now when we retire we can rent out our relatively expensive English house, and retire to our aged cottage in the woods, to live out our days in peace.
Thus in just a few months we have gone from pensionless peasants to landed folk, because we have just learned that with our cottage comes a proprietary interest in several acres of heathland. We can't sell it, but evidently we do have the right to harvest bracken there for our animals' bedding. Whilst we humans are delighted by this quaint arrangement, I can't help thinking that the cats are going to find it a trifle prickly.