That's Yer Lot...

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I've mentioned before how apparently trivial moments of choice and decision made without much thought can radically alter the course of one's life for the better - or if you're unlucky - for worse. I was thumbing through this week's House & Home section of the Weekend FT whilst half-watching one of those daft property reality TV shows and eating my lunchtime baguette of cheddar and pepperoni - yummy - when I saw a house for sale in the always maddeningly and ludicrously expensive property section of the paper. The place in question was in Bergerac, France [pictured]. The price? €1,250,000, which of course is so far outwith my reach and scope as to be entirely discountable, particularly at my stage of life. But it made me think: that kind of money was of the order that the property programme was talking about for very modestly-sized 1930s houses in Surrey. The French place featured in the FT plonked into the same county would currently fetch at least ten times as much.

This took me back to a more innocent and adventurous time in our lives, when we were plotting a move to France with another couple. We'd found a likely property - similar in size to that pictured - in Lot-et-Garonne, with a good plot of land, stream, ponds, the works; for £40,000. Between us we could have raised twice that from selling our then houses, and the plan was to uproot and move there to host painting holidays, as two of us were [art-school trained] painters. It all looked like a dream opportunity: the purchase plus enough dough in the bank to cover costs and expenses whilst getting established; but one of our number kind of got cold feet and so the [ad]venture was shelved, never to be revisited. Do I regret this non-event? Not a bit of it. Serendipity brought me to where I am, and I'm as happy and contented as anyone deserves to be. Had happenstance taken me to live and paint in a large, crumbling house in France, I would equally have felt blessed. I think the rest, as it has to date, would have fallen similarly into place on the back of it...

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