Our House is Not in Paris by Susan Cutsforth

excitement inside me. My whole secret world would swell up and engulf me in the joy and sheer wonder of it all. I never lost my sense of extraordinary gratitude to be living such a privileged life — especially because it had all been so utterly unexpected. Then I would arrive at school and be engulfed by the demands of the day. After just one year of having our petite maison , it was no longer just a holiday but what would become, even more so over the years, another whole way of life. As I walked along the corridors at school I encountered colleagues who realised I was about to depart again and they would wistfully enquire, ‘How many more weeks?’ I would raise two fingers to indicate my jubilation that it was a mere two weeks.
    Some mornings, when I was up spectacularly early, there would be a hasty exchange of emails between me and Jean-Claude. It was evening where he was, and every single time I had to tear myself away. No matter how early I was up, I still ended up rushing to get ready for another day at school. One morning, just a few weeks before leaving, I checked my email to find that he and Françoise had just seen their friends whom we were buying the car from. When they arrived for their apéritif , the Coronels were in their other car; now that we had bought theirs, they were no longer choosing to drive it. We were quite staggered by their degree of thoughtfulness. In the next email, Jean-Claude told me that the Coronels were also selling some furniture at brocante prices and they wondered if we might be interested in seeing some photos. As furniture was very high on our list — that is, we virtually didn’t have any furniture at all — this was yet another element of our story that seemed simply too good to be true. While the furniture didn’t turn out to be quite what we were looking for, it was nevertheless another astonishing element: the fact that we could have bought furniture so easily and, once again, by email.

The Holiday of Lists
    Looking back at my notebook, after just a year, two things struck me. One, what a ridiculous amount of work we tackled — though, in truth, I already realised that, both at the time and on reflection. Secondly, what on earth do all the hastily scrawled instructions for each day even mean? Here are some more examples of the frenetic shorthand checklists that we constructed each day around.
    July 13th: BRIVE — Troc , chandelier, table, etc, bedroom armoire 130 x 60 max. Etam. CREDIT CARD. WORK a.m. ERICK — van, bed legs. CONTINUE KITCHEN planning. Supermarché : mop/square bucket, cheese, soap, walnut liquor, lemon. Hardware: white gloss, roller handle.
    This entry translates as: Today we will go into Brive, a twenty-minute drive away and my first visit. We had heard about a Troc that had a special sale once a month, and were determined to track it down to find, yes, a chandelier for the kitchen. I remember it was quite tricky to find the shop but we eventually did, only to discover it was the wrong day for the sale and they were getting everything ready. Somehow we talked them into letting us look around briefly — not quite sure yet again how this worked with my very limited French — but they graciously accepted our request. It was never a leisurely browse on such rare occasions that we actually left the house to shop. No, we would always race around in search of treasure to scoop up before moving on to the next item on the never-ending list. We were excited to unearth a chandelier for only five euros — a complete bargain. Of course, in my haste, I had not noticed there was a piece missing until we got home. I also managed to grab a bargain two-piece stylish linen ensemble for a mere six euros.
    A further translation of the list for this day reminds me that just one word, Etam , spelt for me a ‘whole’ forty minutes racing round one of my favourite French shops. I learnt very quickly that, on June 30