How We Got Here

Getting here was somewhat traumatic - but as my older brother John pointed out, I have a history of bad luck associated with moving (see previous diary entries). Perhaps it’s because it’s impossible to pass up gigs when the smart thing would be to put things on hold and focus for a while. But never mind. Between touring in America and the UK, Eric managed to sell his house and buy this one we’d seen in the Limousin, which is a lovely and still relatively cheap part of France known for its foie gras, Limoges porcelain, beef and a large population of British expats, due to its proximity to the now high priced Dordogne region.

We got back to England and waited to hear when we could move into the house, and finally loaded up Eric’s Volvowagon with everything we could squeeze in there and set off to catch the ferry. We left behind a storage space full of the rest of Eric’s belongings, while MY storage space mopes by itself in Cleveland (though I did get to pay it a visit when I was on tour in the US.) The drive from Norwich and ferry crossing were unmomentous, the only inconvenience being a dish drainer that kept getting dislodged from the back of the car and making its way into the front seat. After spending the night in St. Omer we set off early, full of high spirits and anticipation, only to see smoke pouring out of the car after about forty minutes on the autoroute. The Amy curse was taking effect, the prognosis for the Volvo was very bad from a mechanic in the hideous burg of Roye and at the age of 47 I found myself hitchhiking for the first time. I was half-laughing and half-crying as Eric and I stood by the edge of the road with our thumbs out, me stupidly in short skirt and boots, thinking how we possibly resembled that redneck couple in Robert Altman’s “Nashville” and perhaps some film-obsessed French motorist would get the reference and give us a ride to Amiens, 30 miles away?

A slightly smaller rental car was waiting for us in Amiens, which necessitated spending over two hours in a truck stop parking lot while we fit the contents of the overloaded Volvo into an even tighter space. The appalled looks of passing motorists were some consolation for the ridiculous task of repacking in public. The offending dish drainer stayed behind at the truck stop, and I won’t say where we left the Volvo. I was wedged between a metal bedframe and and a broom for 6 hours but at least the rental car had a CD player, and we listened to the new Who and Yo La Tengo </a>albums for the rest of the journey.

Somehow the owners of the house had it in their heads that we’d be moving in in another week or two (completion still being a few weeks off). We managed to convey to them that we were actually in a phone booth around the corner with all of our life's belongings and they, good-hearted people that they are, relented and let us in.

It constantly strikes me how little contact I’ve had with life outside cities. Things are pretty rustic around here, but it was immediately pointed out to us how lucky we were to have heat and hot water starting out. The house hasn’t been lived in for years, but is reasonably civilized, situated right on a village street, though there is a barn attached and a barn on the other side belonging to the neighbors who we’ve yet to meet. A barn is a novel concept, and I’ve never had a view before, unless you count this little sliver of Manhattan we could see out of the first place I lived in Brooklyn, or the cemetery across the street from my last place in Cleveland. Here we look out over a valley to the next village, or blue sky and apple trees in the back garden. That is, except when everything’s covered in fog.