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Having overcome the obstacles of starting to renovate her dream home - an ancient, dilapidated barn - and fitting in with the peculiarities of the locals, Janine is now the go-to expat in the area for those seeking to get to grips with a very different way of life. At the top of her career, Janine eventually decided to give up her job in London and move with her husband to live the good life in France. Janine Marsh is a busy lady, but she took the time to answer my questions related to her book and back story. I wasn’t going to read this book suggested by my American cousin - mainly because I too have many anecdotes from my purchase of a barn in the French countryside which is now converted after 25 years (! The author's bleak battle with the elements, a rather smelly sheep and a fickle electricity supply is delightfully counterbalanced with impressions of French life, customs, neighbours, food and of course wine.
She talks about the process of moving there, life events, customs, local traditions, in a casual story-telling style that keeps my attention. I began by listening to French radio online and watching films and TV in French with English subtitles. For me, every page of this captivating book held something different to learn about, food, history, renovation, quirky sayings, and not least the enormous differences between our two cultures, even though we are only separated by the English Channel. She is known as “flop chef not top chef” to her French friends (Madame Merde behind her back – and that’s a long story that’s in her book My Good Life in France!The author’s new life in France started out quite differently to most ex-pats though: whilst on one of her regular day trips to pick up cheap wine in northern France, she purchased an old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais. I love my books, I have more than 4,000 and had to renovate the pig sty so I had somewhere to keep them all. What looks idyllic in the summer months can turn into a real nightmare in those cold ,wet and windy nights, there is a world of difference between sipping a glass of rose in a lime tree ringed village square to chopping desperately needed firewood in February. At school you learn “proper” French but in reality, French people don’t talk like that, they use slang words and trendy words and phrases. That was tough, but being immersed like that made me absorb more because I had no choice but to speak French.
Along the way she became maid to six cats, three dogs, fifty chickens and ducks, and four mad geese. Drinking wine that was made on this same vineyard, or at least, in the same region, by a friendly neighbour. The book could perhaps have done with more extensive descriptions of the neighbouring towns and villages in this north-east corner of France, within an easy drive of Calais and the cross-Channel ferries or Eurotunnel.She gave up a sensible job in London, where she was born, to renovate a bargain basement barn and turn it into a home - an ongoing project. I simply love it when waiters are friendly and you can ask them for menu recommendations or new local events to attend. Here we follow Janine and Mark through the renovation process which, they carried out on weekend trips over to France and involved a lot of hard work and determination. This is about living in and fixing up a several-hundred-year-old house with a small area of land in a small village in the north of France. He now says he wouldn’t have done that but it made me realise how important it was to him, and I had a choice – love or money.
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