A home of your own

One of the advantages of being over seventy is a perspective on the past. Where the twenty-something's are running around crying 'the sky is falling' we oldsters are saying 'Ah, this is like what happened before and we're still here...' What goes around, comes around. And I feel that one of these cycles could well be arriving soon.
   We were in on the first major emigration of the British into France. The reason was that house prices in Britain had shot up while French prices were still very low. At the time you could sell an average house in Britain for one hundred thousand Pounds and buy one in France for ten thousand. In London it was even more advantageous silly prices were being realised and London house owners were thinking of moving out here and living the good life on the proceeds of the sale of their modest semi in Tooting. It was perhaps the only time in our lives that we took the right action at the right time.
   Of course it couldn't last. The canny French soon cottoned on and Papy's old barn, which was moldering away and could be bought for a few hundreds was soon advertised as a property ripe for conversion at over 100,000 pounds, once they realised, or hoped that the Brittaniques would perhaps pay such silly prices.  Around the year 2000 we can recall country houses with the roofs collapsing not being worth the cost of a repair. The British can at least congratulate themselves on saving and restoring thousands of doomed properties.
  I feel that perhaps these days are returning. House prices in Britain are, it appears, booming and we have seen prices in France dropping as the British aren't buying for the moment and people are having to reduce their prices on a forced sale. For example, our neighbor Stephane is selling an almost completed small house tacked on to a large but decrepit barn for 16000 Eur a real bargain for someone seeking a holiday home or even a retirement cottage. We have noticed that prices in general are becoming more sensible, with bargains to be had if you have the money. Anyone for a breath of French air?

 Bye for now, see you soon, perhaps when you have completed your French language course!