C’est la vie: Goes to show you never Cantal

It was a September 11th that we will never forget. We had just finished a leisurely stroll across some cattle grazing countryside of the Auvergne, just behind our so-called chateau in southern France.

It was coming up on 10 pm and our hosts were returning home after a night out with friends. Within a few minutes there was a knocking at our bedroom door. An unreasonable amount of bread had disappeared, and someone had to answer for it. The bottom line: our kids ate too much, and we would have to leave.

They gave us five days, i.e. until Friday, to pack our bags and move along. But we are not the kind to stick around where we are unwanted, persona no grata, as it were. So we were out of the house the following morning, in time to pick up breakfast in San Flour, about twenty minutes down the road.

But let me back up a little bit.

We had arrived here in western Cantal a week earlier, after a long and misdirected all-day drive from Chambery. A quick simple late-night dinner was served and we were shown to our nearly palatial accommodations at the top of the carved oak staircase. The neat and clean rococo wallpaper had me swooning.

And when we awoke the next morning, we saw that new locks were being installed on certain bedrooms on our second floor hallway. Another Workaway guest put a sliding lock on the outside of the 11-year-old daughter’s bedroom, directly across the hall from us. I heard tongue-in-cheek comments about certain behavioral issues. The same Workawayer was also installing a small lock on his own room down the hall, his and his wife’s, that is, a Welsh couple close to our age.

We quickly came to learn that the younger daughter been going through the belongings of other guests when they weren’t around, in addition to stealing from classmates at school. In any case, we were not afforded the luxury of a lock on our bedroom door. But we tried to take it all with a grain of salt.

Another evening at the dinner table revealed many things. Though the map said France, we were clearly living in Britain. The two daughters could speak perfect French, as they attended French school (for about nine hours a day!), but no one spoke anything but the queen’s English around the house. One saw little or no interest or familiarity with the French language; no enthusiasm for French culture; and no inclination for French cuisine.

The menu may have been a wee tad bland or watery from time to time, but the dinner talk was nothing less than scintillating. I could never be sure if the younger daughter had started misbehaving on account of her mother’s abusive language, or vice versa, but the shrill sarcasm was enough to leave me, and the 12-year-old daughter, stricken or paralyzed with fear. “Good God! Look at that sauce all over your plate! Take your piece of bread and wipe up that filthy mess!”

From there it was all down hill. It was a hopeless case. They moved to rural France from London five years ago. They started a brand new life, yet they had not learned a thing. They still didn’t know how to grow tomatoes, and they couldn’t tell a zucchini from a pumpkin. And as for the renovations of the house, you can forget about it. They didn’t even have a proper broom, much less a decent saw or shovel.

What we had was a regular clash of civilizations. In all their prim and proper British politeness, they never uttered a single word of disapproval, but in hindsight it has become clear that they were as shocked and repulsed by our way of life as we were by theirs. Over the course of the week, we never saw mum and dad show anything but contempt for their children. And every time our own three-year-old spoke up at the dining table to say “I love you, Mama,” we were filled with awkward discomfort. You know there’s a problem when your child’s declarations of love have become a source of embarrassment.

Still, they spoke only kind words to and about our children. But this saccharine sweet insincerity was just one of many forms of dishonesty served in their household. And no effort was made to conceal the distrust they maintained towards their own two daughters. Even the simplest recounting of events would have to be qualified by a surly, “So she claims!”

At the end of the day, we felt the slightest glimmer of regret that our children were too loud and unruly for their British standards, but not on your life would we ever envy them for their loveless, thieving offspring. So when,  after repeatedly denying that they had any problems with our habits or our children, they finally told us that they were “not coping well with the situation” and “wasn’t that obvious?” the only real charge they could levy against us was that we ate too much.

Too much wonder bread, thin soup and day old baguette. And not an inkling of appreciation for my wife’s homemade sourdough, kimchi, or various jams, syrups and preserves made from the fruits and berries of their own mismanaged property. So it was without hesitation or disappointment that we packed our things and made ourselves scarce, on to bigger and better things, having learned a priceless lesson in how NOT to move to another country and launch a bed & breakfast.