Ma Folie Française (My French Folly) Read Online Free PDF

We’ll be discovered in no time.’
    â€˜Hopefully not … though you have to admit, it’s quite funny. I mean, here we are thinking we are being pretty darn clever, digging our little secret hole, and in the meantime half the village has heard us.’
    â€˜SHIT!’ Jean replied loudly, a large grin on his face, followed by a loud chuckle.
    We both laughed for several minutes. The entire situation was a farce. We could well envisage all these little old French men and women, tucked neatly in their beds or seated comfortably in their reclining, padded armchairs, settling in for their daily, afternoon nap, when suddenly they would be shaken to their brittle bones by the pounding echo of steel on stone. Over a period of five days, we had, with no malicious intent, broken the age-old tradition of the siesta, for many of the village’s residents. Quel désastre! (What a disaster!) We could go down in history for this, if found culpable. We decided then and there, no matter how disappointed we were, that our quest would have to stop, here and now.
    â€˜We’ll have to backfill it immediately,’ Jean said. ‘We can’t leave any traces of us digging down there, just in case someone notices. And la barre à mine will have to go. It’s too obvious.’
    â€˜I agree. We’ll hide it in the cellar under the apple crates. No one but us ever goes down there.’
    â€˜Okay, I’ll fill in the hole today after lunch … quietly,’ he grinned, holding his index finger to his lips.
    â€˜Good idea. Now let’s eat.’
    Following a light and rather reflective lunch of tinned Petits pois et carottes (French peas and carrots) and bread, we both wandered down to the garage for one final look. There in midst of ancient rubble and dirt were the beginnings of our potential ‘Love tunnel’. Jean had uncovered the remains of an ancient spiral staircase, leading deep beneath the recently concreted, garage floor. It was such a shame to cover it up. I could hardly bare to watch.
    â€˜What an anticlimax. There goes our “tunnel of love”,’ I said defeated.
    â€˜We’re in France, Marisa … we don’t need a tunnel,’ he replied, an irreverent smirk on his handsome face.
    So the garage floor was returned to its initial state and no one, except for Jean and I, would ever be any the wiser, we hoped. For several days, the mysterious pounding was the favourite topic of conversation at every local café and bar. Everyone agreed how annoying it had been at the time, yet now, after its mysterious disappearance, they missed its presence in a masochistic sort of way. You see, in sleepy French villages, not a lot happens. So any new topic of conversation, good or bad, is eagerly received and even though we had caused an almighty disturbance, we remained content in the thought that we had also given the villagers something new to complain about. For, as I have learnt during my brief stay, there is nothing more pitoyable (pitiful) than a blue-blooded Frenchman without a decent gripe?

CHAPTER 3
Les Chambres D’Hôtes
(THE BED AND BREAKFAST)
    Life at La Maison de la Coquille was hectic at the best of times. Spring saw the hefty restorations finish and the pandemonium of interior decorating begin. We had created three en-suited bedrooms for rental and another bedroom with separate bathroom, for ourselves. In an attempt to be constantly more original than the next person, I created name plates for each room, using exotic destinations as my theme and decorating them accordingly. They were ‘Isle of Skye’, ‘Whitsunday’ and ‘Koh Samui’. Created as tiny ‘islands of peace’ floating merrily on our second floor, each one coloured with home invented, ochre-based paints and finished with my own hand sewn touches.
    Situated on the first floor were two generously proportioned, split-level salons , both with monumental