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He was a man of few words and not given to offering advice lightly. Perhaps our financial
plan wasn't a reflection of reality.
Four delicious courses ensued, helping to remind us why we were here: baguette and ril-
lettes de canard , a local delicacy of cold shredded duck in its fat, matched with the Barses'
Saussignac dessert wine; lamb chops from their own herd of sheep, cooked to perfection
withrosemaryandmatchedwiththeirred;thenhome-growngreensaladwithaselection of
fine fromage , finished off with a home-made fruit compote. It was a local feast extraordin-
aire .
'Would you like anything else?' asked Myriam as we finished.
'No thank you, that was delicious, je suis pleine ,' I replied, using the only French words
for 'I have had enough' that I could think of.
Élodie, the Barses' teenage daughter, almost fell off her chair laughing.
Myriam giggled politely. 'Used like this, "Je suis pleine" means "I am drunk",' she ex-
plained.
That evening Sean and I sat outside our apartment enjoying the warm evening air once
the girls had fallen asleep. The first major step had been taken: we had moved country. The
fight we had the night before was a result of stress and fatigue and while we were still raw
from it we had begun to forgive each other. If we were going to take on the challenges that
the Barses had indicated were to come, our relationship had to be strong.
Thismovewasachance toputdownrootsandtopursueourpassiontogether.Since meet-
ing in Johannesburg we had lived in Vancouver, Cape Town and Dublin and worked even
further afield. Our longest sojourn so far had been Dublin and with our ancestry - we grew
up in South Africa but Sean's grandparents were Irish and my great grandmother too - we
had felt very at home there… but there were no vineyards.
I made a list of what we needed to do over the next few days. We drifted onto our dreams
for our new life and our vineyard, our fight almost erased from our memories. I would have
stayed up later had I not known I would be woken to breastfeed Ellie within a few hours.
The next day, warned by Myriam and Bernard, but undaunted, we tackled the practicalities
of setting up our new life: getting an operational bank account; registering Sophia with a
local école maternelle , the pre-primary school; buying supplies and purchasing the neces-
sary furniture and equipment to survive at Haut Garrigue while we waited for our belong-
ings to arrive. The heat was extreme. Sean found me sobbing in the supermarket car park.
A few minutes at 44 degrees and I was in meltdown. Little wonder. Back home a heatwave
was anything over 24 degrees.
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