My Private Paradise Part One

I often sit in my conservatory and contemplate the panoramic view it offers me. My eyes move from the church across the valley in the East to the two-hundred-year-old oak trees on the Southern border of my land. I ponder what to do with the ivy covered, hundred-year-old boulangerie. The flowers and shrubs I planted which are thriving give me a thrill and I wonder whether to try vegetables this year.
And I feel guilty.
Guilty that all this should be mine. I listen to the radio and every day I hear of the war-torn world. I hear of rape and mutilation. Bombing and killings are frequent the world over it seems. But not here. Not in my private paradise. The only disturbance to my tranquillity and reminder of this other world is the terrifying sound of the military jets. They practise low flying sometimes just skimming the tops of the thirty feet poplars which surround two sides of my five thousand square metres of garden.
I tell myself that my political activity and campaigning days are over, and I am entitled to this peaceful retirement. It is easy to do because believe me life in a Brittany commune is amazing.
Before I left England people asked me, “What will you do?” And even now because I live alone and my nearest neighbour is two hundred metres away and my house is the only one in the lane which leads into a field people here ask me, “What do you do all day?”.
Where do I begin? I write, I paint, I dance, I swim, I play music, I go to concerts, I go to communal meals, I have visitors, I visit friends and I garden. In fact, my biggest problem is deciding what to do. I am often heard complaining that I do not have enough time to myself. I really believed before I came that I would have more time to paint and write. Not so. I have always struggled with time. This quote sums up my dilemma.
“Even when we feel healthy and physically secure, we have every day to find some optimum balance between our need to be an individual and our need to be a member of a group. If we go too far one way we are threatened with loneliness and isolation, and if we go the other way, we are threatened by being swallowed up in the group. So, every day we have to find an optimum balance between freedom and security. We cannot have both. The freer we are the less secure; and the more secure the less free. D Rowe ‘Beyond Fear’.
When I listed my interests and activities above, I omitted a very important one. I had to learn French and for that reason I joined the Club des Aines.
I wanted to fit in and to take part in village life. I wanted to make friends with French people. It is so easy to get stuck in an English ghetto speaking English all the time and watching English television.