France for life

CAN a house change one’s life? I wouldn’t have believed it. But almost from the day Patricia and Walter Wells first saw Chanteduc — their 18th Century farmhouse in northern Provence — their future was altered forever.

Ever since the wooded 10 acres on top of a stony hill in VaisonlaRomaine became theirs in 1984, Patricia says that she and her husband Walter have looked differently at the world. Chanteduc turned what was to have been a Paris interlude into a permanent séjour in France.

Before, they had only read about this life, and finally they were participants; they were making it happen. Was it just the sun, or did this place have a magic way of magnifying ordinary pleasures? Before long, they could not go to town for a morsel of goat's cheese or a sack of nails without the errand turning into a social event. Conversation is central to a Provencal's life: so there was always talk of the sun (or lack of it); talk of the tourists (or lack of them); talk of the latest scandal in Paris.