The aforementioned folder ...

 ... (see previous post) is too small.

Have I mentioned already? Probably not.  We are attempting to buy a small terraced house in Chichester.  

We've spent much of the last eighteen months pondering our future (nothing like a couple of major ops to force one to face one's mortality).

Much as we love France and especially the bit where we live, we have come to recognise whoever of us is left will up sticks and return to the UK.  We have no family to take on the role of executor and it would be cruel to ask anyone else to sort out our affairs in France.  So, we are planning for it now and hopefully making things easier for the last of us. Part of the plan is to have a property in the UK already that either of us would be happy to move into whilst things are tidied up in France.

We've found somewhere and are going through the agony of trying to purchase it.  We realised the last time we bought a property in the UK was 28 years ago. It is now another world, not helped by the fact that we are treated as money launderers, everything is now done on smart phones and the paperwork arriving from the solicitors by email is so voluminous that, this morning, I have had to buy a larger folder (see above), an additional ream of paper and a new set of inks. 

We grit our teeth and hang on in there because we love the house we've found and are enchanted by Chichester.

We talk about it becoming our "maison secondaire" for a time and popping across to stay for a week or two, while our base continues (for the time being) to be France.  We are too embedded in the French system and all its healthcare benefits to want to lose that quite yet.

The house is bright, modern, feels spacious within its smallness, with a small garden. Chichester has a John Lewis and I look forward to shopping for modern, Scandi-style furniture. It could not be more different from where we live in France.

This will be a new adventure.