The thread that binds us

A journal of château life - 1st - 8th November 2025

The thread that binds us – audio version

Saturday 1st November

Sunshine sifts through the trees, their leaves are all shades of butter yellow, copper and gold now, the last greens starting to turn, the drive carpeted bronze with fallen leaves.

We turn the corner, bending towards the house, past the gîte, which sits happily in its little garden, looking well. The final turn of the drive brings us face-to-face again after two weeks away, the house looks like she’s been behaving herself in our absence, well cared for by Dale and Marianne who left early this morning, their ferry going one way as ours came the other.

Wet leaves are strewn across the garden, brought down in last night’s storm, the garden is as wild as I left it, maybe wilder, the list of jobs already writing itself in my mind. Monty leaps and howls as soon as we open the door, welcoming us home with yips and barks. The cats come trotting from all corners, curling round our ankles as we bring in cases and bags full of England.

There’s still sand in my shoes from the beach, my clothes still smell of my mum’s washing powder, England is still clinging to me. I find it harder and harder to leave. The English thread that runs through my core seems to pull tighter to its tether each time I cross the channel. I know it will loosen in a couple of days, I know after a night in my own bed, a walk in the woods and half an hour in the cutting garden the fibres will begin to untwist, but the tug is always there, the homecoming is always bittersweet.

Tim lights the Rayburn, the flames licking around the logs, the heat slowly building, seeping out into the kitchen and then the rooms beyond. We unpack bags and open post, easing ourselves back in, making ourselves at home again.

Sunday 2nd November

There are three bags of English shopping on the kitchen floor, essentials that we prefer not to live without. They’re on the floor because the big larder cupboard in the kitchen is stuffed full and disorganised after a busy summer season and it feels like there’s no where to put anything else.

I climb the step stool to reach the top shelves, checking the dates of jars and tins, putting everything in date order, oldest at the front, wiping down the shelves as I go. I work from shelf to shelf, washing and relabelling storage boxes and jars, re-ordering, making space.

You forget when you live in a place like this just how big everything is. This one cupboard is perhaps the equivalent of over half of my old kitchen, so it’s no wonder that it takes me most of a day to sort out. I’m weary by the end, my feet tired from climbing up and down, but each time I open the door to the clean, organised larder it makes my heart leap a little. We’re well stocked with English treats now, overstocked maybe with custard, gravy and my favourite herbal tea. It feels satisfying though, like laying down stores for the winter to come

Monday 3rd November

With a roar the blender spins into action, making short work of the sweet onions, garlic and butternut squash, blitzing them into a smooth velvety soup. It’s been a busy morning, Tim and I clearing the last of the things from our sitting room cupboards, getting ready for the Château DIY camera crew to arrive to begin capturing this next phase of renovations.

The soup bubbled away while I was running up and down the steps cleaning out the cupboard yesterday, the stock infusing with thyme and bay. We eat it for lunch with a beautiful oaty, treacle soda bread from a recipe by Annie Mae Herring, made yesterday too and wrapped in a tea towel to keep it fresh. It’s sweet and malty and perfect spread with salty butter, with a hot bowl of butternut squash soup on the side.

The crew arrive after lunch and we spend the afternoon filming a master interview, sitting side-by-side answering questions to the camera, trying to think of interesting answers to questions we’ve been asked many times before and searching for ways to concisely explain our plans for the sitting room in as few words as we can. It’s ridiculously tiring, and when the crew finally leave I’m ready to sink into bed.

Before we started tearing the room apart I filmed a little before tour of the sitting room with a chat through of our plans for the room. I’m hoping to find time to get this all edited and a video put together for paid subscribers in the next few weeks.

Tuesday 4th November

Dust gathers in my throat, sifting over my glasses, making everywhere look fogged. We’re ripping out the rotten backs of the huge wall cupboards in the sitting room. The once damp wood crumbling in our hands, precariously balanced shelves collapsing as we put them under the slightest pressure.

The old doors are put carefully to the side to be restored and reused, but the mouldings around the door frames are rotten beyond repair. We expected to find damp walls hidden behind the wooden backs of the cupboards, but everywhere is dry. Perhaps an old problem then? Or perhaps the walls have just dried out because we live here all year and heat the house (as best we can) all winter?

I pull off crumbling plaster and brick work, adding to the dust, sweeping the rubble into piles and then scooping it up with a metal dust pan into rubble bags. The trailer, propped onto the front steps, is already full of rotten wood and old shelves, but we heft in the rubble bags too, ready to be taken to the dump.

This room has always had a musty smell. In the winter, if left unheated for any length of time it smelt damp and sad, but that smell is suddenly gone. Even though the room is cold and empty it already smells better, and with the cupboards taken out it feels huge.

We start pulling off tiles next, removing the last remnants of the old galley kitchen that was at one end of this room when we first arrived. My bolster sinks into the wall behind the tile, punching through to a cavity behind a plasterboard wall. There’s no way of removing the tiles without pulling down the whole wall, it’s the only solution.

The board has been put up with the metal rails common in France, but these have been dot and dabbed onto an old plaster and lath wall, so chunks of the old wall come down with the plaster board. The dust is everywhere, the job list already growing.

Wednesday 5th November

A break from the dust today, my French lesson giving me an excuse to pause. I need to do more homework, things aren’t sticking and I feel like my progress has stalled. I’ve reached one of those learning blocks, one of those moments that requires extra force to climb over. This week, I promise myself, I’ll find some extra time for some extra effort.

I spend the afternoon in the greenhouse where things are easy. I cut down the tomatoes, saying goodbye to their bright green scent for the last time this year. On my knees I pull out weed after weed, tugging up the Japanese Anemones that have snuck under the wall from the border outside.

There are already ranunculus and spring anemones growing, popping up from corms I missed when I was clearing the bed in early summer. I carefully mulch around their fresh green stems with compost, hoping to plant their bedfellows this weekend.

The frustrations of the morning have been soothed by a few hours with my hands in the soil. The dark earth is clear and tidy, ready for replanting, a satisfying job done easily. I close the greenhouse door behind me, locking in the warmth of the day.

The early school run has its perks

Thursday 6th November

I wake up to the moon peering in through our bedroom window. The white light of her full face shining straight into mine. Her brightness seems to blot out the stars. It too early to get up yet, so I close my eyes in the hopes of falling back to sleep under the warmth of our big, thick winter duvet.

Sleep doesn’t come fast enough and before I know it I’m up and hustling through the school runs, walking with Monty through the leaf strewn paths of the woods, the air full of that sweet, damp, spice of autumn under the trees.

It’s another day full of dust, ripping plasterboard and more tiles off of old walls and tearing down false ceilings in the hopes of finding long-covered old mouldings. The old plasterwork is there but it’s been half covered in scruffy layers of plaster, perhaps in the hopes of disguising it? We decide it’s probably beyond rescuing and the old ceiling above is in such bad repair that we wish we’d not bothered to rip the other one down. You never know what you’re going to uncover though, so it’s always worth a try.

I sweep the floor for at least the tenth time today, piling rubble into bags and the bags into the trailer. We drive to the dump looking wild and dusty, hair standing up at all angles, using the last of our energy to heave the rubble, plasterboard and rotten wood into their allotted skips. My body feels like it’s done a good day’s work, deserving of a hot shower and a good meal.

Friday 7th November

For the third day this week my hair is full of dust. I’ve forgotten, yet again, to tie it up in a scarf. Conversations over breakfast lead to plans for the day, then one of us inevitably needs to show the other something in the sitting room and before we know it we have hammers and bolsters in hand and the day of work is begun before we’re even ready.

We spend a good hour of the morning trying to gingerly prise a piece of panelling from the wall, suspecting it to be asbestos. But when the first corner is finally free we realise it’s actually made of ply wood. Our joy at this discovery is short-lived because it takes another hour and a half to free it from the hundreds of screws and nails that pin it to the wall.

Every piece of the panelling in this room needs replacing, the only original piece left is rotting away and the rest is a poorly made replica that is sometimes sheet asbestos and sometimes ply.

We bag up more rubble, pile more old plaster board and rotten wood into the trailer, take another trip to the dump and then sweep and sweep in the hopes of stopping the dust making its way through the rest of the house.

I wash my hair again. The hot water sluicing away the dust from my scalp, from my hands and face, from my eyes. Another dirty day of work is done.

Saturday 8th November

I scuff my wellies through the piles of leaves, kicking them up as I walk. I’ve loved to do this since childhood and it brings back memories of an autumn walk with my mum through the backs in Cambridge, kicking up the leaves from the huge old trees that line the ancient streets. School shoes and feet in wrinkled socks sending leaves into the bright autumn air.

It was colder that day, November always seemed colder back then, today it’s mild enough to be out walking in just jeans and a jumper, the air a little damp but warmed by the sun, a golden morning.

Happily it stays fine all day, I spend a little time in my workshop sorting through seeds and last year’s ranunculus corms. I snip off their dried stems and throw them into a bucket of water to plump up overnight, pre-soaking them before I plant them up in the greenhouse bed tomorrow.

I pick what might be the last of the flowers. After several weeks of neglect from me the cutting garden is looking tired. Wild and wayward has turned to wet and weary; flower heads flopping and soggy, leaves turning brown, seed heads mouldering in the misty mornings. I harvest a handful of cafe-au-laits and a few little Sarah Ravens for a pot in the kitchen and promise myself I’ll get out here for a big clear up next week. It’s a quiet day after a busy week, a little time to rest aching muscles before we get back to work on Monday. A proper weekend day at last.

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