Comments on: Where is home?

By: helena

helena — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:47:52 +0000

Hi Anna
You’re so right – it is like a relationship and the awful thing is that lovely as Sainte Cecile is, it is over for me. The house in the Savoie is a place close to our friends Norrie and Mary there I spotted a few years ago and fell in love with. At the time it was not for sale. Now it is, we are seeing it on Tuesday but I have some pics of the outside I will post soon.
Hx

By: Anna

Anna — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:39:25 +0000

I think you know it’s over! Once you lose that indescribable feeling deep inside – it’s finished and you can’t fake it. That’s why I move a lot! But, helena, I’m confused – what’s the house in Savoie???

By: helena

helena — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:16:56 +0000

Hi Jo
Yes I am, I will post pics soon, it is a beautiful farmhouse with a tennis court and I have been in love with the place for years. I posted a while back, can’t remember where, sorry. I agree with you on your definition of home, not sure Abu Dhabi is quite there yet, we will certainly always feel like outsiders…
Hx

By: jo

jo — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:12:34 +0000

Errr, what have I missed? I see references to THE house – but what is going on? You are obviously considering a savoie purchase ( we went last weekend for the afternoon, from Lyon, and LOVED it, sooo pretty) but I can’t find where on the blog this happened! What’s going on – I feel like I’m missing a whole story somewhere!

With regards to home – I still say home for England (because it’s where I grew up and what I know and can relate to best), but more and more I call France home – I have lived in many places and find it always takes a while to call somewhere home. For me, it’s being settled, less insecure, familiar with customs and not feeling like an outsider any more. The physical dwelling has less to do with it. I suspect it’s similar for you, if you read back your posts to a year ago when you first arrived in Abu Dhabi….

Courage!
Jo x

By: Norrie

Norrie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:03:08 +0000

For Fiona and Jasques,
Climate changes,but prejudice is firmly rooted. Savoie and Haut Savoie are large deparments with a landscape of mountains, valleys and lakes. Of course there are areas that have bad weather in winter, tell me a place that does not. Yet the tourists come to ski in their thousands from November on – are they all wrong?

After several sojourns in Ireland and England our children grew up to regard Somerset as home for some fourteen years. Now one lives in Munich, one in Suffolk and the third in New York.
W are coming up to our eighteenth winter in Savoie and are still waiting for the ‘horrid’ months we heard about when we moved.
The Americans still believe in ‘foggy London’ something that hasn’t happened for fifty years. As I said ‘prejudice dies hard.

By: Alice

Alice — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:02:14 +0000

ahhhh, the word ‘home’ – it means so many things to so many people. Is it where the heart is, where you feel most relaxed, where your memories are, where the four walls of your childhood stand? Or is it simply where you and your immediate family are?

As a traveller myself I find it hard to decide what home means to me and right now I’m trying to make a ‘home’ for me and my family, but then just yesterday over dinner with Japanese and Korean friends I thought ‘hmmm, I would actually love to go back to Japan and spend some time there one day.’

I think if you have a travelling spirit then you will always want to experience different places, all of which will hold something for you as a home. But it would be nice to find one place in the world that you might always like to come back to in between … maybe one day I will find it. Maybe I already have.

By: Arthur

Arthur — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:50:11 +0000

Home is often where one spent one’s early years in my experience but, your “home” is where your heart is, and that is with your own special family.
With the travelling you do your young ones are being greatly enriched. The most rounded people are those who have travelled – the squarish are the stay at homes.

The smell? You have forgotten the smell of a French stone house. You guys, as the Americans say, are in great shape for sure; keep smiling and enjoying life.

By: Jacques

Jacques — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:42:00 +0000

Excellent advice Fiona!
As for Bea’s feelings my wife, who knows a few things about moving house when she was young, says the children will always blame you for selling the house of their childhood. Bonne chance pour prendre la bonne décision

By: mimi

mimi — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 22:28:13 +0000

I’m amazed, I thought from your writing that S.Cecile had a magic for you.
Smell is a very powerful sense and emotion. The area of our brain that registers smell is next to memory, so maybe you’re right- the house smelled unfamiliar, so did not evoke any memories.
It must be a bit disconcerting to feel no “homely” connection to anywhere?

By: Fiona

Fiona — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:19:18 +0000

My advice would be to visit the house in Savoie in say, November (or another horrid month in Savoie) and see if you still see it as a potential ‘home’…