Interview with Karen Wheeler - author of Tout Sweet, Toute Allure and Tout Soul

Whenever I worry about my whirlwind decision to buy the House With No Name, my run-down farmhouse in the south of France, I quickly turn to my growing library of books by other people who’ve done pretty much the same thing. My absolute favourites are the three books that former fashion editor Karen Wheeler has written about hanging up her high heels and moving to a small village in rural Poitou-Charentes. The first two are Tout Sweet: Hanging up my High Heels for A New Life in France and Toute Allure: Falling in Love in Rural France, and the third, Tout Soul: The Pursuit of Happiness in Rural France is out next week.

There’ll be a review of Tout Soul on tomorrow’s Friday Book Review, but in the meantime Karen kindly agreed to answer some questions from House With No Name.

Why did you decide to move to France – and when? Did you ever consider moving to a city or did you want to be in rural France?

Karen: It was a random series of events that led me there, all described in my first book Tout Sweet: Hanging up my High Heels for a New Life in France. I would never have considered moving to a city, as I’d lived in London for most of my life, and as cities go, it’s a pretty hard one to beat. I wanted countryside, fields and unspoilt countryside at my door. And I wanted that whole rustic French vibe: red and white checked tablecloths, jasmine and hollyhocks, and logs piled up in wicker baskets by the fire.

It sounds really tough to leave friends in London and make a totally new life in a different country. What advice would you give to anyone contemplating moving to France?

Karen: For me, it wasn’t a tough decision at all. Instead, it felt like an amazing opportunity had dropped out of the sky. My advice would be to move somewhere that is within walking or cycling distance of a village, rather than a remote hamlet. And don’t move there if you’re doing so in order to save your marriage. It’s surprising how many couples do, only for their relationship to go into meltdown shortly after arrival.

How good was your French when you arrived – and are you fluent now?

Karen: It was passable – I had A level French and for my history degree (admittedly a long time ago) I worked a lot with original documents from the French Revolution, so I could read it fluently. Conversation wise, there is definitely room for improvement, especially when I’m cross, which is usually with France Telecom. Then words often fail me.

When I’m in France the main things I miss are Earl Grey tea bags and M&S. What do you miss most about the UK? 

Karen: Apart from friends, M&S food hall is the number one thing that I miss. Someone once said that eating out in rural France is a lesson in repeated heartbreak. Cheese and wine aside, I would say the same about French supermarkets: harmful additives and hydrogenated fats are shockingly prevalent.

And what are the best things about living in France? Best food, drink, way of life?

Karen: For me it is the beauty of the Poitevin countryside. The Poitou-Charentes is a very under-rated area of France with some stunning walks and cycle rides. My favourite thing is cycling through dilapidated hamlets and old villages at sundown on a summer evening, with Biff (Karen’s dog) running along by my bike.

Your village sounds heavenly. Is it really called Villiers – and have you given your French friends different names? How have they all reacted to the books?

Karen: I changed the name of my village and also the names of my friends – with the exception of Luis. The overwhelming response to the books has been positive; and my friends have been very generous in letting me write about events in their lives. That said, I do hold back on a lot of stuff and I try to focus on peoples’ most endearing traits. One day I might write the unexpurgated version! For me, real life is much more interesting than fiction. There are some wonderful characters hiding out in the French countryside.

Your new book tackles a heartbreaking time in your life. I don’t want to give the story away but was it a tough decision to write about your love life and innermost thoughts?

Karen: Yes, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to write this book at all. The most common piece of reader feedback I’ve had about first two books is that they are very uplifting and “better than anti-depressants” but Tout Soul covers some very sad territory. Writing it has been a form of therapy for me. It’s weird but when I write my books, I do them for myself first and foremost – creating the sort of book that I would like to read. It’s only when they are published and out in the word that I panic and think: “God, do I really want people to know that about me?”

I’m actually a bit mortified when I think about the stuff that I’ve revealed in Tout Soul – some of it really quite embarrassing in the cold light of publication day. But I wrote it with my heart rather than my head (had my head been in charge I probably wouldn’t have written it at all).

A friend who works in the book world read it very early on and said that I come across as a bit mad in places. But I recently read A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, in which she meticulously picks apart the process of grieving, following her husband’s death. As Didion points out, “The power of grief to derange the mind has been exhaustively noted.” I could relate to so much of what Didion describes in her book and I think that many of my readers will be able to relate to the emotions described in Tout Soul – particularly the feelings of loss, guilt and regret.

The book was also written for someone who made a lasting impression on my life. And despite the sad events, the ultimate message is, I hope, an uplifting one: that life is the most amazing privilege.

Will there be more books in the series? Note from me: Please say yes!

Karen: I kept telling myself that Tout Soul would be the last – that I can’t go on writing about my life forever – but then something really funny happens or I meet a really interesting character and I think “Just one more book!” Plus, I really enjoy writing the books. I feel like I’ve found the thing that I was meant to do.

So yes, I’m about to start work on the fourth in the series, to be published next year, called Sweet Encore. (Unfortunately, I’ve run out of plays on the word “Tout”.) I can’t reveal the subtitle yet, as I don’t want to give too much away. This book is going to be a bit of a surprise. And after that, who knows?

Is your dog, Biff, as adorable as he sounds and looks?

Karen: YES – probably even more so in real life. He’s a very charismatic little dog – fun, fearless and affectionate. He charms everyone that he meets, apart from the local cats. I’m completely besotted with him.

Karen's latest book, Tout Soul: The Pursuit of Happiness in Rural France, is available for download now, from Amazon. The print version will be launched on March 7 at £10.99, and to coincide with the launch, the e-book version of Karen's first book, Tout Sweet: Hanging up My High Heels for a New Life in Rural France, will be available at a special promotional rate of £2.99 from March 7.

A tasteful shade of pale grey

Most weeks I don’t give House With No Name a second thought. Friends are keeping an eye on it for us and I’m pretty sure the cheeky dormouse who moved into the attic in the summer is having a whale of a time there with his pals.

But now the weather’s getting warmer (hooray!), I can’t wait to get out to France. I’ve got a picture of my tumbledown farmhouse above my desk and can’t help marvelling at how different it looks from five years ago. It has new windows, custom-made in Germany (much cheaper) and painted a tasteful shade of pale grey, a gorgeous south-facing terrace and a new tiled roof. I never thought I could get this excited about a roof, but it really is a work of art.

Before the work started we got a message from the local mayor. Friends told us we should get round to his office double-quick. “He wants to meet you,” they said, “and he’s only there on Tuesday afternoons.” This sounded scary. Was the mayor going to put an immediate stop to the building work because we’d failed to get a crucial bit of paper? Or did he simply want to give “les nouveaux Anglais” the once-over?

It turned out to be a bit of both. The deputy mayor was in charge that day and was ultra-charming. He told us the local commune numbered precisely 222 (all French, except for us and a Dutch family who bought a small chateau 25 years ago) and invited us to a sheep-roast in June. We politely expressed regret and said we’d love to, but our teenagers would be doing exams. You never know, maybe another year.

STOP PRESS (I've always wanted to write that!): Coming tomorrow. A fascinating interview with Karen Wheeler, beauty writer extraordinaire and author of Tout Sweet, Toute Allure and Tout Soul.

Guest post by Trouble Doubled - Twins: twice the work?

Happy Leap Year’s Day! I’m not sure whether such a celebration actually exists but considering that February 29 only comes round once every four years I reckon we should be shouting it from the rooftops. 

An enterprising fellow blogger – and author of the Trouble Doubled blog - agrees. She hit on the idea of running a blog swap carnival to mark the occasion and asked a host of bloggers to write guest posts for other bloggers. So I’ve written one for Here Come the Girls and I’m delighted to say that Trouble Doubled has written one for House With No Name. Here it is:

“When I announced I was expecting twins, lots of different people started offering advice. Mainly family, and mainly older generations. Now, I’m not very good at listening to advice, especially from people who are no less clueless than myself on a particular topic, so of course, I inevitably ignored them.

The one piece of advice I heard most often from people (who I hasten to add had not had twins themselves) was that having two together was not much harder work than having only one baby.  This, of course, is complete and utter drivel.

The reality is that two babies are very hard work, and there are some things which really are twice as difficult with two, and some things that are nigh on impossible. On the plus side, I have found that there are some things which are easier.

For example, getting out and about anywhere isn’t just twice the work it’s actually more difficult than that. Single buggies are usually alright to fit through pretty much any shop door, or onto a bus. But with twins it isn’t about pushing two single buggies around, it’s usually a double width one. And you can’t fold up a buggy and carry it and the baby if necessary, twice over.  Once you have a baby in each arm, it’s impossible to do almost anything. The twins are yet to have their first bus trip.

Toddler incidents increase much more than two-fold. Having an active toddler is hard work for any parent, but it’s relatively easy to keep an eye on a singleton and prevent too many accidents and injuries. With two, it’s really tough because you can guarantee while you are being distracted by one, the other will be up to something which will end in a bump or a bruise. The twins seem to have had more accidents each than either of my older children had.

But then you get things that are not quite twice as bad, like sleep. If you can get your twins to co-ordinate their sleeping, waking and feeding, you will need to get up in the night as many times as a parent of a singleton, though you will likely be up for longer each time. Of course, you’ve twice the odds of getting a bad sleeper with twins, but I have also found that my twins settle better and sleep for longer than my older children did. I think this is because the twins keep each other company in the night.

On the positive side, some things are far easier, like play time. My twins are now a year old. They play together lovely. They chase each other round the room, laughing, completely oblivious to anyone else in there. They sit and babble to each other, passing each other toys. They don’t even notice when I leave the room for a minute or two if I need to. At this age, my older children would try and follow me out, banging on the door and screaming for me to come back. I don’t feel as clung to as I did previously. Result.

So if you are expecting multiples, please don’t listen to anyone who’s never had twins or more, themselves. They don’t know the half of it. Parenting multiples is a wonderful experience, which can be hard work but rewarding in so many ways."

Thank you very much, Trouble Doubled!

The trials and tribulations of paperwork

When I went slightly mad a few years ago and decided to try my hand at teaching (I was useless), the main thing that made me throw in the towel was the endless paperwork.

For every lesson I taught at my local FE college, I had to fill in reams and reams of forms. There were the schemes of work to plan out lessons for the whole of the academic year, the lesson plans covering every single second of every single lesson and something called “reflective practice,” where I had to analyse everything from what teaching principles my lessons demonstrated to whether the class seating plan was up to scratch.

Admittedly, I was a trainee teacher so seasoned pros probably don’t have to bother with the reflective stuff, but even so, I was delighted to read in the Huffington Post this week that teachers’ paperwork is being cut right back.

According to the HuffPo report, the government has scrapped hundreds of pages of guidance issued to teachers. Schools minister Nick Gibb said in the House of Commons on Monday: “I am aware that many teachers are doing enormous amounts of overtime and that is a tribute to the professionalism of teachers in our schools today. What is important is that overtime is not spent filling in voluminous forms or reading huge arch lever files of guidance.”

Quite. For every second I spent agonising over my forms I reckon I could have taught my A level English sets the entire works of Tolstoy. Twice over.

PS. When we lived in France, my son loved Golden Grahams (above). But when we came back to the UK I couldn't find them anywhere. But now they've miraculously appeared on supermarket shelves again. Result? One very happy teenager...

Jacqueline Wilson, B*Witched and sleepovers

A wave of nostalgia sweeps over me every time a gaggle of girls in navy blue polo shirts and matching skirts walks past the house. It seems no time at all since my daughter was a wide-eyed 11-year-old who loved Jacqueline Wilson books, glittery pens and a band called B*Witched (oh dear, she’s going to be furious with me for mentioning that).

But amidst all the wistfulness, the one thing I DON’T miss are sleepovers. The custom of inviting not one best friend, but four or five, to have supper and stay the night didn’t exist in my youth. But these days sleepovers are de rigueur for girls. They involve watching DVDs like The Sleepover Club, playing raucous music till all hours, eating vast quantities of sweets, chatting till 3am and getting up four hours later. And if you reckon your daughter has dark circles round her eyes the next morning, she won’t look half as tired as you feel.

Sleepovers are most parents’ nightmare – and they get worse as children get older. When my daughter was little we’d be lucky if she and her pals went to sleep by 11pm. One friend who stayed was terribly homesick while another felt ill in the middle of the night (probably after all those sweets) and had to be driven home.

Once the girls turn into teenagers, sleepovers involve even less sleep than before. They all bed down on the floor of the sitting room, watch a load of films back to back all night and emerge at dawn for endless rounds of hot buttered toast.

The worst part of it all is that having had practically no sleep the girls are pale, weary and in a filthy temper for the rest of the day. My exasperated husband always declared we should make the Sleepover Girls sleep in different rooms and switch the lights off at ten. The fact that this would have completely defeated the object of the whole exercise didn’t bother him in the least.  

The first picnic of the year

We’ve got a bit of a thing about picnics in our family. My mum was so evangelical about them that we used to picnic in all seasons and in all weathers. From rain-lashed, windswept beaches to sunlit Dorset fields, she chose picnic spots with an expert eye and reckoned that food always tasted better when you ate it outside.

Sometimes she’d unload a wicker hamper, old patchwork tablecloth, china plates and glasses from the back of her bright green 2CV and lay it all out on the grass. Other times she’d manage to stuff a whole picnic into the capacious pockets of her blue InWear coat. My husband still talks about the time, soon after he first met her, when we decided to walk to the beach at the lost village of Tyneham (above). As we sat on the pebbly shore, gazing at the boats tacking back and forth, she promptly produced hot cheese and tomato rolls, seasoned with mustard and wrapped in tin foil, and a flask of coffee for four out of her pockets.

And now, all these years later, my children are just as enthusiastic about picnics as my mum. So when we woke yesterday to discover that the grey skies and freezing temperatures had miraculously disappeared, they suggested an impromptu picnic. We hurriedly assembled a lunch of soup, rolls, cake and coffee and strolled down the road to Oxford’s lovely University Parks.

We walked to the middle of the park, stopping to admire the spring crocuses and snowdrops and passing dog walkers, Lycra-clad runners and parents with babies in prams. We chose a picnic spot near the river and marvelled how even in the middle of a bustling city, you can still be on your own. Then we glanced to our left. On a pitch in the distance, two teams, one sporting pale blue, the other navy blue, were charging around at top speed. Hundreds of cheering spectators seemed to have materialised from nowhere and a little marquee was selling T-shirts and hoodies. We looked again and burst out laughing. I don’t quite know how we’d managed it, but we were right in the middle of the annual Oxford v Cambridge mixed lacrosse varsity match. Did you know such a thing existed? No, me neither.