We’ve had 15 wonderful years of A Wanderful Life, but now it’s time for some changes.
This site has been significantly trimmed down this week and over 400 posts were removed. What remains are a few posts from the last 5 years, and an occasional beauty shot from earlier years. I’ve kept the still-relevant photo essays from Scandinavia, all done just before the pandemic created chaos. And there’s one post from the year 2000 when we came zooming back to France, quickly purchased a house to renovate, and Mark spent that year gutting a 200-plus-years-old village house in Brittany, turning it into our safe haven.
Photo essay sites are not popular the way they were when I set up this site in 2009. The world has moved on and video formats are what audiences want now.
We too are about to transition into video — with a new name and new links. I’ll be on a steep learning curve as I learn video editing, overlaying tracks of music, and the lengthy steps to getting it all online in a harmonious way.
Thank you for the years that you’ve been with us, and (fingers crossed!) I’ll be sharing our NEW SITE within the next few weeks.
There has been a very intentional pause in posting since the end of 2019. For all of us around the world, life became ultra-stressful during the pandemic of the last two years, and it didn’t seem like a wise idea to share anxiety with an already anguished world.
We left Sweden at the end of 2019 and raced back to France. After a lifetime of depending on intuitive input, I had a rather familiar feeling — a large hand was firmly planted in the middle of my back, propelling me forward, telling me not to relax until we were safely back there.
Over the week of Christmas, we wrote a contract to purchase a derelict house in a small village in Brittany, and we had the keys in our hands six weeks later on Valentine’s Day of 2020. The house, one of the old village shops with living quarters above, had been built in stages from the late 1600s or early 1700s, then the early 1800s, and then we had what I laughingly referred to as ‘the concrete bunker’ — a 1960s add-on. It was certainly not in any condition to be occupied.
Again, listening to a building sensation that something dreadful was coming down the road, we filled the house with as many building supplies as we could purchase. The following week, the pandemic was declared and France went into lockdown.
We were not allowed to leave the cold and damp rental house we occupied unless we were picking up groceries, filling a vehicle with fuel, or going to the doctor. And when we did go past our front door, we were required to have a separate written statement each time including our name, address, and time of day we had left the house. France was quite strict about their lockdown!
We were originally denied the right to travel between villages to do renovation work, but I was persistent — and it paid off. I continued to do writing and editing while reloading the fire repeatedly each day to try and stay warm. And after a flurry of letters to government offices, I finally obtained permission from the regional police for Mark to go straight from the rental house to our future home each day. Never stopping or talking to anyone, he spent almost every day for the next 6-plus months gutting and rebuilding that mucky house.
Most of the walls were covered with mud plaster atop ancient lathe.The side walls were stone covered with lime plaster.
Feeling purposeful during that time really helped us, and we didn’t slide into the same depths of depression that some people we knew were going through. We just kept on going, knowing that our ‘project’ would pay off. And it has.
For the first time in ever so long, we are happy where we live. We’ve been in for 17 months now and the house is still in various stages of ongoing renovations, but it was a big project since it’s a 3 level house with a long and narrow partly walled, partly fenced garden out back.
Gargoyles gushing water from the upper wall of the medieval church in the heart of the village.
Our village is small, lovely. and quite old. We have a medieval church (complete with gargoyles overhead gushing water) down the block that was established in Gallo-Roman times.
The people are friendly, and we are fortunate to have a charming bar and restaurant a few hundred metres from our front door. The pharmacy is a short walk around the corner, and we have an excellent boulangerie (bakery) and small grocery on the other side of the town square.
Historic image of the village.
It’s interesting to feel contentment after moving so often over the last two-plus decades. As we re-emerge into some semblance of life, still wearing masks in crowds or when we go shopping, you’ll soon see more new pictures and some flashback pics from our life in France.
At some point, I’ll give you a chance to gasp a bit at our before and after pictures from the renovation. The teaser shots above should give you a clue of the obstacles Mark faced on the ground floor and first floor above. He’s only just begun to renovate the top floor, so there will be more stages of transformation.
In the meantime, it’s good to go back to basics and remember that life is good, and we are blessed.
As I write this, a mere few days after taking the intentionally soft-focused image above, I realise that it sums up the slow-and-steady state of patience and exploration we are currently immersed in.
There is no rush to decide what to do next.
There is no pressure to move forward or backward or in-between.
There is a sense of deep relaxation and a reacquaintance with the Deborah and Mark that we were almost 26 years ago.
The previous article — A-Wandering We Go!— was the introduction to these changes. Until recently, very few people knew the behind the scenes ideas that we’d been percolating in our artistic brains.
Our lives are good — and we are grateful.
I’ll go back to assignment writing and editing at some point, but for now the personal writing and return to photographic pursuits are putting a smile on both of our faces.
And as we decide where, when, and how we’d like to live in the years ahead, we’ll be documenting the journey and sharing it with you.
Stick with us — it’s going to be an interesting adventure! And if you’d like to follow along, enter your email for updates on the form that appears once you CLICK on the line just below this one.
As we travel from country to country, we’ve factored in time to indulge our love of art and design. So my heart beat a little faster when I learned that we could see an original Arne Jacobsen prototype for modular housing design from 1971 — and a visit to the Trapholt Museum in Kolding was planned.
You’d think I would have headed straight to that exhibit first — but no — I was lightheaded from hunger. As we walked to the far end of the museum, we were astonished at the serene view over the fjord below from the large windows of the cafe.
The cafe in the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark overlooks a deep-blue fjord.
After we dined, a visit to the Kubeflex prototype made us realise how far ahead of his time Arne Jacobsen was when he designed it and then died shortly afterwards in 1971. Good architecture and design for the masses, not just for the wealthy, was something he aspired to. Each module of the Kubeflex was 11 metres square and could be assembled in a variety of combinations according to the requirements of the new owners.
Unfortunately, Jacobsen’s untimely death meant that the Kubeflex design never went into production. Instead, the prototype was used as a summer house for over 30 years by the Jacobsen family.
Arne Jacobsen’s prototype for the modular housing design called Kubeflex is on permanent display at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.Iconic original Egg Chairs designed by Arne Jacobsen are displayed in his prototype Kubeflex House at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.Custom furniture designed by Arne Jacobsen is displayed in the Kubeflex prototype house at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.
The next must-see exhibit was the gallery containing work by Nanna Ditzel. The items on display contained bold colours that were visually arresting!
Nanna Ditzel Mid-Century design displayed at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.Nanna Ditzel Mid-Century design displayed at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.
The media and the art world may call it ‘retro chic’ — but there was a nostalgic edge to everything we saw. The concepts that are now quite desirable again were so far ahead of their time.
Entry of the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark.
Next up — images from Mark’s rambles through Kolding.
It has been a year since we visited Paris, and quite a lot has unfolded in our lives. Yes, we are still in Brittany, France — for now.
We spent two months in Tuscany at the end of 2018 with Mark doing renovation work on a historic villa and me doing photography for the villa’s website and social media accounts. It is a massive and ongoing project and I’ll place links to the site in the next update — a photo essay of the Villa Francini Del Prete.
Reading a book on the elevated terrace of Villa Francini Del Prete in Fazzano, Tuscany.
The front entry door into Villa Francini Del Prete from the left side of the courtyard. Fazzano, Lunigiana, Tuscany, Italy.
Arriving back in France in late November, a stressful period of rioting, blockades, and demonstrations began. This situation continued for many months afterward as the Gilets Jaunes movement caused chaos in cities large and small, highways, and even rural roads. Yes, I understand that French citizens have the right to protest what they see as economic inequity. No, they do not have the right (in my personal opinion) to cause businesses to fail, to smash in the huge glass windows of shopfronts and restaurants, and to set fire to barricades and vehicles.
The road blockages also made it difficult to get to work, go to doctor or dentist appointments, do the weekly shopping, and even attend scheduled appointments at government offices. This has not been a happy experience, and it would seem that we are soon to be dealing with rail strikes and rolling airline and airport strikes in the months ahead. We don’t find any of this social upheaval appealing or thrilling.
Mark has had the additional stress of losing both parents within 10 weeks of each other, on opposite sides of the world. He was especially close to his father and was startled when he received a cancer diagnosis out of thin air. We spent most of February in England, and Mark drove his father back and forth to radiotherapy. The treatment was ineffective and the doctor was incredibly inaccurate when he told us we had quite a lot longer with Brian, Mark’s father. No — we didn’t. He died the week after we returned to France.
Right now we’re in planning mode. We have some adventures in mind, and I’ll share those with you at another time. For now, this was just a quick check in to say that yes, we are still ticking along. And no matter what, we always find things to be grateful for — each and every week.
***NOTE***
After dealing with severe amounts of spam and highjacking attempts, I have turned off all comments on my posts.
Interesting how quickly time slides away — and we’re a bit shocked to realise that after six months in Calvados, we are leaving the house that Mark has been working on since November in TWO WEEKS!
We’re headed over to the other side of Normandy for another reno — but it also looks like we’ll be leaving France in mid-June to have some adventures in other countries. Sooooo — it’s time to update Mark’s online work portfolio with a LOT of pictures.
Gallery 1 has the images from here in Normandy over the last 5 months. And Gallery 2 is full of the pictures from that huge renovation he did on the Mid Century ranch house in Australia in 2014 through mid-2016.
Want a peek? Then go to markharmes.com to see what I’m talking about. DOZENS of photos showing the range of the work that Mark does.
