Feel The Fear Week - Moving To France by Annabel Scott

Today is the start of Feel The Fear week on my blog (running Feb 21- Feb 28) and I've got some fab authors dropping by each day to share their fears with us. Today it's the lovely Annabel Scott....

If you'd like to find out the fears of the other authors throughout next week simply scroll down and hit the 'networked blog' button on the right hand side of this blog and they'll ensure you don't miss a single secret...



Feel the Fear In France 

My husband and I have always been that couple who have bored everyone stupid about our plans to move abroad. Costa Rica. Spain. France. It was ever changing, and I don’t think anyone thought we’d do it. But when my husband was offered a short-term contract in Switzerland it gave us the kick up the bum we were looking for. In a matter of weeks I’d quit my job and our house was on the market.

We’d planned to live in Switzerland for a year or so, before making the big move to France. My husband went out first and I was to join him after the house sold. Only, my husband hated living and working in Zurich and we decided to put our French plan into operation as soon as we could. By this stage my replacement had already been hired at my old work, our house had a for sale sign, we couldn’t back out of it.

We set off, my husband, me and our labrador in a Vovlo estate packed to the rafters, the rest of our house was safely in storage until we found a French house. The next night we were settling into our French adventure, in a gite we’d hired for five months. That first month was intense. We house hunted, found a house to buy, set up bank accounts and I enrolled on a teaching English course. It was about that time that I found out I was pregnant with our first baby....

It was then that I felt the fear. We were no longer on holiday. I was about to have a baby, in a foreign country. One that I didn’t speak the language in. One that my mum, sister and support network didn’t live in. One where we actually, when it came down to it, knew no one. It was at that point I told my husband that I thought I wanted to go back to the UK, but I wasn’t sure. I told him I thought it was just pregnancy hormones and that I’d calm down. He did not look happy - maybe it had something to do with our life savings having disappeared into a wreck of a French house.

One year on, and I’m sitting in our lovely, fully renovated, house. My husband is rocking our baby on his knee, the labrador is snoring next to me on the sofa. We’ve managed to build a new support network in our local villages and we couldn’t have asked for better “new” friends. We’ve discovered that we’re not all that far away by plane from our families who we see more of than we ever used to, and what with retired parents they’re free to come over more too. And that scary language barrier? Well, if I gave birth in France with a mid-wife who spoke no English, then I’m pretty sure I can survive anything. Fear, as they say, is all in the mind.

Annabel Scott is a chick lit writer. She has just released the third instalment into her Millie series - Millie and the American Proposal : http://amzn.to/Lnrqwg

www.writerannabel.wordpress.com

@writerannabel