This was the first time when we had an opportunity to live in a private house with a garden. So, with our philosophy of not postponing things for the next life, I decided not to wait any longer and fulfill my old dream – adopting chickens! In 2020, our family welcomed Marie and Antoinette, who brought so much joy that I guess I started sharing the craziness of other pet owners. Unfortunately, Marie didn’t make it to 2023, but Antoinette did, today she is a wise mama-hen to other two newcomers.

In Pau we had a life very simple life. Having nothing but our cycling clothes, we had to dig in old wardrobe of Xavier’s parents to find something else than goretex shorts to wear on every day basis. We had nothing at all from our London apartment either, not even a laptop! It stayed this way until June, then the biggest restrictions were lifted and we could finally go to London, empty our flat and move everything to France. These two modern Robinson Crusoe months were quite peculiar! What we did: a lot of home training and reading. What we did not do: baking banana bread.

I started my own book club, found a teacher of Spanish and started psychotherapy. Xavier dived into house renovation videos on Youtube; we were watching The Crown, marveling our chickens, spent hours lying on the grass. God, we were happy. Twice a week we went for food shopping, every other day we ran 6 km around the house. The spring was blossoming, and even if the nearest future was very blurry, then and there we were fully enjoying our life, no matter how monotonous and overall anxious those days were.

At some point, we also started gardening. That turned to be a black hole, which completely sucked us in – three years later we think fondly of our first Pau tomatoes, while our garden in Toulouse got enormous! Still, people of the city, we couldn’t help being amazed at the fact that we were eating scrambled eggs of our own chickens with tomatoes and parsley from our own garden.

After the main restrictions were gone, and we officially ended our London life, our Pau period became even happier. We bought a new van – Robbie II, recovered a habit of wearing normal clothes, made some changings in our couple functioning that can’t be put in blog (but future Lera, I hope you’ll smile while reading these lines), discovered surfing and explored the region through and through, as well as some parts of Spain. Almost all of these escapades are already online, if you see 2020, then it was it. Xavier was not working, as it was his pause between the contracts – is there any way how this time could get any better?

I shouldn’t probably think this way, but I am really not sure there will be any time in my life, when I can be as happy as I was then. I can’t be sure that after the war in your country it is still possible to be fully happy – reaching the state of contentment would be probably more than I should hope for. We will see. Having such perfect nine months in Pau with my Xavier, Marie and Antoinette was already a great privilege.