Norfolk is a wonderful place for our extended family…
and the whole gaggle of 'em have me presiding over 'em from my hideaway in France…
The warmth and love between us all… it never falters… and when a new arrival comes along… our hearts simply expand…
We chat via internet and they visit as often as they can… they don’t mind that we don’t travel there very often… all is well…
I also think and from recent experience, you become accepting to change your lifestyle as your body and circumstances dictate. Its all lovely at first, a run down ruin to do up, so much space and no neighbours joined or back and front but then it begins to get harder and harder, old houses lose their charm when you find them getting draughty and too big heat any longer and a more modern smaller property makes perfect sense.
I think the C18th Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions, as well as the C18/19th Enclosure Acts in GB (as it then was) scattered the population to a much greater extent than happened later in CE. Far more European families retained a family home in their original village despite some members moving elsewhere, whereas this was far less common in GB. Many people in our village have family homes that they’ve lived in for centuries.
My brother who’s lived in Spain for a long time, is still invited back to his former wife’s family home for the annual slaughtering of the pig, when they spend days curing and preparing the meat so that everyone takes some of it back to the city, or wherever they now live.
Former wife doesn’t show because she’s living in a cult in the Pyrenees who only eat food mentioned in the Old Testament!!! ‘Daft bat!’ as they used to say in Yorkshire.
Inheritance laws force the situation you describe, certainly in France whereas in GB you can leave your estate to next doors cat.
Manna? Locusts? Kid, milk, honey and bread. Dates? Goodness I’m off to Google a list!!
Yes, but most rural dwellers in GB were tenants who had either lost their traditional access to the village grazing commons when they were enclosed by local landowners, or Highlanders, who during the Clearances were forcibly driven off the land by their own clan chiefs. In other words they didn’t have property to leave to their descendants.
By contrast, later C19th French economic migration to urban centres was voluntary, migrants had family homes to which they could return and their links with the countryside were not severed.
Jane, one of the problems that people face is that French friends have their families and spend time with them.
We have found it difficult to arrange getting neighbours together at th e same time because one or another is tied up with their own family together.
We have a very small family so look forward to seeing our Munich family every year.
Yes, family activities are a priority for many. We tend to invite people in family groups, rather than mix and matching people. Our friends who were here last week we first met when the daughter was v young, and now a young woman but still happy to spend time with us. And they now bring papi too.
There was a cousinade at the weekend… the family rented the SdFetes as there were so many of them… and the festivities went on over the 2 days (and nights)…
and at the other end of the scale… there’s a neighbour whose only relative lives in the same village… but the two never meet, never phone even… so sad. Neither has a good word to say about the other…
I know them both and I keep schtum 
Which is why the bloke who has lived in Paris almost all his life refused (eventually) to sell me the small plot of forested land adjoining mine. It is useless, designated as it is, can’t even be used for agriculture but after pondering for 6 months and after sending his son down to look at it, he said ‘non’.
Aaaah, French thinking David Spardo… love it
We are now into our last two days in the UK, coming back home on Friday and we really can’t wait despite packing boxes and chaos all around us at the moment.
We are both (just?) over 60 now (but feeling in our 40’s) and can’t wait for another start in France which will thankfully now be forever. We first lived there in our thirties and stayed for a real long time but work took us elsewhere and then family death took us back to the UK.