Michael Wright - Cest La Folie : Onemans Quest for a More Meaningful Life

What do you do if you reach your thirties and still dont feel grown-up?
Why fritter away your life in front of a computer when you could be wielding manly power-tools?
How do you learn to be a hero if you suspect you may be a wimp?

These and other pressing questions are what drove Michael Wright to give up his comfortable South London existence and set out, with just his long-suffering cat for company, for La Folie a dilapidated fifteenth-century farmhouse in need of love and renovation in the heart of rural France.

Inspired by his much-loved newspaper column, Cest La Folie is the gloriously entertaining account of his struggle to make the transition from chattering townie to solitary paysan at one with the livestock, the locals and the landscape of his adopted home.

Witty and winningly honest, this tale of a new life abroad with a cat, a piano and an aeroplane is as much an elegy for rural France as a hymn to the simple pleasures of being alive.

To explore life at La Folie further, visit www.lafolie.co.uk

Michael Wright was born in Surrey in 1966. Following an unfashionably happy education at Windlesham House and Sherborne, he graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in English Literature, and spent several years working as a theatre critic, arts columnist and literary diarist in London whilst wondering what to do when he grew up. The answer turned out to lie in rural France, where he now lives with eleven very small sheep, three cockerels, three hens, two goldfish, one vintage plane, one labrador with a Baltimore accent and one disgruntled cat.

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First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright Michael Wright 2006

Michael Wright has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the life, experiences and recollections of the author. In some [limited] cases names of people, places, dates, sequences or the detail of events have been changed to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such minor respects not affecting the substantial accuracy of the work, the contents of this book are true.

Lines from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot are reproduced with the kind permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446422052
ISBN 9780553817324

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For my parents, Anne and Peter,
who made it all possible

Jolibois is the name I have given to the nearest town to La Folie. Though you will not see it on any map, it is not hard to find. And perhaps you will not feel the urge to try. For there are many other little towns, and many other incarnations of Jolibois, waiting to be explored and appreciated, all over France.

This new paperback edition contains the complete and unabridged text of the original hardback version of Cest La Folie, with the odd tweak and twiddle where necessary.

I am very grateful to those readers who have written to me, thanking me for the book. Several have expressed doubt as to whether the story is true or not. I should therefore like to emphasise that yes, it is true, and that a quest to be searchingly honest lies at the heart of the narrative.

Many people have written to ask when a sequel will appear. The truth is that this first book was more of a labour of love, and harder to write than I would ever have imagined. But I am now working on a follow-up, and will do my best to finish it before the world ends.

Several months after Cest La Folie first appeared, I am relieved to report that Jolibois life still burbles along in the same old key, and that the townspeople have not felt the urge to drum me out of the region though this may be because the book has not yet been translated into French.

At La Folie, meanwhile, the cat still purrs on the windowsill behind my desk. Gaston, my toothless old ram, gazes lustfully as ever at the plump white sheep in my neighbours field. I have not yet managed to crash my plane. And the Lone Pine still casts its long shadow over us all.

Michael Wright
La Folie 2007

My deepest thanks are to my old friend and ex-drummer, Jon Stock, for commissioning the newspaper column that was the chicken to the egg of this book, shortly after I moved to La Folie. Or perhaps the column was the egg, and this book is the chicken. Either way, Jons support has been athletic, and I have lost track of the number of times when his editorial judgements have saved me from myself, and readers from my gothic excesses.

Thanks, too, to those who freely gave their energies and insights to help me to write this book:

Zo Carnegie, for her sweetness and inspiration

The very special Marisa, and my brother Steven, who both read the manuscript at an early stage and suggested valuable improvements

Guy and Monique, Jean-Luc and Annick, Laurent and Valrie, Blaise and Mado, Franck and Karine, Claire Hajaj, Nick Wright, Fariyal Khatri, Jean-Franois Augrit, Grgory Cheyrou, Guy Dupuigrenet-Desroussilles and all the Benkerts, for encouragement along the way

Patrick Janson-Smith, for championing the book at the start.

Mark Lucas, my agent, for sagacity beyond his years.

Simon Taylor, my editor at Transworld, for making this a much better book than it would have been without his myriad improvements.

The many warm-hearted Telegraph readers who have taken the trouble to write to me, cheering me on

The cat, for her presence

The mice, for their absence (see above)

And to Alice, for everything else.

Quand on veut un mouton, cest la preuve quon existe

When one wants a sheep, it is the proof that one exists

Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupry
Editions Gallimard

I am three years old, and I want to be Queen Victorias train-driver.

No matter that I have missed the bus by a hundred years. I can daydream for hours about the Royal Queen, gazing at pictures of her carriage in the royal train.