The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep53: Angel Strawbridge on not fitting in with the chateau set

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Listen as Angel (and briefly Dick) Strawbridge chats to Annie and Wendy about bringing up kids in a chateau in France, being a cross-channel stepmum, and how to handle une grande renovation project!

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary. And I'm Wendy Gollage. And together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments. With guests who are far more interesting than we are. Good morning, sweaty, snotty, teary peeps. I was greeted this morning with a message from the Wendy saying, get me to tell you all about paddleboarding.

So come on, Wendy Wend spill you know how badly I want to try it but I just fear I'm not gonna be able to do the getting up bit and then I'll just look like a knob in the middle of the river well it's I think this is the first podcast we've started with you calling yourself a knob so that's something to be celebrated paddleboarding is awesome I love it and you were saying you wanted to give it a go on the river but you were started with you calling yourself a knob so that's something to be celebrated paddleboarding is awesome i love it and you were saying you wanted to give it a go on the river but you were worried about rats because why yeah that's my other fear rats dead bodies underneath me and standing up okay standing up is really easy it's a giant paddleboard and you can do it and it's really

good for your core and it's really good fun and when the kids aren't sat on the front it's really relaxing it's really nice I'm going to come to Oxford and we're going to go paddle boarding and I'm going to make you do it okay yeah come and stay for the weekend and bring the board with you no it's like 11 foot oh wow so we'll have to go and hire one okay okay okay. And I won't see any rats and I won't, my feet won't touch any dead bodies when I fall in, will they? Absolutely not. Okay, all right, I'm holding you to this. Confidently. Does anyone know about the prevalence of rats in Oxford Rivers?

I think it's pretty bad. My friend was swimming across the river right next to my house the other day. And she said as she was doing her breaststroke, she looked to the left and there was a rat swimming alongside her lovely this ladies and gentlemen is the person who moved out of her house when she lived in london because they had mice literally just oh i've done that multiple times i've gone and stayed in hotels in the middle of the night because of the mouse thing loads of times let's talk to someone more sane than us yeah okay well thankfully we are joined by someone quite marvellous. Her name has been on our Guess We Want on the podcast sheet forever.

But now, Wend, I hope you've been practising your French. We have only gone and got ourselves Angel Strawbridge from Escape to the Chateau. Bonjour, Angel. Oh, bonjour. Are we going to speak in French this time? Is that okay? Yeah?

I think... We'll get the medal of who's the worst. We should maybe just drop the odd wording, mainly because we're not so great on the fluency issue. I'd actually like to understand what you say, and my French is crap, so please can you speak in English? Well, thank you for having me,

and my French is terrible, and our children are absolutely humiliated when me and Dick try and speak French. And Dorothy especially has this incredible French accent because she started school when she was so young that you can't tell that she has an English accent. And Arthur, bless him, he speaks fluent French. But with an English twang, I like it, you know. But honestly, Dorothy completely corrects us all the time. And it's all about the pronunciation. So anyway, I'm cool for a minute. I've got the kids, you know, you have your kids so they can translate if you ever move abroad. That's what happens. They've got like brains like sponges.

They do, they do. So first question. Always asked to all of our guests any sweat snot or tears in your chateau this morning um there is always a little bit of um of of sweating because when we get up we are running around getting the kids ready for for school um and then dick is very very military like and he would rather always be five minutes early than five minutes mr dick strawbridge um and he um he stands at the bottom of the stairs and he and he shouts out it's like a countdown we are 8 25 we

are 8 26 and all of a sudden it all gets a little bit panicky, a little bit hot and we run out. That would stress me out. No, but does it work? Angel, does it work? Maybe that's what I need to do. You know what it does? It puts a heebie-jeebies up you and then it doesn't matter if we are completely on time

because we've never, ever been late for school. But we've all got this little walk where we go, it's like, you know that that walk that you want to do when you're in a hurry and we go sorry sorry sorry and then we all run over to the car and we'll get in the car and then we go and then we're always on time so that is our you know that that I guess that is only our sort of like sort of sweaty stressy bit in the morning but we we've sort of got into a bit of a rhythm of it that's nice well it's nice that everyone's back at school isn't it how were lockdowns for you being locked down in a chateau doesn't sound too terrible to

be honest angel yeah it was weird so we'd just been on um our dare to do it tour like last year and it was you know it was popping up as we as we were on tour and we got back on a Wednesday and we were we were filming like on the Thursday we had like the camera crew here and we've just seen this sort of like yeah I'm sure it's everything's gonna be fine isn't it you know this thing's just gonna kind of sort of go into nowhere and by Sunday France was on proper lockdown Macron had sort of locked the country down and everyone sort of flew home. And I think you're in a bit of a sort of a bubble when you've got a family around you

and you've got to feel quite blessed at those moments. You do really appreciate the time. You can't help it. It's like we kind of had a guilt about it that we had been had a really busy sort of few few months. And and then we just didn't really know what to do with ourselves. So we got out into the garden and we just sort of cooked and did all the things that you might do when you're on your summer holidays. And the weather was nice. The downside was that obviously we do weddings here.

And we had a lot of, there was a lot of bride management. Oh, Angel, that doesn't sound like an easy job to me. No. Do you know, it's not an easy job because I want to be that person that just makes sure, like gives them the answers and says everything is going to be okay. And makes all their dreams come true she didn't say bridezilla management so it could have been worse i everyone was good but it's the it's the anxiousness and the worries and not having

an answer to a problem that was the big thing i mean some weddings we reorganized four times so we was in this naive state where we would say let's put the wedding back your May wedding let's do it in June um let's do it in July you know what let's do it in October so what we did here was that we actually we were really productive and we got we dug a trench to the orangerie so we were getting a different electricity um capability over there thinking we'll just do weddings later on in the year it's fine um and then it kind of just you know rollerballed until yeah not doing weddings this year um at all um and then it went over to you know people went into next year so we have now obviously in our second year of no weddings and we've got we've got a backup of two years that go all the way from 2022 to 2025.

Wow so that's a lot of weddings now right? Yeah do you know people just couples just threw them into the future that's that's how they managed it they said if it goes so far in the future then then actually I don't have to worry about it. And I think that kind of, you know, people having an answer and a solution, it calmed people, you know, and that was it. And then, I mean, we have a team here. We had to stay productive and you have to kind of think latterly all the time. So we did our Make Do and Mend show, which came out of the fact that we were getting loads of emails uh from people just sort of asking advice um and we thought let's let's do a tv show and we wrote a book um so you know to keep money coming in as you do as you do yeah it was lovely

writing it though just because i'd forgotten a lot of stuff oh yeah it's a nice it's a really lovely book tell everyone about it so um uh the year a it. So, A Year at the Chateau we wrote last year, which was about us finding the chateau and sort of establishing everything up until our wedding. So, it was a whole book about the tears and the joys and the roller coaster all the way up to the end of 2015 and the book that we have written this year living um shattered dream it just starts um at the end of um of where the last book kicked off ended sorry um and it takes you through the next two and a half years and what was interesting when we were um when we were thinking about it we said we're gonna write about four or five years um and then when you start breaking down what we did I mean we were quite tired because you know just writing down bullet points we had about honestly there's about 2,000 bullet points um of of things you know activities that we'd done we're with, you know, without the pandemic, we, oddly, we wouldn't have been able to

write those books, because we were just, we were busy sort of hosting weddings. So, you know, you can look at it, I would rather there hadn't been a pandemic, don't get me wrong. But, you know, but in a way, we, we've had that time. And you've just got to look at that as a positive somehow. The thing is, the thing I marvel about you and Dick is you've got two kids, which most of us find pretty stressful as it is. Most of the rest of us have a nurse breakdown if we have to get a new bathroom during that time. And yet you're renovating a chateau and putting on weddings. Well, are you renovating it today is there someone either there's someone locked in a cupboard what's the banging she's locked dick in the cupboard yeah that's

what it is oh gosh nothing nothing gets past used to does it no it's um we are top top secret but we are doing our roof oh oh there's nothing glamorous about a roof though is there it's money that you don't you know it's not scatter cushions a roof is it no no no i love the cushion moment i can't wait for it um but there is um there's a seriousness about this that um what sort of we were going to do it in four quarters over four years so what we what we thought and this is actually really going to answer your first question on this is that if we've got all the stuff out um and we're doing it and we've got the mess and the scaffolding etc why don't we just like do the whole roof this year um and that is what we're doing because then we

can put it all away um and we don't have to think about it in our lifetime and and our children's lifetime because there's this is the bit that i think um we were a little bit choked about when we started doing um the roof is that we are doing it for arthur and dorothy because it's all great like yeah we've got a chateau that's lovely but when you inherit it as your children and then sort of realize that you have to do a roof um that could cost between 100 and 200k it kind of like takes away the you know that oh i've got a chateau it really and and every house is as good as its roof um but going back to your first question about how we have children and we get a lot done is that since we've moved in we have been in constant renovations okay and I think every project is all about just having the the tools and all the stuff there because half of the

actual preparation is deciding what you want going to get the stuff it's the planning and prep once you have that actually painting a wall in your bathroom or tiling a wall it actually takes not very long it's all the other sort of stuff that that takes a long you know the time do you want to know how long it took my husband to tile a bathroom and the bathroom is an en suite so it's not cavernous take a wild stab in the dark angel i'm gonna say three and a half years. Not quite that bad. Eight and a half months. Eight and a half months. See, Wendy, I would have killed him in his sleep.

I would have stabbed him to death with something. Why? He listens to this podcast. This will be great, Tim. Sorry, Tim. And he's going to stab you. Because he's a perfectionist and he hadn't ever done tiling before. So you can have all the tools and still have no idea, Angel.

It's all well and good saying that you've once you've done the prep but we're not you we're not good at this shit you're good at it okay if my i'm gonna i'm gonna channel my inner in a dick he would honestly say i hate diy and i'd rather be sticking a pin in my eye or going fishing i know that he absolutely absolutely hates it but you know there's there is doing something for pleasure like your bathroom in your ensuite and i'm sure when your husband is is has working and doing other things it's really hard to sort of keep that focus here what when we're doing renovations it's part of our it's part of our job or it's necessary for an event or something so we do put sort of more more focus into it and it is more about just sort of getting jobs done whereas i'm sure your husband do you say his name was tim yes i'm sure he just i'm sure he just

stroked every tile didn't he and just like made sure it's right got his sort of you know yes angle it became like a long-running joke we actually threw a party when that bathroom was finished no word of a lie we had angel i've got another renovations question i'm currently in a house that we are renovating and we've been renovating it for nearly a year and we still haven't moved in my big problem is we're crap at stuff like this so we're getting other people to do it but they never do it when they say they're going to do it how do you manage other people on these things well that is quite a french thing you know i mean there's two there's two ways you can do it you can get used to that um which doesn't always, it's not always like the happiest solution.

She's never going to get used to that, just telling you now. No, I know. It's not going to happen. It's valuing people's time. Finding the right people is probably not just for renovation, but it's like it's the hardest thing in any business, isn't it? Someone who you trust and is reliable and who turns up it's a real biggie like when you say because you'll probably you know put on um uh you know your your different clothes because you've got workmen happening that day and you organize the children different um and if someone doesn't

appreciate that honestly it just makes you feel so aggravated and then you get a bit guilty that you shouldn't feel that aggravated but really you are so i just i'll try and find someone new unless you really love them do you love them are they good i do love them they're really good but they're just a bit like oh so yeah it's not gonna be this week it's gonna be next week now i think it's sit down with a cup of tea really okay so have a frank honest full conversation about how we're all feeling. Yeah, I'm all right. This is like therapy. Right, okay. Darren is going to get invited round for a cup of tea this afternoon.

I'm happy to have that chat with him. Oh, I'll dial you in, Angel. That'll freak him out. That'll scare him witless. You say you're going to be here at nine o'clock. I want you here at ten to nine. I've had your coffee darren we're having a three-way yeah so do you ever feel isolated living in france do you miss

home do you miss coming back what especially at the moment home is france home yeah yeah it's it is really weird um because whenever uh whenever we go back to England, we say we're going home. And whenever we've just come back from Ireland and we were going home to Ireland. And then wherever we are, we say we're going home to France. So I feel like we're multi-homing. And England will always be our home. We're British. in um and it is you know england will always be our our our home we we um we're british um but france very much feels like like being home and i have to say do we feel isolated lonely here absolutely not at all however i do think um that that that you can be there's this idealistic um

sort of vision many people they move abroad they've got this beautiful place in the country you know lots of outbuildings a gorgeous garden and all of a sudden it dawns on you that you can't walk to the shop you don't have the same social life etc so it has to be a lifestyle change and it has to suit your lifestyle you can't put it into a sort of fantasy box um but i tell you the biggest change in my life, this is really genuine. And I say it all the time, not just because I'm chatting to you, Stu, and what this podcast is about. But the biggest change, what I did feel a little bit isolated was when I had my first child. Because that's when I just was like, right, your whole life changes completely.

And I was still in London. I still had everything at my grip, but I didn't have it in the same way. So actually by the time I'd, you know, got used to being a mum and then we'd moved out from London to Essex. By the time I moved to France, I was in a different mental state

than before I had children. So it really, it happened. I was ready. And I think that's the big thing. I think you, if you're going to do a move somewhere like this, you really, you have to be ready for it. And you don't, you might not have neighbours

and you've just got to like the fact that you've got a lot of space and a lot of time. Who do you mainly hang out with apart from Dick and the kids do you hang out with other french people how knit like how near is your nearest neighbor like what does your social life look like well it's interesting isn't it because i have always been a bit of a social butterfly i mean i i had years like a decade of raving in lond London and partying. Good woman.

I was always. Good woman. But I was. And then, you know, when you have children, your life changes like that. And the kids are sort of seven and eight years old now. And I kind of enjoy hanging out with them. We don't really, it's sort of a hard question to answer in light of the last couple of years.

Yeah, because no one has a social life anymore. Yeah, and it is all Zoom. And I'm still very close with my girlfriends and we often get on a Zoom and have, you know, a drink and a gossip and a catch up on that basis. But before, the children very much integrated in school and um and i would you know whenever there is a school party it is um obligatory at the end that you all come and all the parents have a drink um and what have you and we did at the

start when we first moved here we started getting invited to a lot of dinner parties. What did we call it? The Chateau set. Hilarious. Darling. Official name. You basically moved into the aristocracy when you moved to France. Yeah, yeah. And I felt really uncomfortable.

Oh, wow. It was just weird. It just wasn't my thing. And I said to Dick one night um you having a nice time he's like no so why are we doing this we don't have to say yes to everyone we have to sort out babysitters you know by the time I turned up and I've done my hair and everything I'm absolutely shags so we just you know we we actually do enjoy doing things as a family.

And the kids, like we try and involve the kids in everything we do. Because weirdly, it makes our lives a lot easier and lighter. So most people probably don't know you're a step mum as well. How do you navigate that? Especially in a two country, four kids. Is it four kids? How many stepkids have you got? Two.

Yeah. So yeah, four in total. Do you know what? Wendy, no one has ever actually sort of like officially called me that. I didn't say wicked stepmum at least. I did just say stepmum. I think more fairy stepmum. Yes.

It's weird. Now this is odd, isn't it? I think more fairy step-mom. Yes. It's weird. Now, this is sort of odd, isn't it? But obviously, they are in my age range. Like, me and James, we get on really, really well. We're always talking about, like, he's a real foodie. Completely fabulous. You know, he's really handsome.

My nan had a massive crush on him um I'd always be like whenever we used to go over to my nan's house she lived in East London she'd be like how's James so we'd be like she's he's all right yeah he's good with his wife and kids great tell me about James oh I love it she's just such an old old girl she was um and she he's got three kids and they are... Oh, she was step-granny as well. Step-granny. God, ain't she? They are all fabulous. I'm often the one that gets all their prezzies sent to them

just because their kids are similar age to our kids. And one Christmas we had a one, two, three, four and a five-year-old here. It was hectic. And we've got Charlotte as well. So it's James and Charlotte, Dick's eldest children. And I just love them to bits. And of course, I think this is probably textbook,

but when there's somebody new on the scene, and Dick had been separated for many, many years before he met me, but it always feels weird doesn't it when that new when there's somebody introduced into something into the children doesn't matter if they're young or old um or older as they were I still think it is difficult and of course it it took time they were really happy for Dick the fact that Dick was really happy um and and then it just, you know, it took a while for us all to settle in with our different dynamics and I am always there for them and I am, I would consider myself to be, I don't know if this is the right thing, if you ask them they'll probably say a different thing,

but I'd like to feel like that they was a friend and if they was ever in trouble that they could ask they could ask me um as well as asking dick you know they would feel like that they can ask me any question at any at any time and charlotte would you know text me and she'll ask me like a sewing question and me and james we because he's quite an entrepreneur and if that's what i probably consider me to be he'll ask me an entrepreneurial question and it's quite nice when you get asked the question you go oh so it's quite sweet so that it's good it's it's all right there's no sort of real drama there sadly sorry no we don't want dramas we want smooth nice peaceful happy families please now next question is what's next for angels so you've written your books you've got weddings coming out of your ears the roof roof's getting done. Anything else you need to tell us?

What on the sideline? Well, Dorothy has drawn some architect plans for Swimmin' Pool next year. Oh, energy. Serious? It's got rainbows everywhere. Dick was just like, that's really very accurate Dorothy so we sort of know where it is. I think what the next sort of year holds for us is us getting to a point where we are not constantly thinking renovation. It has to you know we've had years and years and years of it

and we've loved every minute of it but we're getting comfortable here. You know we've loved every minute of it. But we're getting comfortable here. You know, we've got toilets that work. It's always good. Always good. We've got light switches that, you know, turn them on and lights come on. It's a novelty. It was. Like, Annie, over to you.

Cooking. Who cooks tea? Is it Angel or Dick? I reckon Dick. It's Dick. And my mum. Oh. Yeah.

So my mum often cooks us lunch when they're here not on there because she lives does she live down the road is that right she lives in the outbuilding out um in what is the coach house it's beautiful we are just renovating um one of their their main suite at the moment um i've got a um a new a design i've done for for my mom and dad that i actually think is one of my nicest ones it's called the emerald flag um the emerald fan is beautiful wow who are you blowing kisses at who is it it's my husband oh guys they just exchanged the cutest blowy kiss moments. Like two little lovebirds. Come on, wave.

Dick's going to get the kids. Hi, Dick. Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb. Hello, hello, hello. You all right? Everybody's in everybody's heads there. You see, we can't hear a thing. Okay, listen, have lots of fun.

I've got to go collect the children. See you later. Bye-bye. Are they done with school already? So we bring them home for lunch at the moment. They didn't always used to, but it's just the way that we are working at the moment. But to quickly finish off your other one, we are having grilled chicken with a bit of curry for lunch. And we're not sure, and a bit of a salad.

Not sure what we're having for tea. Oh, I love that the French do lunch, you see. Annie and I, it'll be a bowl of Rice Krispies or something, but the French do lunch. When we first moved here, one of the things that Dick always said was, I'm looking forward to my two-hour lunches. Like, we will get there.

They really, you know, you go into the cafes and they're just, all the workers workers there in their boots with a bottle of cider having their three course meal um and and that's just what they do and when they have when the children have it it's it's it's exactly the right thing and when the children have their school when they were having school dinners it was three courses so um like arthur would come home from lunch and we'd be like here's your main and he's like where's my start one dessert like they don't know they absolutely don't know any different and um and when i think arthur was about uh three years old just started um he was having

foie gras i can never quite say that but that's that's we've spoken french there um and he came home and said oh i've just had brown butter oh brown butter cute so tea is normally dick's thing or your mum's thing is that right tea's normally dick's mum's is lunch because we're a bit sort of like busy and we're normally running around doing stuff in the daytime yeah also civilized i love that you say tea what time is tea well i think tea is when kids eat it and dinner or supper is when grown-ups eat it if i got it wrong we're gonna have loads of letters and emails people complaining now saying i've said it the wrong way around we have an article on netmums that is is it dinner or tea and it always causes like full-on facebook slanging matches about whether it's dinner or tea. But, you know, that's very easy to happen these days, isn't it?

So, you know, there's always an argument about something, everything. It's true. OK, so the last question is when we ask every guest. Oh, no, I'm not prepared. You're going to be fine. Imagine you're tucking Wendy and I into bed and we can't sleep and so you need to sing us your go-to lullaby please what would you sing for arthur and dorothy when they can't sleep oh my gosh i do know it um i would sing the carpenters um why do birds why do birds or suddenly appear every time you are near and and after if i don't go in and sing it he's eight years old now he asked for that song he's just like me they long to be close to you um it's a bit cheesy but i have sung it every single single night since he was born.

And he loves it. And he closes his eyes and goes to bed. And one day when I was working, he couldn't sleep. And my dad said, you need to speak to him. And I was a little bit tipsy and I had to go to the lobby bar. And I was singing it in the lobby bar on the phone. I love it. To you, close to you.

You know, that song always makes me cry. Wendy, don't say I cry at everything because I don't cry at everything. But there are some songs that reduce me to tears and that's one of them. What a lovely choice. I'm sorry if I've ruined it for you, Annie. No, you haven't at all.

I love it. Absolutely love it. Okay, well, thank you for being an amazing guest, Angel angel it feels like we've really caught up it really does i've had such a good time thanks for having me i hope to speak to you again soon yes lots of love with everything and your family thank you bye