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314lish and I said that I did not understand English. He was very apologetic and gave me directions in French. I nodded sagely as you do but understood very little of what he said.Our plan after I had retired was for me to go to France and continue renovating our barn. I could have stayed on as an instructor, but low level flying was getting harder. My eyes did not focus so quickly when I had to look in to check the map and perhaps more importantly when I then had to look outside again. There were jobs available in the simulator, but I wanted at least a month off at a time fairly regularly to work on in France. Gabby wanted to carry on working for the ambulance service. She liked the camaraderie of it all and for a while got herself on a shift pattern that kept her off nights. We could not live in Thothorpe if I was not there as Gabby could not manage the garden and the house being very old, needed TLC from time to time. We decided to move into York and after some searching Gabby found a brilliant house in Marygate just outside the city walls. It was a semidetached town house facing onto a small courtyard that was shared with a terrace of 3 houses to the front. Everyone had a place to park 1 car, in our case in a carport. But it also had a very small strip of the courtyard in front of it that belonged to us. We bought a Fiat Cinquento that was the thinnest car in Britain and it fitted on this strip. The house was like a Tardis. Downstairs was the kitchen, a utility room, dining room with a conservatory leading off that to a very small courtyard. There was also a cloakroom and hall. On the first floor there was a large living room, 2 further bedrooms a study and a toilet. On the second floor was a large bedroom with an ensuite shower and toilet, another bedroom and a bathroom. Then in the roof there was a large, boarded attic which you entered through a door. It would be farer to call it a box room than an attic although you did need a ladder to get to it. We bought it for %u00a3185,000. We sold Aeroview for %u00a3147,000 and my gratuity from the RAF went into making up the difference. We actually transferred a very small mort-