Page 334 - Demo

330house. Her father was French which was to prove useful to them after Brexit. I was in France at the time and so put Harry in kennels there and then drove down to La Ciotat. Alex had decided to upgrade her degree as she now wanted to be a clinical psychologist. While she was working on all that that entailed, she was living In Gabby%u2019s mother%u2019s flat in York, paying a small rent. Part of the deal was that I would work on the flat and update it during the winter when I was back. Eventually her Gran died and left just about everything to her youngest son Philip. At the meal after the wedding, he told Alex that he now needed a proper rent paying. We were astounded, not only about the fact but also the way he sprung this on her at that time. We decided that it would be better for us to by something for her to live in while she was working on her degree and eventually bought an end terrace 2-bedroom house in Teck Street York. I thought it needed a bit of tarting up but actually it needed much more than that and so that kept me busy. In the end Philip did not sell the old flat for over a year and so he lost money on what he did. Eventually, Alex went down to do her doctorate in Plymouth and bought a house down there with her boyfriend of the time. Then in 2004 Ben had a terrible accident in Athens and broke his back. He had a house in Maidenhead and went back there after he finished 6 months in hospital, initially in Athens and then Sheffield.Harry died in 2007. I felt that as I got older, I could not cope with a dog and so we decided we would not replace him. He was irreplaceable anyway. After that Gabby and I had a walking holiday in the Picos in Spain which was most enjoyable. We felt that perhaps we could keep the French house and then use it to launch out in all directions around Europe. But we would still have lots of work each visit to keep the grass cut and general maintenance. Our new neighbour was a most unpleasant man who tried to stop us using our well and had his radio on full blast all the time making visits anything but peaceful. And so, we decided to sell up and move on. At the same time the centre of gravity