For regular readers of this blog the confirmation that we’re moving to Sainte-Foy-La-Grande full-time in the spring of 2015 comes as no surprise.  We’ve been planning this for a long time now.  The need for new challenges, and horizons has long been an issue.  One best resolved (for me), I have felt, by a complete change of circumstances.  The problem is that I thought that I knew what I wanted to do for a business in France, and now I don’t.  Some of this change is as a result of circumstances beyond my control.  Most of it, actually.  Where previously there was margin for a little risk (or is that a little margin for risk?  I don’t know), there is no longer.  Other lives have changed ours absolutely and irrevocably.  And not for the better.  Not yet, anyway.

The new-new challenge is that now I need to start a new venture with no idea of what to do and little seed capital with which to do it.  Tuppence ha’penny doesn’t go far today.  I am sure – no, I know – that there are all manner of people who have started businesses with no money and encountered only few problems in so doing.  I can’t say that age, or background, or education are limiting factors, because they’re not.  I think, perhaps, that  the two greatest issues are imagination and opportunity.  A friend of mine is an entrepreneur/venture capitalist, and he’s constantly doing new things: innovating, evolving.  He started with a nest egg and, with a great deal of hard work, inspiration, some very hard-nosed decisions (and much more of which I will never know, but only guess) leveraged one small business into a string of highly successful enterprises.  I admire his commitment and applaud his achievements.  But they’re not for me.

Being conventional (and rather boring), I fear that my lack of a good grasp of French is to my detriment, but is it?  Perhaps not.  Graham is adamant that he doesn’t want me returning to the catering field, determined that I’ll not enmesh myself in a life of graft and unsociable hours for small returns.  I can see his point.  However, without a fluent grasp of spoken French and the ability to write it accurately, business administration is out of the picture too.  I feel as if I’m groping around in the dark, with no idea if there’s a light fixture in the room.  I am inching cautiously around the walls, scared to push off into the greater unknown feeling blindly for the switch.  But I’m pretty sure that if I find that there is a wall-mounted switch it will only activate the dimmest of lights, not one with the welly to let me see the string for the bright one that must be there – somewhere.  Have I the courage to venture blindly and optimistically into the unknown and hope that I find the light?  Knowing my luck, I’ll just bark my shins on some sneaky low-lying solid obstacle.  One thing is for sure …… I can’t vacillate for ever.

Ideas are invited…  Thank you!