They met in Spain in the 70s and moved back when I left home in 2002. It's now the family home, though I've never lived there for longer than eight weeks and it doesn't feel like home to me.
I've visited every year of my life except 2008, when my growing concern at climate change prevented me from flying 'unnecessarily'. But I finally relented and have just spent a week there, swimming, sleeping, reading and relaxing. Principles have a high price.
My parents' place is an ongoing labour of love, having grown slowly from a modest hut in the early 80s to the comfortable villa that it is today. I spent my days lounging around by the pool, deciding whether to go for the deck chair or the hammock, and playing with my fantastic two-year old nephew.
Imagine lying here, in a crisp 27C, with nothing but the distant sounds of birds, crickets, and goats' bells gently tinkling. It is the perfect place to relax.
Though quiet and rural, Gaucin is far from boring. There are all manner of cultural quirks to keep the nosey visitor amused.
It's a very traditional village. The elderly man who grazes his sheep on my parents' small fields uses tools and methods as his grandfather did, and has never travelled more than a hundred kilometres from the village. He is typical of his generation.
Of course the younger generation expects more. Born into MTV and YouTube rather than Franco's austere republic, they are like young people in any advanced liberal democracy: demanding, noisy, restless. They smoke dope behind the blacked-out windows of small cars with shiny rims and deafening sub-woofers just as my peers did in my sleepy home town in England.
This much is typical of the area, but what sets Gaucin apart from the neighbouring white villages is its large number of foreign residents. My parents were among the first, but now there are dozens of couples (generally without children and approaching, or past, retirement) from across Europe, north America and even Japan. These foreigners mostly don't wear gold chains, read The Sun or demand egg and chips for dinner like the stereotypical Brits abroad, and most speak excellent Spanish, but I sense that their presence still brings a tension within the village. They are resented for not being local, for pushing up house prices. Yet without the expats most of the village would be unemployed, and the local economy would be desperately stagnant. They've also started an impressive art collective.
The expat scene is something to behold: gin and tonic on the veranda, endless games of bridge, and the Archers on Radio 4. It feels semi colonial, partly because many of the expats were part of that scene in days gone by. One expat, a rather posh fellow named George, has recently build stables neighbouring my parents' land, complete with infuriatingly noisy peacocks and geese. He complained that our unkempt field - which has been left to grow into a semi-wild natural habitat - was 'harbouring beasts' (i.e. mongeese and stoats) which were attacking his beloved birds. (Parallels to President Bush accusing 'unfriendly' countries of harbouring "terr-ists"). When my father said that he didn't know whether these 'beasts' were in fact residing in our field, George asked incredulously "well don't you walk your land?!". My father conveyed his deep sadness at the beasts' attacks, secretly hoping that they'd cull the rest of George's screeching flock as soon as possible.
And that's not all. Besides the peasant farmers leading near medieval lives, the typically 'independent' youth, and the bizarre expat scene, there is also a truly labyrinthine and machiavellian local political scene, complete with corruption scandals (both the traditional backhander and the topical expenses varieties), and vote-rigging allegations. And all of this in a cinematically picturesque village.
The evening before I left was the summer equinox, and we were invited to mark the occasion at the remote farmhouse where my parents met and first lived together. Our host, having lived there the 30 years since they left, was an incredibly eccentric and extrovert 83 year old. An architect, he worked under the legendary Le Corbusier, and still designs stunning buildings to this day. His office is the height of modernity, utilising every technology, yet has no car, walking the 7km to get there every day, and lives without doors or electricity. As we ate in growing darkness he initially refused to light candles for fear of undermining the stars' splendour, only relenting when wine was spilled over the fully-laden table by a friend bravely trying to dice a watermelon blind.
The other guests were a fascinating and charming bunch of ageing hippies, most of whom had been in Spain for over 30 years. Unlike most of Gaucin's expats, they are an older generation. Their sense of belonging in Spain is total, as most have been there longer than anywhere else. It is their home for the rest of their lives, and seeing them so clearly in love with their adopted country was touching.
Though I love the place, it doesn't feel like home to me. I disgracefully only speak very poor Spanish. But it's where my parents' heart is, and until I find my own idyll, it's good enough for me.
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