Das Blockhaus, Part 1

A different sort of cultural adventure

If I’d watched Star Wars I would no doubt do a lot better at telling a story in non-chronological order. In advance, apologies.

My husband, Bud, and I have just printed, initialled, signed and dated an accordion of papers, all in esoteric French, that I think mean we are about to buy a 1940s German bunker for £65,000. The bunker isn’t really a bunker (more on that later), but it is a long lozenge of a building built in 1943, 30km south of Dieppe, with walls almost a metre thick and a roof that’s pretty much flat.

It is my idea of perfection.

We haven’t actually visited it yet.

The ensuing short, cantering posts will tell the story. It’s still unfurling. Already it has involved an online site for classified ads, ChatGPT, research into French prenup protocol (tl;dr it’s complicated, standard, and probably very sensible), frenetic Googling of “forced labour France World War 2” and “shamanistic cleansing rituals”, and a podcast called La Terroriste.