Sundays at the Chateau: CONFLICT AT THE CHATEAU!

[Music] hi i'm stephanie and this is my home the 16th century chateau de la land la land was owned for hundreds of years by a family of marquis who were at the heart of french royal life one of them even had the honor of being sent by king louis xv to greet marie antoinette on her arrival in france but far from being a stuffy museum this chateau is a living home i live here all the time and i'm regularly joined by my mother my family my friends and wonderful volunteers from all over the world who helped me to lovingly restore this historic home welcome to la land a chateau filled with life love and laughter hello and welcome to sundays at the chateau in my bathroom at the chateau de la land now this may seem like a slightly strange place to be filming this but it's because we have a wonderful music workshop going on this week and there are pianists and singers using practice rooms all over the house and those rooms include the dining room that's directly below my bedroom and also my dressing room which is really nearby so you might hear music in the background but in fact my bathroom is one of the quieter rooms in the house so hopefully you won't get too much background noise though actually it is rather beautiful today i would really like to talk about something that's been on my mind for a while because many of you have left comments saying oh it's so wonderful to see so many people living together and there's never any conflict and it's so easy and so wonderful and it's not like that with my family or with my friends and i'm worried that perhaps we're giving the impression that la land is a fairytale place where people always get on there are never any problems and life really is just wonderful all of the time now i do think that it is wonderful almost all of the time here but that's not because there are never any niggles or any problems or any conflicts between the people who live here and that's because we're all humans and if you put a group of humans together there will always be small irritations that arise and if you can keep it to being small irritations then you're winning i think that living in a community is one of the most wonderful things that we can do and i think very much certainly in the west that's been a little bit lost people used to live in family groups much more several generations of one family would live together and i think that we've gained a lot with this move to individualism that there's been because life is much easier when you only have to please yourself or a couple of other people but we've also lost a great deal we've lost the special magic that comes when you live with other people the extraordinary wealth of knowledge that gets pulled together the wisdom of different ages because people of different ages will come to a problem in a different way and all of those ways are valuable people from different countries from different backgrounds will also view a problem in a different way and sometimes it does you so much good to see things through somebody else's eyes everything gets resolved so much faster we've lost the ability to call on someone else's skill when something goes wrong around us and in many cases we've lost the ability to call on somebody else's personality when we're feeling low for whatever reason because it's very easy to get bogged down in a single way of thinking and then it's easy to become quite low because if you're only looking at problems through your own eyes you can't be pulled out of yourself by the people around you people can't stop and say do you know what you're bogged down at the moment and if you sit with us and have a glass of wine we can explain to you a much better way of looking at whatever it is that's ailing you we might be able to help you with it physically we might be able to help you with it mentally and we'll certainly be able to help you with it emotionally but these benefits come about at a cost and that's the cost of having to adapt ourselves to the people around us not always have things our own way sometimes do annoying things to help the others around us knowing though that they'll do things that are annoying to them to help us as well so i decided to run around the chateau interviewing all of the people that live here and asking them what are the benefits of living together in a community what are the conflicts that arise because of that and how do we resolve those conflicts so that we can really reap the rewards of the benefits and here is what they had to say the main benefits uh there's a fast experience of people that come the workaways and the staff and the folklore the most amazing stories they've all traveled the world they're all from different parts of the planet so to have this unique and colorful blend of people all together everybody's got a story and it's fascinating you will always sit with me someday and you always find something new somebody comes in and they'll help with this and they might turn around and say oh when i was in chile i remember i went to this farm and so forth and you you start to realize my goodness because i wouldn't say we're isolated at the chateau but when people come they bring a rich mixture of their experience and their adventures and we benefit greatly i believe from that it would be really nice for me to get the opinion of someone who's here as a bed and breakfast guest but who stayed for quite a while and is going to be coming back so you've really got to know everyone how did you find it well it was great great to learn about all the different types of people that are here you know you got from somebody from venezuela you've got english french norwegian murray it's a mixing it's a mixing pot it's multicultural it is very multicultural yes so i love it you know it's great i learned a lot had a lot of knowledge everybody's different you know we all human people have got moods but the greatest thing about i think the life and adventure in the journey is that to find solutions when things are down yes and be positive i think it's a great great way of life and it's good to teach people this and and to show people this because i don't see i don't think people see that that way no i think i i think people are scared to live in groups because they see the challenges but they don't see the benefits and if you put the work in to making it work then the benefits are just overwhelmingly wonderful yeah and coming to a place like this you've got to put your pride ego and attitude in your pocket you can otherwise there's no point yeah there's no point trying to talk to people understand things and work as a community the people that come to the chateau they are aware of where they're coming to there's so many big personalities so everybody that comes they have all their unique personalities and for them to blend in and to work as a team uh is a challenge because there are strong characters who do their own thing but once they realize and everyone helps to do each individual task but we work together as a team so it's keeping that team happy and together is probably the biggest challenge you're quite a recent addition to the group so what were you thinking about before coming here is it what you expected is it different well um it's everything you can expect it's an idyllic place um it's super flexible um people help you a lot all the time um you do what you like it's just laughing all the time it's funny all the time it's just as you see it is the way it is i have forced hannie to be in this video because she is a real life guest and she is also a patron of la land so i thought that it would be really nice to get your opinion because you've been here for what at least two weeks now haven't you two and a half weeks two and a half weeks so you've been here for ages you've got to know everyone and what would you say are the benefits of the community here so what i really like is that everybody um there's a lot of hard work there's a lot of laughter and everybody is um pretty supportive even when you know i break something or leave something out in the rain yeah everyone is lovely and supportive um just right just now actually i thought i'll have a nap and um wonderful rest of the house woke me up because it's raining and we spot netflix and started tidying around me [Laughter] was that in your bedroom yeah wow i was a little bit disorientated because i came to the bottom i was like hi she came up and i was like do you want to watch netflix and she's just typing she's like what's this so um as the manager and uber chief in this house how how what would you say are the challenges of living together about challenges uh i don't find too many actually because everybody coming here is very very nice and and they put them the best of themselves i think i think we're lucky because people are able to see us beforehand on the vlog so they sort of know what they're expecting that's now but before you know that it gave me a few years ago and it was not that famous but it's always a lot of people from everywhere and trying to help each other i'm very happy with that you guys see too many challenges no no no they're more um how do you say it and the opposite um benefits their benefits yeah challenges and what how do why do you think it works here because you're pretty free to do what you like most i think and well since the beginning you were totally free with us saying like what would you like to do and just go and do it you know and then yeah it's a nice community well the benefits of community living if you can achieve it achieve it properly are that it is um it gives a multi-faceted solution to a living problem it is empowering everyone and so instead of having little individual each with their little power one plus one makes absolutely ten when you have a proper community living because you feed each other you spark off one another in the common direction always in the common direction that's very beautiful i would say that the best way to deal with conflict is to try to avoid it and pick the right people to live in community and because one has to be able to give and take one has to be able to work to a common goal one has to be able to forgive and forget forgetting is difficult more more difficult for some men for others and one has to be able to think outside the mold and especially to show respect to other people to show kindness always so one must up negate the self a little bit for the common good to be fair it's actually mummy who's quite famous for being at the source of some of the moments of conflict that there have been at la land over the years so she's been known if something has is found broken for example the kettle had fused because it had been put in a big pile of water and it got really wet and for some reason it shouldn't obviously have fused a kettle but it did and uh it blown all the it tripped all the switches so we had no light and it took a while to work out what was going on and okay it's a faulty kettle it had been left in a pile of water that's what it is so as far as i was concerned we found the problem we unplugged the kettle we put the lights back on all as well mommy turned around and went did it that's right that was to put it in perspective i think it was a birthday party of mine and the room was filled with perhaps 20 people in the early 40s all of my friends who'd come uh to the party all looking like tiny school children the teacher had suddenly got angry and who was it do you even remember who it was that you wanted yourself today i will never forget it was oliver yes yes yes yes don't tell everybody that and just a couple of weeks ago when nick and mary was still here mommy sometimes getting gets an idea into her head which is not necessarily what's happened but in mommy's desire to solve a problem then there must be a reason as a problem she felt that the the capsules for the washing machine were going down too quickly and so she came up with the idea that nick and mary must be putting two capsules into the washing machine every time they were doing a wash and i asked nick nicholas is not an extravagant person he looked to me so i'd gone completely mad like but why would anyone put two capsules in like that's madness no one would even do that and when he found out that i was asking because mummy had come up with this little theory that that's what was going on he started trying to antagonize her every time he was in there so whenever he was about to put a watch and he goes hang on isabel i can't close the door i haven't put the second capsule in yet i have to say that we have quite a lot of fun in the house and i think that he shows perfectly one of the ways to resolve conflict nick is actually one of the best conflict resolvers i've ever met in my life in that he always does it with humor he doesn't get upset because he would come up with a plan that he was using all of the washing machine tablets he turns it into a long-running joke and it lightens everything doesn't it well i saw some narrow diesel i thought it had resolved the problem but oh how's it going it doesn't explain that beautiful scent each time you went into the laundry overpowering smell of white lilac or whatever maybe that's just the way nick smells laughs well the wonderful thing is that we all eat together there's nobody who's better than anybody else yeah we're all equal and we all can sit at the table and we all can say you know i wish jerry would pull his weight yeah no and i wish jerry would stop asking me to get something from the top shelf you know he thinks like that so i'm very used to communal living i went to boarding school so that i could have chums on tap that was the phrase chum's on tap so i love being here wise am i allowed to mention t gate oh seagate yes let's hear about t gate somebody in the house not mentioning any blonde names puts their milk in then the tea bag all cold and then we'll add boiling water on top and the british people just we fell apart didn't we when it happened yes yes there were stern words only a couple of punches [Laughter] one black eye but we've all moved on but it's fine now we're the best of friends i think this is the prettiest interview that i've done so far for this vlog surrounded by flowers so pretty yes la land is quite a peaceful place in general so we don't have many conflicts what um like talking about really and they aren't really that tough we do have a few what can you say amsterdam funny things well funny interesting things like um i can go to and put laundry up and i'll be so busy and forget about the laundry so someone will sort of dry it and fold it and then someone will shove it somewhere in a basket with all the other clean laundry um and then there will be an awkward mix uh [Music] you start to quickly learn the knickers that everyone in the house was yes but it is even more awkward when it's a new pair of knickers you kind of have to guess who yes and you get very confused and you don't really know where how to go about it because do i assume it's someone snickers do you go by size do you go by style yeah or do i randomly place it back to the laundry room and let the whole insulin happen again and then that person will never have their knickers so it's quite an awkward uh situation rooster oh oh yeah the rooster oh yeah so the biggest conflict in the house is between every resident of the chateau and the rooster yeah particularly if you're on one side yeah yeah because that's what from six in the morning no lately he's even more confused and it doesn't really matter whether it is light or dark so no so from about four he's getting nice about seven so this is actually why dan the gardener is making the whole enclosure for the roosters yeah yeah the conflict i have is sort of anonymous because i'll leave the laundry room i'll have clear piles that's dirty to go into the washing machine that's dry just needs to be ironed everything has its place and then i'll come back five minutes later and bomb has hit it i don't know who the bomb is oh maybe real cameras i will be installing spy cameras yeah yeah don't worry they're imminent i blame the hedgehog um too many people in the kitchen yeah so maddie and i neither of us like loads and loads of people around us when we're cooking because we both find it really distracting like we're monotastic it's both of us yeah anything else and even though i've said it a thousand times to everyone and i repeat it i would like the kitchen cleared when i cook there's still people in coming in because they all just want to be near you man i know but the kitchen is the heart of the house so no wonders but it can cause a bit of a uh meditation or you uh place the sheets in a certain way and people mess them up oh i think we've hit a rich vein [Laughter] you put pillows where you shouldn't i'm sorry but i was in a hurry situation a hurry situation you consider that to be an excuse for putting a pillow in the wrong cupboard [Laughter] pillows go in one closet and sheets a guy in another closet oh and people mix them up and they shouldn't so i see it starts with no there's no conflict just scratch the surface when you oh sorry could you translate that into english for us yes there's never a conflict in the house it's everything everything is perfect here people is lovely to me there are little annoying annoyances for everyone living in a community of course there are i have things which um make my hair stand at the back of my head if i see the laundry room and not attended to uh i see a beautiful day outside and the dryer is working inside i don't like it i see um a mess things like that yes it means somebody somewhere he's sleeping the community is not working yes yes do you know what napoleon used to say it's a weak link that makes a bridge fall it's a week there was a story when you were at school carpenters and blacksmiths they were on a job in some distant country and napoleon's army was about to come and so they needed a bridge built pretty quickly the carpenter did their job but one of the blacksmiths made very inferior nails indeed and when the army came to pass disaster happened because of that one man every link in a chain is of value every link in the chain is part of the whole and that is so important to remember what you just said reminds me of a hilarious quote i once read on social media as one of those inspirational quotes that someone had posted and it said you may be told that you're as weak as your weakest link but remember a chain is also as strong as its strongest link [Laughter] obviously quite to manager i wouldn't want to use that and it's true it's true in a house like this you can have someone who is amazingly good at something yes but without the right team around without the right community without everybody who is involved then everything will fail yes without the goal came being kept yeah of course i think in la land we need love respect understanding and a common goal and trust and that's all we need quite easy nobody feels isolated there's always somebody to talk to if somebody feels something that's not right they feel very at ease to turn around and say look could somebody help me with this i'm finding this difficult they've always got something to go to i feel the trust amongst the people at la land is second to none i've never been in a place where the trust between people has grown so quickly yeah sometimes we have people that don't wake up early in the morning so that people you cannot come with them to prepare breakfast in the morning yes me for example i mean yeah well it just just cut cross yes behind yeah she was like no don't count me but she was 6 30 a.m in the morning with that up with me i woke up at six today because she knew that i was going to be alone without jerry and so even though she's not a morning person she got to wake up and that's wonderful of the people when they come here they try to help and yeah the people that we want here because you can be very good with them some subjects some particular things but you need to be open-minded and very flexible yes you need to be accepting of others yeah and then things here are always changing we can we can plan something but you know how is it after he said okay tomorrow we're going to win my moves yes we're going 5 hours and then in the morning what happened oh no we're not going to email us no no actually maybe sometimes we're going to a mouse buy a car yeah and then it's the most is closed so we have to come back yes it's unbelievable plans change all the time all the time people comes to eat dinners at seven all right and then they come 7 30 or 8. it's like herding cats yeah but you have to be flexible and try to take it with the humor and humor helps a lot um i think is that people are generally very nice here so um i think we're very good at giving each other space and also i don't think we're super stubborn here so if someone did something wrong would definitely say i'm sorry or you know quite quickly yeah yeah yeah advice i guess i'd say just do it if you see the dishwasher news emptying just do it and don't keep track i think that's a big mistake like oh well i emptied the dishwasher yesterday and actually it was gabby's day yesterday and just don't keep track just do it and uh yeah i call it cosmic karma of pints oh so if you're at a pub and you buy a round then that's the cosmic karma of pints every pint you buy will come back to you at some point in some way but to count it and expect it and ask for it it will never work and it's the same with chores or favors you know yeah i'll um hang up this laundry and somewhere somewhere along the line someone will hang up my laundry cheese and a bit of wine food always helps absolutely a little bit of cheese resolves everything yeah and a good meal yes that's so true and also the fact that we eat together yeah that helps resolve anything yeah because everyone is generally in a very good and positive mood so if you are feeling a bit low it's easy to just get that positive vibe out from dinner yeah we have to be able to praise each other for the a job well done or a good idea or a nice gesture or a kindness given i have to learn to appreciate that other people in a community don't have the same skills that i have they might have better skills at many other things picking out each individual skill is what takes really the the determining factor to make a community work i think everyone does really well because it's probably quite difficult balancing what's effectively a business with having your life and living there and existing with a whole bunch of humans and i think that people are pretty straightforward and a lot of their lives are now public yeah which you know i mean i'm being trapped against my will with with a camera in my face yeah so i think everyone does really well because it's hard to switch off but people do well at protecting each other's time when they do have the days off um and also people just like helping for example the person who came into my room too tidy it's their day off today but they just wanted to wind down by watching netflix and tidying they go yeah it's great i feel very lucky to be here thanks so much thanks for having me and i just realized i'm sitting next to a cushion of yours a bit oh yeah no it's a bit scary but i yeah there's so many of us now you need to have above all tolerance tolerance of one another and tolerance a common goal um a mutual respect for each and every person in that community is paramount without any of those factors it will not work and then we got peacocks keeping us happy as well oh oh my goodness oh hi everyone there's the we've got peacocks keeping us happy all the time it's one very inquisitive ian yeah so cute do they come in a lot yeah they do i started feeding them crackers and i shouldn't have because then they started to poo over everywhere yeah you didn't see that coming you didn't see the poo instance so now we've got more conflict in the house between mari and the ians i love communal living i love the fact that whatever whim you might feel like you can find someone who will also feel like that you can find a chum on tap you can find a chum on tap who fantasies a game of badminton hannie runs out with me who fancies getting a bit rose drunk and watching the eurovision film emily and gabby are always up for it you know you get different points of view for everything i mean because sometimes you're too set on how you do things and then other people do the same things that you do but in an easier way so it's just great because you learn new things so yeah it's fantastic but don't mess with the sheets at the end of the day when we're all sitting at the table and we all start talking and laughing and joking and then the music starts and if you've seen any of the vlogs you notice there's no inhibitions when it comes to dancing at la land we all do our own thing and then in the next day we all start again what you see is exactly rigorous on it land fantastic you'll notice that there's a face missing from these interviews because selma has taken the long weekend to go to the beach as it's the end of august he wants to get there before autumn starts and so sadly i couldn't ask him any of these questions i would be fascinated to know his answers as well so when he's next in the house i will ask him these questions too and then i can slot those into the chateau diaries this week so keep an eye out for that in one of the forthcoming chateau diaries from my point of view growing up as an only child in a huge nursing home that was always filled with at least 30 people residents and staff i grew up learning the balance between time spent alone in my bedroom because i had no other children to play with and i would just read a lot and play with my dolls but also knowing that there was a huge support network of people around me all of the time people that i could laugh with i mean it was a very happy atmosphere and those of us who've had happy childhoods i think try to recreate that in later life and so it's no surprise that for me the secret to happiness is having my individual space in a house that's filled with other people because when i'm here in my apartment i'm usually sitting at my computer getting on with editing it's very peaceful i can do a lot of research the minute i step out of my apartment and go downstairs there's laughter there's people there's a million things going on there's a real buzz and excitement in the house and we feel that we're all moving towards a common goal i think that we can achieve so much more when we're together i think that we become more balanced emotionally in many ways i think that living with other people makes us better people because we have to learn to compromise we have to learn to live together we have to learn to look out for each other and i also think that we can achieve so much more in those conditions because when we're working towards a common goal we give each other energy we learn from each other we move forward far faster than we would alone and that's how the fairy tale of life at la land is created not by waking up every day and finding that everything is perfect but by working hard to make it so it's created with devotion with love with loyalty with trust respect understanding looking out for each other and working together towards a common goal and a common vision so next time your family are annoying you in a million little ways or your friends and they will because they're human and you'll irritate them because you're human just remember that it's worth sticking together because life's a lot better when we do lots and lots of love from la land and i'll see you tomorrow in caddo at the chateau a huge thank you to all of our patrons at la land who are making this vlog possible especially our duffer and dauphine of la land jaedel and ether alice allen anna brandon and john michael daniela dan banda lauren barnes vince barone denise behrens daniel bernankovich linda c bradley veronica castillo donna davis zoe dorks sakura dennis jackie ellison nicholas w fairfax tracy ferrari elfine caroline first firster brenda gibbons abigail grant brenda harris delaine holbrook kim hasselhoff jacqueline holmes helen jacobs jimmy kemp david and summer leland victoria lepin janet hof lombard shannon maitland meredith nina messick robert miller cathy nori jc award mp maureen palmer tamara price tonya renee ivonne and peter richards rjb candy robison bettina rojack hanny rossven schreiber lisa schultz jennifer shanks nancy simmons patty suhu susan stevens jenny stevenson sarah thornton colleen troyer brandy walton carlin ross webb aaron windish gregwood david young and ludovico zodonatza and thank you to all of you you

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

Views: 116,218

Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chateau life, chateaux in france, chatelaine, dream chateau, escape to the chateau diy, french castles, french country home, french country house, french country living, historic house, life in a chateau, living in a castle today, living in a chateau, living in a french chateau, stephanie chateau, stephanie jarvis, the chateau diaries, chateau, chateau renovation, escape to chateau, diy, community, conflict resolution, community living

Id: fP6ssQxvMZg

Length: 35min 5sec (2105 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2020