Sundays at the Chateau: INTERVIEW WITH MUMMY!

[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 the shuttle de la land where today we're doing something a little bit different because i've recently been making private videos for my patrons over on patreon interviewing each of the people in the house but i thought for this some days at the chateau we could make the most important interview of all public and i'm going to be posting this therefore for all of you are you ready mommy not really she's not delighted about being interviewed you're a bit nervous i used to do that at the confessional box and that's quite sufficient mommy just imagine that this is the confessional box this is a private space just you and me you feel free to open up really mommy hasn't seen any of the other interviews so no she has no idea what to expect with the questions i'm quite looking forward to this i'm just going to you are my daughter do bear in mind that there are i am parts of my life that have nothing to do with you ah yes yes the the mother confidentiality clause you're pulling it's great well now i think it's time at my grand old age that all of those secrets can come out of the woodwork you will read it in my diary liberate yourself you don't keep a diary you can't call me well this question i think works less well for you than for the others but i'm still interested to hear your answer question number one what led you to laland you i thought that might be the answer well actually you started very very young in your life wanting to live in a castle wanting to be a princess wanting to dress like one well you used to dress me in terrible clothes because i wanted to squash that idea i wanted you to be part of the real world mummy used to force me into dungarees and things that i couldn't stand i wanted her to dress like everybody else around her that's all until i went to school at which point she decided i wasn't allowed to dress like anybody else and used to send me in victorian pinafores and everyone else was in uniform and in the school photos they're hilarious because you have all of the children looking very neat and tidy and then me in some ridiculous thing with my hair looped up looking as though i just stepped out of a victorian movie again he was trying to make her not part of the crowd to make her stand out so first you wanted to make me part of the crowd and then you wanted to make me stand out you're giving mixed messages yeah probably had mixed messages parents aren't perfect no they're not they've only got one shot at it if you only have one child anyway so when you moved to a very grand house we had both to do a business i think that must have done something to your psyche i was six years old and we were living in a bungalow next to the nursing home that my parents had in southport and they decided to sell that nursing home and to move to a much bigger older home to transform that into a nursing home because you believed that beauty was very important for people with alzheimer's yes yes particularly your father believes that it is the last of the appreciative senses that we keep as long as we live and so to be amongst beautiful rooms and beautiful paintings beautiful grounds he felt was very soothing and and helping in a small way and of course it helped the staff too to be in beautiful surrounding in what is a sometimes a very difficult job i think that's true i think it does help people yes yes all people at every stage absolutely beauty touches everyone we might have a different view of beauty but nonetheless everybody is touched by it and everybody recognizes it and i remember still even though i was only five or six years old i remember all of the different um property things that you had that you were looking for looking at and one of them was a castle in scotland and it had turrets and i can still remember thinking wow i told mummy and daddy that i wanted to live in a castle after reading cinderella and that that's normal that that's going to happen because you think your parents are all powerful when you're that age yes but in fact you didn't choose that one you chose one but that had lodged in my mind i think yes and how did you feel when i told you that's what i wanted to do ah you know i've always been into properties and i felt yeah absolutely that's what you want i said great we can travel we can have a good look around perhaps she'll be happy perhaps it will get it out of the system but let's go for it and so we started travelling yes so i was excited because and your father was very excited too we've always liked buildings and properties and so we went for it in a big way it felt a bit like visiting museums right absolutely beside um as we say in france and on we can look and you're not you don't have to buy you don't have to buy so we took it all over france and we within a price range etc do you remember when we came down the road we were in the the agent car yes and you said to your father that's the one yes your father said but i haven't you haven't been in yet so hold your horses and so you said no no that's it the inside can change the position count so that is okay and the inside is still changing when you consider that right now we're sitting in the old grain store there was a huge um anyway it was it was very exciting and so what i didn't like was the actual um living in it and starting the works because we we did the work that are hidden the heavy work like rewiring like speak tanks everywhere like putting shower room bathroom toilets everywhere these are not cosmetic works and so i don't like that sort of work to live in the dust and so on but anyway that was part of the of the chateau living and we had to go through that to get to now oh yeah we had to go through that absolutely we wouldn't be here otherwise so she led me to the show your question what were your first impressions of la land oh i thought it was a lovely manageable chateau because i was very wary of shadows with terrible high root terribly high roof i'll said if i feel i can go and change a tile myself that's fine do you feel you can go and change your tile yourself but it's true it's not one of the really high ones absolutely i like it on the horizontal plane rather than the vertical plane because we had seen many of shadows on the vertical plane and the rooms are extremely small and it's very difficult to go up and down for me it wasn't the size of the rooms in those it was that if you'd forgotten your mobile phone when you're in the kitchen you had four flights of stairs to go up to find it this is it to me this was more reasonable and how did you feel when we were first driving in when i said to daddy when we were talking about i was like this one personally i was non-committed because i thought surely there is something else to it and so the something else was exposed at the back the lake when you walked through that and the chapel oh well absolutely lake chapel you know it it was just there and then i i thought yes this is for me a strange thing because i actually rarely go down there but i think what sealed it for me was the little bridge over the stream in the woods when we walked through the woods and saw that little bridge over the stream there's something special about that place that spot and i just felt at home all right absolutely and to me it felt so friendly so warm so warm i mean psychologically warm emotionally warm a very happy place because some places communicate with you and so yes i thought that would be good what's your favorite color and why oh but i love all colors i love all colors but i think i am attractive to bright colors let's put it that way although as i am getting into my 50s i do like the grays the the whole powder blues and so on so i do have this color range now before the 50s i was bright bright no black you see this is unusual no black um i like yellow i like orange i liked pink yes fuchsia pink um bright yes fuchsia pink's one of my favorite colors in yellow i obviously get my love of color from both of my parents because mummy loves vivid colors daddy as well i was always surrounded by very bright colors yes if i ever wore black you and daddy would both say wow are you wearing that what something happened you know one way in my opinion humble opinion one wears black when one has no inspiration you know it's safe you can wear black you can look smart in black you can look slim in black you can look sophisticated in black it's more difficult to do that in other colors i think so it's a safe thing and of course why not but it's not me you don't believe in safety first when it comes to oh no we have one life so all colors but maybe big ones and a soft spot for fuchsia and yellow yes what did you want to be when you grew up and what did you become do you know i don't think i had a goal to become to be anything oh yes the stage perhaps i would have loved to be on the stage i'm sure that's not going to come as a huge surprise to anybody to hear that but i i did not live in the atmosphere that would um push me to go on to the stage i lived in a little little village in my very small childhood after that we traveled the great deal but then i must i was very young how old do you think i don't know six something like that and the mayor of the village was making a product putting a production on in the village and i'd heard about it i lived next door to the mayor and i kept asking him what role have i got in that production and he would me off for me of i pestered him i but i need a role i need a role i'll be good i'll need a role and in the end probably for peace sake he said i could have a role and my role was to walk onto the stage and said goodnight daddy to a boy who was playing obviously something and i thought really that was not quite what i had expected and he probably i mean there was clearly no need for this there was no need to written it in especially absolutely absolutely and so i i walked onto the stage and i said good night daddy and i thought i'm going to stay here a bit longer no reaction from the audience here and so i beat him he walked i didn't bite him that hard but as i kiss him i went right up and he went and the whole place erupted and i had my moment of faith i wasn't tasked again that was the beginning and this was the beginning of your acting career so you had to move on from acting and what did you move on to another thing i would have loved to do and i wanted to do even then was running i loved running yes i used past i used to beat the boys of my my age at running not long distance you know you're a sprinter yes print and so those are the two things i have not at all achieved and well after that i realized that perhaps i should do something a bit that would bring me some money i played a bit with teaching it was not for me so i thought i'm going to go away and i'll be an interpreter i had to find a job i could not go to england i had to find a job and they were recruiting for um assistant carers in a hospital in the south of france a neighbor came and said did you see that the uh advertising for young women to go to england i say are they are they oh i'll try because i didn't like teaching and so that's what i did i came and i never regretted it england was wonderful to me i started by being the helper in a ward and then through training and all that the training itself took three years and then i became award sister then i became a senior a nursing officer which is in charge of several awards and then a senior nursing officer which is in charge of the of the hospital and and that's when my husband put to me the idea of working for ourselves i didn't want to because i had a very interesting job i was doing reports for the ministry of health it was most interesting but um i thought well i know all he wants to do is paint so if he is his own boss he will get that opportunity and so i went along with it i left the national health i i didn't regret it at all because we worked for ourselves and it's a different thing altogether i have had a wonderful wonderful working life in england england gave me so many opportunities but of course once you were employing yourself you couldn't ever get away you didn't have holidays anymore never no that's what i remember so from the age of six until i was in my late teens we didn't have any family holidays together well two that's not sure we had two one when i was 12 to orlando and one when i was 15 to the south of france that one didn't go so well because daddy fractures his skull so we had two family holidays one ended badly though luckily he recovered and it was all okay in the end but it took a couple of years for things to be okay again after that very much soon um so yeah family holidays weren't really a part of my life and i think that's why we enjoy each other's company so much now because i never just got used to it as a child it's still special there was also something i very much needed you to be i wanted you to be bilingual i felt that my heritage should be passed on to you and so uh you were sent from the age of three on your own in those days you could travel on your own with your card etc and to my mother and there you spoke french entirely and i only spoke french to you and your father only spoke english to you and so that's how you became bilingual but i loved those holidays because i spent every single school holiday with my grandmother and my uncles and my aunt in france and it was an idyllic childhood i was sad not to be with you and daddy it didn't show well i don't actually remember being sad about it we wouldn't handle her give her to the staff at uh yes and she would go and our father and i we would be and you would never turn back oh not a single time would you turn back i was very busy mommy i was going on a journey so that question was what did you want to be when you grew up and what did you become yes you wanted to be an actress or a sprinter and you became the senior nursing officer and um a psychiatric nurse yes and that's exactly that you went off piece didn't you not education there wasn't but in a way you're performing now i know that you're being yourself and so it's not really acting no no it's not acting but that's it you see i could have been myself on stage too i don't think they had reality shows in those days mummy you had to wait all these decades before reality shows became a thing well that's right and now i'm in front of the camera it's incredible isn't that incredible how light you see i was made for it there is such a thing called destiny believe in it what has been a defining moment in your life oh my defining moment was to marry your father definitely and what in why was that so defining because i was brought into exposed to a different way of life different thoughts different experiences he um he loved to read about all sorts of different things well you know about art about philosophy and so on and it introduced me to the that world and so um it was very defining i wouldn't be who i am now if he had if i hadn't met him and also i think what was defining before that was the amount of travel i did with my parents and that taught me different ways of living different countries different everything you know transportation and so on taking boats taking planes and that that was uh very good learning to be comfortable with that which is probably to belong to the world yes and without that you would never have sent me a loan at the age of three and probably i would not have gone to england no you see so perhaps that was the most defining thing and why were you traveling so much can you tell me my father was in the army and so he was posted here in there and when i could not go i would go to a boarding school and but when i could go i would follow but so i changed school and where did you live we lived in many places in france in germany senegal in madagascar and and those were in the days when people really did not travel so i could come back to my little village very very insular little place where if you married somebody from 20 kilometers away it was a foreigner so so very very different i can go anywhere and feel at home i am so adaptable when i think people are feeling oh i'm away from sunshine no i am at home the minute i put my my feet somewhere india america wherever i feel at home my friends tease me because i get this from you and if we're on holiday somewhere when i'm talking about going to the hotel i'll say okay well let's go home now and then we can pop out again and i mean it absolutely that hotel it's my home so i say naturally yes i think it is the fact that i tend to leave for the moment not for what is past not for tomorrow as such this is the only reality and so where i am i am at home because one needs a home and you make it wherever you are no what did your father do in the army he was an adjudant chef in the colonial army he was also well he was a show jumper in the in the cavalry and um so we were horse riding of course you don't like horses i think my father frightened me of horses i had to write them but he was telling us horrible stories he thought he took toughen us up but anyway i'm okay on a horse outside but the minute that horse tries to get in the stable and i am still on it no no no that is a no-no and once many years many years after after my childhood in fact in england we went out of riding a group of us and and the horse would not stop and i could see the stables arriving and so i stood up on the horse took my feet out of this chair up and then stretch up and grab the roof and even left angle i was left dangling anything and then the horse was down below looking at me oh thank goodness i was a man in the yard he got me down i wasn't that far high you know but i had i had stood on the horse because i used to do a bit of voltage turning around on the horse you know for fun so i was quite nimble on the horse i could lift up but didn't your father let the horse his horse come into the house yes yes in madagascar we had a bungalow sort of accommodation with a very large lunge we were not very far from the stables and my father would bring his horse he would just ride to the front door and bring him in the house would come in into the room so as the horse came in i would get out why was he bringing the horse into the sitting room to show that he was so well behaved he could train a horse well imagine if he'd lived long enough to discover that his granddaughter was allergic to horses he wouldn't have been impressed he wasn't impressed with either my brother or i i mean we should have been the best and we were not the best but he adored you yeah oh i'm looking forward to hearing the answer to this what is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done tiffany and i we're in versailles and we were going back from versailles to paris so we were in the station waiting for the trend there is one platform a trend on each side of the platform and we sit in our train and we chatter with the train is full yeah full the train is full and then i hear something on the tanoi outside and i said to stephanie come quick quick we're in the wrong train we have to be in the next train i hadn't heard anything like that on the tunnel and i said mommy they didn't say that they did they telling you they did it's the other train the other train was completely empty yes completely and she's saying this very loudly and drawing quite a lot of attention to yourself the other train is the train to paris yes and so i got out of the trench defending too yes and as i get to the trend everybody leaves up our carriage because they'd all heard mummy so everyone around us who'd been listening was like oh well apparently she's heard it's the other train so they followed and then the rest of our carriage thought oh they know something that we don't know so our entire carriage went on to the other train and our entire train followed every other carriage was like oh hang on that carriage has gone across the entire train load of people moved from one train to another train i think that was the most embarrassing time only because because on the tunnel we hear a voice trying to remain very poised and couldn't stop laughing i don't know why you've all moved trains the trend going to paris is the one you've just left and i'm just like oh oh i wasn't the first one out then [Laughter] so you might some of you might have been there on that trend and i apologize but i like the time when you were taking your boss in your car and you wanted to ask him if he had his seat belt on but you hadn't been in england very long and you couldn't remember how to say seat belt what did you say to him don't forget to put your sanitary towel i meant seat belts she said what so instead she asked her male boss if he was wearing his sanitary towel i like that one well i prefer the train one i'm interested to know what you think these are what is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness i think my greatest strengths is courage my greatest weakness is judgmental being judgmental so you can throw yourself into anything that needs to do absolutely yes you can be judgmental because you expect everybody to come up to your standards and you're very exacting of yourself yes i think people with very high standards of themselves are often quite judgmental to others yes i am very judgmental it's true but you're softening i think percy is a very good influence well then he exists it from a very far different he does but he does exert it he softens you i think it might be aged too but it's also happiness i think happiness softens people i think i was a woman of passion i cared greatly care greatly about the the patient about the job about i am a task oriented person and and so when you don't have those those duties that you are totally involved in you can relax a bit yes because all all that judgmentalism if there is such a word from on on my part was to protect the job and i've had to say this to mummy many times here when you become you know irate for something that hasn't been done perfectly in the house that i understand because for all of your working life it was literally a matter of life and death if something was not done properly if standards started to slip on the very very smallest thing then what would stop them slipping on the biggest thing the right medication at the right time absolutely you have to be totally totally dedicated to the task but you have to expect yes to do exactly the same i understand that but now you have to learn it's not life and death no and and it's okay you can you can relax you can let go yes but somehow the need to do the job properly stays with you well because you've done it for so many years it just stays with you i am a heart ass master but i have always led by example yes always what is your star sign my starshine i'm a cancer i've always hated that star cancer is not a good name to carry around never think of it as a little crab yes um we are my my mother's birthday is the 17th of the 7th and i'm the 18th of the 8th i always thought that was really pretty yes very similar yes where do you hope to see yourself in 10 years time still alive well i certainly hope so really at my uh at this stage in life all i want is to have a happy life with percy just just the two of us and doing what we want not being stopped by circumstances just managing to be together and this is the little question that i end these interviews with so don't worry it's the last one sometimes that's the one that bites well it might what is your purpose my purpose yes what what is it that drives you in life what is your purpose on this planet i think it is to do good and if you cannot do good to certainly do no harm i think that's my purpose to to to walk lightly through this earth not not make too many nasty things behind you that's my purpose just to walk into oblivion without having damaged much that's fascinating because i've been asking oliver and natty and selma who've all answered these questions before what is their purpose and in every case they knew as quickly as you did what their purpose was and it struck me as very odd that it's not something we usually talk about no and yet it's actually fascinating what people see as their purpose it's not something we ask ourselves so it is it is nice um perhaps if you had asked me when i was i don't know 10 i would have been it would have been a very different answer but now this is my answer it doesn't have to stay fixed throughout a lifetime i don't think so no no no no no perhaps not but i think that these questions should remind all of us to speak to the people that we see every day or that we love our friends that we've known for years and ask them questions like this which reveal a lot about each other that perhaps we've overlooked that we haven't thought to speak to people about well i thoroughly enjoyed that there were things i didn't know i didn't know that was your purpose for a start i don't you noticed it by my behavior probably no i would not in a million years i said that my mother's purpose was to tread lightly and leave no turbulence because if there's one thing you do it's you leave turbulence you are more of a rocket yes it's funny i'm talking about the planet you know the the earth i think that i think that here there's the purpose of your soul and and you are also talking about then the purpose of the planet as a whole that humans in general should tread lightly we are all part of one ecosystem yes yes but in life i wouldn't say that your purpose was to tread lightly and not ruffle any feathers but you see because i am committed to whatever i'm not frightened of ruffling feathers but that's only with people but for example i would not um want to destroy your stream by polluting it or anything like that no no i would not do that but if i have to speak harshly to anyone it is to re-establish the balance it is yes for things to be realigned and for the that fine line to flow properly otherwise people can sink you and you've got to just bring everything back up again so i'm now for the first time really realizing my mother is a warrior for yes peace definitely but a warrior for it yes and you have to fight for your beliefs fight for good and for good oh good i told you it was a little question to end it with and are you happy to be here and i know that party is not here and it would be wonderful if he was i am counting my blessings it would be very churnish of me to complain but of course percy i feel i feel very very worried for percy and sad because he's alone i have everything here going yes he is alone and that is very very sad for me well we all wish you were here everyone in this house feels it keenly yes she's he's a lovely presence to her yeah he is he's a lovely man well thank you mommy i know that you were dreading this interview because i don't like to speak about myself that's true thank you so much for watching thank you for being a perfect interviewee mummy if you want to see the other interviews with uh selma and natty and oliver they're on my patreon page tomorrow night monday will be the present opening that we do once a week with the gifts that we've received unbelievably still to us that just flaws us it's incredible and on tuesday will be the next chateau diaries our diary of daily life here at la land until then bye from la land bye bye a huge thank you to all of our patrons at la land who are making this vlog possible especially our duffer and duffin of la land alice allen anna brandon and john michael daniela dan banda denise behrens daniel bernankovich linda c bradley veronica castillo donna davis zoe dork sakura dennis laura de mari jackie ellison nicholas w fairfax tracy ferrari caroline first of brenda gibbons abigail grant brenda harris delaine holbrook kim hasselhoff jacqueline holmes helen jacobs jimmy kemp david and summer lalon victoria lepin janet hof lombard shannon maitland meredith nina messick robert miller cathy nuri jc award mp maureen palmer tamara price tonya renee ivonne and peter richards rjb candy robinson bettina rojack hani ross barbra schmelzer sven schreiber lisa schultz jennifer shanks nancy simmons patty suhu susan stevens sarah thornton colleen troyer brandy walton carolyn ross webb aaron windish greg wood david young and ludovico zordinatso and thank you to all of you you

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

Views: 110,642

Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chatelaine, dream chateau, escape to the chateau diy, french country house, french country living, stephanie chateau, stephanie jarvis, the chateau diaries, chateau, chateau renovation, doing it ourselves, escape to chateau, patreon, french heritage, life story, vlogger, interview, great interview questions, getting to know people

Id: ndzHBPxU3cg

Length: 38min 22sec (2302 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020