Jacqueline Alban

Jacqueline, Jacqui, Dear, Dearest, My love, Yes Dear. All names for my nearest and dearest, trouble and strife. When she is around, we all know what we should be doing. She knows what she wants to achieve here and she has a good idea how she is going to get it. As long as everybody else does what she says...... everything will be OK.

She is the reason we all came to France in the first place and sometimes I think she is the only reason we stayed.

You see, She has faith in what We are doing here. Me and Max have faith too but her faith has always been total. This plan will succeed because Jacqui has seen the light and decided there is a place for 'accessible holidays in France'.

She had to practically learn French in a year. High school French does not get you a mortgage over here. You need to learn a whole new French language on top of the one you thought you knew just to deal with bank's, builder's and architect's.

The first couple of years seemed to have more 'lows' than 'highs' but She has pushed ahead and three years on the dream is becoming a reality.

The reason we first started to think about the idea of accessiibe holidays is after Jacqui, herself, was involved in a car accident, ended up using a wheelchair for most of the time, for eight years. We went on a couple of "accessible" holidays, just to find because they had put a grab rail next to the loo that was accessible, yet they forgot the four steps that you had to negotiate to actually get into the bathroom! Plus also, after years working as a community advocate for Advocacy Northants, a lot of people were either put off by the lack of information on accessible holidays or were just really annoyed that you put the word accessible, disabled or wheelchair with the word holiday, that gave people the right to overcharge you by an extortionate amount!

Hence we decided that we could and would do it better! With Jacqui's personal experience of being a wheelchair user and all that entails, it seemed silly not to put the experience to good use, and actually use some of that knowledge that only a disabled person can really understand!

We did use an architect here in France to help with the regulations, etc, but it soon became apparent that he wasn't and isn't disabled! How could he understand why it was far more important to have a huge bathroom and not kitchen, why we would want to put grab rails both sides of the loo, why we wanted tiled floors, why we wanted to make all six apartments accessible, not just the ones on the ground floor, why we wanted level access showers and why Part M and also the French equivalent building regulations just didn't do it for us!!

So Jacqui fought for what she wanted and what she thought was the optimum layout of each apartment, why she fought tooth and nail for larger bathrooms without any obstacles, etc, etc.

We got there in the end!!

As one of our customer recently said - "just because I am the disability equality officer for the council, doesn't mean that I know absolutely everything - but generally I know a man who does so that is half the battle!"
It is the same with Jacqui - she doesn't say that she knows everything and anything, but invariably she can find out, or ask a person who knows more. If a guest comes up with a good idea for the apartments - then we are more than happy to try it out. One idea recently was some kind of pull handle on the front doors - so it is going into trial in the next week or so and see how we go.