Sir Humphrey would be proud.

This is not specifically about French culture but it's all part of the moving experience.

As UK tax payers we were informed by various websites that we would be entitled to French healthcare, paid for by the NHS, while my family and I was living in France.

The process seemed to be, on the surface of it at least, fairly straighforward. You apply for a form, called an S1, which you then present to an office in France, called CPAM, whereupon your healthcare would be organised. Well that's the easy way of looking at it.

I have yet to reach the stage of presenting my S1 form to the French office, largely because I have yet to receive it. Initially you need to contact the correct department in the UK.  After 2 days of phone calls each of which lasted just 30 seconds (preceded by 30 minutes on hold) I was eventually convinced by the Inland Revenue that my family was ineligible to claim healthcare abroad and would have to shell out for private cover. This was rather a large blow to our plans and we started to take stock of the new financial situation we would be in when we moved.

After several days of worrying about this we decided to seek some professional advice from a company called Siddalls (Whom I am delighted to be able to plug because of their fantastic advice and extremely reasonable terms). We were convinced by them to start the process again and this time to insist that we definitely were eligible and not to be put off. We re-commenced our efforts duly emboldened and several phone calls later I had our S1 application printed, filled out and in the post. The Inland Revenue assured us, indeed almost boasted, that once they had received the form it would take them just 2 days to make a decision, marvellous!

Ten days later and having heard nothing, I called the Inland Rev to enquire as to the progress of our application. I was told, as if some sort of prize should be awarded to them, that they had, with ruthless efficiency, received the form. It would now take a mere two weeks to get from the post room to the office where the decision would be made. The post room presumably being somewhere in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Having given them another week and therefore the necessary time for our papers to cross multiple war torn borders and "No-fly" zones, I called them again to check on progress. "It has just arrived in the office" was the remarkably coincidental reply. "Great" I said" so it will now take you 2 days to process, yes?" I was assured that this was indeed the case, super stuff, progress indeed.

Predictably I called again two days later to see if the deed was done, "Not yet" (Equally predictably) came the reply. When pressed on the point that they had repeatedly told me that the process would only take 2 days, they floored me with a brilliant riposte "Ah but the decisions team only work one day per week". As stunned and disappointed as I was I couldn't help but admire the way that (At time of writing) a 6 week process had truthfully been described as taking just 2 days. Long live the civil service!