Getting stuck in.

One of our main concerns before we moved was to ensure that we joined in with the local community and integrated with the French speaking part of it.  We needn't have worried, the French speaking community have almost insisted on welcoming us and getting us integrate with village affairs.

Competitive Wife has already been roped into a variety of local events and meetings, in two weeks she has sat on the committee for opening a new community library, helped make the local goats cheese tarts called "Torteaux" and baked them in the community oven and at time of writing is at her French class in the local town followed by lunch with the French class at a Creperie called "Le Marmite" (I think it's a big cooking pot roughly the same shape as the jars of savoury spread, must be a connection there).  Last week she also went (with a friend who visited from the UK) to a soiree Tartines, which we came to realise can only be described as a toast topping festival!   I’m working on her to write an account of "soiree Tartines" for my blog but true to her name she won't let me have it unless it's better written than my entries! (Not altogether difficult one would have thought).

For my own part I'm getting into French society through the medium of DIY and vegetables.  We have started receiving vegetables from a variety of sources, in exchange for anything from furniture to cup cakes.  Green garlic are particularly plentiful at the moment, we've received about 30 of them so far and are running out of things to put them in.  Along with those, in the last week, we have had 4 lettuces and a bag full of what Local service calls spinach but which looks alarmingly like doc leaves, nice in an omelette though.  On the DIY front I'm pushing the limits of what I can do on a daily basis, I've replaced windows with cut glass and putty, wired the barn with lights and set up/aligned a satellite dish all for the first time ever.  The window and TV work fine so 2 out of 3 isn't too bad.  I'm afraid I'll have to call 40 cat man to help with the electrics but he will then need to have a drink with me afterwards and he does smell of cat wee and doesn't say anything while he's having his drink leaving me floundering around to make conversation in basic French!

Well, onwards and upwards and let there be light next time I write.

Nous Somme Arrivés

Well here we are, we've arrived in France and house in the UK is due to sell any day now (the point of no return, so to speak).  It’s all a bit chaotic, and flying by, so far so just a few bits and pieces here, possibly a better written and more cohesive entry will follow shortly!

The big house (there are 2 on the property, the other one we imaginatively call the little house) is coming along well, totally unrecognisable from two years ago when we first saw it.  It fights us tooth and nail to remain as it is with every simple DIY task taking 2 or 3 times longer than you would expect due to years of abuse from previous owners, I mean why use the supplied fixings to put blinds on windows when a blob of super glue does the job so quickly?  Changing things like blinds then becomes a far trickier job than advertised.

I seem to remember referring to our 18 month old as having premature terrible twos in my first post, well perhaps she thinks she should be living up to it. I had no idea how prophetic those words would turn out to be.  If anything fails to go her way at the moment she has decided that spitting on the floor will get her the reaction she is after.  Where exactly this new fad came from, neither Competitive Wife nor I are able to fathom.

Last week one of the local British imports of Prop Forward physique, asked me if I could help him unload a lorry bringing his sheds from the UK over here.  I said I'd be delighted but had little idea (nor, I think, did he) that it would take six men a full (and full on) 3 hours to unload.  At time of writing I'm rather sore.  Myself, Prop Forward, Local Service, Grumpy Welshman, the driver and a local plumber/electrician with 40 cats (40 cat man) managed to shift the equivalent of a small copse of trees from the back of the lorry and in doing so consumed (between us) 1 cup of tea, 2 Oranginas, 12 cans of strong lager, 5 shots of whiskey and a Pastis.  Apparently nothing can be done around here without offering an alcoholic drink afterwards or in this case during.  Grumpy Welshman was on particularly good form, turning up in a hi-vis vest and making sure the traffic got past the lorry safely, I'm sure both cyclists made it home all the more safely as a result.

That's all for now.
 

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!

The long way home.

This could be a lengthy one so brace yourself.  Well in fact, if this bit hasn't been edited out, it is.

One of our trips to the house last year saw one of my wife's longest serving friends (Penniless solicitor: PS) come over to visit us for the last 4 days (Thursday to Sunday) of a 2 week stay.

Our aim for the 2 weeks was integration with the local community and to this end we had arranged a little "Apero" evening, inviting our neighbours by knocking on doors and speaking at them in our best French.

The Apero was to be held on the Friday and we were as scared as kittens.  We had no idea how many would turn up, each invitee had been asked to "invite anyone you think of who might want to come".  This led to a bit of panic buying in the wine and glasses departments and at the time of writing we still have far too many glasses.

The evening was pretty much a success, about 25 locals turned up (Including about 10 ex-pats but the rest were French locals) and we managed to communicate fairly well and keep all of the glasses topped up.  Other than a small groping incident the night passed off without a hitch but somehow wife (Against her own rule of not entertaining the night before we drive home) managed to invite Grumpy Welshman (GW) and his better half over for dinner the following evening. This was the first link in a chain of events that will be family lore for many years to come.

The following evening, after we had got dinner sorted, we received an invitation from GW to come over to his for a pre-dinner drink.  It was a bit close to little one's bedtime to take advantage of it so, very graciously, wife offered to let PS and I go as long as we were sure to be home by 7.30 given our impending early start and 12 hour drive.

Armed with 45 minutes, we set off on foot for GW's house and had barely managed 60 yards when a van parked in front of us pulled away turned left and removed a large chunk of trim from it's side cutting a corner a bit too fine. The driver, either unaware or unbothered simply drove away!  Several neighbours came out to see what the noise was so we smiled, practiced our best Gallic shrugs at the little bit of van on the side of the road and headed off once more.

After another 20 yards a rotund Frenchman (with a nickname derived from his father's job at the water board, we'll call him WB) we recognised from the Apero evening came running out of his garage and insisted we came in to see the work he was doing on his house.  We explained we that we needed to get to GW's house but he simply explained: GW, "he's my brother" as if that settled any and all argument!  "And so it begins" were PS's prophetic words at just that moment.  A full tour ensued complete with much appreciation of wall finishings, window trim, flooring, electrical installation and understanding of the costs involved, not to mention a considerable amount of boasting that it had all been done outside of the tax system!

We finally got back down to his garage and were about to bid our farewells when he produced a half bottle of whisky with a hairy Scotsman on the front and 3 disposable plastic cups.  Something of a movie style dream sequence followed with WB, who spoke no English, teaching me (A Welshman from the valleys) words in Welsh while we all downed neat whiskey.  GW had clearly been coaching him for this moment for years.  By the time we got underway, WB in tow, it must have been 7.20 and we had managed 80 yards.  Further drinks at GW's meant we didn't arrive home until 8.15.

This didn't go down well with wife who had been dealing with the little one who didn't want to go to bed and trying to keep dinner edible.  This was entirely fair on her part however I still couldn't see any way around the delay without being rude to our new acquaintances!  Much drinking was done for the next few hours and I think we staggered to bed well past midnight with a 6am start and 12 hour drive home the next day.

To say we were in poor condition to commence the drive home would have been an understatement, three hangovers and a loud baby in a car at 7am on the autoroute, mixed in with a bit of leftover tension from the night before was not ideal.  We had to give up and stop at the first services for coffee and a bit of a group hug (Or the British equivalent, a sensible chat around a table).  This cleared the air and our heads somewhat and we got back underway having wasted about an hour.  Now behind schedule and struggling to catch our ferry from Calais, we pushed on as fast as we dared for 6 hours and with the port just 20km away were squeaking in on time to catch our boat.

At this point the petrol light in the car came on along with a warning that we had just 45km of fuel left.  Wife was asleep in the back of the car and after confirming the remaining distance with PS who had the map I said "Let’s risk it".  These are the words that wife woke up to asking "risk WHAT?".  I started to explain but before I could finish we had run out of petrol.  So now we are on a service road near the autoroute with a baby, it's foggy, cold and occasionally drizzling.  Having jogged the half km to the nearest SOS phone to find that it didn't work I came back and following the instructions on the SOS booth dialled 112 on our mobile.  My mistake was to ask if anyone spoke English because they just hung up!  Another 10 attempts later we finally managed to explain our situation to someone and get a rescue vehicle on it's way to us, perhaps from Paris as it only took 2 hours to arrive.

On arrival he tipped 2 litres of petrol in the car, stuck out his hand and said 185 Euros please, when questioned about this he shrugged, said "c'est Dimanche" and threatened to call the police.  We paid the man leaving us a combined wealth of 1 Euro, and headed off once more.

Arriving at the port we were told that we needed to go to the ticket office to pay to change our ferry crossing, a mere 87 Euros.  When I explained that this was more than the original return crossing cost the lady behind the counter cheerily said "I know", she followed this up by saying we were now too late for the next crossing and would have to wait another 2 and a half hours. "Merci" I said with as little real meaning as I could manage.

The waiting hall consists of a huge room filled with 5 or six vending machines.  Having not eaten since breakfast we decided to spend our Euro a single packet of crisps to share between 3 of us.  Never has a crisp tasted so good and collectively we were almost weeping with joy when I held up the little one to look into the packet and said "look crisps!".  Showing a previously undiscovered talent for comic timing she promptly threw up straight into the packet.  We really did cry with laughter.