It happened like this...an English family moves to France. Part 9

Although we found a buyer for our house relatively quickly, Completion dragged on for over a year.  He was buying, he wasn’t, he was buying, he wasn’t … I packed things and unpacked them, phoned the notaire, faxed him, stared at the telephone, stared at the fax, stared at the sky.  We heard that the buyer had moved to Hawaii.  We heard that he was now in Portugal.. We heard that he was moving here after all.  I put the property back on the market, showed more people around it, heard good news from the notaire and took it off the market again.  Another long silence, so I put the house on the market once more, showed people around … on and on till finally Completion, well tattered and almost unrecognizable, limped through the door.

A peaceful haven ..

Like most women, my heart just went out of the house as soon as I knew we were selling.  All the work we had lovingly put in became irrelevant, and all I could see was a monster in need of constant maintenance.  What had once been a peaceful haven for me where I could lick my wounds, became an isolated and cold wind-swept batisse that I no longer wanted to live in.  A large damp patch developped near the front door, the upper stair carpet started to fray in one corner, the fleur-de-lys floor tiles in the hall became too tedious to clean, and the flower beds were just fine with weeds  in ….

Pippa waiting for the school bus outside our front gates. One year when we were camping in Spain we bought two concrete lions and, with the aid of a digger, hoisted them up on top of those pillars.  As far as I know they are there to this day.

I wanted to go home …

… more than anything .  We sat down and did the sums over and again, and it didn’t matter which way round we calculated it, we would be utterly broke if we went back to the UK, would have to find work somehow, the children would have to start all over again in the UK system … it just didn’t make financial sense, nor practical sense.  And any emotional sense would soon be thwarted by the practicalities of life.

I had access to a lot of properties because of my business.   I had seen every kind of property under the sun, both inside and out, and had negotiated every step of every element in a hundred and one deals.  I knew what we were about, what the values were, which loans were available, who to contact.  I could tell at a glance anything that was a quick camouflage job, indoors or out, I could judge the state of the roof, I could spot termite trails a mile off.   I knew all about the little hitches that could wreck a potential purchase, where and how to check the title of the vendors, where and how to check the boundaries of the land.

I was no longer the young woman who thought she was busy because she had a baby and two children.  I knew what real busy was, and I knew all about stress and disappointment.  I had changed.  And although I was aware I had developped a kind of hardness, a water-off-a-duck’s back attitude to so many things, I felt I was probably a better person.  A wiser person, certainly.

 We both liked the old Roman town of Saintes, and toyed with looking there.  I had never lived in a town, though Saintes is not big.  It is still my favourite town in the area.  Until 1810 it was the “capital” of what was then called the Charentes-inferieures (Charente Maritime) but, like so many towns of its ilk faded in to grubby obscurity till it was restored and put on the map, as it were, in 1990.  The river Charente runs though it, lovely for boating or walking, and there is an excellent pedestrianized area with lots of shops and restaurants.

Red tape.

In the meantime, if I was to work, which I was, I still had to obtain my Carte Professionelle.  I hurled myself in an impressive variety of somersaults as I found the torturous routes through the system, which seemed to be designed on purpose to make everything as difficult as possible.  I became an expert acrobat, brilliant at walking a tightrope.  Nothing phased me any more.  I had been there.  Done that.   At the time it seemed to me that France wallowed in bureaucratic nightmare, but I now know that Britain is the exception – Britain, the US, Australia and other English-speaking countries.  We are “free” and, providing we obey the law we may do as we wish, within reason.  On the Continent it is the opposite – you may do as you wish providing there is a law permitting you to do so.   That is why the French use expressions such as “je n’ai pas le droit” which you would never hear in English.

I have no idea how many phone calls I made, nor how many letters I wrote, but I had to drive to La Rochelle (almost an hour) on five or six occasions and eventually met the Mr Valtel I had been told about.  Actually, he was very kind and really wanted to help me.  He was the first to admit the system was ridiculous and that I had been badly served.  He helped me through several loop holes as I got my dossier ready.  This included, I recall, having an “official police translater” translate my papers – which cost me quite a lot of money, but was a requirement.  She translated “estate agent” as Agent of the State, which caused great hilarity in Valtel’s office.  Another police official had written that I had been born in Cape Province, South Africa, Angleterre.

Not that I wish to ridicule the police – I am a great admirer of the police.  But I think the point is perhaps that they are precisely that – the police, invented for catching criminals.

The red tape was such that even Valtel had to make phone calls to obtain information.  On one occasion, with me in his office, he phoned the Minister of Somethingorother in Paris.  He flicked the phone on to loud speaker and explained my situation.  The Minister listened.

“Ecoutez,” he said after a while, “il ne faut pas trop leur aider, les anglais.  Qu’elle rentre chez elle si elle n’aime pas.”

Translated: Listen, you musn’t help the English too much;  if she doesn’t like it she can go home.

Valtel was mortified.

To cut a long story short, and after months and months and months, my Carte Professionelle was refused by the Powers That Be in Paris.  The reason was because I was a foreigner.  I was certain that was discrimination and that I could have kicked up a fuss.

“You are, in effect, forbidding me to work!” I exclaimed.

Our delicious boys!

Exhaustion

But, truth be told, I no longer cared.  I was seriously exhausted.  You wouldn’t think it but clients are very demanding.  Perhaps any job where you work with the public is demanding in a way that it isn’t when you work with a colleague or two, or an inanimate object of some kind.  I had to keep up a pleasant and smiling facade, be interested in what they were saying, not mind their children filling my car up with crisps and screaming in my ear … hour after hour, day after day, and all in the hope they would buy something.  And then I’d be so pleased because they wanted to buy something, I’d let the notaire know, let the vendor know … pat the whole thing through months of paperwork to Completion, be available on the phone for idiot questions and requests, (“Oh Catherine!  So glad to catch you!  Would you mind popping over to our place … he he, well, the one we are buying, and measuring the skirting boards for me?”) keeping my clients happy with their purchase till I got my commission cheque.  But often enough, for no good reason, the clients would change their minds and the sale would fall through.  Nobody paid me.  I had to create my own money.  Often enough it was exhilarating but sometimes it was gutting.

These things don’t sound so bad in themselves, I know, but it was continuous.  After a full day’s work and with three small children, it was sometimes as much as I could stand.

And so I stopped.  Just like that.  I was not willing to battle for the Carte.  I was not willing to exhaust myself any further.  I wanted to be at home with my children.  We were selling up and moving to the coast where, I hoped, there would be a bit more life and laughter.  I took out the last few of my clients (breaking the law utterly) and then handed them over to the notaire.  Waved. Said goodbye.

Jake playing in some drains on a building site.  Isn’t it funny how, thirty years later, you can still recognize the clothes your children wore ?  I remember that little sweat-shirt; it had baa-lambs on it.

 Health matters.

We found that Bruce’s Meniere’s would come and go.  There was no two ways about it, but the arrival of the post, which could quite plausibly herald some dreadful letter from some authority somewhere, triggered it off. The phone ringing.  People rang in the evenings, when he was home and the calls were cheaper – giving him no rest once he got home.  It drove us both mad, trying to get supper, get the children off to bed, tidy up, rest a bit – and that phone kept ringing.  We were obliged to answer it.  That was how we made our money.  Sometimes it was one of Bruce’s clients to say he was delighted with the mezzanine, or another client to say he was furious the electrics were not finished.  Frequently it was somebody being thoughtless, all wrapped up in their own project of a house in France and totally forgetting that we were real live human beings that needed time off.

Sometimes Bruce was so ill all he could do was lie on the floor.  He said he couldn’t fall off the floor.  At other times it was just a maddening buzzing in his head.

Something had to change and we had to find a different way of earning money.

  We cycled almost every Sunday unless I had clients.  The roads around Primrose were very quiet and fairly flat.

Finding a suitable property

Of the thirty or forty properties that I knew were for sale, none was suitable for us.  We had become accustomed to large, airy rooms and big windows.  We were used to a lot of space and plenty of quiet.  With a limited budget (despite selling Primrose at a juicy profit) there were not that many houses available for us to look at.  Furthermore, property near or on the coast was more expensive – still very cheap compared to Britain, but almost beyond our budget.  To top it, there was very little indeed in the way of buildings for renovation and the few that there were tended to be village houses in run-down little streets, or grotty farm dwellings with no architectural relief, never mind pleasant views, and surrounded by nasty modern bungalows.

We both had a wild idea that we could perhaps buy a modern property in need of no work.  That appealed to us for a while, and Lord knows there were plenty of recently-built properties all along the coast, most of them square and unattractive boxes.  I love the turn-of-the-century, ie 1900s, seaside architecture but anything we liked as also too expensive, though for a while we did consider a magnificent house on a cliff, overlooking the sea, near Royan.  It had been “restored” in the 1960s and everything needed re-doing, so it was just up our street.  Some bright spark had even removed the original staircase and replaced it with a “modern” concrete one, complete with duff-coloured tiles!   But no, that sea view, so lovely, so hypnotic in the summer, would become a fierce and icy enemy in the winter.  So the hunt continued.

And it was one day, as we returned from a day trip cycling with the children on the island of Oleron, that we drove past a huge old house with a For Sale sign.

“Talk about a white elephant!” I exclaimed.

“Hmmph!” agreed Bruce, “I wonder which idiot is ever going to buy that?”

Part 8

Part 10 to follow.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, an artist and a poet.  Her books are available from Amazon/Kindle or can be ordered from any leading bookstore or library.  They are also available as e-books on this site.

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-9/#sthash.9jdCYz83.dpuf

It happened like this...an English family moves to France. Part 8

• William in his home-made go-cart.  Although he was only 11, he wrote an article about it which got published in an engineering magazine.

The land tax office

The letter stated, quite simply, that we owed this huge sum of money and that it should have been paid at the time of the purchase.

I phoned the appropriate office but the person at the other end of the line had no idea what I was talking about and the reference number on the letter didn’t seem to help.  In fact, she said the reference was nonsensicle, even though I read it out carefully two or three times.  She suggested I phone back later, which I did, but that didn’t seem to make any difference.  We went through the same introductions and I finally asked her why she had suggested I phone back later ?

The British Consulate had once given me a good tip – always ask for the person in charge because a) it makes the one who answered your call jump to attention (his words) and b) the person in charge likes to feel s/he is indeed In Charge and does his/her best to have the appropriate information for you.   Thus I was eventually passed on to somebody else (ne quittez pas!) who then passed me on to The Man Who Had Signed The Letter.  All this took ages, and I waited through a variety of tunes, to include the inevitable Green Sleeves.

When The Man came on the line, he explained to me that an “agent” had seen the house and it was clearly worth a great deal more than the 350 000 francs (£30K) we had paid for it.   (Somebody had been round to spy ?!!)

“I should hope it is!” I exclaimed, “we have done a great deal of work on it!”

“At the price you paid, it would mean it was a ruin when you bought it,” replied the man dryly.

“It was!” I said crossly, “it was a ruin and we have done it up, and now it is worth a great deal more!”

“Nobody can do that amount of work in so short a time,” he replied with a sigh of impatience.

“Well we did!”

I made an appointment to see him.  He was off on holiday and couldn’t see me till he got back, three weeks hence.  It was maddening.

• In my brother-in-law’s microlite on a nearby air field.

Frais de notaire

I knew what had happened and had, in fact, dealt with a similar problem for one of my clients earlier that year.  You see, when you buy a property in France, you pay what are usually referred to as les frais de notaire.  This is a misnomer because only a fraction of the fee goes to the notaire; the rest are government taxes, like land tax in the UK.  These taxes depend on the value of the property.  Because Primrose was now worth considerably more than 350 000 francs, the powers that be, in their wisdom, decided that we had given cash to the vendor and only allowed the 350 000 francs to appear on paper, thus saving us thousands in land taxes.  In small village communities and with a people who don’t move house very often, this was quite possibly fairly common practice.  With computerization I expect all this kind of shinnannigans is impossible now, but when you consider that the local notaire was quite plausibly the brother of the buyer or the vendor, or the godparent or something … it doubtless happened more that the authorities cared to admit.

Anyway, it had not happened with us.

Irritated and, of course, concerned, I waited for The Man’s holiday to expire.  We still had the Court case for the Carte Professionelle hanging over us, work to be seen to, irritations and upsets with clients, the children to raise, stuff … you know how it is.  We led busy, active lives.

Emmaus

Finally, armed with a mercifully huge collection of before-and-after photos, I went to see The Man. The office was near the station in Rochefort close to an Emmaus which has since closed down – a pity because it was really good.  To this day the Emmaus in St Agnant, in aid of the homeless, is one of my favourite afternoons out – I love bric-a-brac and old furniture and what other people consider junk.  Nowadays, however, you can only rarely pick up real goodies for a song because, like charity shops in the UK, an expert comes in to value things.  But if you have got an eye for possibilities, it is a fun place to go.  As far as I am aware it is the only charity shop in France – but I may be wrong about that.  Emmaus is Biblical –  it is the name of a hamlet just outside Jerusalem, and a couple of pilgrims saw Jesus there, after Jesus had died.  It features in the gospel of St Luke.

The history of Art is my totally favourite subject; this painting is by Caravaggio, dated 1601, and named The Supper in Emmaus.  It is a lovely example if chia oscuro, ie use of light and shade.

Anyway, I diverge …  I made my way to the appropriate room, up a flight of tiled steps and in to a spacious office overlooking the railway.  There I was greeted by a pleasant-looking man in his forties.  He wore half-moon glasses.  An enormous weariness came over me and I flopped in to a chair without being asked and flung, perhaps a tickle rudely, the photos down on to the desk.  He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I am terribly tired,” I said, and I was.

He didn’t respond.  He probably thought he had misheard.. . or perhaps he thought it was something English women say, the way the French say “bonjour” and kiss each other.  Perhaps all English women sit without being asked and announce whether they are tired or not.

He picked up the packet and tipped the contents out on to his desk.  He looked through the pictures with genuine interest and, to my surprise, said (but in French):

“Yes, I have heard that les anglais are very good at restoring our old properties …”

• The larger of the two  guest rooms.  It was on the ground floor and boasted double doors on two sides, one out to the courtyard and the other to the woods.  When we bought the house an underground stream had seeped up through the floor, which had half an inch of muddy water on it almost all the time.  Bruce, with his habitual savoir-faire, dug a trench to divert the stream; it took a long while to get rid of the overall damp smell.  After a year we moved the beds so that we could make a doorway on that far wall, and that led through to a bathroom.  The bathroom was originally a disused bread-oven – you’d be amazed at how big the inside of a bread oven is!

He flicked through the photos, occasionally asking a question, and was quite interested in which room was which, how we had repaired the staircase, did I think the staircase was original, and he was so glad we’d kept the fleur-de-lys floor tiles in the hall … and so on.  He said he’d love a house like that but that his wife would never agree to living in such an isolated spot.

“It was nonetheless exceptionally cheap,” he said finally, putting the photos to one side.

“You are not telling me that one is not allowed to do a good deal in France, are you?!” I asked.

He smiled.

“No, of course not …”

He handed the photos over to me and told me he would reach his final decision in due course.  And that was the end of the interview.  I wanted to thump my fist on the table and yell … but I just smiled and left … as one does.

About six weeks later a letter arrived from The Man, telling me that all charges were dropped and that we had nothing to pay.

“I could have told you that for free!” I shouted in to the empty room.

• We took on the kind of projects that most people shied away from.  We were both very good at it. In the early days I would sometimes help with carrying buckets of cement and shovelling rubble, but I haven’t gone anywhere near that sort of thing for years now – and don’t intend to!  I can’t remember this man’s name … Jean-Something I expect.

The Tribunal

We finally appeared in Court about a year after the gendarme episode.  It had eaten at me almost constantly, and I had been veering from panic about going to prison to what-fun-going-to-prison-how-jolly-interesting-that’ll-be!  Most of the time that inbred positivity remained with me and I didn’t think for one moment I would go to prison or anything like it.  In fact, in many ways most of me just considered the whole thing massively tedious at a time when I already had too much to do.

I don’t know what I expected once I got in to the Court room – if I had expected anything at all – but one thing that did strike me was that, as each person’s turn came round, there was no notable calling-out of the name: Dupont v. Renaud!  That sort of thing.  Names of people, banks, businesses or whatever were sort-of half-mumbled by somebody sitting at the judge’s table, so when our turn came I had no idea we had started till I saw Vincent, our dear little lawyer, stand up and point to me.

 I couldn’t hear much of what was being said and Bruce couldn’t understand much of what was being said.  It seemed to be a fairly casual sort of conversation and, finally, I saw Vincent smile and he came over to us and said we should follow him out.  Gosh, thought I, are they going to put hand-cuffs on me?  I wished I had brought a camera.

But no.  Nothing quite so dramatic.  Vincent explained that I had been given two days’ suspended sentence.  And that was the end of that.  That was simply the end of that.  It made me really cross. I wanted to storm back in to the judge and shout “after all this TRAUMA, all these months of waiting, all you can manage is 2 days’ suspended sentence ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   What an insult !”

• ile de Re, near Ste Maire

The Ile de Re

We went off to the Ile de Re camping that week-end.  We lay on the beach with the children, and we splashed in the cold Atlantic waters.  We tried to wash it all away in the sea and bask it all away in the sun.  In the evenings we almost always ate out, overlooking the little port at St Martin or the little place at Ste Marie.  We cycled for miles and miles, along the pistes cyclistes that wound past the beaches, through the marais and in and out of the villages.  Miles of cycling.   I needed to work it out of me somehow; I was furious, relieved, stunned, weepy ….I saw a young man bareback on a huge shire horse.  I saw fishing boats pulling lobsters in.  I saw my children play on the sand.   I watched the sun drop over the horizon to the places where I was born and had lived. I listened to the waves splashing on the beach all night.

I felt it was time to move on.

Part 7 

Part 9

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Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available of Amazon/Kindle worldwide or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  They are also available as e-books on this site.

- See more at: http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk/blog/it-happened-like-this-an-english-family-move-to-france-part-8/#sthash.dVkZA1da.dpuf

How to avoid and how to deal with arguments. Men and Women: Venus and Mars

I was about to write: my husband and I never argue, but that isn’t really true.  Like all normal human beings we sometimes argue, but it is soon over and done with, it happens rarely, and it is never ever out of hand.  It is also, by the by, usually about his mother!

We have been married 34 years – a tad more.  Here are the tips I have picked up over time, not because we argue but precisely because we don’t.

- decide in advance. Almost like a recipe, write it down so that you both agree and neither of you can deny it later. These are the things that are  guaranteed to drive me mad.  These are the things that are important to me.  Where you cannot agree on the ingredient (for the recipe, so to speak) examine whether or not it is reasonable and what to do about it.

- decide in advance what you are going to do. Write down (it is better to write it down if you argue regularly so that you can point to it and say look, we agreed that we would never mention that again!)  Set out the rules, e.g the following:-

- have a cushion.  Or a jar, or whatever.  Whoever is holding the cushion speaks.  They are allowed to “hold the floor” for up to 3 minutes and after that they have to hand the cushion over to the other person to speak.

This technique forces the other person to LISTEN.  It is way too easy to interrupt when somebody is trying to make a point (“that’s not true! You said it was the dog!”)  The three minutes of listening also gives time to breathe deeply, decide to be calm, think of what you are going to reply …

- speak calmly. And check the expression on your face.  An angry expression only makes everything worse.

- check the level of your voice too, and your body language.

- never ever use foul language.  People who resort to calling their loved ones foul names are the pits.  You can never take it back and no amount of “sorry” is going to wipe it out.

- Let go!  For goodness’ sake let go of the argument.  Is it in fact so so important ?!  Does it really really matter that you “win” ?  Shut up!  Just leave it be.

- never argue (or even discuss) in the evenings.  Emotions always run higher in the evening/at night, especially if you have had a drink.

- never argue (or even discuss) in bed.  That is a special place where you love and it must be sacred to that.

- if it is still important in the morning, discuss it then.  Chances are it won’t matter at all by morning.  It may even seem very silly!

- never try to reason with somebody who is drunk.  A drunk person is temporarily mentally handicapped.

- remember who you are dealing with.  This is somebody you love, for pity’s sake.  S/he loves you!  This is not the enemy.  This is not a fight, nor a competition.

- count to 10 before you even begin.  Seriously, it is amazing how after just 10 seconds you can calm down.  If not, go for a walk or in to a different room.  And tell each other that this is what you will be doing so that it doesn’t seem that you are stomping out.  Write it on your list.

- and take a few moments before you answer.  Think.  Is this worth persuing ?  Would it be better to simply say “oh, really?  Did I?  Sorry about that, I hadn’t taken it on board somehow…”

- if it helps, know that when you are angry you look very ugly!  Most people would be shocked if they knew what they looked like.

- remember!  That awful argument was because you once again forgot to put the bins out.  You promised that this evening you were taking Freddy to football. You agreed that your mother didn’t have to come over every single bloomin’ Sunday!  Remember it!  Actually I’d say that this is what most women get cross about – their husbands/partners quite simply forget.

- if it is over 7 days old do not argue about it.  That is just silly.  If it is something very important that happened over 7 days ago it should be something that gets discussed – not argued over.

- concentrate on what is going to end the argument rather than on proving your point.  As the years go by you learn to side-step each other’s irritations anyway, so learn now.

- the key to a happy marriage is that you do everything s/he wants and s/he does everything you want!  Why do something you know in advance is going to upset him/her ?

So many arguments are over the silliest things.  I remember arguing with my husband over a fire poker.  Quite recently actually.  What a stupid thing to argue over.

And remember that men and women are wired-up totally differently.  They handle things differently.  You cannot expect each other to understand every time, because your partner’s brain is not wired the way yours is.  So let it be.  Peace.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  Her books are available from Amazon/Kindle or can be ordered from most leading book stores and libraries.  They can also be purchased as e-books from this site (£1.99):-

https://payhip.com/b/tEva    “A Call from France”

https://payhip.com/b/OTiQ    ”French Sand”

https://payhip.com/b/BLkF    “The Man with Green Fingers”

https://payhip.com/b/1Ghq    “Saying Nothing”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Call-From-France-Catherine-Broughton/dp/1475116659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377346248&sr=8-1&keywords=catherine+broughton

A very good book, even if you don’t argue:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mars-Women-Venus-Communication-Relationships/dp/0007152590