Foreign Perspectives

Archive for August, 2004

Had a bit of a dash to the hospital this morning as this little guy decided that it was time to venture out into the world.

Wendy’s waters broke just as we pulled into the carpark so it was a bit of a dash after that ’til 11:08 when he made his appearance. Seeing as we took the last photo of the three of us at 10:23 and it takes a good 30 minutes to drive to the hospital, we weren’t hanging around along the way!

Nothing happening on the baby front at the moment… Wendy reckons sometime this week for sure.

I thought I’d have a go at claiming the French “child benefit” a few weeks ago which helped to kick off quite a bunch of tax papers from the UK to join those starting to arrive from France.

Up to now the French side has been relatively simple. Apart from a few hitches several weeks back we are on track to be fully into the French health system (although probably not before John turns up) and, thanks to the European freedom of movement legislation, I was able to tell the French pension scheme where to go last week (they can’t force you into their compulsory pension scheme if you’ve already got one in another European country). I even had the first bill from the social security folk last week which I was all set to pay, until I started working through the UK Child Benefit form.

I got onto the second page when I came across the question “when did you stop working in the UK?”. That sounds simple, doesn’t it? Obviously it would be whatever date in early March I stopped getting paid ie just looking at the P45 would give me the necessary date. Ah, well, no.

Those of you in Rosepark may recall that I didn’t have a “leaving do”. That’s because I didn’t resign. I’m actually still working for the civil service! No, seriously, I am. Think about it: they’re paying for my further education, they invite me for promotion interviews, they send me circulars, they say I’m still subject to civil service rules,… OK, they’re not paying my salary, but in all other respects, I’m still “on the books”. Net effect of this is that it would appear that I can opt out of the French tax & social security system altogether. I would also appear to have the status of Crown Servant which is pretty significant in a lot of respects, and particularly so in terms of tax (and, I think, nationality ie it will affect John).

Anyway, I seem to have become a job creation scheme for the Inland Revenue and an education service for them and their French equivalents!

Assuming that they agree with this state of affairs, step one is to sack the French accountant (a major upside) and acquire a UK one then start fully unravelling myself from the French system. I’d also need to start planning for the fateful day four and a bit years off when I actually do have to resign although I think I can still stay out of the French system even then.

More anon on this one as it will probably take the Inland Revenue a month or more to work out the implications of my situation.

Saw a bit more on the dreadful year for the French tourism industry at the weekend. Seems that the travel agents had been telling everyone to go somewhere other than the south of France for their holidays this year. Net effect, naturally, is that the number of tourists knocking around France is well down. They have also changed their holiday habits and are generally looking at the forecast and going if it’s nice and going for shorter periods too. To be honest, we haven’t really noticed all this as we’ve been ramping up the promotion for the hotel since we started so it’s quite difficult to tell whether the number of customers we have now is increasing because it’s the high season or because of the increased advertising we’re doing. Probably a bit of both.

As it is, over the last month we’ve had more bookings than both the local hotels put together which impresses me no end as they’ve both been at it for years. Although we’ve been mostly getting bookings just a few days ahead we’ve already got bookings for October, December, February and March. Kind of un-nerving to have a nearly empty reservations book two weeks ahead but it’s been like that all through July and August yet we’ve ended up almost running out of sheets & towels for the rooms at times in practice.

All being well, we’re hoping to start properly promoting the restaurant in a few weeks time after Wendy recovers a bit. Suggestions for an opening promotion welcome!

Must head on now… ’tis tea-time.

We had our hospital run at 2am Saturday morning. Not recommended and I’ve still not recovered from it!

Things were coming along nicely ’til the genius of a midwife gave Wendy some morphine for the pain (they don’t do the “gas and air” thing in France) which managed to stop the pain and everything else too.

Umteen transfers between the bedroom (very nice private room, courtesy of the French government) and the pre-labour room for monitoring (that gadget that they hook you up to which measures the baby’s heart rate and the pressure ie contractions) and Wendy was thoroughly fed-up & sore with all the poking around inside (she’s 3cm and has been since 2am Saturday) so we went home around 10pm. Just as well really as nothing further has happened. She figures sometime this week for sure.

Looks like John will be arriving somewhat ahead of schedule, probably either tonight or tomorrow.

Wendy had a rough night of it so it was almost a hospital trip this morning. Anyway, thought we’d call in this afternoon to see what the facilities were like in the clinic and maybe get someone to give her the once-over while we were there. By that time, the contractions had started, though not in a big way so it was off to get the blood test for the anaesthetic (French health is a bit fragmented: the doctor gives you a note to take to a laboratory to get tests done).

Back home now, but we’re getting ready for a hospital run later.

My Carte Vitale (health card) turned up last week along with three separately posted “attestations” listing who is covered. Two seem to be identical and include everybody but the health card only listed me. Separate from all that, we got an envelope listing what they’d paid us re our claims of a month or so ago and yet another envelope with a pile of claim forms that they said they couldn’t pay because they predated the validity of the health card (which kicks in from July 26th). Anyway, with so much documentation from the one place, we thought it was time to pay the CPAM another visit.

First off, they said that the attestations weren’t valid because they weren’t responsible for us and in fact the only person covered was me and that was from May 1st and not July 26th. The health system here is a bit peculiar: basically the health “system” that you join depends on what work you do. I don’t know all the details of it but there’s one system for the employed, another for the self-employed and yet another for the farmers (no doubt there are more!). As I’m self-employed here, that’s the scheme that I should be signed up for so we’d to go off to their office the next day.

As with the normal CPAM office, they also said that I was the only one covered and wanted copies of all the birth certificates etc. They’re confused (as are we) about why the CPAM people paid out on claims we’d made and then said they weren’t the ones who were covering us. They say that they’ll cover us all from May 1st but that the attestation saying that will probably arrive at the start of September which is a bit of a problem as that’s when John is due to arrive too. We’re not quite sure what happens if he turns up before the attestation and neither are they but seeing as we actually have an attestation listing Wendy we’re going to give that a go if need be. All this hassle is due to our accountant not getting off him bum and registering the business in February: everything would have been sorted out by the end of April, giving us stacks of time to play with. It turns out that if we’d been registered when I specially stayed here a week to get things sorted in February, we’d only have had to pay for Wendy’s very first examination as the French health system reimburses maternity care 100% so all you need to do once the pregnancy is confirmed is to hand them your health card. All being well, I’ll be referring to him as my former accountant in the not terribly distant future (we’re actively looking for someone with a bit more brains).

Further complicating things on the health front is that the surgeons are going on strike for a week around the time that John is due to arrive. However, as he has now “engaged” if you know what that means (I don’t) he may be arriving in a week or two (ie a couple of weeks ahead of schedule) which is probably just as well as she can hardly walk at the moment. She’s twin sized but there’s only one little guy in there.

We’re filling up with Italians at the moment although funnily enough they’re not coming from the Italian hotel website that we recently got listed on (haven’t got any bookings from it yet). Generally speaking, we’re doing really well from the “hostels” booking site that we signed up with late last month. It’s the one that’s used by Ryanair and FlyBE who are two of the three airlines that fly here (I’ll have to check out how Airfrance directs people to book accomodation and work on that next). They charge me 10% commission on each booking but it’s only on the room rate so for instance last night we’d three Italians in a triple room which we’d normally get EUR56 for but as they’d booked through the Italian version of the hostel site we only got EUR 50.41 but they took breakfast so that brought it up to 68.41 so it’s working out around 8% commission rather than 10%. On the other hand, they’d not have been here at all except for that site so we’re really up EUR 68. We think that we’ll get bookings from them for virtually the whole year too although obviously not so many when we get out of the main holiday season.

Funnily enough, we are now getting more bookings than both of the local hotels put together and they’ve been here for years! The local auberge has hardly any bookings at all at the moment (there’s a sign up in the tourist office window which says how many rooms they have free so we’ve been looking at that every week to see how the competition is doing: they don’t know what our figures are though) and he’s been here just over two years now. He’s got a webpage but hasn’t bothered to get it onto the search engines and doesn’t seem to be registered with any booking systems either so you can’t find him unless you know he’s there and as he’s in a little village off the main road, he doesn’t get many drivebys either.

Oh, I’ve started on an “events” page for the Pyrenees area (well, anywhere within about 90 minutes of here really). As far as I can tell, there’s nothing like it on the internet at the moment, which probably explains why there are so few tourists at any of the events. My little page is at www.mascamps.com/event/en.htm; I’m adding everything that I can find which takes some doing as they mainly just publicise festivals etc. locally so you actually need to go to the tourist office in each village to find out what’s going on. If we’re out and about it’s quite common for us to end up in a village that has a festival ongoing that we hadn’t heard about (and that counts places within a few miles of us too!).

Our first long-ish stay visitor is leaving tomorrow. Seems like they’ve just arrived but they’ve been here nearly a fortnight! We’re had quite a run of people booking to stay for a week or so over the last few weeks with the first of those arriving at the end of next week. All through the Ryanair booking system too which is strange as I was originally expecting that we’d only get short-stay visitors that way.

I thought that we weren’t doing too well on the wine sales (well, the shop certainly isn’t but then we’ve done diddly in promoting it up to now) but we’re down to our last couple of bottles of Chardonnay from the original six boxes so will have to buy another couple of boxes of that soon. As far as the rest go, we’ve lots left as people are taking some of pretty much everything but the Chardonnay is by far the most popular.

Have to think about what to do about that promotion trawl too… Sod’s Law would, of course, apply and I would be bound to be top of the list. On the other hand, if I do take up the career break “insurance” and return to Rosepark (wherever that may end up!), maybe I should go for it. On the left foot, sitting typing this in t-shirt & shorts in a sun-drenched courtyard in the south of France beats sitting in a rain-drenched Rosepark anyday. And on the right foot, I still haven’t had the time to complete my annual report so the chances of me getting time to run up a major league job application in the next two weeks don’t seem great. If I could run to voting buttons on this e-mail, I’d ask you to vote on my options!