Foreign Perspectives

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If nothing else, creating the blog version of this little newsletter has upped the number of readers somewhat. We had a couple of hundred folk looking at it in the couple of days after I put it on.

We had an English couple with us all week as part of a mini-package with breakfast, lunch, evening meals and transfers just about every day which is certainly a lot more profitable than people just staying the night but definitely creates a whole lot more work. The days just disappeared on us and we hardly got anything done.

As a result of them, it took us three goes to make it to a meeting with the bank manager. Still, at least he’s now got a chunk of stuff that needs doing for us. We still can’t accept Amex or Diners Club (”deeners cloob” here) as the applications haven’t been processed yet which isn’t really surprising as banks here are incredibly slow. They’re also about 30 years behind the times in most respects. As a small example of this, Credit Agricole updated their computer system a few months ago and just decided to start charging all their customers EUR 5 per month just for having an account simply because the new computer system would let them do that. That’s in addition to the EUR 40 that they already charged for a debit card on the accounts. So now we’ve to pay EUR 100 just to have an ordinary account. Another example of backwardness is that they’ve just started to issue credit cards (yes, really: 30 years after the rest of the world!). Naturally, they come with a charge (EUR 30 or so), penal interest (17% which is pretty high considering that Eurozone rates are somewhat lower than the UK) and a MAXIMUM limit of EUR 8000 (about £5000) which is lower than the minimum limits on some UK cards: I don’t think he believed me when I said that some UK cards have maximums up to £50,000 on ordinary cards (and those kind of limits are definitely achieveable too whereas the EUR 8000 max of Credit Agricole is rather difficult to achieve). Oh, and the “overdraft limit” is only applicable during the month ie you need to clear your overdraft each month so it’s really just to cover bills arriving before your salary.

We’re intending to update two rooms each year so that we don’t end up having to replace the stuff in all the rooms in a few years time (ie we’ll update the whole hotel every five years or so). Normally we’d have done that in the new year but the big end of year booking is forcing us to bring that forward a few months so we were off bedroom shopping during the week. Anyway, first to get the refresh is our proposed “honeymoon suite” which will have a really nice set of furniture before Christmas and we’re also replacing one knackered bed in a room which we’ve yet to use but expect to be using regularly next year as it’ll be our only non-ensuite room when we create the little suite by adding a connecting door between the other non-ensuite room and one of our double rooms. We weren’t even going to bother offering the non-ensuite rooms but they’re very popular with the people booking through the Ryanair/FlyBE system.

Nothing doing with the vaccinations. We went along to the clinic but they decided that both James & John were running a temperature and therefore couldn’t be given the vaccines so it’s back in early December to try again. The reason that they were pretty warm (as were me & Wendy) is that it was 29C that day. They don’t allow for people not being used to the high temperatures here. When John was born they insisted on putting three layers of clothes on him (including one rug type effort) plus blankets on top. I’m sure you’ve heard that babies can’t sweat. Normally that’s true but they put so much on him that the sweat was dripping off him!

We’ve one of those google alerts set up to keep an eye on the bridge developments so we can see that it’s being quite widely reported in the UK. I think the folk in Millau are incredibly optimistic when they think that people will come to their town to see the bridge. A fantastic feat of engineering, maybe. Worth a special trip to see, no. At the very least they’re going to see a heap of their shops closing over the next few years.

It’s a public holiday here tomorrow (Monday) so we’re intending to head off to Spain for the day to stock up on a few things. The English family ate their way through a lot of beans on toast. You might think that’s a cheap meal. Not here: beans are really expensive. So, we’re going to try and get a box of tins of beans in Spain (they aren’t quite at UK prices but are definitely a lot cheaper than in France). Also, Wendy has fallen in love with “sillic bang” which cleans up chrome like new and has made quite an improvement in the appearance of our bathroom fittings.

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You’ll probably be quite amazed to find us listed as number four at Take a Break Nudist Retreats ! Haven’t pulled in any punters from that site just yet though.

We have just been accepted by the Ryanair activity breaks site so are busy working on some packages to put onto it. Most likely the first will be a Christmas short break, so if the in-fighting re the location of the Christmas do is still ongoing, you may as well plonk Mas Camps into the fray! Any suggestions folks?

Some folk were asking about an archive of these little mails. How does something like Mas Camps News grab you? I haven’t added them all yet but should get up to date later this week.

We’ve been busy sorting out our “to do” list for the period up to next summer (so it’s a biggie!). We’ve now got more than enough on it to keep us out of trouble for quite a while but at least it’s giving us a chance to see that things are moving ahead.

One thing that’s really going to feature bigtime in the activities for the next couple of months is a massive booking by a French family. They’ve booked the entire building for the evening of the 31st December through to lunchtime on the 2nd with all meals. We’ve not nailed down the final menu but have just received a EUR 600 deposit cheque so I guess we better get going on the planning. They’re even using a couple of rooms that we never planned on using so we need to tidy those up a bit.

James & John are getting their first French injections tomorrow afternoon. No problems with MMR vs separate injections over here: you just ask for them and they give you the prescription to get them. You’ve to pay for the vaccines that you get in the chemist but £15 for three is something of a bargain as compared to £80 for just the measles one in the UK. Those with kids who are interested in the three vaccine option could probably manage to do it on holiday over here for much the same price (the NHS would refund the 70% that normal French health plans refund; you can claim the refund here or, more easily if you’ve not got a French bank account, when you get back home). There’s no waiting time either: in the UK we were on the measles list for about six months; here we just popped into the chemist and could have even had the injection the same day if we’d organised the appointment that way.

We’ve not forgotten about the deportation issue but there haven’t been any developments on that front lately.

I see that “the bridge” is being opened by Chirac on December 17th. It’s part of the Paris-Barcelona highway but unfortunately they’ve not even started on the bit between Beziers and Perpignan so effectively the traffic jam will move from Millau (and boy is it dreadful there!) to around Beziers. Still, at least the roads around Beziers are considerably better than the awful mess through Millau.

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We got an “interesting” call from the mairie on Thursday relating information which the prefecture (county council) had related to them…

One: I need a Titre de Séjour (work permit).

Two: Wendy will be getting deported in January unless she provides them with a long stay visa because otherwise she is here illegally.

As you may have gathered from “one”, the prefecture are over 20 years out of date with European law. Anyway, I asked how to apply for it. They want passport, proof of address, proof of business registration and proof of income. That also shows that they are a good 10 years out of date with French law: it’s illegal for them to require me to provide proof of income (just as well really as I can’t get any of the documents that they were looking for). They’re also a good while out of date with their own procedures as the week before they sent me a document saying that Titres de Séjour are no longer issued for European citizens as from last November. We’ll be off to the mairie tomorrow with our little printout from the European Commission (yet again) pointing all this out to them.

They’re none too familiar with the visa rules either. The French foreign ministry say that we never needed a visa for Wendy as she’s related to a European citizen (ie James) and can stay as long as she likes without a visa. No, it doesn’t matter that James is only two because they don’t ask the age of the European citizen on their forms.

Yet another one of those times when we need to sit down and consider the plus points of them knowing diddly about foreigners living here.

Weather-wise, I’ve had to wear the long trousers two days in a row now. Only for the mornings and evenings though as the “shorts weather” kicks in around 10am.

We’ve got a tentative booking for 22 adults, 3 kids and 4 babies for the December 31st and January 1st to include all meals. Our prices mustn’t be too far off as they’ve given us a big list of names and the rooms that they need. It’ll be ALL of the rooms, including three that we don’t normally count. I think we’ll need a holiday afterwards to recover! They’re more into the new year thing here than Christmas so we’ve not had any enquiries re Christmas, though that may change as we’re hoping to run a Christmas short break throughout December with a traditional British Christmas dinner/lunch (so, if you’re still fighting over the location of the Christmas lunch, you could always stir Mas Camps into the pot!).

Arnold

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