Foreign Perspectives

Just a short note this time as we have, yet again, run into the sand with the French bureaucracy.

We thought we’d have a go at getting a social security number, child benefit and register with the health service last week.

Of course, as is always the case, the French equivalent of the DHSS is the civil service at its worst. Well, actually it wasn’t nearly so bad expected and, on the whole, fairly reasonable considering French bureaucracy in general. Anyway, courtesy of our visit to the social security folk we now have a list of documents to acquire (several of which don’t exist in the UK, of course). The UK child benefit people have been very decent to keep paying for James as indeed have the child tax people (in spite of them having been told that we’re off here). Actually, I suspect that one consequence of the career break status (ie I am still employed by NIO) means that I’m still entitled to them both. However, since the French pay more, I think I’ll have to see about getting the UK payments stopped so I can get the French ones started.

Optimistically, we went round to the health service place right afterwards. Somewhat inconveniently, it only opens in the morning which makes it rather difficult for us to get there and we’ve not managed it just yet. They’re the guys who give you a social security number and fork out for doctors bills (which, as you’d expect, are mounting up). Anyway, we’re going to give that another go next week.

Separately from that, we’re upping the ante with the advertising which if nothing else is increasing the number of hits on the website. We’ve a slight problem with the advertising as whilst, in practice, we’re a hotel restaurant, legally we’re a chambres d’hote with a restaurant. Net effect of this (and to increase the number of hits) we normally advertise in English as a hotel and in French as a chambres d’hote (in practical terms, we get almost exclusively French people via the “chambre d’hote” pages and everyone else via the “hotel” pages). However, since I came across a bunch of “bed & breakfast” sites we’re now also advertised as a bed & breakfast (eg allbedandbreakfast.com). Due to the incredibly hot weather last year there’s something of a shortage of cash amongst the locals this year but we’re planning on running an advert for the restaurant in the local paper to see how that goes. Funnily enough, the French, in spite of their gastronomic reputation, eat, almost exclusively, beef burgers with chips (so much for Wendy’s flashy dishes!).

The ADSL modem turned up last week and didn’t work. Well, of course, you’ve to send a copy of your bank details first (the RIB): just typing the whole heap in online ain’t good enough. Anyway, after the dial-up dropped down to 9.6k (which definitely isn’t usable for online banking as it times out all the time) I gave the modem another go and hey presto: I’m sitting out in the sun typing this letter to you guys courtesy of the Mas Camps wireless network. Haven’t quite sussed out how to offer it to the guests but that’s a challenge for next week. One things for sure: it beats surfing in a cloudy Belfast anyday!

Oh, nearly forgot: there’s a cheapy holiday to the Spanish coast 90 mins south of us on Teletext. My Aunt & Uncle are using that to pay us a visit next month (it’s direct from Belfast).