Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘France’ Category

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.

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!

Last time we left John S in the dust when we were listed as THE CHEAPEST accomodation in Perpignan.

That was Monday. Tuesday, we figured it would be at least a couple of weeks before we got any bookings from them and may as well go up to Gracay to get the pillows, soap, mail, etc. from William Gowdy. Gracay’s not an awful lot south of Paris and takes about eight hours of driving to get to so that was an overnighter.

William’s settling in pretty well and has acquired a car. He’s not got a landline yet so no internet access but he does have a mobile; if you want to call him let me know and I can pass on the number. Gracay is a nice little village; shame it’s so far from here or we’d be calling in now and again. He’s also getting his first visitor on Tuesday this week who will also be my first visitor as the whole lot of them are going camping in the south of France so will be camping in the field that I don’t know what to do with across the road. Have to see about getting the lawn mower out to tidy it up a bit for his tent.

We called in with him on the Wednesday morning and filled the trailer up with the stuff that he’d brought over. Between one thing and another we didn’t get away ’til almost lunchtime. Incidently, the road down (the A75) is brilliant and toll free but has one or two stretches that haven’t been completed, notably the big bridge at Millau just to the north of Beziers which you may have heard of. That road is part of the Paris-Barcelona european highway which should bring us a whole lot more visitors when it’s completed. William tells me that it was just filled with UK registered cars yesterday which is a good sign.

The late start meant that we didn’t get to here ’til after 11pm. I generally check the mail in the morning and evening “just in case” and it was just as well I did that on the Wednesday night as we’d seven separate bookings awaiting us and one for the Thursday! It certainly looks like the Ryanair/FlyBE site is a good one to be on: up to now we had the problem that the tourists coming off the planes had already booked somewhere to stay. Since the cheap Ryanair/FlyBE flights are booked a few months ahead we figure that we’ve probably missed a heap of people who would ordinarily have stayed here but there’s nothing we can do about that. We might pick up some of them later though as all the other accomodation listed on the site seems to be fully booked right through August.

That site is quite an expensive way to book accomodation as it follows the Ryanair model ie give us your money and we’ll keep it regardless oh, and give us a couple of quid to cover our costs in taking your money. So, you need to pay a booking fee of £3 plus 10% of the accomodation price to the booking company. Since 10% of the accomodation is about £3 in our case it means they’re billing you getting on for 20% of the cost of the booking if you’re only booking the one night. However, from my perspective it seems quite good as, so far, they’ve tended to book the rooms that I wasn’t bothering to list elsewhere (ie the two non-ensuite ones) and, so far, I’ve cleaned up on the meals & airport pickups so their charge is much less than 10% of my income from the bookings. The only downside is that their reservations are “guaranteed” which means that if we get a booking from them we have to honour it which in turn means that we need to keep our reservation calendar up to date all the time. We can still take drivebys though as they’ve set us up as needing 24 hours notice of a reservation so if a room is empty tonight we know we can let people have it.

To further complicate our lives, we’ve registered on another guaranteed booking site today. Just in case we’d get double bookings, we’ve had to reduce the number of rooms a bit but I figure that two sites like that is about the limit that we could juggle. As it is, we can’t put the gite on the second site as we’ve only one of them although it’s pretty much booked up throughout August now anyway.

Oh, and then there’s the small matter of our own direct reservations! We’re only taking guaranteed ones for those too now (via Paypal, as suggested by JW) and have had our first couple of those for August. We’ve also had our first couple of “no shows” in the last week as a result of which, we’re going to start taking deposits from people who call in to make a booking too and will be checking with the bank as to how we go about making the French equivalent of “customer not present” transactions for the telephone reservations.

As you’ve probably gathered, I spend a fair chunk of time finding ways of getting this place listed, preferably free (though I have paid £30 for the greatbedandbreakfast.com site which I’ve already recouped in bookings from it). I’m also branching out a bit in other areas so, all being well, we will be able to accept American Express cards fairly soon and the restaurant will be becoming a Ticket Restaurant and taking “Déjeuner Cheques” (the French equivalent of Luncheon Vouchers). I’m still looking round for the accomodation equivalent of LVs but, so far, have only come across “Cheques Logis”. Roger: suggestions welcome here!

A question: since France Telecom are charging me a fortune to rent the coin payphone in our lobby, I’m looking for alternatives. Any suggestions folks? And, no, removing the facility isn’t a realistic option. To give you an idea of how ridiculous it is, we have a total of less than ‚€4 in coins in it (and that’s including ‚€1 from the previous owner) yet are forking out ‚€70-odd a month to rent the thing.

Hi folks,

Here’s what we’re about to say in Chez Nous for next year:

Town/Village Mas Camps, Maury

Type of Accomodation B&B rooms for 2-4; apartment for 2 to 6.

Mas Camps offers you an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life in a selection of wine-themed rooms all with views over the surrounding mountains and vineyards. Twenty minutes from Perpignan with regular FlyBE and Ryanair flights from London, Birmingham and Southampton (with airport transfers if required); 90 minutes from Carcassonne and Girona. We are also a popular stopover to/from Spain. Satellite TV on request. Sorry, no pets.

B&B continental (‚€6) or English breakfast (‚€10); evening meals also available.

One bedroom Apartment within the mas has two double beds (an additional twin room can be included if required). Satellite TV.

For further details

Contact Arnold or Wendy

Telephone UK: 0871 919 6551; France: 04 68 29 10 77

e-mail cheznous@mascamps.com

web www.mascamps.com

Rental charges

October-March April-June July-September

B&B £28/ ‚€43 £33/‚€46 £38/‚€53

Appt £250/‚€350 £280/‚€390 £320/‚€450

Comments welcome; we need to send this off in the next day or two so you’d need to get your feedback in quickly.

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).