Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘France’ Category

We’ve sort of settled into a routine now: early morning, get breakfast stuff; mid-morning work on the French degree; 11-ish to 1.30-ish have lunch; afternoons: alternate between admin/tidying up and battling with French bureaucracy.

In the evenings we were hoping to be flogging meals to the locals but money’s a bit thin on the ground ’til after the harvest in September so we’re in the process of attempting to widen out our definition of “local” which hopefully will bear fruit in due course.

On the French bureaucracy front, we finally managed to acquire our “KBIS” (ie business registration number) a few weeks ago. For some reason, which totally escapes me, the accountant reckoned that there was no great rush on that as it was “in the works”: so, even though I’d specifically asked for him to get it way back in February, he didn’t get off his bum ’til late April and toward the end of May we received said document (which he said in February only took 3 days to get) with a start date for the business of May 1st (which will probably cause problems in due course). Over here, you basically can’t do anything without it. To give you an idea of the implications some things that you can’t do are: have a business account (so I couldn’t cash cheques made out to Mas Camps); accept credit cards (nearly had to turn away a couple of people over that); get a social security number (can’t claim Wendy’s medical bills without that); get a card for the local cash & carry (nearly ran out of several items for the hotel over that one)… the list is endless. As I say, it escapes me why he thought there was no rush on it.

Oh, and one other “small” item: you can’t have a business phone line. Thanks to the wonders of the timing of French bureaucracy, now that I have the KBIS and have paid the two months overdue bill (of course, without the KBIS they wouldn’t take the money from me), they have cut me off for not paying it. Which is why it’ll be a while before this reaches you (I’m guessing at minimum a week but it could be more).

He’s also of the opinion that I don’t need the TVA number (Value Added Tax number) ’til the end of the year. This one isn’t quite so serious though it has cost me several hundred pounds so far as it means that I can’t claim any UK VAT that I pay (which mounts up quite quickly when you count the computer I’m typing this on, a load of pillows and stuff arriving late June, all the UK adverts plus a bunch of other stuff we’ve bought in Spain).

Needless to say, we’ve been actively looking for a new accountant for the last month or so.

I can see why Roger’s friend said that people have gone bust waiting for French bureaucracy!!

We’ve now had three folk applying for a job here. However, I’ve looked at some of the bureaucratic loops that need to be gone though to employ someone here and I figure that it ain’t worth the hassle unless you’re employing at least 2 or 3 (which we couldn’t justify just yet). Also had a painter call while I was out: Wendy said that he went completely round the building and had a job getting rid of him; got a call later that evening to say he’d be prepared to do it for FF50,000 (they still count in francs here) ie about £5,000 which is a whole lot of money for painting (well, it’s a whole lot of building too I suppose).

The website is coming along nicely and the regional guide page seems to feature quite highly in the Pyrenees Orientale tourism searches, in both the French & English versions. I’m currently concentrating on that as the hotel gets quite a few hits via the regional guide. Also have to see about developing the sales side: so far only one flight booked, and a couple of books & a DVD sold but that’s not too bad seeing as I didn’t really do much in that line with the site. As you know, we recently came across a little brochure on the early history (ie Roman & Templar eras) of Mas Camps so I added the first version of that onto the site the other day and I’ve added a bit of that to the main hotel page too. The general aim is do an update of the main pages every two or three weeks but in practice it’s been nearly every week for the regional page since we got here as I’ve been adding photos of the local attractions and souping up the descriptions of them (which, in turn, is upping the number of hits). Laughably, thanks to John’s assistance, I now feature as the top site when you look for “pyrenees motorbike tours” (though, so far, we’ve not had any “greasy bikers” staying)! Actually, with that spurring me on, I’m hoping to target more directly wine enthousiasts, walkers/ramblers and cyclists so if any of you have suggestions of what kind of things I’d need to write in those areas, let me know. And, no Brian, I’ve not forgotten about the golf courses: just haven’t been around the areas where they would likely to be recently.

Anyway, tasks for the rest of this week are to erect the next couple of signs, hopefully Thursday and Friday evening (it’s way too hot now to do serious work before about 7pm here: I managed to put myself out of commission with a touch of heatstroke for the last couple of days trying to), see about getting James a Carnet de Santé (health book), acquire a social security number (which is required by quite a backlog of forms that I’ve built up) and, of course, see if we can’t do something about the phone.

We’re hoping to place our first advert for the restaurant in the local paper within the next week or so which at least only needs to be in French. It’s getting to be something of a nuisance to have to write everything in both french & english: the website in particular is quite a chunk of paper if you print it out and it all needs written twice.

We were up at the mairie again on Thursday (we seem to be going there every week or two for something or other). They’ve not heard anything about Wendy’s european residence permit: we suspect that, as was the case in NI, it’s very rare (she had the only one issued in NI as far as we can tell). Our big bins are still on order (we’re running with household size wheelie bins at the moment which fill up surprisingly quickly when we’ve restaurant customers). From before the time of the previous owner we’ve been in the Fenouilledes area accomodation list but we should be appearing under the restaurant heading as well soon. Snag is, that the Fenouilledes area is in the wrong direction: by the time people get to their touristy sights, they’ve already passed us by and ideally we’d like to be in the Agly tourist area list instead (ideally, in both, of course). We had one go with the Agly people a few weeks back but have since discovered that their “welcome to Agly” sign is on our land so we’ll be returning to them in due course to have them either remove the sign or add us to their lists.

The ADSL modem has turned up but, of course, it won’t work without the phone line working so that’ll be a while. When we do get it going it will be a major, major speed improvement. At best I can get 30k here and most of the time it’s more like 12k (I even got down as low as 9k once) which is seriously slow: even retrieving the email takes ages and you can’t really open more than one window at a time (downloads are a total nonrunner).

Techies: does anyone know how I can use a GPRS mobile with infrared as my “modem” for surfing etc.? It’s coming up “no dial tone” when I connect to it via the infrared and try to use it as an ordinary modem. It’s using a French Orange Mobicarte (pay as you go) but I bought the phone separately, so perhaps I need to set something up on the GPRS end? (everything else seems fine though)

Once upon a time…

Twenty-two centuries ago, the Romans completed the conquest of Narbonne. They constructed the Roman road of Aquitaine, which led to Montl¿rrand and to the doorstep of Naurouze. Along the Mediterranean coast, they built the Domitrienne Road towards the Pyr¿n¿es Orientales and which led to the first conquest of Roussillon. Everywhere that there were strategic grounds, they established military camps, for example Ruscino between Perpignan and Canet Plage, at the same time camp and town (there are numerous relics); another example mid-way between Estagel and Maury, on the border of the RN117: Mas Camps, military camp, commanding a vast plain in the Agly Valley (relics, Roman mosaic).

From the 12th century, the Templars arrived in Roussillon, taking the side of the King of Majorca. The Roussillon Templars depended on the Province of Aragon, but they were also autonomous. At the end of the 13th century, they had in Roussillon, two large commands: Perpignan and Mas Deu, near to Vinca. They also had in Roussillon more than 120 chateaux and domains. In the Roussillon, you must also include Fenouill¿des, which as vassals depended both on the Kingdom of Majorca and the Kingdom of France. The Templars had therefore the goods in all the cantons of the Pyr¿n¿es-Orientale. Notably mentioning the castle of Prugnagnes and associated domains, the castle of Sournia and associated domains and then the ancient roman camp which was on the large plain and valley of Agly and where they had chosen to stay in a very large manor house (“maison forte”), Mas Camps.

The two large commands of Perpignan and Mas Deu, had as chiefs at the end of the 13th century and start of the 14th Guilaume d’Ollers (for Perpignan) which was also chancellor and prime minister of the King of Majorca, and Raymond of Guardia (or Saguardia) for Mas Deu, supervising one part of the Templar province.

Or in short, this place has been around for a while. We’ve also some info of the last of the Camps family who lived here (we have his WW1 medals and some other stuff).

There’s more, but as it’s getting late my translation skills got too ropey towards the end, so more anon.

I’m finally a legit businessman in that the KBIS finally turned up last week. We were in the accountant’s office at around the time the postwoman was sticking it through our letterbox. Anyway, by the time we got back home and found it, we’d just enough time to race to the bank and apply for the credit card machine (which, in theory, should be here in “15 days” ie a fortnight, but somehow I just can’t see it arriving that quickly).

Actually on the post front, we’re amazed at how awful the administration of some places is when you tell them you’ve moved… at the moment the competition for last place is neck and neck between the Woolwich (told at least twice that we’re here) and… the Civil Service. Sadly, pay section have realised that I’m not there anymore but personnel still seem to think I’m in Holywood.

The KBIS also lets you open an account at the local cash & carry (Makro would you believe?) so we headed off there the next day and did a bit of restocking (we were running really low on the shampoo for a start).

Managed to get “our” toilet operational at last! There’s loads of toilets in this place but the handiest one for our own use turned out not to work. Anyway, several weeks back one of the english immigrants (of which there are loads) said “why don’t you see about getting a new one”. So we raced off to the local DIY place (as always, these ideas come to you about 30 minutes before closing on a bank holiday weekend so it was quite a race). Naturally, we were short a few items in the “toilet kit” so a week or two passed by ’til we got the little hose extension and another while before we got the sealant and a bit more before we got the gun to put it in. But, that’s all in the past now and our toilet works!

Now that we’re on a roll, we’ve decided to have a go at erecting a wall in front to act as a sign. There’s been a fair number of folk who’ve been directed our way but never made it so we’ve moved the sign up the priority list somewhat. Short term, we’re thinking of getting some really, really big bits of plywood to put the sign on but we’re also running up a proper breezeblock wall over the next month or so. We’ve also got several non-operational toilets which we must sort out too…

At the moment there don’t seem to be any “proper” tourists arriving at Perpignan airport: any time we’ve been up just about everyone seems to be being picked up by some other english friends. Net effect is that our leaflet supply is lasting forever up at the airport.

Bonjour mes amis:

We are gradually becoming legitimate French residents….

Last week we thought we’d make an assault on the mairie. They seem to be responsible for just about everything in these parts so it seemed like a good place to start on our efforts to become “legit” French residents.

We failed in the school registration as James is just too young. Everywhere else in France he could start now ‘cos he’s two but in Maury it’s three. That’s probably a good thing as his English will be well established by then though I guess that it’ll make his first month or two a lot harder for him.

A big success was acheived in the bin department though. Not only have we a much bigger bin on the way but on the 26th they’re coming to collect the massive heap of junk that was left by the previous owner. Actually, we have a much smaller pile now as the neighbours asked if we didn’t mind them taking some of it. Wendy reckons we could have sold it in one of the flea markets.

Health-wise we’ve hit a brick wall at the moment. It seems that to register for the equivalent of a national health number you first need to register for work. That’s in the works but so far I’ve not received my “KBIS” (dunno what that stands for but apparently every French business has one). Wendy had her “20 week scan” this afternoon so that’s another ‚€60 on the bill (I suspect that we’ll need to claim all the bills to date via the E111). The scan was a much, much more thorough one than James had at the Ulster Hospital. They check everything that can be checked and since junior wouldn’t play ball and turn over, we’ve to go back in a few weeks time so that the doctor can check the rest.

Bit of success too on the bank account front. Apparently the chequebook and card for the business account are in the branch waiting for me to pick them up.

Next challenge is to get Wendy a bank account for which we’ve an appointment at the bank tomorrow morning.

And after that, it’s off to the Prefecture (county council equivalent, sort of) who think that Wendy needs a visa. Remember all the work that went into getting her a European Resident Permit from the Home Office? Well, we’re about to embark on the same task over here. If anything it should be a whole lot easier as French law equates “living together” as being equivalent to being married in a number of respects, notably for immigration laws. Anyway, I will be looking up the relevant laws to quote to them so it should be an interesting meeting.

Also for this week is an IKEA trip. We have given up on trying to get “proper” pillows in Spain (they do cutdown French ones) and locally so we’re off to Toulouse where we’re also hoping to get some garden furniture for the lunches that Wendy’s intending to start soon.

Bonsoir!

It’s been pouring all day. Yes, folks, it really does rain in the south of France.

Anyway, seeing as the weather wasn’t great, we thought we’d have a bit of lie-in so it was a bit of a rush just after 9am when the doorbell rang. That was our first potential employee. By the time I managed to get downstairs, the French was operational enough to tell her that we might be looking for people around the end of June.

We had another bin-trip over lunch to clear out another trailer load of junk left by the previous owner. At the current rate, it’ll be the end of the month before we’ve gotten rid of it all.

Since it’s the start of the month, it was time to drop off the first pile of invoices with the accountant so that’s where we ended up this afternoon. Unfortunately, it’s mainly bills that I need to pay rather than bills that people have paid me but all being well that split will change by the summer. Time too to see what’s involved in employing someone. It seems simple. The minimum salary (SMIC) is ‚€7.19 an hour but that’s gross, of course, so they end up with about 80% of that and employers taxes mean that it costs about ‚€10 an hour for me to employ someone. There’s also the complication of the 35 hour week here with a maximum of 48 hours. In practice, the hours we would need someone would be a bit bizarre: probably about 2/3 hours in the late morning/early afternoon to make the beds etc. and the same again in the evening to look after the restaurant. I suspect we’ll need at least two people to do that.

That’s the gorge around the corner that we were at yesterday.

A bientot,