Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Society’ Category

Hi folks,

It’s been relatively quiet in recent weeks so we’ve been using the time to try and get some French admin done.

We didn’t get too far with our first attempt at the mairie to get Wendy a residence permit. They called the prefecture who started talking visas. However, if you cast your mind back a ways you may recall that in the end I did manage to get a residence permit for Wendy via the European legislation. Sooo, we asked for that at the prefecture and they promptly sent us back to the mairie as the prefecture only does visas and you get residence permits from the mairie. Anyway, the mairie let us fill in all the forms this time. And then sent the form off to the prefecture. No, I don’t know why we couldn’t fill in the forms at the prefecture when we were there. Well, I suppose I do: it’s France.

We asked about school for James while we were there. Everyone says that kids can start at 2. Not in Maury, it’s 3 so he’s got off for another year (he was 2 on April 29th). It’s also about 5 miles up the road vs the nearest school in Estagel (different mairie so we were told we couldn’t go there or at minimum needed the Mayor’s permission to do so as he’d have to pay the Estagel mairie for James’ schooling). However, a few days later our neighbour, who’s a teacher) told us that as we live in a “mas” we can go to whatever school we like so James may well be starting this September. Actually, probably not as I think it’s probably better to let his english get established properly.

The “mas” issue is interesting. We also decided to get going on visiting the equivalent of the local tourist boards and getting ourselves listed. First stop was Estagel ‘cos it’s closest. They said “no dice” as we’re not in the Estagel area. We started wondering about the reason for the “mas” issue. Essentially it’s because, at least in our own case, Mas Camps is a place, not just a house. There’s another reason in the case of ourselves as I found out the other day: we are in the area of both Estagel and Maury. In fact, the “welcome to Estagel” sign is actually on the bit of my land over the road (the road marks the boundary between Maury and Estagel). Sooo, it’s off to Estagel to give them two options: 1) add me to their lists or 2) remove the sign.

Still haven’t got my “KBIS” (business registration) which means a trip to my (soon to be former, if he doesn’t get the finger out) accountant tomorrow.

Have to see about the drinks license again one of these days as we’ve been flogging it in the restaurant.

Oh, the restaurant… we decided to open it properly as from this Monday so we’ve been distributing leaflets round Estagel (hence earlier visit to their tourism office). The slight complication is that we didn’t want to overdo it so didn’t go overboard on the marketing. Anyway, that’s worked out OK as we had our first couple of customers this evening and didn’t totally make a mess of it. That’s our menu attached: sorry for the awful French – I’m really bad in French in two things: numbers and food!

The website hits are mounting up nicely and I’ve one of the top Pyrenees-Oriental websites (well above the official tourist board anyway) so we’ve been out and about taking pics for the regional guide part of the site (which gets about 50% of the total hits). For the sporty amongst you, that’s the first of the seasons bike races which, as you can see, goes right past our front door!

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,

Bonjour!

Yesterday (Friday) was total chaos.

We started getting up around 8.30 as usual and planned our day out: French in the morning for me, then off to the Mairie to see about getting ourselves registered and finishing with a trip to the accountant.

The door bell rang about 5 mins after we decided to do all that.

Five Belgians had arrived for our gite, a day early. It’s really a gite for at most three so we started organising extra beds in a big hurry. Wendy managed to persuade them to go off and take a drive to collect supplies while we got organised.

We got one extra bed in and realised that no way could we fit five in so I called Alistair (the adventure tours guy) to see how his gite was fixed up. His is for nine and fortunately was free so we offered them that when they got back. Had to drive them up to his place as it’s a bit hard to find and impossible to describe how to find in English, never mind French. We set off for his place just after noon (yup, three hours to sort out the gite!).

On the way back we spotted a big bin by the roadside so I dropped Wendy off at Champion to get supplies for the next couple of days (`tis May Day on Saturday and everywhere is shut) whilst I headed off to pick up the trailer and fill it with rubbish. As we’ve not got to the Mairie we’re still running with domestic size bins a) have more waste due to the hotel b) have heaps of junk from the move and c) have heaps of junk left over from the previous owner to get rid of. One trailer is about two big (ie 2 wheelie bin size bins) bins full. Fortunately we spotted a couple more big bins on the way back to collect Wendy.

Thought we’d pick up some outdoor furniture for the gite too but they’d went and sold the table we were looking for.

By them Alistair had arrived. I stayed with him while Wendy went off to get some more shopping done.

I mentioned that our main toilet wasn’t working which ended up in a race to the DIY store to collect a new one plus more tools to finish off fitting the lock on the front door.

We didn’t know how to turn off the water so had to wait `til our neighbour arrived at 9pm before completing the fitting of the toilet which by 11.30pm was operational.

In the meantime we have also sorted out the Sky satellite which is now in a position which should let it work in the gite. Which means another trip to Castorama on Monday to get another satellite tuner for the gite (assuming it works with our box).

We are all totally knackered!!

Oh, and it was James’ birthday on Thursday so in the midst of the above he was pedalling round the courtyard in his little car and pushing his bike around and generally wanting to be involved in all the action. He’d his eye on the bag of toys that the little Belgian boy had brought along and was getting set to mug him for them.

And early on my French mobile arrived. I’m on 00 33 6 981 420 65.

Bonsoir:

We saw a satellite system for sale for ‚€35 last week so thought it was high time we did something about the TV situation. Up to now we’ve had nothing but had brought the two TVs and Sky box from Holywood.

“Satellite kit” means something completely different in French than you & I think. In France a satellite kit gives you the dish and decoder (digital one for ‚€85, analogue for ‚€35) but no means of attaching the thing to the wall. Next day it was off to Castorama yet again to get the attachment kit. Unfortunately, my trusty rechargeable drill wasn’t up to going through a stone & concrete wall so the next day it was off yet again to get a more grown up drill, serious drill bit and really serious bolts to attach the thing to the wall (nope, the attachment kit doesn’t include the bolts). I figured that wireless was the way to go so today, just before attaching the final bit to the wall it was off to buy one of those little wireless gadgets to save a heap of cabling and finally we have our Sky TV back again.

However, we haven’t forgotten about the decoder box that came with the dish. Of course the remote control doesn’t come with batteries… yup, off to the shops again tomorrow to see if we can set the thing up or if we’ll need another LNB to pick up another satellite.

Would you believe that we still haven’t got our drinks license transferred over? Nobody knows where the document needed to do the transfer is so we’re flogging the boose anyway. We also STILL aren’t registered as a French company which is getting to be a bit of a problem as I need to employ Wendy so she can claim the maternity expenses from the social security people.

Ah, the maternity thing. Wendy’s first appointment was this morning so we took along the really big dictionary (commonly referred to as the breeze block). As it turned out, we needn’t have bothered as the doctor speaks pretty good English. Wendy’s to get a heap of blood tests (French doctors are really into tests) in the next day or two and the scan in about two weeks.

We’ve acquired a weird French couple who are the first lot too stingy to pay ‚€6 for a breakfast. Must see if they’re related to the Shearers! They seem pretty addicted to TV and are glued to Sky at the moment so it may be a while before we get rid of them.

That’s one of the castles dotted around the mountainsides here…

More anon,

Arnold