Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

If there’s one thing that strikes fear into Brits who are thinking of moving to France, it’s the prospect of needing to look after a septic tank.

Why is that though? There’s nothing really that scary about a septic tank. No, the main reason is simply lack of familiarity with septic tanks because many of those moving to rural France are moving from a town and the closest they get to such things is when they flush their toilet.

So what exactly is a septic tank anyway? Very simply put, it’s a method of recycling the waste that you flush down your loo into soil and water that you could drink. No, no joke: if the septic tank is functioning properly then you can drink the water coming out the other end.

Septic tanks come in various forms but the most commonly known in the UK operates as a two tank system. Everything you flush down the loo empties into the first of these tanks where it separates out into three basic components:
1) a sludge which sinks to the bottom;
2) the liquids; and
3) a scum.

The sludge sinks to the bottom and is gradually purified by anaerobic bacteria. One consequence of this is that you should NEVER pour disinfectant down your loo when you’re using a septic tank: this is a sure way of making it smelly.

The liquids run off into the second tank which usually consists of layer upon layer of stones (from large down to sand) which acts as a filter.

The scum forms on the top and will eventually lift the top of your tank if you let it build up long enough. It’s not smelly and makes an excellent fertilizer.

The second tank operates via aerobic bacteria and converts the waste water from the first tank into fairly pure water. A scum layer builds up in the second tank too and after a while you’ll need to shovel off the top layer of this.

So if everything is operating normally, there’s no smell. Where it can go wrong is when someone uses disinfectant in the toilets, thereby killing off the bacteria that make the whole system work and thus you end up with a tank full of **** which obviously smells. Also, if the tank isn’t big enough you can find that it gets overloaded and doesn’t work properly (this can happen if the tank is far too big but is less likely).

In general most people find that they need to get their tanks pumped about every four or five years but, if the tank is the right size, they really only need to take off the top of the scum layer. We had a tank in the UK which functioned without any pumping for over 20 years and just needed us to shovel off the top layer in each tank once.

Hope this lays your fears of septic tanks to rest!

Arnold

If you were thinking of going somewhere for a dirty weekend, where would it be?

The French are, of course, totally open about such things and commonly arrive at their accommodation with their mistress for an afternoon and leave the pillows in “interesting” positions.

In France, your first thought would probably be Paris and who am I to argue if you’re thinking romantic night-time cruises on the Seine? However, for an actual dirty weekend, Mas Camps near Perpignan seems to be gradually moving up in the stakes. Already it’s been referred to in Cosmopolitan by one couple who stayed a whole week and didn’t leave the room.

Anyway, for your next dirty weekend, why not try Mas Camps. Simple direct flights from London Stansted, Birmingham, Southhampton and Manchester with a pickup service taking you straight to your room.

Arnold

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.

Our washing machine is on it’s last legs so we thought we’d get ourselves a new one before it keels over altogether so it was off to Darty. Thought we’d get a make that we’d heard of as supposedly it would be more reliable but seeing as the cheapest one I’d heard of was EUR 439 and the cheapest cheapo make was EUR 199 we figured, “hey, so what if it breaks down after the two year guarantee; we’ll just buy another one”. Anyway, el cheapo washing machine should be turning up sometime tomorrow. And even better, I got to use my brand new Amex card! Yes, we have now found two shops that take it. Not exactly the most useful card to have in France although it does look very pretty.

Seeing as it looks reasonably likely that the assorted Inland Revenue offices will consider me as a Crown Servant I figured that we’d best get the tax credit & child benefit claims in for John in case there’s some limit to the backdating of payments. It sounded a good enough argument to the child tax guy who was all set to pay us the tax credit but our record is currently locked (those guys gotta get a new computer system!) so that’s certainly sounding promising. Child benefit are debating the issue as supposedly you need to pay national insurance in the UK to get it but, assuming that the main tax office accept the Crown Servant status, that’s where I’d be paying it so I guess it’s a matter of waiting for their decision. Snag is that the French tax year ends in December so I need them to decide pretty soon. The biggest plus point would be that I could ditch our **** French accountant, all being well I’ll be looking for a UK accountant very shortly.

Also thought it was time to regularise Wendy a bit so it was off to the work permit place (for reasons which are even more complicated than I could possibly describe here). Anyway, after a very long chat there which which brilliant for my French, we now have to go to the Mairie to see about getting the residence permit which should have been here a month or two ago.

Oh, nationality again… the Paris guy reckoned, no, John wasn’t British because the new nationality legislation of 2002 still isn’t in force yet (despite it having gone through parliament over two years ago!). However, as I queried a few things he dug himself into a hole and now has to consult HQ. To summarise the state of affairs: as the old nationality legislation is still in force, I can’t pass my nationality on to John (they define “father” as “husband”). However, children born to Crown Servants (a rather significant status) are treated as though they were born in the UK. Were he born in the UK, Wendy could actually give him British nationality as she has a residence permit which is automatically renewable (next month in fact) ie she can live in the UK “without limitation” which means that in Belfast we could get a passport, so adding that to the Crown Servant status means that…. our man in Paris can’t answer the nationality question but he now realises that he’s given me enough rope to hang him! So, it’s possible that we could just apply for a UK passport for him in Paris (or indeed in Belfast when I’m over). Laughably, we can now get James a British passport so perhaps we’ll manage a consistent set some of these days (we’ve been pulled up twice in the airports already as it looks very suspicious to have a British guy and an Australian girl taking an Irish child abroad).

We’re now up to five separate groups of people who’ve stayed here since July and are buying houses. Latest arrival is a couple from Bristol who are off househunting as I write this. We haven’t actually noticed the prices going up and you can still get quite a reasonable place in the next village for about EUR 50,000. However, we did notice a similar property to ours (though about half the size) on sale for EUR 900,000 last week which is getting on for twice what we paid and seeing as our place is more than twice (possibly as much as triple) the size of it, I guess ours is worth more like EUR 1,500,000. Hmmm, almost enough to sell up & retire. Seriously though, if there were a way of getting the place valued over here, we’d be quite keen on having that valuation to take along to the bank.

I guess now and again it comes across that it’s a complete nightmare living here with all the bureaucratic nonsense that they get up to sometimes and the last week or two has certainly been one of those times when it’s end to end bureaucratic dead-ends. But then we sit back and think: hey, it’s September, it’s 30 in the shade, we’ve a really serious suntan, we own a hotel (that definitely falls in the category of phrases I never expected to be uttering, in spite of the odd joke after Roger bought the restaurant), and whilst we may have the French bureaucracy to deal with now and again, we’ve none of the daily hassles of working for anyone else. And aside from anything else, running a hotel is dead on: the guests are only here in the morning and evening so we’ve pretty much the whole day to ourselves.

Almost forgot, it looks like Mark C has relinquished his title of the “tightest tourist” (jointly held with Norman H and my Mum) and will be venturing over next year. Although, I’m sure he’ll be pushing for discounts when he gets here… He’ll also be making his second TV appearance, in France this time (naturally all costs being met by someone else!).

Arnold

Everyone’s seen the Bastille Day parade in Paris but you can say that you’ve seen the Estagel parade.

Yes, folks, that is the entire parade from the guy at the front with the wreath, the mayor with his little sash and the military might of Estagel (both policemen and the fire engines in the background).