Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Relocating’ 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!

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,

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

Hi folks,

We had a couple of unexpected emergencies today:

1. The cash box filled up so we were forced to bank some of it; and

2. It got so warm that I had to break out the shorts!

Anyway, things are going fine. Haven’t quite enough to pay the mortgage but we may have to upgrade the size of the cash box as everyone seems to run around with wads of notes here.

We’re in the process of upgrading things so there’s now somewhat fancier bars of soaps in the rooms than previously and we’ll be looking to splash out on a few beds over the next week or two. The range of shops isn’t as great as in Belfast so it’s been harder to track down some things than expected and we only ordered the planned new cooker and fridge this afternoon.

Prices are something else though. If you’ve been checking prices in Belfast lately, you’ll be amazed to know that I was able to pick a big range cooker, big fridge/freezer and microwave for under ‚€800 (£500). In Belfast the cooker alone would be easily twice that: and they’re not even on offer! And no, I’m not whipping off the VAT for that comparison. Actually, in general it seems to be the case that for most things the UK price and the French price are the same except that the UK price has a pound sign in front while the French one has a euro sign ie you’re looking at about 40% off at the moment.

Arnold

Hi folks,

We picked up the truck Thursday two weeks back and spent the next two days packing up the house, right up to midnight on the Friday! A 0740 boat meant very little sleep that night and a hurried departure (just made the boat and no more).

Somehow we managed to get down to Dover by about 11pm that night (way further than planned but I wanted to get past Birmingham, then London and then there weren’t any hotels `til we reached Dover). Around then the police stopped us and were all set to arrest us for having an overweight lorry but it was only 4900 kg so that was OK but left us checking in around midnight.

We slept in and caught a ferry around noon and all was going swimmingly `til Wendy started flashing the lights etc. That’s when we discovered a shredded tyre. The towing guy pointed out that the other inside tyre was about to go too. French towing guys are generally useless. That’s all they do. Anyway, on Sunday we were stuck in northern France as nothing is open on Sundays here. The garage they sent us to on Monday didn’t do trucks and neither did anyone else in the area so we’d to call the rental place again (the out of hours guy on Sunday was totally useless: he said “just jack it up and change the tyre” which a) is dangerous on a truck and b) isn’t possible on a loaded truck with the gear they give you). Anyway, eventually they organised a guy to sort us out but that meant another night in Cambrai.

Tuesday and Wednesday went fine at least and we ended up here around 7pm on the Wednesday, with the whole truck unloaded by Thursday lunchtime. Too late to leave it back before the Easter break though so I didn’t get back to Belfast `til Wednesday afternoon (after three days of driving), just in time to catch the plane to here on Thursday morning.

Nearly forgot… got the truck virtually taken apart in Dover by customs. I don’t think they believed me when I said I’d not bought anything!

Anyway, I’m here now.

We got our very first customer on Sunday the 11th and, contrary to JS’s expectations, they paid EUR6 each for a continental breakfast. They even gave us a tip!

Can’t get rid of a French couple who turned up on Tuesday so I guess we’re doing something right and the people from our first travel agent booking are arriving this Sunday.

Everyone was off for Easter so I couldn’t get the wine shop stocked, hence lack of crates at the door of Rosepark, David. However, I should be back in October (possibly earlier too) so could probably fill the trailer. Incidently, David, could you recommend a wine magazine? We’re trying to stock up our lounge with magazines to cater for the various types of clients but didn’t see any wine mags when I looked the last few days (turned up here with a way, way overweight bag of mags!).

Sooo, when are y’all coming over to visit?

Arnold