Foreign Perspectives

We got an “interesting” call from the mairie on Thursday relating information which the prefecture (county council) had related to them…

One: I need a Titre de Séjour (work permit).

Two: Wendy will be getting deported in January unless she provides them with a long stay visa because otherwise she is here illegally.

As you may have gathered from “one”, the prefecture are over 20 years out of date with European law. Anyway, I asked how to apply for it. They want passport, proof of address, proof of business registration and proof of income. That also shows that they are a good 10 years out of date with French law: it’s illegal for them to require me to provide proof of income (just as well really as I can’t get any of the documents that they were looking for). They’re also a good while out of date with their own procedures as the week before they sent me a document saying that Titres de Séjour are no longer issued for European citizens as from last November. We’ll be off to the mairie tomorrow with our little printout from the European Commission (yet again) pointing all this out to them.

They’re none too familiar with the visa rules either. The French foreign ministry say that we never needed a visa for Wendy as she’s related to a European citizen (ie James) and can stay as long as she likes without a visa. No, it doesn’t matter that James is only two because they don’t ask the age of the European citizen on their forms.

Yet another one of those times when we need to sit down and consider the plus points of them knowing diddly about foreigners living here.

Weather-wise, I’ve had to wear the long trousers two days in a row now. Only for the mornings and evenings though as the “shorts weather” kicks in around 10am.

We’ve got a tentative booking for 22 adults, 3 kids and 4 babies for the December 31st and January 1st to include all meals. Our prices mustn’t be too far off as they’ve given us a big list of names and the rooms that they need. It’ll be ALL of the rooms, including three that we don’t normally count. I think we’ll need a holiday afterwards to recover! They’re more into the new year thing here than Christmas so we’ve not had any enquiries re Christmas, though that may change as we’re hoping to run a Christmas short break throughout December with a traditional British Christmas dinner/lunch (so, if you’re still fighting over the location of the Christmas lunch, you could always stir Mas Camps into the pot!).

Arnold