A New Adventure in France

It’s hard to believe that’s it’s a year since we first saw the house, made an offer and started this adventure. We’ve been in the house for 5 months now and I think we’re beginning to feel pretty settled here.

We had a quick trip back to the UK in February to meet up with my aunt and uncle from New Zealand who were stopping off in the UK during a 3 month trip to some wonderful locations. We travelled with them to North Devon to see my Dad – my aunt’s brother. It was great to have some time to catch up with them as well as other members of our family and friends – never enough time to do everything.

Back in France it’s still a quietish period but countryside pursuits continue. I saw a feature about a local artisan who makes baskets and other pieces from willow and decided to sign up for one of his 1-day basket making courses. Along with four other French people I arrived at his simple farmhouse, just over the hill from us, where we were presented with materials and tools and guided through the process of creating a basket we could take to market. We worked, me with my knees around my ears, on low chairs that you might find in a kindergarten, manipulating the willow that is surprisingly tough, despite being soaked in advance so it is more pliable for working with.

Christian, the teacher, has a willow plantation locally and has created high-end pieces for galleries in Paris. He explained that nowadays there is no money to be made in making standard baskets as there is so much competition from cheap Chinese imports. In true French style we broke for lunch for 1.5 hours, with Christian’s wife serving a delicious home-cooked 3 course lunch. The French never just serve wine without detailing its provenance and Christian proudly presented an excellent red wine from a small local producer and which we have since found at the local market. On noticing some music posters on the walls, I also discovered that Christian is the founding organiser of the local Blues Concerts – we really enjoyed the first one we went to in December and have booked for another one next week.

Fortified by lunch we had to get back to basket making. Having done the structural work in the morning, the baskets soon took shape as we continued. By the end of the day we each had a basket, some to be used at the market, some for gathering mushrooms or for Easter Egg hunts.

As we worked on our baskets, outside the house we could hear the dogs and gunshots of the local hunters, out on their Saturday morning hunts. In order to thank local residents for disturbance caused by hunting, e.g dogs in your garden or roads blocked by hunters’ vehicles, some hunting associations put on an annual meal or ‘Repas des Chasseurs’. If you’ve read any of the ‘Bruno Chief of Police’ books by Martin Walker, you’ll have a sense of the events held by the hunting societies so we were keen to attend when we saw the local meal advertised.

The lunch started at midday in the ‘Salle des Fêtes’ and we were allocated to one of the long trestle tables that included other expats including Belgians, Dutch, German and English all speaking mainly French as well as their mother tongues. As expected, the menu included products from the spoils of hunting, including boar paté, roe deer saucisson and an excellent boar roast. Definitely not a meal for vegetarians! Lunch finally ended at 4.30 p.m. with a glass of some kind of ‘eau de vie’ served by the mayor. We also came home with a 1.5 litre bottle of Ricard which we won in the tombola. It will will come in more useful for us than the side of deer that someone else won!

Joe has recently started 1:1 French lessons, to improve his conversational French, with a French teacher who speaks only French and who grew up speaking Occitan. Joe has already made good progress and is apparently already the star pupil!

The biggest surprise of life in France so far, however we much we might have expected it, has been how long it takes to get admin things done. We are, however, slowly making progress. Joe’s hard work on the Jeep over the winter has paid off and on a chilly bright morning two weeks ago he set off to a nearby village to have an MOT (Contrôle Technique) carried out. Although historic vehicles don’t usually require a CT, it is required for the first registration on French number plates. The CT centre was recommended by fellow classic car owners Joe met last year as being sympathetic with an understanding of older cars which can never meet modern car requirements. The ‘contrôleur’ was impressed with the standard of the Jeep and in particular the brakes that had previously launched Joe into the ditch. Joe came away clutching the certificate and a pass and paperwork has now been submitted, with fingers crossed for registration. To date we only have one of four vehicles registered – each one of them had different requirements and queries. Even French officials we have spoken to have admitted that the French DVLA equivalent seem to be more fussy on every point and query every document.

Another big step was getting into the French healthcare system a couple of weeks ago. After presenting our ‘dossiers’ (paperwork) in December we received the all important social security numbers and carte vitale which has to be presented for all medical issues and prescriptions. The French healthcare system, refunds 70% of the cost of medical consultations, tests, etc. and most people take out a top-up insurance (mutuelle) to cover all, or most of, the balance of the costs. As in the UK, France also has a shortage of GPs in many rural areas. We could not be taken on as patients by the sole GP in our village and had to go to a larger town about 15 minutes away to see if we would be accepted there. Fortunately we have been accepted and the GP was very thorough, organising various screening tests to get us up to speed in the French system. Let’s hope we don’t have to make too much use of their services.

In the last week, notification of two long-awaited appointments came through – one the medical exam in Bordeaux for our visa validation, and the other an examination of the campervan (built in Germany) to confirm if it meets French requirements. Another of the ‘gifts’ of Brexit for British expats!