The South of France is covered in snow on Boxing Day. As the pound approaches parity with the euro (cue panic for ex-pats), Mediterranean weather seeks parity with the UK.
Even though today is not a holiday in France, everything around the village is very quiet. The chickens enjoy some warm maize porridge. And the llamas munch hay in their shelters. All is calm. All is white.
Having just read Simon’s post about the process of getting our car registered in France, I sort of wish I hadn’t! Generally, whenever Simon is talking to me about the tedious-but-necessary things he is doing, I am grateful that auditory processing is not one of my strong points. Whilst I like to pride myself on the fact that I can be a good listener, I am actually not a very good hearer. I suspect I spend much of my life walking around with metaphorical fingers in my ears, and mentally la-la-la-ing, so that I don’t have to hear things that I don’t care to know about.
Unfortunately, my visual processing skills are somewhat more strongly developed. Suddenly seeing all that stuff ‘in print’ (so to speak) gave rise to a couple of notable thoughts.
The first thought was basically along the lines of, “Holy Shit!!! How much?!!!”
The second thought was slightly more complex. It included a little bit of , ” Ah…so that’s what he’s been babbling on about all these weeks,” and, somewhat more charitably, a lot of, “Bloody hell, poor Simon – he’s been having to do loads of horrible stuff, and I haven’t even really been listening!”
I really don’t know what I’d do without him.
I wasn’t entirely oblivious to the whole process of course. Whilst the dull and tedious bits washed over me, and failed to hold my attention for much longer than a nanosecond, I certainly noticed the more entertaining bits of the whole palaver.
Let’s, for example, take this line from Simon’s post…
“Get new headlights, and fit them – so they dip to the right rather than the left”
Although Simon had actually fitted the new lights well in advance of the Contrôle Technique, he didn’t get round to adjusting them until the day beforehand. (Obviously, we don’t go out much at night). So the time arrives to do the deed, and we both head outside into the gale (of course, it had to be a cold and windy day) to work out how to achieve this seemingly simple task. “I need to shine the lights on to a flat surface” he says. Hmmm. Precious few of them around the end of our road, with its cliff-edge postion and open views.
So Simon decides to park the car across, and completely blocking the road – hoping no one will want to drive past, so that he can shine the headlights on to the not-at-all flat surface of the front of our house. “That’s not at all flat” he says, disappearing into the Pandora’s Box also known as The Garage. He emerges with a very large piece of cardboard and a pencil. “Hold that still in front of the lights and I’ll mark where the tops of the light beams are”. I stand awkwardly sideways on to the big and bendy expanse of cardboard. The gale blows. The cardboard tries to take off. I try to hold it still against the wall, but without obscuring the beams of light playing dimly on its flapping surface. It starts to rain.
But hang on a minute….the car is on a slope. The road is on a slope. We obviously need to start with a level car. But Roquetaillade is a village on a big hill, full of little hills. All the roads slope, up and down, and side to side. So, with bright ideas lighting up the blank walls in his brain, Simon returns to Pandora’s box and returns with an old shelf. He places it carefully under the front wheel of the car – the one on the down-hill side, gets in the car, and edges it forward until the front, right tyre is neatly balanced on the old shelf.
Hmmm? The car still looks wonky. Simon disappears into the garage again. I stand in the rain and wind, with my friend, the wet and flappy cardboard. I consider its potential as a make-shift umbrella – but the wind is too strong, and it temporarily metamorphoses into a hang-glider.
Simon returns with the Dreaded Tool that marrs many an attempt at a ‘quick’ bit of DIY….The Spirit Level. My heart always sinks when the Spirit level emerges – I know we are in for a long and dreary attempt to make imperfect things seem perfect in an imperfect world. Simon respectfully places the Icon of All Things Flat onto the ledge of the front bumper. Sure enough, The Spirit Level confirms what our eyes are screaming at us. The car is not at all level.
More bits of old shelves appear. I had no idea we had so many old shelves. I wonder briefly why we don’t use them to make Very Useful Shelves. Simon carefully reverses the car, places more pieces of wood in front of the wheel, and v..e..r..y sl..ow..ly edges the car forward again. I recall all those times when he has admonished me for carelessly driving cars over kerbs. I recall that this is supposed to be an off-road vehicle, so driving over kerbs is probably allowed now.
The wheel takes the obstacle in its stride, and mounts it beautifully. We stand back and proudly admire the vehicle’s proven off-road capability. The front right wheel is veritably disappearing into the body-work. But something is amiss. The wheel is evidently MUCH higher than its left-hand neighbour. But the car is still sloping down the hill. Even the Spirit Level agrees that the shelf-mountain has failed to correct the car’s down-hill slope.
Does the Spirit Level lie? Do our eyes deceive us? Are the Laws of Physics mere playthings in the hands of the Headlight-Levelling gods?
“Ah ha!” exclaims Simon, as another bright light switches on in his bemuddled head. “Of course!!” he nods and smiles knowingly. In the windy wind and increasing rain, I wonder what is making him smile. We’ve been out here for half an hour and he hasn’t even tweaked the headlight-beam adjuster once yet. He shares his moment of enlightenment with me. “It’s got self-levelling suspension!”
Well, durr….Obviously. Any fool knows that. (Self -levelling?? but it’s still all wonky??). What that actually means is not that the car will kindly make itself level on its own, so you can adjust its headlights. What it actually means is that the wheels can go up and down independently, wildly even, and the overall carness of the vehicle will maintain its equanimity, so that the lucky passengers will have a relatively smooth ride. Nice.
But at this juncture, singularly unhelpful. We resign ourselves to the fact that the car will resolutely maintain its degree of overall slope regardless of how many old shelves we throw at it. We think laterally. We decide simply note the degree of unlevellness as demonstrated by the trusty (and slightly smug) Spirit Level, and I hold the cardboard at precisely the same angle of wrongness.
Within minutes, Simon has marked where the beams appear to be shining, noted their degree of failure to match the slope of the cardboard, magicked away inside the bonnet with the most Alleny of Keys (7mm – an odd thing to own), and got all the wrongnesses to line up in the Right Way. I wonder vaguely if anyone has invented a Spirit Unlevel, that can be fixed to maintain matching degrees of slope between objects – something along the lines of those digital scales that can be set to zero with a bowl on top, so that only the difference in weight is measured. Simon wonders whether our splendid, job-well-done will be good enough to satisfy the Man at the Testing Centre.
Well the rest, as they (who?) say, is history. The Man was satisfied, and the headlights were not in any way deemed to be a cause of Contrôle Technique failure. And a few days later, when we emerged from our local supermarket and were trolley-riding our weekly provisions childishly back to the car , Simon espied a wonderfully flat-and-level white-painted wall, at the side of the very flat-and-level car park. Unable to resist the opportunity, he drove up to the wall, switched on the headlights, and sat back in his seat with a sigh of satisfaction. The bright beams glared back at us off the wall’s surface. Absolutely-bloody-perfect. “I think we did a good job there” he said.
Sometimes I envy the way that Simon can find happiness in such Little Things.
In theory, you can’t keep a car in a new EU country for more than 6 months before you get a local registration. In practice, there seems to be no way for anyone to enforce this. And so, we have not rushed to get into the bureaucracy of getting our cars registered.
However, we knew that at some point we would need to make the move. And when Val’s son Alfie passed his driving test recently, there was an incentive to get on with it, so we could allow him to use my old car in England with the no claims bonus I earned on the Land Rover insurance.
So, being in the EU this should be dead easy, right?
Well, judge for yourself:
I can’t bear the thought of adding up the cost, or the time I spent on this. Still, the new plates look nice don’t they?
Did I mention that French law requires number plates to be riveted on? (Thanks Pete for the loan of your pop riveter.) Did I mention that when we move house to another department, under the current system we have to have a new registration number, and so another set of number plates? Luckily there’s no charge for a new Carte Grise when you move . . . . . .
Dealing with all this could get you down. But then, not now the weather is back to normal and I can walk through vineyards with views like this. We may soon be broke, but we’ll be fine!
“Sometimes Life is like a parachute jump. You just have to open the door and make the leap. And hope that the Big Guy in the Sky has packed your parachute properly.” (Message Received, 20 November)
Well, here we are, six weeks after deciding to sell this house, and we are in free-fall. We have well and truly jumped, and as yet we have only the dream of a parachute to cushion our landing.
On Monday, Frank and Phil arrived in a wet and thoroughly miserable Roquetaillade to visit us, the llamas, and the house-that-will-soon-be-theirs. And on Tuesday, following a splendid lunch at le Grand Cafe in Limoux (Thanks again Frank & Phil) , and a further brief sojourn chez nous to complete a few llama-and-chicken related chores, and hastily quaff a celebratory bottle of Blanquette, we rolled up en masse at Maître Isard’s salubrious quarters, at the appointed hour of 5.00pm, to sign the Compromis de Vente.
Monsieur Isard is an interesting fellow. He is slow and studied in his responses. He speaks a brand of English that consists largely of inappropriate phrases he recalls from ancient Monty Python sketches. He employs an enchanting range of gallic expressions which he tosses at you over the rim of his wizard-like glasses, whilst packing, respecting, carefully lighting and singularly failing to smoke his Non-PC pipe. And he really, really wants to be sure that you know what it is that you are signing, on every page of every copy of every document.
Consequently it took us two and a half hours, a lot of ink, and quite a lot of emotional pain, to complete the process whereby we agreed to sell, and Frank and Phil agreed to buy our house. We were horrified to discover how much Capital Gains Tax we would have to pay. Frank and Phil were horrified to discover the extortionate cost of the Notaire’s fees and taxes that they would have to pay.
At the conclusion of the brain-and-pocket-punishing experience, we all retired to a nearby cafe for a strong drink (of coffee!) and a moment’s reflection on What We Had Just Done.
There is no doubt about it. Buying a house can be a very daunting experience. And buying one in a Foreign Land can be even more so. But six years ago, we took that plunge and are thoroughly convinced that it was one of the Best Things We Ever Did. We have loved spending holidays in this house in this village, and we have loved living here as full-time residents.
But our dreams have evolved, our needs have changed, and now it is time for us to Move On. Like a father giving away his daughter at the altar of marriage, we are passing a much-loved and precious thing into the hands of another, whom we trust will love and cherish it as much as we have.
And we are free-falling into the Big Unknown. Once again, we find ourselves sitting on the Cliff of Uncertainty, pondering the Horizon of Possibility, and Waiting.
You might think, given all the practice we had at it earlier in the year, that we would now be highly skilled in the Art of Waiting. As with so many of these sorts of things, Simon is much better at it than me. He sets the thing in motion, busies himself with the here and now, and lets things be. I, however, continue to find myself hopelessly in thrall to the Demon of Future Happiness, and to be suffering a seriously debilitating bout of Impatience. I want to know where we will be living in three months time, and I want to know NOW!!
But Life will insist on proceeding at its own measured rate, and despite all my mental foot-stamping and metaphorical tantrum-throwing, it simply refuses to be hurried. Clearly this Patience thing is a lesson that I still need to learn. I can almost see the Head Teacher in the Sky sitting round his office table with my Life Mentor and my Life Teaching Assistants, reviewing my Individual Education Plan. ” And how about the target behaviour of ‘living patiently with Uncertainty’? Any progress on that front?” “Well, not as much as we would have hoped. It’s an emerging skill, but we’re still working on it. She needs more practice before we can really tick that off as achieved.”
So, even though Simon and I managed fairly quickly to reach a decision about which house to go for, (to be honest, I’d pretty much decided the moment I saw it – but I had to wait for Simon to catch up, and convince himself that sometimes the heart knows better than the head), and even though Simon contacted the agent more than a week ago with our offer, Life decided to send the Vendor of the House-of-Our-Dreams away on some sort of musical tour for a few days, so that he has been uncontactable by anyone.
Of course, things with us can never be straightforward, and our offer on the house is also related to the question of whether we might also be able to buy additional land from a neighbouring farmer, who is apparently wanting to retire, and might therefore be happy to offload some of his territorial responsibilities. So we are waiting for the errant musician to return from his travels, to speak with the estate agent, to speak with his neighbouring farmer, to tell the agent what the farmer says, and to decide whether he would be willing to accept our offer anyway. Ah…so many stages! So many opportunities for a slip twixt cup and lip.
Of course, the Other House (the sensible one) is still there in the back of our minds as a fall-back position. But, try as I might, I struggle to imagine us actually living in that one. On the other hand, I cannot contemplate the possibility that we will not end up living in the house we have chosen to pursue.
In my imagination, I have already stretched out on the clover-rich grass, squinting up at the brightest sunshine dappling through the rich green leaves of the big oak in the little valley in our garden. I have watched through the velvet-curtained study window, for the arrival of the postman down the unruly track to our house, sitting half way up the stairs of the beautiful-but-simple double-winder oak staircase that we have installed to gain access to our converted loft. I have curled into the end of our old settee with a mug of fresh coffee, listening to the tick of logs flickering softly in the wood-burner in the main room, and watching soft petals of snow lining the corners of the small panes of glass, partially obscured by the Peace Lily flourishing on the deep window-ledge. I have looked out of the small, but perfectly placed velux window in the newly created upstairs bedroom, to see the llamas grazing contentedly on lush greenness, only yards from the newly created back door nestling snugly beneath the lean-to porch we have built to house our wellingtons, our log pile and the swallows’ nest.
So it really is only a matter of time (of which we will have plenty), and patience (which I will learn to exercise) and money (of which we will hopefully have sufficient), and lots and lots of hard work (the easiest bit of all) and short-to-medium term discomfort (hmmm..), before this Dream becomes Reality.
And when enough of it is real for us to be able to comfortably accommodate visitors, you will all be welcome to come and stay in our beautiful Mongolian Yurt in the garden, to watch the star-bright night sky through the domed roof, and to listen to the llamas morning daisy-grazing all around you. And to share with us Our Dream.
Blue skies at last, and this is the third day in a row without rain . . . .
The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth.
Arthur RimbaudRimbaud was a French poet much quoted by Eric Cantona during his time with Manchester United, so mystifying Alex Ferguson and TV interviewers. His name is pronounced Rambo, but he was very unlike the book/film character whose name he apparently inspired.
Sun on our neighbour, the castle
Since the end of June, I have been recording the weather, courtesy of a gift from my son Mike – a wireless weather station that links to my computer. You can see the results on our linked weather site. Val jokes that, when I want to know what the weather is like, I look at the computer rather than out of the window. And I must admit that I have become a little obsessive about the weather data . . . . rather like Val and the weight of chicken’s eggs. Maybe we compensate for the lack of mindless tasks imposed by employment, by creating our own mindless tasks? Or perhaps it’s a deep-seated need to quantify and impose order? And there I was, thinking I was living the free and easy life, in tune with nature, etc . . . .
Anyway, it’s my collection of weather data that enables me to respond to statements about how unusually wet it has been this Autumn with facts. Facts like: there were as many rainy days in November as in the whole of August, September and October combined. Facts like: we had 132.9 mm of rain in four months up to the end of October, followed by 142.8 mm in the one month of November. Facts like: of the first 18 days of December, there were only 2 when it didn’t rain.
Yes it has been unusually wet. And cold. And snowy. The Universe seems to have forgotten that this is meant to be the South of France. With a Mediterranean climate, dammit!
The llamas, and the llama carers, have been suffering. Both fields have steadily become more and more waterlogged. The mud has got deeper, and wetter, and slippier. There was a lively stream running across the Rough Land this week, and I temporarily suspended walking activities, because I could no longer stand up.
The breeders have been a bit fed up with the weather, but they have responded by settling down in their shelter to do some serious eating. Day after day, they’ve been lined up neatly, stuffing themselves with hay. Even Lilas, who at not much over one month old really should be concentrating on mother’s milk, is getting stuck in to the hay. So, apart from them getting overweight, and us having to wade through the mud with regular hay deliveries, there’s been little to worry about with the breeders.
The walkers have suffered much worse. Back in the summer, their field seemed a llama paradise – loads to eat and plenty of shelter against the wind. Now, with all the deciduous bushes bare, and the grass well trimmed by enthusiastic llama teeth, it’s less hospitable. And the endless rain has produced a bedraggled and sorry trio of llamas.
The big shortcoming of the rough land, which didn’t matter in the warm dry weather we were supposed to have, is that there is no proper shelter. And in the absence of this, the llamas were in danger of drowning. It was time to build an ark!
Luckily, we had most of the necessary materials left over from building the original field shelter, now so contentedly occupied by the breeders. Unfortunately, they were at the breeders’ field and needed to be transported. Even more unfortunately, the vineyards leading up to the Rough Land were surrounded by slippy slidy clay – and completely impassable by Land Rover.
And so . . . lift, trudge, groan, heave, slide, pant, stagger, freeze, haul, moan . . . . . . we moved the timber, roofing sheets, tools, etc onto the Rough Land. And in no time at all, with only minimal collateral damage to our bodies, much to the fascination of watching llamas, a shelter was made.
And today, now the rain has stopped for a while, and the sun has come out (!), the walking llamas were contentedly munching hay in their own little shelter. I haven’t yet seen them lying down in the shelter and telling each other bedtime stories, but I left them with a happy heart and a feeling of real contentment. We won’t be spending nights wakefully worrying about them any more.
Such are the trials and successes of our new life.
