Building your own house.

Buying a new house in England is relatively simple. You arrive at your local Barratts development, decide on the house you would like. After a visit to the on site show room the kitchen, curtains, carpets and floor tiles are chosen and within three months the house is yours.

The process in France is not quite so straightforward (or as quick !!). Generally, housing developers do not build houses and then sell them after they are built, most houses are build on demand to your exact specification.

The first stop is the local Marie, where you can see a plan of all the available building land in the commune. Usually all the services ( water, mains drainage and electricity) will already be at the site. You then choose your plot, and pay somewhere between 15 and 20 euros per metre squared.

The next task is to decide on a building contractor. Some have 40 or so houses that have all be approved by the relevant planning authorities. This is the easiest and cheapest way to get a new build, but beware any changes you want to the ‘standard’ plan will cost you dear !.

Alternatively there are lots of other companies willing to design and build bespoke houses to your exact requirements.

New build houses take between 12 – 18 months to build, it must be fun to watch each stage of your house being built.

The amount of building land now available is increasing annually ( much to the delight of the local farmers who are seeing their practically worthless and now largely unused fields dramatically increasing in value !!) and these new build houses are springing up everywhere so this idea of building your own home has definitely caught on !.

Taking out the rubbish

A new bin has arrived in our small commune.

Until Friday, we had one green topped bin for general rubbish, and one yellow bin for recycling. All glass and paper waste (i.e. newspapers and magazines) must be taken to the dark green and blue recycling bins in the village.

A couple more houses are now being inhabited permanently so now we have an extra green topped bin !.

It does take a little getting used to, to remember to take the rubbish to the bins at the end of the road and then to sort it by the roadside.. and there are no secrets !!.. everyone know what breakfast cereal you eat !!.

But be careful..to ONLY put the recycling rubbish in the yellow topped bin. Dustbin men in France have huge powers to humiliate those who abuse the recycling rules !!. I once put a crème fraiche tub in the recycling bin and on the way back from taking the children to school is was taped with red and white hazard stripped masking tape to the top of the bin for all to see !!.. I screeched to a halt, hoping I was the first to see my error. I tore the crème fraiche tub from the bin and put it in the green topped bin..

Why can’t crème fraiche tubs be recycled anyway ?

The Easter Bells

You would not not have heard any bells in France over the Easter weekend, not even the midday bells have been heard.

As I understand it..all the bells have gone to Rome and they return on Easter Sunday. As they fly over the gardens on their way back to their rightful bell towers they drop Easter eggs and chocolate rabbits and chickens in all the gardens across France, ringing as they leave.

This is the signal for all the children to dash outside and to search for the hidden chocolate goodies !!

Let it hail !

I have just returned from the Post Office ( not a Bank Holiday in France today !!).

I remarked to the man behind me in the queue, that the weather is positively dreadful today, wind, hail and rain with the very occasional burst of sunshine. It is like deepest winter.

He looked at me, amused. ‘Mais, non.’ he replied. ‘ It never hails in the winter, when we have hail the seasons are changing, now it is Spring’.

I left the Post Office smiling with the wind in my face and said out loud ‘Let it hail !!’

Kettle on the table

A curious thing. I have over the years visited a dozen or so French families for a coffee, or as is often the case a cup of tea. I am presented with a teabag, because I am English and the English drink copious amounts of tea. In my case this is true, I do drink a lot of tea, and I must confess I do still import vast quantities of PGTips.

However, I have never had a cup of tea made for me. I place the teabag in the cup and the kettle is brought to the table with a small bowl and a jar of honey. It is quite strange to see a kettle on the table, but in fact it is extremely practical as no one bats an eyelid when I reach for my second cup !!

French Lessons

I’ve just had the most disastrous French lesson. I don’t think I’ll ever master this ridiculous language !!.

When we arrived in France we naively thought that with a few lessons and after chatting to a few people a couple of times we would become fluent..oh, no,no,no.

I have been having weekly one to one French lessons for five years, and I set aside half an hour a day to try and improve my grasp on impossibly difficult language but progress is painfully slow.

Yesterday, Francois, my incredibly patient French teacher just put his head in his hands and quite correctly summed up the situation..’You have a lot of things mixed up in your head…!

As he left two hours later, probably thinking I was a lost cause, I turned and thought..thank goodness, next Monday is Easter Monday, so no French lesson for two weeks !!..

An hour later, Francois called, ‘You need to work on the Grammar, the Pronom and Les Possessifs in conjunction with the Passe Compose, Imperfect and both Future tenses. This can’t wait two weeks, can you make a lesson next Tuesday ?

Meeting the Bank Manager

Last Friday, we had a meeting with the Bank Manager to ask for a mortgage to help finance our latest project.

At 9.30am, he arrived. A very smart grey haired spectacled man in his fifties with very shiny black shoes. He opened the door next to the cashier, and we past the counting machines, a large safe and went up the stairs to his very sparse office overlooking the town square.

Do you have your papers he asked ?

I produced our birth certificates, marriage certificate (which seem to be required for everything in France) and last years tax return.

In return he slid a piece of paper across the desk which showed the amount we had asked to borrow and the monthly repayment amounts. Are you happy with this ?, he asked.

It all seemed pretty reasonable..an interest rate of 4.8 % can’t be bad, so we both nodded and soon his printer was churning out the mortgage contract and we were signing the still warm papers.

Disappearing Trees

The most common form of heating in rural Brittany is still by wood burning stoves, although this is slowly changing as now modern houses have electric or oil fired central heating.

However, wood is now becoming somewhat of a scarce commodity and over the last few years the price per chord is increasing to reflect the dwindling supply.

This year has been the first time, that I have noticed trees in vast quantities disappearing from the roadside and in fields that used to provide the cows some shade in the summer months as farmers try to keep up with the demand for this valuable heating source.

Free Plastic Bags.

A big debate in the UK. Should shops stop giving away copious amounts of plastic bags ?

In France, the supermarkets have never given away free carrier bags which although can be incredibly frustrating when you have a trolley full of shopping and then discover that you have left all your shopping bags in the boot of the car !!, it is a lot better for the environment.

It took me several months to consistently remember to take my own bags into the supermarket and on many occasions I have left the bags in the car..so have had to put the ‘loose’ shopping back in the trolley after I have paid for it and then pack it all into bags when I got back to the car. I often see this double or even triple handling of groceries in supermarket car parks so I can’t be the only one who forgets the bags !!

School Dinners

9.15am. The school cook phones in sick.. could I make the desert and be at the canteen by 10.30 with another mother to help prepare the starter and the main meal.

Aaaah..my recollection of school dinners are spam fritters and very lumpy rice pudding.

By 10.30am I had made 80 profiteroles..thankfully our guests in the gite next door had left at 9.00 so I was able to use two ovens !!..so armed with my still very warm choux pastries, the chantilly cream and chocolate sauce I made my way to the canteen.

The canteen kitchen has just a fridge, oven and a dishwasher, there is not a microwave or chip fryer to be seen.

Quiches were made, vegetables prepared, Chicken Cordon Bleus assembled and the tables laid.

By 12.00 we were ready. I was amazed how much these children ate.. quiche to start, then chicken and vegetables, then a choice of brie camembert or emmental, then an apple or banana (compulsory) and then two profiteroles.

At 1.15 the children were putting on their coats to walk back to school.

Once again, I felt extremely pleased to be involved and in the thick of it all…I do hope the school cook is better tomorrow !!

Depot Vente

A Depot Vente is basically a second hand shop. They are organised car boot sales.

How it works. The Depot Vente is usually a big shop which is open normal shop opening hours. Anyone who has something to sell, large or small from a settee to a necklace can take to a Depot Vente and they will sell it for you at the agreed price. The purchaser has to give a small commission to the shop owner. But it gets interesting.. every week the price of all the stock goes down by an agreed percentage. Dare you play the waiting game and see the price of your desired object reduce or will it be sold to somebody else

I love these treasure troves..usually there is just a lot of overpriced rubbish, but occasionally I have unearthed a real find.

To the doctors...

My son woke this morning with an alarmingly red ear which appeared to be to be weeping with some yellow / clear liquid.

At 9.00am we were waiting in the Doctors waiting room. Until last year, the majority of GP doctors worked on a waiting system. You arrived and waited your turn. Of course you are always guaranteed to see a doctor, but it just takes time !!. Last year new legislation decreed that all GP’s must have some consultations as ‘by appointment’ only. This hasn’t gone down very well with the doctors !!.

Most GP’s work on their own, our GP has two rooms in our local town, a small waiting room, about 10ft square with 10 chairs around the edge of the room and her consulting room which is slightly bigger. There are no receptionists or nurses, no automatic doors and no fancy décor.

At 10.40 am it’s our turn. I explain the problem. The doctor carries out a very thorough examination, we pay the 25 euros consultation fee and we leave with a perscription. He has a ear and eye infection and to clear up this horrible infection we have a bag full of medication. Twenty little tubes of what appears to be sterilised water, but when they get into contact with the infected area the water fizzes and becomes like expanding foam !!, eye cream, antiseptic spray and antibiotics.

The cheese course

So many mistakes have been made, many due to my ignorance of the French culture and customs.

It has taken me a long time to get the cheese course right. Initially, when we served the cheese course it comprised of a selection of cheeses bought from the local supermarket, a few savoury biscuits and some grapes. I was always surprised when our cheese board was barely touched. The French are supposed to love cheese aren’t they ?

How much I have learnt. There is no comparison between the soapy supermarket brie and the real stuff bought from a dodgy van at the local market. The French never eat biscuits and grapes with their cheese, only a lightly dressed green salad and don’t try and sneak in any tomatoes, cucumbers or peppers. They will be left at the bottom of the bowl !!