We actually own an apartment in Nice, bought from the proceeds of selling my house when I moved in with my husband. It is an interesting (polite term) business, buying property in France...
...unlike the UK, both parties - vendor and buyer - are required to turn up at the Notaire's office for the handing over ceremony. You should set aside half a day for this in the normal course of events ('normal' meaning 'if you are French'). In the abnormal course of events (I am abnormal, dear reader), not having French as a first language, the government requires an official translator to be in attendance.
My translator was a jolly chap, intent on lightening the proceedings by telling jokes, showing his amazing mastery of the English language (ha ha ha). Some of these jokes may have been funny (let's give him the benefit of the doubt), but I was multi-tasking at the time - endeavouring to stay awake AND trying to concentrate on what the Notaire was insistent on getting me to nod to - so my funny bone was not that keen on being tickled.
The contract that had to be signed by me (you'll notice my husband had a pressing appointment with his job in the UK at this time) was the thickness of the telephone directory for the whole of the northern hemisphere, and every single word had to be read out in French. And then, due to the presence of an abnormal party (me), it then had to be read out, word by word, in English. Without the jokes. (Difficult one for my translator).
It was a complete revelation, this document, and after the first five hours I could see that it was entirely in my interest that not one, teensy word was missed out.
"Zees bit 'ere means you should not leek ze walls by the windows. Do you agree to undertake not to leek ze walls by the windows, Madame?" (This is true, I had to agree not to lick the walls by the windows - and make absolutely certain that none of my guests would engage in such a delicious activity - before they would let me buy the place).
And then, just when I thought my will to live was rallying slightly, I had to sign, or initial, 12,637 pages - in French AND in English (I have a very nice French initial as it turns out; it's much more chic than my English one).
It is only now that the procedure takes another turn. On the verge of tears, having thought you'd never see your loved ones again, let alone the property you have rashly agreed not to lick the walls of (IT'S MY PROPERTY NOW! IF I WANT TO LICK THE WALLS YOU CAN'T STOP ME! SEE YOU IN THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS, FRENCHY!) you subsequently shake hands with everyone in the room (76 people), thank the Notaire for taking 8 thousand quid off you, and stagger outside towards the nearest bar, where you down 4 bottles of the local plonk in 25 minutes.
Apartment, what apartment? Hic.
Wednesday 6 May 2009
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Some twenty-odd years ago I lived in Paris for a while. I fled there to escape a bad love affair.
Paris is the most romantic city in the world, and the irony was not lost on me. Well, the idea of it wasn't lost on me until I found a place to stay in Asnieres, on the north-west fringes of the city...it's a place which has one claim to fame: its dog cemetery. It takes a special talent, I think you'll agree, to relocate to a place which has inspired thousands of poets and writers and artists, and end up in dog cemetery territory.
I tried to get a job. I turned up every day at an employment agency and sat in their back room containing a dozen typewriters, trying my best alongside other young ladies to negotiate the unfamiliar layout of the letters - agraves and acutes getting under my fingers when they weren't meant to be there. I ended up agravated with an acute headache. And a typing speed - after months of practice - of 10 words an hour. And no job.
So I wandered around the museums, took full advantage of the copious amount of free music in the stations and churches, sunbathed in the Tuileries gardens and parks and on the banks of the Seine. Brilliantly therapeutic after a bad love affair.
Nice has art galleries. My favourite so far is the Chagall Museum. Small, perfectly formed, with a pizza and salad restaurant in the grounds under a few umbrellas. The spot always seems to be serviced by a cool breeze no matter how hot the weather. Next time I visit it I'll be without my husband. So I might just have to eat his pizza as a goodwill gesture.
We've started to tell some close friends now about our impending (I hope 'impending' can stretch its meaning to a year) separation. They are all shocked. Some are very upset. We don't really like to do this to them, but the alternative is not an option any more.
Less than two weeks before I fly out to Nice for my first interview. I don't like flying much. The other day I spoke to an aquaintance who trains BA pilots. Where are you going, he asked me. To Nice, I replied. Oh, that's just down the road he said. Who are you going with? BA, I said. Oh, you'll probably be OK.
I'll do the jokes, thank you very much.
Paris is the most romantic city in the world, and the irony was not lost on me. Well, the idea of it wasn't lost on me until I found a place to stay in Asnieres, on the north-west fringes of the city...it's a place which has one claim to fame: its dog cemetery. It takes a special talent, I think you'll agree, to relocate to a place which has inspired thousands of poets and writers and artists, and end up in dog cemetery territory.
I tried to get a job. I turned up every day at an employment agency and sat in their back room containing a dozen typewriters, trying my best alongside other young ladies to negotiate the unfamiliar layout of the letters - agraves and acutes getting under my fingers when they weren't meant to be there. I ended up agravated with an acute headache. And a typing speed - after months of practice - of 10 words an hour. And no job.
So I wandered around the museums, took full advantage of the copious amount of free music in the stations and churches, sunbathed in the Tuileries gardens and parks and on the banks of the Seine. Brilliantly therapeutic after a bad love affair.
Nice has art galleries. My favourite so far is the Chagall Museum. Small, perfectly formed, with a pizza and salad restaurant in the grounds under a few umbrellas. The spot always seems to be serviced by a cool breeze no matter how hot the weather. Next time I visit it I'll be without my husband. So I might just have to eat his pizza as a goodwill gesture.
We've started to tell some close friends now about our impending (I hope 'impending' can stretch its meaning to a year) separation. They are all shocked. Some are very upset. We don't really like to do this to them, but the alternative is not an option any more.
Less than two weeks before I fly out to Nice for my first interview. I don't like flying much. The other day I spoke to an aquaintance who trains BA pilots. Where are you going, he asked me. To Nice, I replied. Oh, that's just down the road he said. Who are you going with? BA, I said. Oh, you'll probably be OK.
I'll do the jokes, thank you very much.
Monday 4 May 2009
So why Nice?
What can I say; it feels like home and I cry whenever I leave the place.
It's gorgeous, too. The architecture is a mixture of Belle Epoque, baroque and modern. (Surrey's is a mixture of big red brick rectangles and small red brick rectangles). There's a fair smattering of those magnificently silly buildings which look like they've been designed by sloshed fairies after imbibing far too much of the elderberry wine, or whatever the favourite tipple of sloshed fairies is. Wedding cake architecture at its glorious best.
The sea is sapphire blue, the flowers and palm trees are plentiful, and the English aren't attacked by the French inhabitants for having the audacity to be English.
We once spent a miserable time in Brittany, a cold, wet French version of England disguised as a desirable place to take a holiday. It was the first time we'd been away with all our kids - two being his, one being mine. We rented a house we found last minute on the net, and when we turned up we realised why it was the only one in the whole of France still available at the height of the summer...
...the walls were 2 feet thick. The decor and furniture were from the less desirable Les Miserables period, and my husband spent most of his days with his heart in his mouth as his 11 year old son endeavoured to throw himself out of the largest tree in the garden. (I know the house was horrible, but that was going a teensy bit too far even to my mind).
The evenings were taken up with fending off an Englishman who heard us talking English in the local Co-op and approached us in a friendly manner. We'll call him Gordon here, because there's one particular Gordon who comes to mind who is a complete pain, too. Anyway, Gordon came over every evening to our rented accommodation - unannounced - to try to entice the husband to the bar, with the idea that I would be content to clear up after supper and sit on my own staring at the horrible walls. He succeeded once, but strangely - possibly because my husband values every tiny part of his body - never again.
He did once invite us all over to his house. When I say 'invite', I mean he wouldn't take no for an answer, so off we trooped, only to find his missus prancing around the large garden, naked save for a (very) tiny pair of briefs. She looked aghast at us, and we at her. Tea and cakes were had on the lawn in a manner you would not expect to encounter at a cream tea parlour in rural Devon. ("Would you care for a muffin, Miss Marple? Oh, I can see you already have one.")
Anyway, one evening we took a stroll through the ugly village and waited outside the local creperie for it to open. We were the first customers there, and were shown to a lovely large round table in the centre of the room, where the five of us sat down eagerly anticipating an assortment of kirsch this and flambeed that. We ordered. And then a party of French people arrived. Much noise and activity and kissing of cheeks, with the result we were told to get up and move to a tiny awkward table next to the toilets.
But this was not the end it. Every time Madame passed our table (she was the spitting image of Edith, Rene's wife in 'Allo 'Allo, but without the charm), I was somehow clocked on the back of the head by a stray elbow. English. Guilty as charged.
We left that house two days early, to great consternation of the monsieur who owned it. We told him we had a pressing appointment with a mediocre flea pit in Caen, which, luckily, we stumbled upon after our flight away from Le Colditz. Gordon, however, was more tricky to leave behind, and it is only in the last year - some 8 years after this holiday we had the misfortune to inflict on ourselves - that he has stopped calling us at 3.00 in the morning in a drunken ramble about the good times we shared together.
Nice does not have buildings where the walls are 2 feet thick. Horrible, ugly furniture is not allowed (Nice was Italian until 1860, and a jolly good thing too). And anyone who looks like they are refugees from 'Allo 'Allo is immediately deported back to Brittany, where they belong, and where they may long remain.
What can I say; it feels like home and I cry whenever I leave the place.
It's gorgeous, too. The architecture is a mixture of Belle Epoque, baroque and modern. (Surrey's is a mixture of big red brick rectangles and small red brick rectangles). There's a fair smattering of those magnificently silly buildings which look like they've been designed by sloshed fairies after imbibing far too much of the elderberry wine, or whatever the favourite tipple of sloshed fairies is. Wedding cake architecture at its glorious best.
The sea is sapphire blue, the flowers and palm trees are plentiful, and the English aren't attacked by the French inhabitants for having the audacity to be English.
We once spent a miserable time in Brittany, a cold, wet French version of England disguised as a desirable place to take a holiday. It was the first time we'd been away with all our kids - two being his, one being mine. We rented a house we found last minute on the net, and when we turned up we realised why it was the only one in the whole of France still available at the height of the summer...
...the walls were 2 feet thick. The decor and furniture were from the less desirable Les Miserables period, and my husband spent most of his days with his heart in his mouth as his 11 year old son endeavoured to throw himself out of the largest tree in the garden. (I know the house was horrible, but that was going a teensy bit too far even to my mind).
The evenings were taken up with fending off an Englishman who heard us talking English in the local Co-op and approached us in a friendly manner. We'll call him Gordon here, because there's one particular Gordon who comes to mind who is a complete pain, too. Anyway, Gordon came over every evening to our rented accommodation - unannounced - to try to entice the husband to the bar, with the idea that I would be content to clear up after supper and sit on my own staring at the horrible walls. He succeeded once, but strangely - possibly because my husband values every tiny part of his body - never again.
He did once invite us all over to his house. When I say 'invite', I mean he wouldn't take no for an answer, so off we trooped, only to find his missus prancing around the large garden, naked save for a (very) tiny pair of briefs. She looked aghast at us, and we at her. Tea and cakes were had on the lawn in a manner you would not expect to encounter at a cream tea parlour in rural Devon. ("Would you care for a muffin, Miss Marple? Oh, I can see you already have one.")
Anyway, one evening we took a stroll through the ugly village and waited outside the local creperie for it to open. We were the first customers there, and were shown to a lovely large round table in the centre of the room, where the five of us sat down eagerly anticipating an assortment of kirsch this and flambeed that. We ordered. And then a party of French people arrived. Much noise and activity and kissing of cheeks, with the result we were told to get up and move to a tiny awkward table next to the toilets.
But this was not the end it. Every time Madame passed our table (she was the spitting image of Edith, Rene's wife in 'Allo 'Allo, but without the charm), I was somehow clocked on the back of the head by a stray elbow. English. Guilty as charged.
We left that house two days early, to great consternation of the monsieur who owned it. We told him we had a pressing appointment with a mediocre flea pit in Caen, which, luckily, we stumbled upon after our flight away from Le Colditz. Gordon, however, was more tricky to leave behind, and it is only in the last year - some 8 years after this holiday we had the misfortune to inflict on ourselves - that he has stopped calling us at 3.00 in the morning in a drunken ramble about the good times we shared together.
Nice does not have buildings where the walls are 2 feet thick. Horrible, ugly furniture is not allowed (Nice was Italian until 1860, and a jolly good thing too). And anyone who looks like they are refugees from 'Allo 'Allo is immediately deported back to Brittany, where they belong, and where they may long remain.
Sunday 3 May 2009
3rd May, 2009, Planet Surrey
Beam me up somebody, for god's sake.
I've been residing here on Planet Surrey for nigh on 10 years and am in dire need of a relief crew.
My husband is also looking for someone to relieve me, by-the-way (no smutty jokes at the back, this is a serious matter) as we're splitting up, and, being a man, he can't be expected to last more than a day outside a relationship. He's a very nice man, intelligent, loyal, very practical around the house and tall. Send me a note if you're interested and I'll pass it on.
Anyway, I digress. Actually, I'm hoping to digress to Nice, where we (I) have long been planning to relocate. This was supposed to be in a matter of years, when my husband would take early retirement, but since we've recognised that our marriage is long redundant, I may as well go early.
Surrey is something else. I wish it was somewhere else, preferably where I wasn't. I landed in a cloud of love, hope and optimism when I met my husband (he wasn't my husband at the time, nor anyone else's - highly unfashionable I know, but I have to be honest) but didn't really factor in what living on another planet would be like.
For a start, I'm not blond. Yes, I do have hair, thank you very much, it's just not blond. I'm not stick thin with long legs, although my legs do actually reach the ground. Both of them. Always a plus, I think. And I don't drive a 4-wheel vehicle, either. (Although our car does possess 4 wheels if you count the one in the boot).
I've never been able to make conversation with Surrey women. Actually, I'm not sure they converse in sentences, it's more in mews and purrs and looks of disdain (or are they only directed at me?) When my son started his new school here, having moved up from Sussex, I encountered weeks, if not months, of disdainful looks at my pitiful appearance - dear reader, I was wearing...I don't quite know how to tell you this...clothing of the sort people wear in the 21st century! There, I've done it. No wax jacket for me, not a riding boot in sight, no pink stripey shirt tucked into spray-on skin-tight beige slacks. (Perhaps this is why Surrey women have pinched lips and a pained expression all the time?) No, I look what I would term 'normal': colourful high street pieces teamed with ballet pumps, big jewellery, fashionable bags. All enveloped with delicious ironic comfort in a rusty Saab, the arty intellectual vehicle of choice.
Anyway, I haven't got a daughter named Arabella, Clavinova, or Anaglypta, Dyspepsia or Swarfega for that matter, and even if I did have, she wouldn't be blond. And my husband doesn't work in the City (ha! Nor do theirs any more!) and I know lots of things about the world that aren't related to shopping. (Actually, I know rather a lot about shopping, but don't tell them that). So what is there to talk about with Surrey women?
But those days, the days of not talking about anything to Surrey women whilst being on the receiving end of their looks of disdain, are numbered. I have an interview in two weeks with the Headmaster of a school in Nice, and we'll see what that brings.
Beam me up, Frenchy! My engines cannae take Surrey no more...
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