Seeing the logs for the trees

Phew! It’s been a busy few weeks (which is my excuse for not having posted a blog for a while). My portfolio of properties for sale via the Allez-Francais.com website has grown with a further four owners entrusting me to act as their estate agent. One of my clients, Jean, wrote to me after all the details and photographs of her house had been posted on the website with the following comment: “Great example of how to market a property - you should be an estate agent!”

Jean and her husband Dave have lived in France for over 20 years and, having started off in Normandy, they have gradually worked their way further south as they have developed a series of old barns. They are ready for an easier life now and Dave started to tell me about their dream for their final project – to build a timber framed and clad house. I showed him a photo of our house in Busserolles and he went weak at the knees! This was just what they had imagined their dream house would look like so I invited them to come over and have a look. They were so excited to see our house and their enthusiasm was infectious; it really reinforced for us how lucky we are and how right we were to have forsaken the stone cottage vision that we originally started with. “However much you want for it, I’ll pay you” said Dave!

My other major work project has been the hunt for a suitable property for my clients from New Zealand who have taken me on as a Property Finder. The difficulty with this one is that I have found them a perfect property far too quickly! They do not arrive in France until March but I have found them a fantastic property that fits all their criteria and their budget (just) already. I am trying to secure a verbal agreement with the vendor but understandably they are reluctant to take it off the market to wait until a viewing in March. I think we will have to run the risk that it is sold by the time March comes around so I am continuing to view other alternatives – so far none have even come close!

The weather turned really cold here last week with a temperature of minus 10 recorded one morning. We are snug as bugs in our house though thanks to our fabulous wood burner which radiates heat through to every room. However, we inherited a limited supply of seasoned and dry firewood and the log pile has been reducing at an alarming rate. Whilst I have a whole acre of wood to go at with my chainsaw, it is wood that will not be ready for the fire for at least another 12 months. With the children visiting us over Christmas, I did not want to have to ration log usage so decided to try and buy in some more logs.

Despite seeing enormous stacks of wood around the area, I had been told that people are very protective of their log stocks and reluctant to sell. I reckoned I could work the charm however and decided to try asking at a local smallholding. I had never met the owners but they had huge piles of firewood all around their house. It turned out to be some experience!

In the yard was an old man who limped heavily towards me, reminding me of Lurch from the Addams family. He eyed me with great suspicion as I explained my request in halting French. Despite my best efforts to spread some neighbourliness, no smile cracked his impassive face. “We will ask my brother”, he grunted.

I sheepishly followed him towards the farmhouse, the journey seeming to take forever as he dragged his useless leg after him. The door was opened and I was ushered inside. The scene that greeted me was like something out of a horror movie. In a single downstairs room with broken wooden floorboards and lit only by a single dim bulb suspended from the ceiling, was a wooden kitchen table piled high with unwashed pots and cutlery. In one corner was an unmade double bed (did the two bachelor brothers share the bed?!?!), in the other an ancient and filthy wood burning stove which was obviously the sole method of heating and cooking. Sat at the table was the brother who stared at me from sunken eyes set within his pale, almost white face.

“Bonjour, comment ça va?” I tried in my cheeriest voice. “Mauvais” was the grunted response – “bad”. Lurch explained what I wanted and an alarmed look passed between them along with much shaking of heads. Sensing this was not going well I mumbled that it really was not a problem and made moves towards the door. “Cancer” and “death” were the next words I understood and I realised then that Lurch’s brother was dying of cancer – “prostate” was another word I picked up on. Feeling desperately sorry for this tragic pair but not having a clue what I could do to help them (other than not take any of their firewood) I made my excuses and left.

I have to confess that the experience left me a little shaken; partly because I felt so helpless and useless but also because it is amazing that in the 21^st century, people still live in these sort of conditions in a civilised country like France. But perhaps they choose to live like that?

I went for a safer option next and asked my French teacher is she could recommend someone – the upshot of which was a trailer load of logs delivered the next day by a charming local cattle farmer. And best of all, they burn beautifully!

Finally, with Christmas approaching, our local mayor (who is a Christmas Tree farmer) has arranged for the village streets of Busserolles to be lined with around 50 trees that the local councillors have been out and decorated. As newcomers living right on the edge of the village, we feel privileged to have one at the end of our drive. On that note, may I wish my readers a very peaceful and happy Christmas.

Back to Blighty

For the first time since we moved out to France in June, I made a return trip to the UK last week. It was an important and highly significant event that I went back for; my daughter Louise was graduating in Sheffield.

Louise with her brother Chris

She gained her degree in the summer but for some strange reason her university waits until November before conferring their degrees upon their students. For many of the graduates it means returning to Sheffield from far-flung corners of the world but not for my Louise – she secured a marketing job with a Sheffield based company and hence continues to live in the city which she has grown to love over the duration of her course. It seems to be true for so many people, myself included with respect to Newcastle upon Tyne, that we develop a real soft spot for the place where we spend our student days.

I flew back courtesy of Ryanair from Limoges to East Midlands. At one stage in my life I was flying on business to some European destination or other nearly once a week but it is a few years since I last took to the sky. Flying with a low cost carrier remains great value for money if you get the booking process right, avoid the traps of online check-in (where optional costly extras are easily mistaken as being just a normal part of the service) travel light and avoid their continual efforts to get you to buy something else whilst trapped in their aircraft.

It really did feel like travelling in a flying shop with the enthusiastic cabin crew continually marching up the aisle trying to sell hot drinks, cold drinks, cigarettes, sandwiches, pizza, hot dogs, jewellery, charity calendars, scratch cards, telephone cards, cuddly toys etc., etc…. Please, just leave me in peace to bask in the relief and satisfaction that I have managed to get on your plane with a bag that only just passed the size and weight test!

I used to enjoy the whole buzz of going to an airport and getting on a plane but I must confess that I just wanted to get this journey over and done with as quickly as possible. The experience was not one that I would call enjoyable but (and it’s a very big and important but) being able to travel all that way in 90 minutes for just €59 return is really, really cracking value! Not only that, both flights arrived bang on schedule, something I rarely experienced when flying on business with British Airways. That ultimately is why Ryanair now carries more passengers than any other airline in the world!

Having left sleepy little Busserolles, I knew that arriving back in the UK might feel rather strange but even I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock that I experienced. I was only 5 minutes out of East Midlands airport in my hire car, concentrating hard on driving on the left again, when I encountered my first traffic jam, waiting to get onto the M1 northbound. What a waste of precious life time, crawling along in a metal box with only the Archers for company (are David and Ruth back together these days?) and staring across at equally bored drivers. The excitement of finally reaching the motorway was soon diminished as I then sat in a slightly more quickly moving queue (this one with the added bonus of idiots undertaking in their executive motors and lorries pulling out without warning) for another 90 minutes until I finally arrived in Sheffield and met up with Louise.

I spent two days in Sheffield and another two days over with my Mum in a little town in East Yorkshire. After 6 months of peace and tranquillity in Busserolles, I just could not get used to the crowds of people, the constant noise and traffic, cars parked along every inch of the street – and that was just in the town where my Mum lives, never mind Sheffield!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing family again and it was an enormously proud moment for me to watch Louise collect her degree. It was a significant event in her life but it also felt hugely significant for me with both my children having now progressed through university and, equally as important in this day and age, both having secured good graduate positions. It feels like a key milestone on the parenting project has been passed – on time but certainly not within budget, parenting rarely is!

Busserolles

As I drove back down the hill towards Busserolles, I was struck by the fact that this felt like coming home. This is not just a place in France where I live; this really is home for me now. I was greeted at the gate by the dogs and Nikki (yes, in that order) and my senses were alert to the still quietness of the countryside around us and the clean, fresh air tainted only by the wood smoke drifting from the chimney.

It made me realise once again how lucky I am to have the opportunity to live in such a wonderful region of France and it has made me reaffirm my determination to make the most of this wonderful life.

Tricky Business

It is five months since we arrived in Busserolles – I cannot believe how fast the time has gone, nor how much we have achieved in that time. We have found and bought and moved into our new house. We have managed to get integrated within the rather complex French healthcare system, including the holy grail attainment of a French social security number (we have met English people over here who have been trying for two years to get that far!).

I have now got three businesses up and running (more about this below) and I have even paid my first tax instalment!

Our life here has settled into an agreeable routine. The baker’s van from the next village comes up to see us in the new house every Wednesday and Saturday. On the other days of the week I wander down to the village post office to collect my bread from the Busserolles baker (following his fire in August he has been baking in another village but drops off the bread to order – he hopes to be back into his Busserolles base before Christmas), stopping along the way to chat to the regulars I always seem to meet (average age around 85 I think but they are a hardy bunch who seem to be out and about in all weathers and always happy to chat to the Englishman).

The covered terrace at Le Clos des Chenes

Since our meeting with the Mayor and his council members in September, the Mayor and his clerk, Martine, have been incredibly helpful. Six weeks after they had written to the Conseil General for the Dordogne (a bit like an English County Council) to seek guidance as to how far back from the road our fence line would need to be, nothing had been heard. With our fencing contractor due to arrive this week, I called in to see if there was any update. The Mayor overheard my conversation with Martine and, clearly not best pleased that no reply had been received, called the Conseil General himself and spoke animatedly to some poor chap for about 10 minutes. True to his word though, the following morning an official arrived and proceeded to survey the road and the edge of our field. It took him an hour after which six luminous green stakes had been planted.

The fencing plan for Le Clos de Chenes

You might expect, as I did, that these stakes marked the fence line that we should follow. “Non” declared the surveyor. His luminous green stakes he explained marked a line that was 50cm in front of the line where we should erect the fence – obviously!

Anyway, back to business. In addition to my property photography business and my property finding business (www.i-spypropertyfinders.com) I have now got a third (and I think final) strand on the go. My status as a registered ‘agent commercial’ has enabled me to take up the offer from my friend Peter Elias to develop a property portfolio to sell through Peter’s Allez-Francais on-line estate agency. Covering the North Dordogne and the South East of the Charente, I will be looking to take on good quality properties for sale and to give them the I-Spy360 treatment with a mixture of quality still photographs, virtual tours and floorplans.

The first property in my estate agent's portfolio

Things have got off to a good start and in the first ten days I have taken on instructions to sell two houses, both of them beautifully renovated old farmhouses. Now though, I have hit a bit of a roadblock.

The nature of all three of my businesses means that I need access to the internet. To get access to the internet I need a telephone line. And thanks to Orange/France Telecom, as I write this I have neither.

I alerted Orange to our pending house move on the 31^st August, six weeks ahead of time. Despite my protests that I would not be able to work without telephone or internet after we had moved out of the rented house in the middle of October, the earliest date they eventually promised to get me hooked up was 7^th November. I even wrote to the Chief Executive of Orange in France to complain about how his organisation’s poor service was impacting my business! He clearly took notice and I have now had several conversations with a customer service adviser who was personally allocated to my account. Whilst they were unable to act any faster than the 7^th November, she received reassurances from the contractors that everything would be resolved and I received confirmation that a technician would arrive at 10am.

The outcome was spectacular – we waited in all day on the 7^th and nothing happened!

I received a call from the contractor at about 6pm to say that they would not now be coming until the 9^th but would arrive at 8am. As I write this blog, on the 9^th, the technician has just arrived – it’s 10.30am!

If you are reading this blog and it is only mid November then you will know that he has got us successfully connected to the outside world and business as usual can recommence.

A dog's life

Our Dad has had a really busy week and hasn’t had time to write his blog so we’ve been asked to help out. Our key board skills may not be up scratch but we’ll do our best to let you know what we have been up to since we arrived in France.

Our names are Tess and Rolo and we are Dad’s faithful dogs. Coming to live in France has been a great adventure for us although it seemed very unfair that we had to have lots of injections for Rabies before we could come whilst Mum and Dad didn’t need anything! It was a long journey to get here but we just settled down in the car and let the miles (or kilometres as we have to call them now) roll by.

Tess (left) and Rolo

What we have enjoyed most of all about France is the countryside which provides for miles and miles (sorry, kilometres and kilometres) of quiet paths for walks. It seems that every village has its own set of way marked paths which traverse through large forests, across open granite plateaus and meander along quiet country lanes where we hardly ever see a car. Exploring these paths has been great fun and along the way we have seen quietly grazing herds of the majestic Limousin cattle, complete with cows, calves and the odd bull.

Over the summer it was very hot at times and we didn’t go too far or stay out too long in the sun because sun stroke can be a very real danger for dogs. When the temperature reached nearly 40 degrees in August, Mum would have a wet towel ready to wrap around us when we came in from a short stroll.

As we write this there is frost on the ground and so we have to lay in front of the wood burning stove or face real risk of frostbite!

Removing a tick 

Tess was the first of one of us who found out about ticks. They are insects which live in the grass and attach themselves to passing animals to suck their blood! One day she had some little lumps on her head and our French neighbour Nadine explained what they were and how to remove them. She gave Dad a small, green, two pronged fork and showed him how to get the tick out properly. The problem is that if it is removed incorrectly it can leave the mouth parts of the tick still stuck in the skin and this can become infected. They pass on a nasty disease called Lyme’s disease which can make both dogs and humans very sick.

Tess was very good at allowing Dad to remove the ticks but Rolo didn’t like it at all and got very cross whenever the green fork appeared! Fortunately for us, Dad was able to buy something called Frontline which was applied by dropping it on our necks (hurray, no injections!) and it meant that any ticks that tried to suck our blood after that would be killed – dead.

Tess is 15 years old and is getting quite stiff because she has arthritis. In England she used to get some pills from the vet and so she was taken to meet the new lady vet in France. She declared herself to be horrified that Tess had been taking these pills for so long as they can apparently cause liver damage. The vet took a blood sample (ouch!) and the results showed that her liver was not working very well and so she suggested some new tablets for her arthritis which would also allow her liver to get better. These tablets are loads cheaper than the one’s Tess had in England and her arthritis is no worse – so Tess is happy and Dad is happy! (Actually we think Dad quite fancies the young French lady vet).

Rolo has made friends with some of the local dogs, especially a Gordon Setter called Titane. One day Dad was out walking with Rolo and they walked through the little hamlet where Titane lives. Rolo didn’t know this however so when a large dog came hurling out of a house barking for all its worth, Rolo panicked and ran back along the way they had just come. Expecting he would soon realise it was Titane, Dad just laughed and waited for him to come back whilst he had a chat with Titane’s owner, Jean-Louis. And waited……and waited. Eventually Dad retraced his steps and ended up back on a country road where he shouted and shouted. Meanwhile, Rolo had made his way into someone’s garden and they tried to catch him but Rolo remembered he should not talk to strangers! He ran back onto the road and was startled to see a moped come round the corner. Rolo is frightened of many things and mopeds and motorbikes are pretty high on his list of major dislikes – so he ran for all his worth.

Titane the Gordon Setter

 Fortunately he ran in the direction where Dad was waiting for him so over the brow of the hill came the sight of a startled Rolo being closely followed by (‘chased’ is Rolo’s view on the matter) an old man on an even older moped!

Rolo and Dad were reunited and decided it was best not tell Mum about their little adventure because she is always telling Dad not to let him off the lead. They walked back to see Jean-Louis and had a bit more of a chat when suddenly a very harassed Mum appeared. It turns out that even though they hadn’t caught Rolo, the people whose garden he had gone into had managed to get the ‘phone number from his dog tag – they had called Mum and said that they had nearly caught her dog but that he had run away again! Mum had therefore come out in the car in a panic and had spent 10 minutes hunting for Rolo only to find him and Dad having a jovial chat with some French friends!

That’s it from us, hopefully Dad will be back with more stories of life in the Perigord Vert next week.