Everything I had read about living in
France had prepared me for the weight of paperwork that would be required to
support most major transactions and renting a house was to be no different.
Fortunately for us we had the services of Silke from Piegut Immobilier who
carefully explained everything to us in her excellent English (one of the many
languages she speaks). She then jumped
in her car and led us the last few kilometers to Busserolles.
Having only ever seen a few photographs of
the house we were renting we had deliberately set our expectations low. In our
minds we were moving into a dirty, smelly house which would need us to spend
the first week doing nothing but cleaning out grimy bathrooms, trying to make
the kitchen into an area free of botulism and banishing spiders and lizards
from their cosy haunts.
Talk about having expectations exceeded - they were blown out of the water. Silke opened the door to a sparklingly clean house
that was furnished beautifully and was much larger than we had anticipated. The
bathroom was immaculate with a Jacuzzi bath as a lovely surprise and the kitchen
was modern and well equipped. The only thing that seemed strange to our English
eyes was that the oven was installed in the utility room rather than the
kitchen. Time would prove the sense of this arrangement – when the weather gets
hot it is great to be able to prepare food in the cool kitchen whilst the oven
churns out the heat in a separate room.
But the best discovery about the house was
the basement – it was a cavernous wonder! Why such joy? Well, we were moving
from a four bedroomed house in the UK to a two bedroomed fully furnished house
in France. Clearly we would have to put much of our furniture and other belongings
into storage but our tight budget did not allow for any kind of third party
storage. We had therefore gambled on being able to store everything at the
rental house and in our minds we were going to have boxes piled ceiling high in
every room.
Only once we set our eyes on the huge
basement with its fully tiled floor and wide access doors at ground level did
we realise that when the removals lorry arrived in a weeks time we could simply
say to the guys ‘just put it all in the basement’. Fabulous!
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| The centre of Busserolles village |
We were therefore able to spend our first
week in Busserolles recovering from the journey and finding our way around the
locality. Tess and Rolo loved the huge garden at the house and we discovered
some beautiful countryside walks right on our doorstep. We also met our delightful
neighbour Nadine who spoke no English but was happy to explain things slowly
and to help us with our French. She soon became our guide to rural France and
humbled us with her generosity as she brought us haunches of wild boar to try,
vegetables from her garden and bottles of the local plonk.
Rolo discovered lizards and became obsessed
with these charming little creatures who nervously scuttle away whenever they
sense any movement nearby. They move so fast it seemed unlikely he would catch
one but one day my wife discovered a twitching lizard tail and assumed the rest
of the lizard had been swallowed by Rolo. We waited anxiously to see what
effect fresh lizard would have on his stomach.
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| One of our friendly lizards |
Nadine was duly consulted as to how serious
the outcome might be for the poor dog. She smiled knowingly at us and patiently
explained that when these lizards feel in danger, they actually shed their tail
which then twitches invitingly to distract their predator. Rolo would be fine
she said but we would probably see a tail-less, but very much alive, lizard in
the garden.
Relating this story (or should I call it a
tale?) to another local we were informed that his cat was an avid lizard hunter
and their garden was full of short tailed lizards!
On our third day we went to the local
Credit Agricole branch for our meeting with Marie Lambert. Once again there was
going to be copious amounts of paperwork to sign but Marie hit a problem. A
computer fault meant that she could not get any of the documents to print. We
sat there patiently whilst she called her IT helpdesk but the silent looks we
exchanged between ourselves hinted at our increasing exasperation. We knew what
was coming next, a grudging apology and a request to come back another day.
How wrong we were. Marie instructed us to
waste no more of our time at the bank, we should go and enjoy the local market,
have lunch and she would call us on the mobile when she had found a solution. What
emerged was the proposal that she would come out to the house later in the day
and we could sign everything there. Just tremendous service, I can’t imagine
any British bank employees leaving the cocoon of their branch office and making
home visits.
The following Friday afternoon we had a
knock at the door. I was taken aback to find a large white Britannia Appleyard
removals wagon outside with Nigel and Jonjo, the two men assigned to our job,
standing on our doorstep. “I wasn’t expecting you until Monday” I blurted out.
Not a problem they said, because French laws meant that they were not allowed
to drive at the weekend, they were going to spend the weekend locally and
thought they would come and see where the house was so as not be late on the
Monday morning. They were clearly chuffed at the idea of unloading most items
straight into the basement and so, despite the heavy showers that blighted the
day, they cheerfully set about unloading our worldly goods.
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