posted on 22 December 2006 15:14
by
Mark
Yule (b)Log
An exciting week: our B&B website has finally gone live, we’ve been Christmas shopping, and I’ve added yet more documentation to my burgeoning carte grise dossier.
Having received encouragement from our IT consultant up in Normandy, we decided to unleash www.lepicvert.com onto an unsuspecting global village, such that we are now inviting anyone with a computer to come and stay with us in a house we’re not yet living in (obviously they don’t have to bring a computer, I suppose I mean anyone with Internet access). However, we have kind of made it clear on the site that we’ll only be taking bookings once we’ve moved in, spruced the place up a bit, and registered with all the appropriate official bodies, so it’s not too dodgy, and anyway if we get arrested I’ll sing like a canary and bring the devil-may-care IT consultant down with me.
The last few days have seen some lovely clear weather here on the Vendée/Deux Sevres border, with the loveliness tempered somewhat, well completely, by a wind bitter enough to rip the hairs off your chest. It seems to be coming from a northerly direction, and I seem to remember that that usually means trouble. The plummeting temperatures have severely tested the new electronic notice board recently erected in our ‘downtown’ area, as the Americans would have it (ie in our case the bit next to the church). Vegas-style proclamations welcoming people to the village, and scrolling messages rather redundantly explaining that the reader is looking at the village’s new notice board, are underlined by the stark announcement that the temperature is a somewhat un-Nevadan -2; and that’s without that windchill factor thing that the weathermen always darkly refer to. With no sign of wind-abatement in the offing, I’ll now monitor it to see how low it’s programmed to go.
However, despite the weather, I donned my balaclava helmet and went for a walk the other day and saw, dead in a verge, what I’ve subsequently been told was a coypu. At the time, I felt quite sad that this unusual-looking creature had apparently met such a violent death on the road to L’Absie, but then I read that since they were somewhat short-sightedly introduced to Europe in the middle of the last century, they’ve made life hellish for many of our good, honest Euro-mammals by ruining habitats and, erm, some other naturalistically complex concepts like that. On reflection, I also thought that he must have been pretty dozy to get himself run over on the L’Absie road, whose volume of traffic isn’t exactly at M25 levels, and all feelings of sadness evaporated, to be replaced by feelings of hypothermia. Half-frozen, I returned chez nous for claret and sympathy.
Yesterday, we went Christmas shopping in the megametrolopolopolis that is Fonteney le Comte. I was anticipating the Dante’s Inferno scenario one tends to get in every English town centre/out of town centre/rural shopping hellhole the wrong side of November, but the gigantic Hyper U seemed to house just one Vendéen shopper to every hectare of its apparently excessive floorspace.
Glorifying in this capaciousness, I pushed my chariot up and down the aisles with gay abandon, throwing vaguely appropriate gifts in as and when (only joking, My Family), and in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, we were through the checkout and I didn’t feel like killing anyone. Result.
As mentioned, the carte grise dossier grows apace, the latest addition being the quittus fiscale. A few days prior to the Christmas shopping expedition, we battled through the fog sitting obstinately over the Vendée river on our way to Fontenay. The Office du Tourisme (Syndicat d’Initiative in old money) gave us directions to the Hotel des Impots, and off we went to speak proper French.
After a little trepidation and consequent trembling hands (fortunately I was able to pass that off as weather-induced), I passed the fonctionnaire our various official papers, and after a delightful conversation about engine sizes, we were sent packing with a nice new certificate and, wonder of wonders, a complimentary word on our linguistic skills! All we need now is our controle technique thing, and we’ll have a dossier fit for a carte grise.
January 4th is the fateful day for the controle technique - I’m fully expecting the Land Rover to ruin my life yet again, but he has been going pretty well of late, notwithstanding the fact that a lot of his electrical innards are currently hanging out as part of some multiple-fixing project of Squidge’s. I was halfway to the supermarket today when I looked in the rearview mirror to see the naked bulb of the central rear brake light mechanism dangling against the rear window, with its casing, screws and washers dribbling around in the boot below. Luckily, the gendarmes were all too busy checking up on fraudulent B&B businesses at the time, leaving me free to dangle.
That’s about it for now. I’d just like to wish all my blog readers (and I’m assured by James Admin that there are more than none) a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a lovely 2007.
Oh, I should just say to all you France-based folk that I’ve got one or two ‘Mark’s Blog 2007’ calendars of scandalously poor quality for sale. Obviously, I can’t come door to door with them, so perhaps if you just send your cheques to Living France, payable to me, we can post them out to you (just leave the amount space blank).
A bientot…