The worries expressed in the last blog about a lack of opportunities to improve my French have proved ill-founded. It's been a varied couple of months in all sorts of ways with linguistic exposure on many fronts.
We've been house-hunting and it took us a long time to find the right place. En route we saw lots of horrors - sound modern houses with no soul, old houses with soul but no roof, and occassionally old houses which appeared to be in good shape until discreet enquiries brought feuding builders to light, or springs in the basement, or the discovery that the garden "non-attenant mais tout près" was actually in the next departement. All this experience was a great vocabulary builder, teaching me all about furniture beetle, death watch beetle (vrillettes, petites et grosses, respectively) and the names for parts of a house which until now were unknown to me in any language.
Then the expertise (the termite, asbestos and lead check) on our house for the buyers was an education. The last expertise on the house four years ago was carried out by a spotty youf who appeared with nothing more than enthusiasm and a screwdriver. He skewered the more obvious beams for ten minutes before pronouncing "pas de problème". I'm not sure how he checked for asbestos and lead in pipes and paint but he was confident that all was well with the house. By contrast the expertise carried out last week was super haut-technologie. He, too, had a screwdriver but also a sonic thingy for determining whether or not beams had cavities and another gadget which tasted old paint for traces of lead. His examination took more than two hours and while I don't know how exact it was, I was certainly very impressed. The result was the same, "pas de problème". He carefully explained all as he went along, so expanding my already comprehensive bati-speak (builder terminology).
A couple of weeks ago it all came together. Buyers fell in love with our town house and we found our 16th century presbytery with the essential garden up in the mountains about twenty minutes drive from where we are now. We signed the compromises de vente on the sale of our house and the purchase of the new within a few days of each other and hope to be in the Corbieres by Christmas. Phew!
From answers on Living France Forums, I'd already reconciled myself to the loss of 1000's of euros in capital gains tax (plus-value). Then our notaire told us that regardless of the criteria used by the tax office, we should still claim to be exonerés on the grounds that the house we're selling is our principal residence and, indeed,our only house in the whole world. Two meetings with four tax people covering three hours at the Hôtel des Impots left me exhausted and with a flea in my ear, but a vocabulary so enriched by civil service obfuscation that they almost earned my money. They'll happily tax me as a resident in France when the time comes but won't recognise any capital gains rebate I might request for the same period as a resident. Hmmmm.....someone seems to be having it all ways and its not me.
As well as all the above, we have made strenuous efforts to be sociable, as planned, and that has helped enormously in maintaining what French we'd picked up since last autumn.
Then we were invited to join a local choir to open the Fête du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary. It was great fun, although a little Pythonesque at times, reminiscent of the choral hymn to spam, but it taught me some Occitan drinking songs and a lot about the French penchant for dressing up. The members of the various guilds wore yards of velour of a colour appropriate to their product (carrot producers in orange topped with green etc...you get the picture). Those blessed with membership of the Grande Fraternité du Cassoulet wore velvet academic gowns in brown and gold with similarly coloured hats shaped like a stew pot, le cassoulet. As far as the cermonial went, it was interesting and entertaining. As a gastronomic event, I don't recommend it. Cassoulet is too rich a dish to easily digest in mid-winter (all duck confit, pork, beans, sausages and fowl fats). Eaten in August it's inclined to overheat the eater and to lodge itself in the large intestine till Christmas unless shifted further south with a couple of bottles of something robust. That said, cassoulet goes down rather more easily than the explanations I was forced to swallow at the tax office.
But all of this adds to the colour and flavour of French life - the largest civil service per head of population, the richest and most heart-stopping food (if over-indulged), and the whackiest ceremonial dressing-up box in the world.