How to re-register a car in France

If you know anything about the cost of second-hand cars in France, you won't be surprised to read that I got our new-used car in England. If you're thinking of doing the same, you might find the following useful.

The first thing to do was switch the headlights over to left-hand drive headlights. We used Headlampshop on ebay, following a recommendation, which all went smoothly (and cost about €260). Because the fitting wasn't a simple spanner and hammer job, I used our local garage (which cost about €80).

Then I needed a Certificat de Conformité from Toyota France. This is a piece of paper that says the car can be driven on French roads. I tried to get around it, but discovered it is currently compulsory. A mugging at pen-point, if you like - or even if you don't (which cost €135 but is dependent on car make, type, power etc).

Armed with this, I could put the car through its Contrôle Technique. This is the French equivalent of the UK's MOT but only needs to be done every two years. The mechanics are reassuringly thorough and the whole thing takes about 30 mins (and cost €68).

Armed with this, I could go to the Sous Préfecture in Bergerac. I also took the UK registration document, Certificat de Conformité, my passport, a justificatif de domicile (recent bill to show we live here), my insurance documents and anything else I could think that I might be asked for. The woman handed me a Carte Grise (vehicle registration) request form and wrote on the bottom that I was missing a "quitus fiscal". This I needed to get from the Hotel des Impôts. I went and watched a woman complete, by hand, a beautiful form - in triplicate - who handed me the top copy. It seemed pointless, although charmingly antiquated, and I began to feel empathy towards people in offices doing this for a living (or more likely, a retirement, but that's a different story). I went back to the Sous Préfecture and handed all my papers over again, answered a few questions, watched the woman trying to make sense of forms she saw every day (with increasing empathy), was given a new form to take to the next window with everything else and paid for our new number plate (cost €96.50 and is also dependent on the type of car).

I knew from before that I had only a short time in which to change the plates or face a fine, so I immediately went back to the garage. They ordered and fitted the plates for me (for about €50).

Now all that remains is to go back to the Contrôle Technique and have them put a sticker on my shiny new Carte Grise, and to tell my insurance company about the change, so they can print out a new - and final - piece of paper for me. I don't think this will cost anything.

Any questions?

Circumlocution

One of the possible reasons the mayor came round the other week was that, after two and a half years of living without an income, we are now - officially - Poor.

(The reason for the delay is that your rights to benefit in France are measured on what you earned two calendar years ago. I earned over €26K in the first half of 2007 - and was self-employed - therefore had no rights until this January, despite the fact that we spent all of that income buying yurts. This January, I got a letter from social services saying how poor we are, based on our 2008 income, which I was told to take it to the mayor's office to see if they could help pay the kids' school meals. The reason why I think it prompted the mayor's visit is that the first words out of her mouth were: "Are you OK for money?" And: "Can you feed the children?" The implication here is that it's OK for adults to starve to death - just as long as the kids are OK. Although what the kids do after they lose their parents is anyone's guess. I reassured her, telling her were we eating our pigs.)

When I had my follow-up meeting with the mayor, she said I must go and see the CAF (social services) to see if they could help pay for the kids' school meals.

I arranged an appointment and was told (apart from what a great idea a yurt camp is) it was nothing to do with the CAF and I should go and see the CIAS to see if they could help pay for the school meals.

I arranged an appointment and was told (apart from 'school meals don't cost very much' - they do if you don't have any money) to go and see the mayor's office to see if she could help pay for the school meals.

Which brought us back to square one. A familiar square. (Perhaps I should give it a Proper Name. Square One has a nice ring to it.)

We went without an appointment and were told 'lots of people are in difficulty - and look at what's going on in Portugal and Greece' - though not by the mayor.

Naturally, we could waste more time going round and round in circles. But we're busy people. We decided to take the kids out of school for lunch after the holidays and went back to work.

I suppose picnics in the park near the school, next to the river, with our own ham and home-made bread, might be nice. Especially now the good weather's on the way.

Toying with telly

Have been dabbling with the idea of doing some TV in relation to écovallée. But as a producer in the UK suggested the other day, why should people care about the self-imposed difficulties of a middle-class family living in another country, when there are so many more needful subjects to cover? (My words, not his.)

Fair point, I thought.

Meanwhile, I've had meetings with the mayor and the regional Chamber of Commerce and in a few short weeks, I'll be able to report (how's THAT for positive thinking about two and a half years of tilting at hot air?) that we'll be open for business - legally - this year. Of course, there's the question of finding the money for the wood for the platform, and the new cover (I never did tell you what was so wrong with the original material we bought, did I?) and a few furnishings.

Horse. Cart. Cart. Horse. (Hang on - we do have a cart horse, but we did get the horse before... No. We haven't even found the cart yet.) For old times' sake, and to give your eyes a rest from all these weary words, here's a photo of the yurt we were originally going to live in, in front of the Brighton Earthship.


And to keep you really up to date, here's the yurt we're living in now (when the snow kindly covered all the crap lying around in the yard).


Maybe I should have called this post: Spot the snowball.

Yesterday...

...all my troubles were pretty much blown away - at least for a few hours.

It all started after lunch, with a phone call from a friend, inviting us out on Friday to our favourite restaurant. We hardly ever go out, partly because of the animals, partly the children, and mainly because we are so astonishingly poor.

Then I had another call. The laptop that my awesomely talented friend Café del Nightmare is giving to me (yes, giving - I suspect there isn't a more giving person on the planet) will almost certainly be arriving on Monday. Which means this old iBook, literally held together with superglue, can become the paperweight it so desperately wants to be.

Then another call. The car was ready in the garage and I could pick it up at school-collection time.

All pretty good, I thought. How else can I capitalise on what was obviously a good day to be Capitalising on Things. So I started emailing the Chamber of Commerce in the regional capital to set up a meeting next week, but was interrupted by...

...the arrival of the mayor. Completely out of the blue. All smiles and touchy-feely. She wants to help me, she said. And to help Her Indoors with her new stitching business. She invited me to come to the Mairie on Monday afternoon, where she'll give me the name of a bank in Bergerac that could loan us the money we need to get a yurt up and fitted out this year, and details of how the Conseil Generale can help, too.

More than a little bemused, I finished the email to the CCI and set up a meeting on Thursday morning.

Then I saw the time. I was running late - but still made it to collect the car and pick the kids up from school.

The good fortune didn't rub off on The Daughter, alas. She trapped her finger in the car door and we had to go to the doctor's. No stitches and it definitely could have been worse.

I said it wasn't over.

Remember Square One?

After a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce a few weeks ago, we discovered that all we needed to do was make a Simple Declaration at the Mairie and our yurt camp would be up and running. The Maire wouldn't even need to send it for approval from the regional capital.

So we picked up the forms for a Simple Declaration from the Mairie. (Imagine here a photo of many, many sheets of paper, all numbered, in triplicate.)

Her Outdoors filled it in.

She took it back to the Mairie to ask if she'd done it right.

The Secretary looked shocked. How the hell would she know? The only people who know are the Planning People (remember them). We must phone them and ask. They answer the phones from Tuesday to Thursday, she added helpfully.

Today is the next Tuesday. Her Outdoors phoned and was invited to a two o'clock meeting.

She went and saw a very familiar face, and found (among other things):
o We could apply for permission using the Simple Declaration but there is no point, as the people in the regional capital will only reject it.
o Buying the Shack didn't change our case in the slightest - why don't we buy a piece of land with camping already on it? Or apply to have our land re-zoned?
o The Maire can't decide on camping using Simple Declarations any more - everything has to get sent to the regional capital.
o The regional capital has just decreed (by 'just' I mean "just" - the woman Her Outdoors spoke to was the only person in Planning to know this) that all camping must now be applied for formally, with a CU (regular readers will know what this means).

So it seems we've come full circle. Back to the beginning.

It's OK though. I have a few ideas.

Money(d)

You know when you get some unexpected money and then something comes along, like a car service or a broken boiler, and takes your excess spondoolies away almost to the penny? This has just happened the other way round.

Last week we got a letter from the social services telling us we're entitled to €280 euros to send The Daughter back to school (which means we can pay the mortgage and phone bill).

Today I opened a letter from our solicitor with a belated rebate cheque that will not only pay the outstanding (and very impressive) water bills, put petrol in the car and juice on the breakfast table, but could even pay for the upcoming Controle Technique (MOT equivalent).

Minor miracles, but we take them where we find them.

(Just came back from the social services in Bergerac, where the woman who's given us months of grief has been replaced by a young, good-looking, very helpful temp; I had a feeling things were going to go well when I found a free parking space outside the office. On the way home all the traffic lights were green - if I didn't know better, I'd go out and buy a lottery ticket.)

Mayor(d)

We had a meeting with the mayor yesterday to talk about next steps.

You may remember, this is the mayor who told us that, if we bought the Shack and got permission to enlarge it, we could live next door to it in our yurts and have up to 20 people in yurts on the land next year. The mayor who, when I asked for that in writing, gave us her Parole.

Her word.

Her solemn oath.

So I was more than a little surprised when she told us yesterday that we couldn't live next door to the Shack in our yurts. That we had to show we were living in the Shack (external dimensions to be 7 x 3 metres when finished - which is something we can't currently afford to do anyway and winter is approaching fast). She told us, in fact, we couldn't live in yurts for more than eight months in a year. And that we couldn't have three yurts on our land for guests next year. She suggested putting up one yurt and, if no one says anything, putting the other two up in 2011. Problem is, we can't live on one yurt's income. We're already overdrawn (which is very inadvisable with a French bank). And we'll never raise the money for the showers and toilets if we can't pay the loan back.

The French word for this situation is translated as: Shit (hence the headline).

Champagne cocktail

So we got Planning Permission last week. Which means we can now buy the smallest, ugliest 'house' in the world (‘now’ in a pretty loose sense – ‘on Thursday at 2pm’ being more precise). Which means we will soon be moving into our own yurts on our own land (we have some fairly major reconstructive surgery to do first, including adding an unnecessary sewerage system and building a kitchen and bathroom) and open the business we brought with us nearly two years ago.

(How time files, as our paperwork will testify.)

Hardened drinkers will recognise that a bottle of cheap sparkling wine-type stuff was definitely in order. Which I discovered to my surprise and delight can be made more enjoyable and longer lasting with the addition of some equally cheap mixed fruit juice. Who knew?

Boring planning status update

I’ve been doing the occasional Planning Status Haiku or Reversed Haiku in the side bar over the last year or so, to keep myself amused and you informed (how time files when you’re having paperwork).

But poetry’s never been my strong point, so here’s some rather tedious exposition.

Daniel ‘The Hand’ Lamin, having steered our new land and old shack purchase through the CU, has prepared all the documentation for the Permis de Construire. He was supposed to have a meeting with the man from the newly created SPANK last week, who’s just back from a week’s holiday, about exactly where our sewerage will go. Then the paperwork will go off (if this is too boring you can go off and make a cup of tea if you like – oh, you’ve already gone) and, with a follow-up phone call from the mayor, come back in about a month. Approved. Hopefully.

(I ran into the mayor in town the other day – she looking very smart, me covered in the various layers of mud that say ‘English’ around here. She looked and said she was very happy for us, that it was all coming together at last. “Do you have a yurt up yet?” she asked. “No,” I said. “I’m just putting up a platform for the kids’ play yurt,” I added, thinking my platform may have been reported to her by an ill-meaning local. “Do whatever you want,” she said. We love our mayor.)

When we have the permis, we will have a meeting with the Notaire (solicitor), and the shack and land owner, buy the land and shack, put down adobe floors for a 26-foot and 18-foot yurt, and move in. It’s only taken just over two years at this point to go and “live in a tent in a field”. And we’re not even going to be in a field. Observably ridiculous.

There. I can get back to more interesting posts now. How was the tea?

CU Danny

Got a phone call from Daniel this morning.

You remember Daniel. He’s the guy who gave us a hand when the Planning Department refused our old application.

I write ‘gave us a hand’. What I really mean is: ‘submitted an efficient, effective, astonishingly detailed attack on the Planning Department’s refusal to give us the CU (Certificat d’Urbanisme) we so clearly deserved’.

He’s also the guy who’s been giving us a hand with our new property purchase.

I write ‘giving us a hand’. What I really mean is: ‘single-handedly persuaded a reluctant neighbour to sell us their small, ugly building on an adjoining piece of land that would allow us to circumvent the previous planning refusal (the Daniel-written rebuttal for which is currently celebrating its first birthday at the tribunal in Bordeaux), before submitting a CU application to make the small, ugly building bigger and more beautiful, bizarrely enabling us to live next door to it in our yurts, while having up to 20 guests (actually, we’re only going to have around 12 tops) in yurts where we originally intended – an astonishingly detailed application that has proven to be both efficient and effective’.

Because Daniel’s phone call this morning was to tell us that our new CU has been approved. (APPROVED!) The evidence is apparently in the post (and not just this one).

The first fight is over. Me and Her Outdoors have so much tension draining from us, we feel like amoeba. Albeit amoeba with a bluddie good excuse to drink Champagne and with a huge amount of work in front of us.

But enough about us.

What Daniel is going to do now is give us a hand with our Permis de Construire.

I say ‘give us a hand’. What I really mean is: ‘submit a dossier detailing exactly what we’re going to do to the small, ugly building – which Planning cannot apparently refuse – for which we can expect an answer in about a month – after which we can start doing what we were expecting to do a year and a half ago.

That's almost not the point. This is: I recently learned Daniel’s surname. I won’t spell it for you, but I’ll tell you how it’s pronounced: “La Man”. It’s not only significant in the United Statesian sense (“Who da man? Dan da man”), but as you may remember from school, the French word pronounced “Man” means “hand”.

If you’ve been following this blog for a long while, you may also remember that we found our land a few hundred metres (yards) from a place pronounced “La Land”.

Which is why I’m now interested in meeting the following people: “La Horse Cart”, “La Plough” and “La Free Solar Panel”.

Fairly poor. But not really.

In France, as you may have vaguely heard somewhere, there are very generous allowances for people living on low incomes.

Which is nice, as almost everyone here is poor.

These allowances (or rights) include: x hundred euros a month to help pay rent or a mortgage; x hundred at the start of the school year (per child over x) to help pay for new shoes and a school bag (or what mountaineers would normally call a rucksack); x per day during school holidays for activities clubs, so parents can carry on working to pay their eye-wateringly high social charges; x for having a baby; x a month for having a child under three... you get the gist.

Now, you’d think that earning minimum wage while supporting a family of four, plus over a dozen other animals, qualifies you as someone on low income and entitles you to some or all of those rights. But you’d be wrong.

In fact, you’d be wrong by a couple of years.

You see, rights in France are calculated on the household income made from January to January the year before last. Which means, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, it’s possible for the unwitting immigrant to fall into a bit of a hole. Especially when coming from a country with a tax year that runs (seemingly arbitrarily in retrospect) from April to April.

Our hole went like this: In March 2008, we hadn’t earned any money since July 2007. We’d been here over six months, in very expensive (by French standards) rented accommodation, with no idea if or when our World’s Most Luxurious Eco-Friendly Family Yurt Campsite project would get on the ground – and money was running out fast. We went to social services and were told that, because of our income in 2006, we were entitled to precisely no euros and no cents.

Which didn’t make any sense at all.

When pressed as to why the system is calculated in this way, we were told with a shrug: “So it’s fair for everyone”.

(If any Daily Mail readers have stumbled onto this screen by mistake, you should know that this kind of bureaucratic lunacy is not confined to the non-English. A friend of ours from Brighton told us about a time she was immobilised by an inexplicable failure of the leg. Her doctor signed her off and told her she’d be entitled to incapacity benefit. But because of the contributions made between this date and that, she was not entitled to a bean – French or otherwise. “But that was when I was on maternity leave!” she exclaimed [the punctuation’s a bit of a giveaway]. “What about all my years of contributions before and since?” The social services simply shrugged and said: “This way, it is fair for everyone.”)

Why am I telling you all this (except to make up for a sizeable lack of blogging in recent months and the fact that it was raining outside when I started this post)? Because since Christmas either Her Outdoors or the Liddle Chillen have been at home, sick. Because next week the Liddle Chillen are off school for two weeks and, as someone on low income, my manager told me yesterday I couldwouldshould be entitled to an enormous discount off the activity club, which wouldcouldshould mean we can spend some time on the land preparing for the opening of écovallée in July. All we needed was something called a Passeport Loisirs from the social services in Bergerac.

We went this morning. I was feeling pretty confident, having calculated our 2007 household income was a paltry (by English standards) 26,000 euros.

Sadly, it seems this is still far too high to entitle us to any financial help from the government. We will have to wait until 2010, to take advantage of our truly poor 8,800-euro income from 2008. By which time, if our new venture is the success we believe it shouldwouldcould be, we won’t need the extra money at all.

You know that scene in Shawshank Redemption?

The one where Morgan Freeman is asked if he's rehabilitated and he goes off on one about what it means to be rehabilitated?

We had a meeting with the mayor last night that was a bit like that.

Before going in, Her Outdoors said she had Absolutely No Confidence that anything good was going to come out of it, even though Our Hero Daniel has managed to persuade our neighbour to part with two pieces of adjoining land, one of which has a kind of shack thing on it, and that's why we were seeing the mayor.

Then the mayor said: 'OK. You can do everything. (Everything! Live in the yurts on our land! Have up to 20 guests in yurts next summer!) My team will push it through and Planning can't refuse.'

It's a good scene. Mind you, it's a good film.

The Council Cameth

We were only expecting to meet the Maire and her Adjutant.

So we were a little surprised when two unexpected Council members came into the boardroom and sat down, looking like they belonged there (which, to be fair, they did), casually flipping through flipping enormous ring binders that drew my attention to our ongoing lack of A Mighty Dossier.

Me and Her Outdoors smiled nervously, relieved that we had changed out of our muddy clothes, and that Managing Director of Périgord Développement, Marc, had agreed to come along.

We were a little more than a little surprised when all the people standing in the car park turned out to be the rest of the Council, who jumped into their cars and followed us to écovallée.

Laughing manically now, we led the extravagantly large convoy, more than relieved that Daniel the builder said he would come too.

The Maire - a very enthusiastic and supportive woman who loves the project - got straight to her first point. The access road from our car park to the land - a shabby, half-finished, track that zig-zags through the woods and is steep and slippery in all kinds of places - is a "non" starter. The firefighters will never go for it.

No problem, we say. There's another road a few neighbours away at the other end of the site. Maybe we can use that in emergencies.

The rest of the tour went well, me telling the Maire things and she repeating them loudly to everyone else. Council members in dressy shoes didn't complain too much about the boggy fields they had to tromp through to reach the other road (at least, not to us). And conversations continued for some time.

Next steps on the road to écovallée are:
o Asking the firefighters what kind of access they'll need.
o Asking the neighbours for permission to use their land for access.
and maybe even
o Buying the neighbouring land off the neighbours.
so we can
o Build an access road.

Like I said: It's complicated. And it's going to take time.

There isn't a word for being this tired.

Yesterday, after my second full day of strimming, I lay in a half-damp hammock and realised I was too tired to walk across the field to retrieve an empty petrol can and a bucket.

But I did.

Because I also had to feed the chickens, put them to bed, feed the pigs, tidy up some electric fencing, and walk home, to cook dinner for everyone and I've forgotten what else.

Today, all I had to do was take a yurt from the trailer in the car park (trailer park would be more accurate right now) to the field at the bottom, by hand (you'll know how far this is when you come), put it together, then have a meeting with the Entire Council, (more on this, later - I'm too tired right now), and feed the animals, put them to bed, walk home and cetera.

It's Extremely Likely I'll be in bed before ten for the second night running - and not for the right reasons - we're both far, far too tired for that.

I just have the energy to leave you with the Monumental News that, finally, to the surprise of chickens, pigs, horse and, to a degree ourselves (although, to be fair, I'm only adding this, as you may realise, in a half-hearted attempt at creating a sentence with more commas in than others on this blog), there is a yurt in écovallée. It's a beautiful thing.

Flocking surprise

I was going to write a post about F***** Telecom. About how, when we arrived in this country and needed communication with the outside world (communication that could only be provided by F***** Telecom), everyone (EVERYONE) shook their heads and tutted and said: F***** Telecom - ******* arseholes (yes, American readers, there is an "r" in "ass"). The post would have been prompted by a loss of service last week that coincided with Boy's birthday and meant he couldn't speak to his grandparents. A loss of service following a bill dated the 4th, received on the 14th, to be paid by the 15th. A transparently criminal strategy for extorting a(nother) €10-euro late payment from us, that was met with knowing tuts and wry shakes of the head from my co-workers, while I said: F***** Telecom - ******* arseholes.

But I won't.

Instead, I will share with you the delightful news that The Daughter has gone into the free range egg business. She has bought three six-week-old Light Sussex hens who are now sharing the orchard/chicken run/orchid meadow with our own feathered flockers.

Is she doing this out of a sense of social responsibility or ethical obligation? Because she is inspired by all things écovallée? Because she has identified an egg-shaped gap in the local market?

No.

It's because she wants to buy a new game for her DS.

Huzz-ah.

Me and Her Outdoors were both a bit nervous before our first meeting with Madame le Maire. Hardly surprising. We have no Plan B (just a range of modifications to Plan A), and she has the power to emotionally and financially ruin us.

Which is exactly what she didn’t do.

After an impressive summary of the situation from Daniel the builder, our new mayor revealed that:
o she is open to the project (huzzah!).
o she will find out where the problem was (huzzah!).
o and work with us to find a solution that works for everyone (huzzah!).
o she is not the law, as some people say (ah), but has a degree of flexibility to work within the law as it stands.
o we will not be allowed to live in a fixed yurt all year round (double ah) because it is exempt from tax d’habitation. Her Outdoors asked if we could pay the tax voluntarily, but the system does not allow for this degree of flexibility.
o we might have to build a house (triple ah). I said it would have to be a straw-bale house. She said fine and Daniel said he works with someone who can make this happen (double huzzah!!).
o we won’t be opening this year (quadruple ah).
o we can put up a yurt every couple of weeks, for a couple of weeks, for friends and family (huzzah!).
o she’s going on holiday for a couple of weeks (ah).
o she’ll call us when she gets back, to arrange to see the land with her adjutant (huzzah!).

It all ended with handshakes, smiles, and assurances not to worry. Which is a pretty good re-start.

Service with many smiles

Today, we had meeting at the social security number place. And found out why there are so many cars in the car park.

First we met the receptionist, whose job it was to check a short list and ask us to sit down in the design-filled but otherwise empty open-plan space (think Jobcentre Plus with more style and no people). Oh, and to take photocopies of our passports.

About a minute later, a lovely woman invited me into one of several numbered offices, asked a few questions, keyed a few things into a computer, printed a few things out and told me she'd arranged a meeting with a consultant (heart sinks) in a few minutes (heart re-floats).

She then showed me into a different seating area, where a corporate video about the service we were enjoying played on a loop, and where I briefly saw Her Outdoors, fresh from a simultaneous appointment, before...

Another lovely woman whisked me into another room. More questions, more shaking of the head in response our current predicament, more tapping on the computer, more print-outs (including a couple of seasonal jobs in wine shops that sound quite tasty) and that was that.

We're on the system. Or in it.

I don't think anyone really knows what happens next. There are just too many people in too many departments to know for sure. The last lovely woman said something about coming back in July, but probably to another office and I probably wouldn't be seeing her again. The whole experience was beautifully inefficient.

In other news, we're meeting the new mayor tomorrow. At three.

Déjà-vu. Take two.

Our meeting with the new mayor's now going to happen on Monday.

Or Tuesday.

Maybe.

(Looks like I shaved for no reason. Again.)

An unexpectedly lovely morning

With the pigs in the wood and Pepito in a field full of grass, we took a morning off hard labour to take care of some unstarted business in Bergerac - armed with nothing more than a file of birth certificates, proofs of residences, and Plenty of Potentially Pertinent Pieces of Paper.

Unstarted Business 1: E106s

Before we left the house, I read this in a letter that came with our E106s (which I think stands for Important Document to do with Healthcare Provision): "We have completed both forms at Part A... Do not fill in any part of the form yourself."

If you were me, you'd enjoy reading that again: "Do not fill in any part of the form yourself."

That's the sort of paperwork I can deal with (although not immediately - the letter is dated December 11th).

After this auspicious beginning, Unstarted Business 1 continued like this: Walk into building, taking a numbered ticket at the door; sit in reception - for just over a second - until Receptionist asks why we're there; a few seconds later, the number counter on the wall jumps to our number and we go into Room 1; the woman asks us our situation (and quickly regrets doing so), then takes half our Pieces of Paper away for copying; the Carte Vitale will be on its way, she says. She is charming and lovely throughout. The receptionist then draws us a map to...

Unstarted Business 2: the Job Centre

Even though we have a potentially blisteringly successful (and I'd like to think, international award-winning) business sitting in our garage, there's a chance we're going to need some kind of job. For money. Soon. I tried registering online the other day, but you need a social security number. And not an English one. (Bring on the United States of Europe.)

We walked into the empty waiting room of the Job Centre and explained our situation to another very nice woman. She told us exactly where to go. (Not far, as it turned out. She showed me on the map.)

Unstarted Business 3: ASSEDIC

The car park of the social security number place is one of two halves. The first is full of spaces for cars driven by people who might want to use the service. The other is filled with actual cars, driven by all the people who work there.

Here we waited for what must have been over a minute, then explained our situation to yet another lovely woman (where are all the men?). She gave us an appointment on Monday, wished us luck with the mayor's meeting tomorrow - and that was it.

Three lovely experiences with government offices - before lunch.

Which was also nice.

Chicken Week: Day Five: Pretty Good Friday

Busy though. Daniel the Builder came round first thing with papers to sign and send to the Tribunal, to keep the permission ball rolling. He has a meeting with Planning next Thursday and it begins to feel like he's very much the Right Man for the Job.

Clare spent all day working on costumes for the parade (more on this later), while I worked just as hard on the chicken house, although it's hard to tell from this picture:


Or this one:


Some things - hinges, flooring, grills etc - take a bit of time. It doesn't help matters when, just as you think the day's over and you only have to feed the pigs before you can start enjoying a Good Evening, you find them here:


Where they're not supposed to be.