Home & Dry in France , livre ebook

La Puce Publications - George East

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112 pages

English

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This hilarious collection of cautionary tales and anecdotes,discusses all the delights and drawbacks of finding,buying and restoring French property. Significantly subtitled A Year in Purgatory,Home & Dry in France follows the initial adventures of our innocents abroad en route to their 18th-century water mill.

Sujets

Travel writing

Humour

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Publié par	La Puce Publications
Date de parution	07 septembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781908747075
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0199€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Home & Dry in France
Published by La Puce Publications www.george-east-france.com
© George East 1994
First Impression 1994 Second printing 1995 Third printing 1996 Fourth printing 1997 This edition 1998
ISBN 0 9523635 0 X eISBN 9781908747075
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Designed and typeset by Nigel at Christianson Hoper Norman Reprographics by SP Repro Printed in Great Britain by Borcombe Printers PLC, Hampshire
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers’ prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
F RENCH L ETTERS
I don’t know about you, but nothing annoys me more when reading a book about France or the French than when the author has either:

1 Haughtily assumed you speak and read the language as fluently as he or she does, and will understand and appreciate every clever use of French word or phrase littered throughout the livre .

2 Patronisingly assumed you are completely ignorant of the language, so slavishly explains every French mot (word) throughout by immediately offering an English translation in brackets.

The problem is compounded by the way we have unashamedly pinched a dictionary’s worth of French words and phrases which have, over the years, become common English usage.
After much thought on the subject, I have decided to sit as firmly astride la barrière as ever, and provide an instant but separate explanation of French phrases and words employed in the following pages which I believe the average reader (i.e. me) would find useful in following the general plot.
The French Letters Index is to be found at the back of this publication, and chronologically explains (where I believe it to be necessary) what the italicised words or phrases mean.

I may, of course, have got it completely wrong in some or most cases, but at least you’ll know what I think I mean. . .
M anche is that part of Normandy pointing like an accusing finger across the English Channel, which is also somewhat perversely known to the French as la Manche (the sleeve).
Just to confuse matters further, the top bit of the Manche peninsula is only ever referred to by its proud if not obdurate denizens as le Cotentin.
Within half an hour of anywhere in Cotentin, there is a choice of rugged coastlines, vast sandy bays, rolling hills, alluvial plains and ancient forests to explore and enjoy.
There are real fishing ports, sturdy market towns and individualistic villages and hamlets to get to know and savour.
There is also a race of people who have scant in common and culture with their countrymen (especially, in their view, those from Paris).
It could be claimed, indeed, that the Cotentinese Normans are closest to most of us in common history as well as distance. Their first major package tour of England took place in 1066, and our return and generally much more welcome visit on D-Day.
For some reason, about 99 percent of the magical attractions of le Cotentin remain unknown to the millions of British tourists who roll off the car ferry at Cherbourg each year and head south down the RN13 as if pursued by demons.

Which, for the people like us who selfishly want to keep such a good thing to ourselves, is just fine.
A UTHOR ’ S N OTE
As a result of detailed research (mostly in pubs) I am convinced that at least 100 percent of all English homeowners at some time consider the prospect of buying a property in France.

This initial enthusiasm usually results from:

a) Speaking with friends who have a friend who knows a chap who said he had just snapped up a 17th-century Breton farmhouse in 37 acres with more than enough outbuildings to convert to a fair sized holiday village . . .and all for the price of a second-hand Citroën.

b) Reading enthusiastic but completely inaccurate articles and PR puffs in magazines and newspapers about characterful cottages for conversion from £7000, and magnificent manoirs merely in need of a lick of paint and the odd roof tile for less than the price of a three-bed semi in the UK.

Of the thousands of aspirant buyers I have met, about half seem to go as far as obtaining details of properties on sale in France.
Perhaps half of that number make a realistic assessment of the pros and cons and decide at that stage that the game is not for them, whilst the survivors actually reach the stage of making contact with a French-based agent.
The proportion of those adventurers who actually book a ferry and get to see a selection of properties somewhere in France is, embittered agents tell me, miniscule in comparison with all those who have dreamed the dream.
Those hardy few who pursue their goal after realising that the existence of a roof can be a selling point for some properties ‘ripe for conversion’ are, as records show, but a fraction of the original task force.
Nonetheless official statistics show that thousands of UK residents actually buy French property every year.
My researches indicate that at least a hundred times that number would like to, but for one reason or another, don’t.
That’s why and how this modest work came about.
If it helps give a clearer picture (and some advance warnings) of the sort of situations likely to be encountered en route to finding, buying and restoring a home in France, it will have done its job, however sketchily.
If it warns of and even exaggerates some of the potential problems without putting off a single soul who really wishes to become one of that brave band of adventurers owning a little piece of heaven across the waters of la Manche, so much the better.
The following jumble of first- and second-hand experiences, anecdotes and cautionary tales is not, and was never intended to be, a fact-filled How To book. 1
It is merely a record of how one couple started a conversation in a pub with a friend who had a friend who had a friend who had just bought the cheapest property in Northern France – and how they eventually ended up with an old mill . . .and a new life.
And how we wouldn’t have had it any other way.
George and Donella East
Le Moulin de la Puce
Cotentin
Normandy
Contents
R ITES OF P ASSAGE
H OME T HOUGHTS FROM A BROAD AND T HE M EAL FROM H ELL
B EWARE OF THE D OGS
T HE L ITTLE J EWEL
G OOD P UB -L ICITY
M INDING YOUR LANGUAGE
H OME AND D RY AT LAST
D OING Y OUR H OMEWORK
A N IGHT B Y T HE F IRE
A LL H ANDS TO THE P UMP
T HE H AZARDS OF S MOKING
S TARTING O VER
T HE F LEA L ANDS
H EALTH AND I NEFFICIENCY
A S PRINKLING OF T RADITIONS
N IGHT OF T HE C ONGA
R ITES OF P ASSAGE
December 17th
‘Erm, no. . .’ said our latest agent with a brave smile, ‘. . . this is actually the place we’ve come to view.’

As garages go, it was quite appealing.
But it wasn’t what we had in mind when boarding the ferry at Portsmouth seven hours earlier, bound for Cherbourg and the final steps towards buying a characterful property in Normandy.
There had, it appeared, been a slight cock-up between the UK office and their Manche representative.
The flint cottage with red tiled roof and (almost) views across the harbour of the quaint fishing village had, we were told, been sold at some time between our selecting it from the details and our arrival to view.
Worse still, it was just what we had lusted after, and a total snip at £9,000.
It was also just across the courtyard from the garage in which our latest agent was now seeking sanctuary from my displeasure.
Apparently, the two buildings were part of a parcel in the process of being divided up and knocked out by an elderly fisherman who couldn’t believe his luck that so many crazy Anglais would pay so much for a part of his family home.
The cottage which had just gone and the garage which hadn’t bore consecutive serial numbers; these had become smudged and therefore confused in their electronic transfer from France to the UK.
At least, these were the alleged fax of the case.

Thus we encountered yet again one of the most basic laws and lores of French property buying:
What you see and read about at home is not necessarily what you get to see in France.

As it happened, and as our new agent Mark Berridge was eager to point out, there had been several minor drawbacks affecting the straightforward purchase of the cottage.
One of them being the potential appearance of the original owner’s eldest son in a bath towel in the lounge on alternate weekday nights.
Which provided yet another valuable reminder of the diversity, complexity and sometimes apparent bloody-mindedness of French property laws.
One of the many dating back to the Reign of Terror – and still consistently terrorising unwary and uninformed foreign purchasers – this particular beauty aimed to stop property falling back into the clutches of the accursed aristo minority. This was achieved by ensuring that the head of the family could not sign away his dependants’ birthright without full consultation, arbitration and agreement with his direct heirs.
In application, it now seems that virtually every blood relative of the property owner must be in total accord with the selling of part or whole of any property, be it ever so humble.
In the case of our fisherman vendor, he had secured the approval of all his family to the proposed hiving off of the cottage next door – with the exception of the senior son.
Given the expensive aid of the local notaire and an arbitration committee set up and chaired by the local mayor, an agreement