This entry’s very late as we just had a busy week with my Dad during which lots of progress has been made on my parents’ move to France. The house sale is now concluded, the house is insured, and various labourers have been hired. But you will have to wait until Monday for Matt to update you all on that as I need to cover the previous week, leading up to Dad’s trip.
This was very quiet work-wise for me, but this was no bad thing as we ended up doing quite a bit of mid-week socialisng. I also had a bit of back-and-forth with the notaire and the estate agent over the logistics of the house sale. We received some documents on the Thursday, which included the final amount we had to wire to cover the sale and various fees. In order for Dad to be able to sign on Mum’s behalf, the notaire also had to produce a document for which there was a 60€ charge. I noticed there was no mention of this charge, so I called up the notaire to ask about it.
I am glad I did as the notaire had no idea what I was talking about. It seems our friendly-but-useless estate agent had failed to inform him as promised that Mum couldn’t make it over. He said it would still be fine for Dad to sign alone and he’d forward the necessary. We received this the following day, only to find that the document would need to be signed and certified by a UK notary, lawyer, or police officer. With such little time left (Dad’s flight was on monday), this wasn’t looking feasible. Dad managed to see a lawyer on Friday afternoon, but he refused to do it as the document was in French and would first need translating by a sworn translator. We told the notaire it was impossible and he suggested getting mum to sign and date a scanned copy of her passport instead, so we did that.
According to the documents the notaire sent, we also had to wire over all the money three working days before the meeting. This was already impossible as we only received them four calendar days before, and in between it was Bastille day and a weekend. We also found that our bank limits us to a maximum daily transfer around of 6000€. What with the uncertainty over Dad being able to sign and knowing the money would not all be sent before the meeting, we were all a little worried that the sale might not happen. Luckily, it was all fine – but that’s a story for the next entry.
On the wednesday, we went to St. Front for our first fish & chips night of the year. We went with our new friends Marie and Christian, as she’d previously professed a liking for the British staple dish. It was a relatively cool and overcast day, but still just about warm enough to eat outside. The food was the same quality as ever, but the prices had gone up noticeably, and they even now charge for the little sachets of sauce, so I don’t know if we’ll be heading back any time soon. We enjoyed the company very much though. We headed back to theirs after for a digestif and then came home.
Our cheeky mid-week socialising continued the next day when we invited Rigit over to ours for a meal. They were at the end of their 2 week trip out here and were extremely reluctant to leave. They’re hoping to be out here in September for the wedding, but they need to sell up in the UK first. We’ve reached that point in the year when our various friends and neighbours’ veggie plots are overflowing with cucumbers and courgettes so every time you see someone, you get given a handful. This is why we never plant any ourselves. So the meal Matt put together was a veggie pasta that used up some of the courgette.
We had a double dose of Benoit & Virginie over the weekend. After a quiet friday, we went over to theirs on saturday for dinner. Also in attendance was a good friend of theirs, Stephan, and his wife Laurence. We sat out on their terrace all evening chatting and eating a lovely meal. Benoit made a chilli con carne that would have fed a small army, and did me a separate one of turkey meat. After the meal, they asked us if we were free the following afternoon to help them bring in the hay. They keep horses and have several fields that need harvesting annually. Drunk and merry, we happily agreed.
The next day we awoke feeling decidedly the worse for wear. The weather had gotten its act together and we were back to 30 degree sunshine, but we nonetheless had a quiet day indoors. By late afternoon we’d rallied sufficiently so we headed back to B&Vs. We got there at 6 to find that work was already underway. They know a chap with a nifty tractor-type vehicle that did a good chunk of the work for us. It magically sucks up the dry, cut grass and spits out neatly tied bales of hay behind it.
We then took these and loaded them onto Benoit’s trailer. It was still really hot so it was hard work. Every time the trailer was full we retreated to a small patch of shade while he drove it to his barn. There, another team of volunteers were neatly stacking the bales. The first field was the biggest and took close to an hour, but the rest were smaller and we were done with those another hour later. We were exhausted at the end of it but had a restorative pastis or two on their terrace and soon felt better. In the end, we stayed for dinner as well. Benoit made us all an omelette using a load of girolle mushrooms he’d picked earlier. He packed us off with yet more courgette and some other bits n bobs too.
Right, that’s more or less all for that week. Tune in again on Monday for the next update!