Welcome back to Frog Blog. Nationally speaking, it has been a very bleak week for France with the results of yesterday’s first round of Regional Elections being even worse than feared. Marine Le Pen’s extreme right party, Le Front National, has just come first in 6 out of 13 regions, winning the support of 1 in 4 voters. A truly terrifying result.
France uses a two-round system for its departmental and regional votes and round 2 takes place this sunday. In a 2 round system, the first round can feature multiple candidates. Following the results of round 1, the list is then whittled down the 2 with the most votes, who go head to head in round 2. Round 1 is often used as a protest vote and there’s some hope yet that not all 6 of the regions will ultimately turn to the FN as voters are free to change their minds on round 2. For the moment though, it’s not looking great. I’m at least proud of our region for being one of only 3 that voted for the left, but even here in traditionally communist Aquitaine, it was a close call. It’s all the more scary to see the gains the party is making given the presidential election due in 2017. Needless to say, my citizenship application would face a rather harder time under a FN government. Not that I’d really want to be here in that event.
On my application, there’s been a further development. On Friday, I received a letter from the Préfecture to summon me for an interview. This is the final stage of the process: they meet you, assess your grasp of French, and make sure you know enough about French culture, history, and what it means to be a citizen. Unfortunately for me, Périgueux’s prefecture is obviously not up to the job of doing these interviews, so it is to Bordeaux that I am summoned, at 10am on a random Tuesday in January. We’ll have to get down there the night before and stay over to get there on time – yet more expense added to an already pricey process. I now also have quite a lot of reading up to do over Christmas!
We’ve also recently had another run-in with the state, this time over taxes. France has a tax aimed at businesses called La Cotisation Foncière des Entreprises, or CFE. Foncière means land tax and the idea is to tax office spaces. When we first arrived in France, Auto Entrepreneurs (sole traders) like us were exempted from this tax – and rightly so seeing as the vast majority, like us, don’t have offices and either work from home, or out and about.
However, the regime has been the subject of numerous reforms since the socialists got in in 2012, and as part of this, we’re now classed as “micro-businesses” – and therefore, liable for the CFE. Tens of thousands of sole traders petitioned the government in vain about this and lost, with the result that last year, we all got billed. What galls me the most is that in our case, we both work from home – the same home. A home on which we already separately pay an annual foncière tax. And now we both of us have to pay a supplemental tax on it. It’s not even like we have an office: I work on our sofa. So I now have to pay an annual tax on our sofa.
But that’s just the background. The real fun was about this year’s bill, or more to the point, the lack of one. We realised it was CFE time and we’d not had any notification, so did a little digging. What we found was that they aren’t sending bills out anymore. You still have to pay, and by a deadline too if you want to avoid penalties, only now you don’t know the amount and you get no warning. You’re just expected to voluntarily make a payment by a certain date. For the eagle-eyed, a small box in the corner of last year’s bill had a brief statement: “please note we will not be issuing bills after this year”. That is literally all the information they supplied. And yet they assumed this would be sufficient for us all to know it meant we had to sign up on their website, receive a special reference number through the post several days later, and then try and navigate the same appalling website to make a payment using your magic reference number. And all by the 15th of December or else you’re fined a penalty. How hard would it have been to include an information sheet with last year’s bill, for crying out loud?! Anyway, we’ve paid up and now we know for next year – assuming they don’t fiddle around with the process any more, that is.
Right, I realise this already growing long and I haven’t even got to recounting our week. Fortunately, there’s not too much to tell. Work has gone very quiet, as is normal for the time of year – although I have a large translation project ahead of me for the French version of my latest website. I have two projects that I was hoping to have done by the end of the year, but the clients have been slow, so they’ll spill over into next year. Similarly, I have four existing site redesigns that are more or less finished but again thanks to slow clients, I can’t put them live (or bill for them) so quarter 4 will not be as good as I’d hoped. It’s also quiet for Matt although we’ve been recontacted by a slightly strange woman who approached us and then blew us off in the space of a week earlier this year. It sounds like more of a Matt project than a Will project so might keep him busy for a bit.
Our week was uneventful so on to Friday night and what was our final rehearsal for our last gig of 2015. This was organised as part of the Téléthon, an annual national fundraising weekend similar to the UK’s Children in Need. Events happen up and down the country, including Brantome where the whole of Musique en Herbe was down to play a two and a half hour concert.
We already knew we were disastrously underprepared and Friday’s session only served to confirm this. It didn’t help that it was only that night that we were presented with the final setlist, which featured several songs we’d not done for months and a couple more we’d never done before. I managed to not lose my temper at all but was dreading the gig all the same. At the end we helped pack up, but we refused when they asked us to show up at 9am on sunday morning to help getting it all put in the van to be transported. They already take up far too much of our weekend as it is and we were invited out on the Saturday in any case.
This was to Nat and Jill’s where we had a lovely time and a delicious meal. When we last saw them she invited Lee, Richard and us to theirs for New Years’ and she wanted to get us over to discuss logistics. She served up a chicken bacon and mozzarella dish, with crème brulées for dessert. We stayed till gone midnight chatting and drinking. Back home, we had a cleanser and then hit the hay around 2am.
We awoke around 10 and had a quiet morning. I spent some time going over the new songs and then after lunch, we headed off to Brantome. Our gig was in a newly built public building designed specifically for concerts and events and it was a lovely space. I just wish we could have done it justice. Due to various technical hitches, the sound check started late and was far too rushed. Throughout the show, microphones squealed, speakers buzzed and drums vibrated. Perhaps it was all an effort to drown us out. They say a poor workman blames his tools; well in this case, the tools and the workmen were all on a par. Our lack of rehearsal was evident on pretty much every song, several of which had to be stopped and restarted. To be fair, we are amateurs by name and nature and the crowd of 50 or so were very supportive, but for me it was a real shame to end on such a low. Especially after the great success of Milhac. For reasons that are beyond me, Musique en Herbe decided to video our gig in its entirety so comprehensive evidence of our catastrophic performance exists, but I shall not likely be posting any of it.
That being our last gig of 2015, Matt and I announced to the group that we’re taking the rest of the year off as I for one could certainly do with a rest from them. We had one further gig with them pencilled in for the 6th of Feb, but we’ve wisely gotten that moved back to late May, or it would have been a repeat of the Téléthon. I also can’t remember the last time I picked up my guitar and played some Blur or Bowie, or anything at all just for the pleasure of it. Speaking of, I think I may go and do just that now. Bonne soirée.