Another fairly quiet week as first I had the flu, and then Judy went down as well. Nothing too bad but not very pleasant.
We met the language teacher in Pompadour, a very nice lady who lived in England for 21 years. We will go back to basics and work through a course with her – one lesson a week to start.

We managed a trip into Brive to get Judy her birthday present – she chose a really nice necklace. The lady in the shop then boxed and gift-wrapped it so I can “surprise” her. I have been in touch with an accountant, and taken the first steps in setting up my little business here - “Imagerie de Proprieté”. Once the official start up is underway I can start approaching potential clients and advertising, hopefully just as spring starts and people might want nice photographs of their houses and gites.
Still trying to get some building work done, but as everywhere getting a builder to come is one thing, a quote is another, and actually getting the work done….We are still waiting for quotes from two builders, one of whom – a really nice chap with several acquaintances in common – said that with the downturn there isn’t enough work around, and there are lots of cowboy builders about. He is thinking of going abroad to work.

One of the nicest things here is to be able to look out of the window and over “our land”, even if it is basically scrubby woodland on a 45 degree slope. I often see and hear buzzards, and a couple of days ago Judy watched three deer. The oddest was a squirrel (red here of course) on the windowsill of our sitting room – some 8 metres above the garden – very athletic.

Just had an oil delivery, I won’t tell you how much it cost because I’ll only get depressed again. Anyway it should last us well into next winter, particularly since we had the boiler serviced.

Now we have private top up health insurance we are off this afternoon to settle up our bill for our blood tests at the laboratory, life here isn’t so much complicated as just different!

Now we have recovered from Christmas, we have got down to sorting out a few more things to help us settle in.

We know we must improve our French – but we hardly see anyone to talk to at this time of the year as everyone is indoors in front of their fire. We have had some cold temperatures and a bit of snow, but nothing as bad as UK seems to be enduring at the moment. Anyway we are meeting a local language teacher next week, and if she seems OK, we will book weekly lessons with her. We have tried studying from CDs, but it doesn’t really give you the confidence you need. The big problem is that all our first contacts in France have been with people like utilities, phone companies etc – and mostly on the telephone, not an easy start.

Regarding the house we have had the boiler serviced – should run a bit more economically now, and had another quote for blowing 30cm of insulation to fill the attics – just over €2,000. It’ll be spring before I make up my mind. Some of the bubble wrap we used to protect pictures when we moved has come in very useful for “double-glazing” some of our draughtier windows.

Our doctor had us take blood tests – there is a laboratory in Objat to which we went on Thursday morning. They took an armful from each of us, and the results were posted to us and arrived the following morning. We took them up to the doctor, who said we were pretty healthy, but gave us the usual warning about cholesterol etc. Phew.

Later on Thursday we went to Brive to meet Amanda Kiff, who runs the Correze office of the Franco-British Chamber of Commerce. Amongst other things this helps new businesses to start up, and Amanda was able to give me lots of useful advice and contacts to help me with my plans. She radiates enthusiasm for her job and for the Correze. It may be a relatively unknown area at the moment, but not for much longer is she has her way. I joined up on the spot, and this will enable me to make further contacts, go to meetings and social / networking events and, I hope, get more help and advice. Amanda can even get tickets for Brive Rugby Club!

Well we are back home again after visiting the family in UK for Christmas.

We travelled over on Le Shuttle on the 22nd. Eurostar and the Tunnel had just had major problems, and the weather in Northern France was supposed to be awful, so we set off very early and got to Calais with about 3 ½ hours to spare, as all the problems had disappeared. Luckily they were able to put us on an earlier train, so we were able to visit a very old friend, Dave Makepeace, and his family who live very close to the Folkestone Shuttle terminal.

We then went to stay with our daughter Rachel in Tooting in South London. We visited our son Nick and his family in Leigh on Sea, my brother Martin and his family in Kingston (twice), Judy’s sisters Carol and Gill and brother Chris in Stevenage, another old school friend Richard Allnutt and his family, and we even managed to squeeze in some culture visiting the Turner exhibition at the Tate. We had a great time – especially thanks to Rachel.

We came back yesterday – a long day’s driving, and we were very glad to get home. It was noticeable on the motorways that there were lots of cars with Parisian plates also heading South – the French like to spend the big holidays with their families we are told.

We have cranked up the central heating again, I have slept for about 10 hours, and am gathering my strength to sort out the bits of official post we got when we were away – utility bills, health stuff etc. It’ll wait!

Happy New Year!

With the cold weather we have had a pretty quiet time for last few days. The oil-fired central heating is working well (although the level in the tank is falling too rapidly for my pocket’s liking!) but this is an old and rather draughty house. Ah well, on goes the jumper. I have done some insulation between the cellar roof / house floors, but we do need more insulation in the attics. We had a company come out to give us a quote – they pump a type of cotton fibre in to a depth of 200mm. €9,000 ! Even allowing that we can reclaim 40% of that against tax next year, that’s quite a lot. I’m looking at other possibilities, as I really don’t want to use fibreglass. Sheep’s wool would be perfect, but I haven’t found a supplier yet. There are a number of websites with classified ads and chat forums so I have asked if anyone knows of a supplier – so I live in hope.

We hope we have finished the Christmas shopping – just a couple of perishables to get. We had a bit of snow last night, and the road outside our house turned into a bit of an ice rink – a couple of cars were abandoned for the night at the bottom of the hill. This morning the tractors are out clearing the roads, but I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere today.

Took our tetanus jabs out of the fridge last night (before the snow) and nipped up to the doctors with them. A quick jab, and we have to have another one in a month. He also wants us to have blood tests – so we have to the laboratory in Objat and get them done. A bit of paperwork to sort out to get some of the money we have spent reimbursed, and we don’t have our Cartes Vitale (health cards) yet, but we are getting there.

Returning to UK on Tuesday – so hope that all the roads have been cleared here and there before then.

A happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

Joyeux Noël et une nouvelle année prospère

Quite a busy couple of days – for us at least. Tuesday we were in Objat, with two main purposes in mind. We have received a social security number, but not yet got the actual “Cartes Vitales”, which are the ones you present to doctors, chemists, hospitals etc. Judy discovered that for getting a prescription the social security number was enough – although we should get the Carte soon. Although this pays for most of your treatment, it is recommended that you get top-up insurance which pays the rest and will cost about €1,000 a year for both of us. One rather surprising element was that our new doctor had asked if we had had tetanus jabs recently. We haven’t, so the prescription included two doses for tetanus, diptheria and polio, which we were sternly told to take home and keep in a plastic bag in the veg drawer of the fridge, until we took them to the doctor to give to us.


The second thing we had to do was to change my mobile from pay a you go to a contract. PAYG is fine, but here the cards are time limited – even one for €25 may only be valid for a couple of months. The nice lady in the phone shop told me that if I did take out a basic low-cost contract, I would have to have a new mobile number. To keep my old one would involve a discussion with Orange customers services. After a bit of thought I decided that 1. Only a couple of people have my mobile number so telling them a new one wouldn’t be a problem, and 2. I hate talking to customer services in any language. So a new number it is.

We then went to look in the local wine merchants in the town. What a great place. A huge choice of wines, from the really expensive to, and I kid you not, the draught white at €1.20 per litre (or red or rosé) which comes via a baby petrol pump straight into your plastic bottle or other container. What a lot of experimenting we have to do….

Today we had a drive around looking for a couple of last Christmas presents. (By the way Christmas cards are on their way as soon as the lady in Voutezac post office gets a new supply of the relevant stamps). We first went to Donzenac, a really pretty mediaeval village about 20km away.

 Sadly, and not surprisingly, nearly all the interesting shops have shut over the winter, so we’ll have to keep on looking. On the way back we called in at the vet in Pompadour to check that they can give Bertie the jab for his pet passport the day before we hit the Chunnel for an English Christmas – all OK.

When we went into Brive on Friday we had a really good lunch at a very nice restaurant which specialises in Correzian dishes. So you will probably be a bit surprised to learn that on Sunday we decided to go for a drive into the Dordogne and had lunch in an Irish pub. It was nice, filling, food, and it was enjoyable chatting to the owner, but (aside from the fact we were the only customers), it isn’t difficult to understand why Irish and British food doesn’t have quite the same reputation as the French variety. Mind you we may go back again for the quiz night…..

A pretty quiet week – we’ve written all the Christmas cards, got most of the presents, and gloried in the fact that we are returning to UK for the actual celebration, so someone else can do all the hard work!

I am hoping to set up a small business here, doing property floorplans and photography. To help me with the setting up the local Franco-British Chamber of Commerce arranged for me to meet a very nice and helpful French lady from the Brive Chamber of Commerce, whose job it is to help small businesses start. She seemed reasonably impressed by my plans, and was able to explain the steps I have to take – although the system I want to be under is comparatively simple, there are still a few bureaucratic hurdles to overcome.

I’ll keep you posted.