Another one of those days

This is what all of my days are like now, and probably will be until I eventually move out of my house at the end of this month.

I woke up just before 5.00am (having got to bed last night at 12.00am) with my mind racing about a problem to do with my house sale. I told the buyers that due to the diagnostics report saying that my gas hob has ‘anomolies’, the easiest solution would be for me to change it for an electric one. But it turns out that it’s not – my old fusebox doesn’t have enough circuits for an additional 16A supply and it would be crazy to upgrade it now as the electrical supply is soon to be buried in the garden (rather than coming in via overhead line) and that would be the ideal time to move all of the outmoded boxes outside in advance of a planned kitchen upgrade.

I have found out that in order to resolve the previously mentioned ‘anomolies’ with the existing gas hob, two ventilation holes, one at high level and the other low, each of 100cm2 would need to be banged through the walls of the kitchen. It would be madness to do that now as I know that the buyer wants to have a ceramic hob in the future at which time the holes would be unnecessary, and who wants to have holes that big in your walls connecting direct to the outside and letting freezing cold air into the room in the winter?

So I needed to write a long and detailed email to my buyers explaining my reasoning and I’m now waiting for a reply. I hope that they see sense – I think they probably will.

Then onto my next job – arranging a sterling transfer from my UK bank to euros in my French bank account. This was a big priority as I have a meeting tomorrow afternoon to finalise my land purchase and the full funds have to be in the account of the seller’s notaire by that time. Despite the £ not being quite as high against the € as I had hoped I did the transfer on line before mid-morning which should usually be in plenty of time.

Then moving on again. I have a meeting on site with a prospective contractor tomorrow morning. He has a good understanding of the problems that were involved in getting my house approved and he requested having a full copy of the ‘demand de permis construire’ and the ‘arreté’ that I received giving me the approval that I needed. This involved scanning umpteen pages onto my computer, packaging them up and getting them across to him on line, a task that required quite a lot of time and effort.

Then it was time to check on the progress of my currency transfer. The UK end reported that the funds had gone but there was no sign of them arriving in France. OK, time to continue with other things, namely to create a ‘declaration préalable’, which is a dossier similar to a ‘demand de permis de construire’ and submitted in duplicate to the Mairie in order to obtain permission to place a caravan on the construction site before and during the building works.

This is yet another bureaucratically demanding device that can be created on line but which you have to spend quite a bit of time and effort on in order not to make any errors that would result in it being summarily rejected. You also have to create detailed plans showing the terrain and the proposed siting of the caravan on it plus I was advised by ‘Urbanisme’ at Rouffignac that it would also be helpful if I could mock-up a photograph of the caravan on the land, much as you have to do for the ‘demande de permis de construire’ for the house that you propose to build.

So once again, a lot of work that eventually brought me up towards the end of the ‘normal’ working day, approaching 5.00pm. So time to check again on the currency transfer and no sign of it, which began to cause me some concern, so I decided to ring my bank in Montignac which was fortunately open until 6.00pm today. And I tred and tried for at least 10 minutes but just kept getting the message ‘all of our lines are engaged’. I got through once but as soon as the banal music-on-hold started I was immediately cut off and I was back into the same cycle.

So this was beginning to be something of a crisis and there was nothing left to do other than drive to the bank personally. When I did and explained my problem I was told in a very off-hand way that this time-scale was usual in France and that a transfer made any time today would not hit my French bank account until tomorrow. I was gob-smacked. I then asked how long it would then take to do my ‘local’ transfer which needed to be effected by mid-day tomorrow and was told in the same off-hand way that that would also not hit the receiver’s bank account until the following day.

I was truly appalled by how hopelessly inefficient the system is here in France. A transfer that would take minutes in the UK (let’s say up to 2 hours in order to allow for possdible blips) takes 2 days here. I was disgusted and turned on my heel and walked out, not for the first time I might add.

There was nothing more that I could so it was time for some refreshment when I got home before moving on to the next job – removing the old caravan fridge in readiness for installing the new one which is now standing in my kitchen. It took a bit of working out and some careful disassembly so as not to do any damage to its wooden surround into which the new fridge will slide, but I eventually succeeded, bar undoing a single gas connection, at 9.30pm.

An hour or so ago I checked my French bank account and lo-and-behold my transfer had arrived. I tried to do a transfer on line myself to the seller of the land’s notaire but was not allowed to as it was above my permitted ceiling. So more time was then spent typing an email emphasising the urgency and instructing the bank to make the transfer on my behalf as early as possible tomorrow morning. I’ll need to contact the notaire as soon as possible after my site meeting tomorrow to see what the position is regarding finalising my land purchase that afternoon, but I’m not optimistic.

So a long day, as they all are at the moment. After typing this I hope to be in bed before 12.00am and it would be really nice to have an undisturbed night’s sleep as I’m not getting enough hours and am now beginning to feel the effects. I knew that this wouldn’t exactly be a fun period but I have to say, it’s turning out to be quite a lot worse than I originally expected.