I’m now down to single figures for the number of working days I have left. It feels pretty unreal. Plans that were about things that will happen in the future are now about what will happen in a few weeks.
Yikes!
It’s now all official with our property, with the lease signed by both parties and the deposit paid.
Ibanista were great in picking through the details. They spotted a few things that needed fixing (e.g. the landlord isn’t allowed to charge 2 months deposit).
We’re now planning a quick holiday just after I finish work so we can go and check out the place (with lazer measures in hand!) and do the formal walkthrough/ get the keys.
It will be great to see the space in-person and start to plan what will go where. We know we have a couple of challenges with the kitchen, but we also know the massive basement gives rise to options like a home gym, or a music/art room.
Spurred on by the need to finalise what we are taking with us, and the things we can’t, we’ve dived back into slimming down the bloat.
Rachel had a flurry of sales for clothes on Vinted a while back, but my efforts to get rid of things on Gumtree were frustratingly slow. This week, on the fourth attempt, I finally had a buyer actually turn up to take one of our chairs.
We’d spent last weekend clearing the garage. Lots went for recycling at the tip, some went to charity and the rest was up for grabs. So Rachel started putting it on Vinted (which turns out to be ‘Gumtree that works’) and making real progress.
Award for cheekiest sale has to go to Rachel selling our old lifejackets and asking the buyer if he was interested in my paddleboard too. And he was! It was a sweet moment seeing this massive box being collected by Parcelforce.
So suddenly we’re in the position of being legally responsible for a property from 1 June. And needing formal medical insurance. And new car insurance (we’re taking our lovely BMW with us!). And all of it is needed quickly.
Luckily the lovely folk at Ibanista put us on to Fab French Insurance who have English-speaking advisers who know how to get through the hurdles we’re facing.
Frankly, they win for the tagline ‘making insurance as simple as Frenchly possible’.
In contrast it was weirdly difficult to speak to a real person at Direct Line (they seem to have hidden the phone numbers on their site now) and was told I would actually have to renew our car insurance for a year next month, AND pay a penalty on cancelling it. Nice.
Why did it take our new landlady extra time to return the signed lease? Why couldn’t we get an instant answer on our insurance quotes?
The answer is French public holidays. There are actually four in May alone.
It’s always been a bit of a standing joke with us that things in France are never open when you think they will be. Shops are normally closed on a Monday (and sometimes a half day on Wednesday). And they seem to have public holidays all the time.
The reality isn’t quite that. While the UK has 8 bank holidays, France has just 3 more. And those closed shops? Well, match that up with longer lunches, an earlier retirement age and a better pension and you start to think maybe it’t the UK that has its priorities wrong in terms of worker rights and work/life balance.
So I’ll happily wait that extra day I think…
We’re close to the final (and biggest) milestone - getting a visa to actually be allowed to stay for a year in France.
Getting the lease for the house was a key win (and maybe the hardest to get), the health insurance is coming together, the financial details are all pretty much there….
…but I can’t help thinking ‘what if?’ If we don’t get the visa then the plans are all off, the house sale will stall and we’ll be back at square one.
I’ll be a lot happier when this part is over.
Ongoing, and recent, turns in UK politics haven’t exactly made us feel a longing to stay. To see the country shift further towards populism (in all its forms) is pretty depressing, and our aim to be in France before the somewhat inevitable outcome of a general election.
I’m not under the illusion that French politics is a bastion of sanity either, of course. There are real risks that a further shift right could herald a crack down on immigration there. We already know our chances of EU citizenship in the longer term are very slim because of changes already made.
But honestly, if I have to sit through another media-generated scandal or leadership challenge I think I might lose it!