Normal service will be resumed....

Image by Wisconsin Historical Images via Flickr

Summer is over, and life returns to normal.

Families are storming the aisles of the supermarkets in search of school notebooks with pages divided into little squares...which I feel somehow accounts for the way the French think...firmly within the box with the lid nailed down.

Having returned from their holidays, the railway workers are going on strike shortly, but this might be preferable to what happened recently while they were still at work when some bright spark managed to mix up the front and the back of the train at Lyon station so that those going to Milan ended up in Zurich and those going to Zurich ended up in Milan.
Fans of Fawlty Towers will not be surprised to hear that the train came from Barcelona and that the driver knows nothing.

A person somewhat detached from reality drove into the courtyard of the President's residence, the Elysee Palace, at four in the morning...only it wasn't the usual person somewhat detached from reality who is still on holiday in the south of France taking a break from presidential duties.
Let no one blame the gendarme responsible....considering what he must see passing him on a daily basis - ministers, politicians, foreign dignitaries - a car with a flashing light must have appeared quite innocuous.
Even at four in the morning.

Gypsies of Roumanian origin are being returned to Roumania, whence they will return to France in due course, thanks to the open borders of the European Union and the services of Eurolines.

Gypsies not of Roumanian origin are being moved from noticeable encampments to less noticeable encampments  so that they 'cannot be found' by tax inspectors reluctant to enter into dialogue with the owners of top of the range cars, caravans and chainsaws.
This must be part of the campaign to reduce government spending as I calculate that for every tax inspector entering a 'travelling people's' encampment - here - you would need to add the services of a platoon of riot police; the tear gas and rubber bullets associated with same; the services of ambulance, fire brigade and hospital personnel, the cost to the social security system of the resulting time off work of all those enumerated above and, last of all, the big expense - the fees of the spin doctors who will present the fiasco as a success for the law and order campaign.

Austerity is the watchword..not that any politician dares use it...but, as usual, it is more do as I say rather than do as I do.
Having announced big cuts in ministerial budgets and arranging to sell off quantities of government property to pre-selected bodies, the President still sees fit to maintain his official residence off the coast of the south of France even though he actually spends his summer hols with the in-laws at Cap Negre nearby.
However, he did use the fort to have a meeting with his Prime Minister and two other colleagues recently....either to justify hanging on to the place or because he was ashamed to have people visit a house with sewage disposal problems.

Out in the sticks, though, local government has been listening.
The big end of summer event locally is a fete with demonstrations of old farming machinery..... real 'Walter-Gabriel-falls-in-the-threshing-machine' stuff....and tractor agility competitions.
It attracts a lot of farmers, and anything that attracts a lot of farmers attracts a lot of local politicians, anxious to court their votes.

Wherever you have politicians you have speeches and this fete is no exception.
First up is the deputy....the member of parliament.
He belongs to the opposition so has no access to the gravy train. Thus his speech is full of promises about what he would do if he could.
Next up is the local member of the Conseil General...the county councillor.
He belongs to the majority political party, but the opposition controls the county council and the regional council, so his access to the gravy train is extremely limited too and his speech is thus a mirror image of that of the deputy.....just reverse everything.
Then we have the leader of the Pays.......a body which claims to represent the local communes. He wants to know what the first two speakers are going to do about all the things that they have carefully not mentioned in their speeches.
Finally we have the maire of the commune which houses the fete and we turn at last to serious matters.

'Who is going to pay for the vin d'honneur?'

Now, in rural France, people are willing to put up with the endless speeches. They are the tax you pay for access to the table full of glasses and the racks of bottles and casks behind......the vin d'honneur.

Normally, for this fete, the Conseil General provide the wherewithal, but, as the maire points out to the audience who are by now in a state between open revolt and cardiac arrest, this year, it has decided it cannot afford to do so.

After a great deal of extempore oratory from the floor the maire calls for order and announces that, exceptionally, the commune will pay.
Clearly he has prepared his coup well in advance as minions promptly appear with tables, paper covers and boxes of glasses while others push in trolleys with the casks and bottles and the usual rush of the gadarene swine begins, to the hum of approval for the maire's respect for rural tradition.

For once, the politicians do not circulate, but make a discreet departure, shaking hands with the beaming maire.

I am not so sure that the inhabitants of his commune will be so happy when they get their local tax demands next year, though.

The funding of local authorities has changed under the Sarkozy regime and the Taxe Professionelle - the tax on businesses - has been abolished. Unfortunately, this was one of the main resources of income for local government, so while business rejoices home owners tremble.
After all, when in search of revenue, the easiest thing is to go for assets which cannot be hidden....like property.....and it has been estimated that the average homeowner will be paying about 200 euros extra on their property tax bill next year to compensate for the loss of the Taxe Professionelle.

Not content with that, the local land registries have been geed up to make a re-evaluation of property values with a view to raising the tax base and, accordingly, I have received a form H1 with an annexe to form H1 which requires me to enumerate the number of shower trays and washbasins I possess and to venture out with a tape measure to confirm the extent of my outbuildings.
Among other things.

I have a source at the local Land Registry.
Deep Thirst.

Deep Thirst tells me that the panic is on. Apparently, there hasn't been a re-evaluation for years with the result that old houses which had been given a minimum of wash basins and shower trays in the 1970s are taxed at a higher rate than houses which acquired their washbasins and shower trays later.
I know this to be true.

Despite reporting that I had converted a two bedroom house to a four bedroom house in the 1990s, I was still paying less property tax than did my neighbour with a two bedroom house which had been assessed in the 1970s. No one in that period was interested in the property tax...they had the Taxe Professionelle.

However, this being rural France, while the panic might be on, the panic is selective.

Deep Thirst informs me that while I have received an H1 and its' annexe, as have the Americans who bought the place at the other end of the commune, the notaire who managed to sell the Americans the house together with two fields which did not, as it happened, belong to it, and who is busy converting the stables and outbuildings of the chateau in the next commune, has not and will not be the happy recipient of an HI and annexe.
Neither will farmers.

I must get out more often....

Image by Ped-X-Ing via Flickr

Life, such as it is in deepest France where it seems to move with all the elan of treacle on emery board, is passing me by.

I realised this when taking a local trip lately, going into the town to take the train. Things have changed radically since my last encounters with the railway system when crossing France and when making my escape from the hexagon.
Neither event was all that long ago, either, so what winds of change are blowing across the local landscape?

First, on pulling into the carpark, I noticed the absence of a dear friend.
The portacabin, in which the harassed ticket clerk has been operating for at least a year despite it nearly being blown away in the great storm in March.
The storm which blew roofs off  houses, uprooted trees and had electricity supplies cut for days.
The day after, the clerk struggled into work, taking detours to avoid roads blocked by fallen timber, only to find an indignant lady on the doorstep of his bijou workplace.

Where had he been? He should have been open some time ago? Was this what he called public service?
He apologised.
Had madame been worried that she would be unable to travel? The first train - for which read bus service - did not leave for another ten minutes in which time  he could issue her a ticket.

No. But as there were power cuts and her television wasn't working she thought it would be a good time to drop into the portacabin and check the logistics for the family journey to a wedding in the south of France later that year.

Gently, he explained that as there were power cuts, his computer would not be working either, but he offered to look up all the options on his printed timetables if she did not mind it taking a little more time.

She bridled.
No, that would not do at all.
She wanted up to date information, so it was no use trying to fob her off with that old fashioned stuff.
What sort of an idiot did he take her for?

Being in the (semi) public service he decided it was best not to give  a transparent response to this particular customer request and she took herself off to join the vast queue at the one local baker who still cooked  in a wood fired oven and who wasn't too grand to make his bread by hand, while the clerk assumed tranquil possession of his domain.

Not only had the portacabin gone but the station had been repainted, while the swinging doors that always made me feel like John Wayne entering the saloon every time I went to buy a ticket had been replaced by sliding doors that opened on my approach.
Very sinister. French railways is watching you.
The plastic bucket type seating had been replaced by rather natty metal benches....clearly it has been considered that with all the improvements the public will not be minded to use them as offensive weapons when queueing behind the ladies who are seeking alternative thrills when their televisions don't work.

More to the point, our  push me pull you train, which was great once you had sorted out your ice axe and crampons in order to climb up into it, has been replaced by a modern push me pull you, which might well look as if a TGV has given birth to a midget but which has access at platform level.
If you have never travelled on a French train, you have no idea of the relief this change of access has accorded me.
No more flying trapeze work to load your luggage, no more ruptured tights....except once you glide aboard you discover that the French mania for complication has been too strong for common sense and that the whole thing is divided by steps into different levels and that, while there are two racks for bicycles, there are no luggage storage areas, so if you want to keep an eye on your baggage, you have to sit on a pull down seat by the door to protect it from the attentions of the third person to board with a bicycle who inevitably thinks his machine more worthy than your luggage of  the place lodged behind the toilets where it won't fall over.

There were already people waiting on the natty new benches.
Long experience has taught people to get their ticket early in case they end up behind the sensation seekers who want to book their summer holiday train in March at the precise moment that the one of the three trains a day is about to depart.
Among the travellers, three black men.
I have no idea of what PC term is currently in favour, so cannot use it. Not that I would if I did, to be fair.

Now, in that town, I was aware of only one black family....so to find three black men in the waiting room was quite a surprise.
The social leaven must at last have reached deepest France.
North African doctors have become a commonplace at the local hospital, though not in the population at large, but black faces still draw attention.

With none of the modern qualms about whether or not to mention their presence the clerk explained to me that they were part of the consultancy engaged by the local council at vast expense to reorganise the diabolic mini roundabout system which has endangered life and limb in the town for the last three years, ever since it had been spawned by a previous administration with nothing better to do and European Union money within reach of its' sticky fingers.

Clearly the leaven has only a temporary shelf life.

The push me pull you drew in and disgorged its' passengers, among whom was a gentleman whose ruddy complexion glowed undaunted between a jaunty tyrolean hat complete with feather and sidewhiskers which had decided that 'side' was not enough and had thus extended their empire over the whole lower face.

Eyeing the passengers on the benches he stopped dead and delivered himself of a diatribe to the effect that he, long time inhabitant of Ste. Felicite en Terre, had never thought to see the day when not only foreigners but black foreigners would be infecting the fair land of France.
He, his father, grandfather and ancestors had fought to preserve a country and its values against adulteration by outside influence and cross breeding with outsiders.
He did not pay taxes to support foreigners in idleness while good decent French people worked their fingers to the bone just to scratch a living.
The country was going to the dogs.
France for the French!
Vive Le Pen!

And with this endorsement of the leader of the far right National Front he stepped boldly out into the car park.

As the doors closed behind him, we all looked at each other and without comment began to board the train as the inevitable last minute client approached the ticket office.
He wanted to check the trains for a place near Lyon - or about one hundred kilometres from Lyon - that he had read about in the local rag's weekend holiday supplement, but whose name he could not remember.

The doors opened again to reveal Monsieur Le Pen's loyal supporter.
He, long time inhabitant of Ste.Felicite en Terre, had somehow overlooked the fact that his home town was one stop up the line and that he had missed it. He needed to get back on the train which was about to leave.
But the would be holidaymaker had come up with several likely suggestions for the clerk to investigate and, in true French fashion, was giving place to no one....

As I say, I need to get out more often and see a bit of life.



Acknowledgement.  I am sure that I have dredged up the name of Ste. Felicite en Terre from a novel I read about Brittany, but I cannot remember the name of the author. Thanks to him, though, whoever he is.