L'intimidation

Image by Miss Blackflag via Flickr

L'Intimidation.....bullying.

A part of the French experience that doesn't surface in the books and articles about France, but I think it underlies what we, foreigners, might class as discrimination, as we see it only from what happens to ourselves, without a wider picture.

I have been brought to thinking about this by reading a discussion about discrimination on the Survive France network, then an item  on Marilyn Z Tomlins' blog about the assault on an autistic child by his classmates and...at a side angle... by a post from A Year Down the Line about something which may or may not turn out to be a problem.

A participant in the Survive France discussion, Sarah Hague, who has a super blog at St. Bloggie de Riviere, made the point that you are all right in France until the moment you stick your neck out at which point the knives come out too and I think she is right, but I also think it reaches across the whole of French society, not just, as was the focus of the Survive France discussion, in relation to the French reaction to foreigners.

Before I start, do just bear in mind that my experience of France has been garnered from living out in the sticks and what I say will necessarily reflect that experience, though from the little I've seen of the urban beaufs and bobonnes they seemed pretty similar to their rural counterparts.
Neither am I in any way a social scientist, so what follows is purely anecdotal.

Talking to French friends' children, especially those working in the private sector, the amount of harassment and bullying in the workplace related by them would not be tolerated in the U.K.....yes, just as in the U.K. there is legal resource to combat this, but there is a culture of resignation.
That's how things are.
If you're lucky enough to have a job, then you just shut up or get out....
The pressures can be appalling and the results tragic, as in the case of the multiple suicides at France Telecom, but that is the workplace culture.
Bullying.

The union structure in France does nothing to protect the average worker...outside the previously state run sectors unions hardly exist, after all. The unions exist to look after themselves and any attack on their position is met with crippling strikes.....the dockers want to be included in the 'exceptions' to the raising of the retirement age, so they strike, bringing France's maritime commerce to a halt.
Dialogue?
Forget it.....just bully.

It happens in other spheres too.
I blog frequently about the scandal of the septic tank inspections...the hidden quotas, the inequality of treatment...(here)..... where the response of the water boards to the legitimate complaints of  those concerned is to put up two fingers...or rather, this being France, just one finger... and threaten to send in the bailiffs.
Bullying.

A crooked politician wants to underpin the garden wall of his town house.
Does he pay for this himself?
No.
He causes damage to the wall on his side and calls on the neighbour on the other side to assume both the fault and the cost.
The neighbour is undergoing treatment for cancer.
The politician harasses him and his wife, night and day, with threatening telephone calls.
Bullied, they give in.

You do not, in your right mind, speak truth to power in France.

Didier has a phrase which sums it all up...
'Nous sommes pour rien...'
We count for nothing.

He knows.
An electricity line ran across the field behind his house to service an outlying house in the hamlet.
Then EDF decided that they wanted to re route the line via the roads for ease of access and proposed to run it round past Didier's house and garden. This would involve felling his plum trees, which were on the boundary.
The plum trees which supplied the raw materials for his eau de vie.
The owners of the house on the corner of the road, next door to Didier, protested.
If EDF put up new poles, they would block the drain that ran round their house and their walls would become damp.
The EDF subcontractors agreed to put the line underground to meet their objections...after all, the long term aim was to put all lines underground.
Didier asked them if they could not just extend the underground line past his property, another fifty metres...if the lines had to go underground anyway at some point.
No.
Why not?
Because they weren't obliged to do so. And who was he anyhow?
Trivial?
Not to Didier.
And the whole thing was an eyesore in a pretty hamlet.

Conformity is dinned into the French from their schooldays....individuality is not appreciated.
Not only is there only one answer...there is only one question, and woe betide you if you run over the lines of the box provided for ticking.
I don't and didn't have children going through the system but I noted with French friends' grandchildren that it suited the plodders and tended to bore the pants off the imaginative.
No wonder it produces a culture of box ticking and inflexibility.

So, kept in their place and that place well defined, is it any wonder that the French need an outlet for their frustrations?

A friend told me that in Iran the only place people feel that they control any part of their lives is when they are at the wheel...and that the driving is wild!
Well, let's look at French driving habits.
Tailgating....infuriated hooting when the lights change and the first car hasn't gone off at Mach 1...overtaking on the inside lane...overtaking on the brow of a hill...and revving their engines at full blast to do so....the coup de poisson....speeding......and as for filtering one and one at a lane closure...doesn't sound unlike the friend's description of Iranian drivers.

The behaviour I came across most often took place on a hump backed medieval bridge on the back road to town.
There was a right of way system, but just how many times, coming from the disfavoured end with nothing on the bridge, my little A3 would get half way only to find a white van, which had been invisible when I started to cross, just advancing and blocking the way.
Common sense would tell you that if you arrived at the favoured end when something was already on the bridge you would wait for it to clear, but common sense had nothing to do with it.
The white van was bigger and demanded right of way.
I have had threats of violence from the drivers of the white vans when I did not immediately reverse and this is nothing to do with discrimination...the car had local plates so until I replied they had no way of knowing that I was foreign.
It was the wish to dominate.
The wish to bully.

In relation to the threats of violence I cannot say that my replies, when being told to get off the bridge, were such as to turn away anger....more like grievous words to stir it up....but I don't like being bullied and I won't stand for it.

It strikes me that if, in France, you are not born into a family who can make your way for you in society, you are frustrated at every turn...and, if you are not of a naturally peaceful temperament, you take it out on those further down the pecking order.
Thus a frail elderly man, like my husband, was natural prey (here) for a bunch of louts encountered at a vide grenier.
If you have any sort of power, you use it, you demonstrate it, in order to maintain your status.

Now, turning to the sense of discrimination felt by immigrants, add to the mixture of ticked boxes and the pecking order the intense chauvinism of France..the land where the French believe that the best of everything is to be found...and you find a very volatile situation.

The foreigner, just by not being French, is inferior, as is his or her culture.
His or her knowledge and experience counts for nothing as not being French.
Thus, in whatever situation, the French view should prevail.
Even if the French view as presented is totally illegal in the French system and would be laughed to scorn by any other French person...particularly a Parisian. (here)

There is an underlying feeling that a person who does not speak the same language is stupid...and is thus a mark, to be taken advantage of.....and how annoyed are the partisans of this view when the 'mark' refuses to have advantage taken.
How, I might wonder in passing, is one to speak the same language when it is a patois unintelligible to people living only a hundred kilometres away, but this is a problem which does not trouble for one moment the speaker of patois concerned.

I had a problem of this sort years ago with the contractor who was installing a septic tank at a house I was renovating. He was weeks behind schedule and the only way to get him on the job was to track him down every week and nag him.
He didn't like it and neither did I.
Just before Christmas, job still not finished, he turned up at my house demanding payment.
I told him he would be paid when he finished the job.
He looked round at my house and its setting and said

'I see where your money goes, keeping up this place...no wonder you can't pay poor men's bills...'

It was like having a conversation on railway tracks diverging at the points.
He genuinely thought that he could shame me into paying him for something he had not done.
I had money, he wanted it...despite not having finished the job.
It was like dealing with a very primitive organism.
But at least the hostilities remained at the verbal level; he did not try violence, which is what happened to a friend (here) in similar circumstances.

The other side of this coin is the refusal to understand anything you, the immigrant, might say.

One part of this is that common phenomenon....
'This is a foreigner, he or she doesn't speak French - even when you are addressing them in that language - so I can't understand.'
A sort of panic.

The other part is a refusal to believe that anything the immigrant might say could have any value.

I had asked for a speed limit sign on the stretch of road by my house, where the local hillbillies used to come screaming off a bend into a short straight just before running into the ditch on the next bend at the limit of my property.
Formalities and begging letter to the President of the Conseil General completed, a road engineer turned up and so, by sheer coincidence, did the Maire.

Me to road engineer

'You can see the problem...they pick up speed coming out of that bend and lose control on the next one.

Maire to road engineer

'There's no need for this at all, the road is perfectly straight between here and St. Ragondin.'

Me to Maire, pointing with both arms to the bends at either end of the straight

'What are those then? Scotch mist?'

Maire to road engineer

'The road is perfectly straight.'

The matter was resolved by producing the letter from the President of the Conseil General authorising the work..a copy of which had been sent to the Maire in any case, but it was an interesting experience.

There is also the commonly held view that economic life is a pie diagram...and the more fingers in the pie (immigrants) the less plums there are for the French.

Following on from the chauvinism, where everything French is best, it is clear that immigrants only come to France to take advantage of what it provides, thus taking what rightfully should be available only to the French themselves.

Chance would be a fine thing!

The hoops you have to jump through to get anywhere with what is laughingly called a system in France would baffle all but the most hardened benefit cheat....there are times when it baffles even the French!

Like a lot of things, you have to be able to understand French and how France works - not in order to avoid discrimination, but to understand how and why it operates.

It is not universal, luckily, but it does exist and it seems to me that some of the people who claim never to have been discriminated against are those who could be said to have integrated well......

In that they are as supine and unquestioning as the majority of those of their host nation.

Gas attack at the bottom of the market

The small house has finally been sold. The bottom of the housing market in France has been called - unless the market detects that I will be putting the big house up for sale soon and decides to wait until the day after that sale for prices to start soaring.

The whole affair has been a nightmare, from agents pushing for low estimates, through endless internet clients who seem to be more interested in house tourism than in house buying, to the final straw, the refilling of the gas tank to test the heating system.

On the way there has been the neighbour who decided to put off potential clients as he liked the house being empty....
The sight of M. Crasseux hirpling over the sward in his cap and dressing gown to warn visitors that all was not as it seemed with the house was enough to deter all but the stout hearted until, hearing about this from one agent, I asked the local maire to intervene.

He reported back, exasperated.

I went to see him and I asked him what he thought he was doing.
He said he was just trying to prevent people from being ripped off by foreigners.
What's wrong with the house, then?
It's owned by a foreigner. Stands to reason there'll be something dodgy.
Why?
Because they're foreigners.

His visit must have achieved something, though, as in future M. Crasseux kept himself to himself on visiting days.
His home help told me why, some time later.
Well, the maire threatened to 'take notice' that his septic tank wasn't in order....

Considering that he doesn't have one at all, that was quite mild in the cirumstances, but it seemed to have done the trick.
Personally, seeing that the foreign clients probably didn't understand M. Crasseux' patois, I thought that it was not his dire warnings of
'Blow wind! Come wrack!'
that had done the damage, but just the mere horror of having him as a neighbour.

Living the dream consists of contemplating life from over the rim of  a glass of wine while sitting in the garden listening to the birdsong.
It definitely does not include the irruption of a testy pensioner tastefully clad in ill assorted patterns of plaid, gesticulating wildly while incomprehensible sounds emerge from between the false teeth.
Visions like this only form part of living the dream once the dreamers have fallen into the hands of the local Britpack and have taken to imbibing the rough five litre cubis from the supermarket.

There has been the person minding the house and garden who was never available to show people over it, reasoning that thus his employment would last longer....
Slight error of judgement there, sir. Good luck with the rest of your clients.

There was the man who drove from Holland in a snowstorm, only to say he thought it was a bit far away for a weekend retreat....

There was the woman from Holland who didn't like the kitchen....
Hoping for helpful feedback, I asked what was wrong.
It's much too big. People will expect me to cook.

There was the English man who said he had encountered two English people in the town on the way through and he wasn't going to live in an English colony.
I thought about an introduction to M. Crasseux but rejected the idea as counterproductive.

And so it went on....

Eventually, an energetic French agent appeared with a young couple who wanted a house with a garden, big enough for them, their two small children and all the rest they proposed to produce as long as the process was tax efficient.
Small problem, they needed a bank loan.

Before my eyes, they embarked on a procedure which was about to add another third to the price of the house, in order to satisfy the bank that the house was fit to loan money upon.

Now, this is a house dating from the late eighteenth century.
The stone walls are at least one metre thick, and when it was renovated, the roofs were insulated and new double glazed windows installed. It faces south, is always warm and cheap to heat.
In order to meet new 'green' guidelines, the whole house has to be dry lined!
In order to get the loan, the new guidelines have to be followed.

The young couple thus find themselves saddled with a loan much larger than they had envisaged, for something that does not need to be done, in order to put a roof over their heads.

Undeterred they went ahead, so I was obliged to undertake - pay for - the plethora of obligatory inspections, looking for wet and dry rot, death watch beetle, woodworm, asbestos, lead and, of course, the state of the electricity gas and water installations.

I have had some rum inspections in my time....
The house I was buying where a full inspection was done, which surprised me as the place was barred by a chain without a lock and to gain access it was necessary to break down the door - something the inspectors had clearly not done in order to carry out their work.
The house I was selling where I had stripped all the old  paint down to bare wood and repainted it. The inspector duly found lead.
How?
These machines are really sensitive...they'll find a spot of paint imbedded in the wood under five coats of new stuff!
Pity I'd stopped at four, then, wasn't  it.

We overcame the question of why there wasn't a T.V. point in every room - it hadn't been in the norms when the electricity had been installed.
It had been a miracle in my view that there had ever been an electrical installation at all.
I had asked the electricity board to put power on to the house and had requested an underground connection from the pole on the other side of the road.
Refused. It had to be an overhead connection.
Overhead connection installed.
Request made for an initial working point, to do the renovations.
Refused.
Why?
There was only an overhead connection. A working point could not be installed with an overhead connection.
I managed to find a way round this - oddly enough by using M. Crasseux's electricity supply, at his suggestion.
Electricity installed.
Applied for the inspection.
Installation refused a certificate.
Checked the inspector's points with an independent electrician who said there wasn't a problem at all.
Forced to pay for second inspection.
Passed.
No certificate.
Many telephone calls and two registered letters later, it appeared that the certificate had been sent to an office of the electricity board miles away.
A month later, the certificate arrived.
So there was something to inspect when it came round to selling, even if there wasn't a T.V. point in the loo.

As the house had been empty, I had not refilled the gas tank, but, to test the system, gas was required.
The gallant agent stepped in here, as I was showing signs of imminent terminal temper failure.
She would see to it.

I am heartily glad that she did, in view of what was to follow.

I had given her a copy of my contract with the supplier, so she contacted their office at Tours, to order 200 kilograms of gas - enough for the test.
Two weeks later she received the invoice -  for 2000 kilograms of gas.
She rang.
No, that was what she had ordered.
No, she hadn't.
Yes she had or it would not have been delivered.
Who was their local rep?
She could not be told. That was confidential commercial information.

As the agent is French, this was not a case of being difficult with foreigners. This is merely an example of the lack of commercial culture in  France. How the place survives at all is a mystery to me.

By approaching the local rep of their commercial rival, she eventually unearthed the company's own rep, who seemed genuinely surprised to hear from anyone at all. As well he might.

She entered negotiations. She produced her written order. He hummed, harred and telephoned Tours.
The gas would come in handy.
Not to her client it wouldn't. She was selling the house.
Then the new owners would like it.
Very likely, but they didn't want to pay for it and her client certainly wasn't going to do so.
But someone would have to pay.
Very likely, but that was his problem.

Two weeks later again, a new invoice was issued for 1000 kilograms.
Good try, Tours, but not good enough.
It took her another week to get an invoice for the amount ordered and, finally, the system could be tested.
It worked.

The sale could proceed. It has proceeded.

I have the money. They have the house.

The agent has high blood pressure.

I know how she feels.


Photograph by Maurizio Blasetti.

Let's get back to the sheep....

Image via Wikipedia

It is evening on our little farm in Costa Rica.
The heavy scent from the papaya flowers pervades the house.
We planted these trees from seeds from a super tasting fruit eighteen months ago and now we have four trees which are higher than the roof, laden with green fruit which will ripen in our absence.

We have eaten mango from our own trees for breakfast, together with coffee from our own bushes.
We have had elevenses of coconut milk from the green coconuts on the palms behind the house.

The orchids which fell from the trees in the last storm are starting to flower on our balcony.
The vanilla vine is starting its' climb up the support provided for it and we hope for the first pods next year.

We have plantains to cook, guinea to cook or to eat and bananas by the hand.
I would love to be able to bring two or three hands of our bananas to Europe for friends...never being a banana lover I have been converted by eating them fresh from the stem and I would love to share the experience.

Friends will just have to come to see us.

Well, after the Lord Mayor's Procession of our trip into Nicaragua and Honduras, comes the dustcart...I am about to set out for deepest France again and I am not particularly looking forward to the trip.

I also wonder whether I shall be happy to be back. Distance lends perspective and although Costa Rica is by no means a paradise,  time away from France has been time for reflection.

I have finally managed to sell the last remaining small house and the whole process has been a nightmare from start to what I sincerely hope will be a finish on Friday - though I suspect it will be fifteen rounds with the notaire on Capital Gains Tax and a sharp tussle to get my hands on the cheque on the day of the sale.
All hassle I could live without.
When I bought the farm in Costa Rica, I checked the Land Registry for title in the morning and by afternoon the purchase was completed.
The contrast is startling.

We know that we have to downsize - the effects of winter on the garden being the final blow - so I have to start the dispiriting round of agents again for the sale of the big place.

I have already decided that the first one to start sucking teeth will be out of the door on the end of my foot and that any local one who tells me that he knows what I paid for the place will swiftly follow.
What is it about the French that they think that what you paid for a mouldering wreck has any relation to the fine upstanding house you are about to sell many years down the line?
Inevitably I will get one who will gloat about the British leaving France because they have run out of money - indicating that he thinks I am in the same position - so the foot will be employed again before he can offer his insulting estimate.

It occurs to me that I'd best buy a stout pair of boots before starting to contact agents or I'll soon have sore toes.

The tax forms will be arriving soon, the insurance company - from whom I parted company years ago - will be threatening me with bailiffs for not paying them to insure a house I sold seven years' ago , the water technician will be wanting to discuss demolishing one of my weirs - for which read 'we are going to do it anyway' - so that will involve yet more useless lawyers to challenge the decision, and I must remember not to try to change one hundred dollar bills as these have to be passed via the French Central Bank and will take five weeks to return to my bank account in euros.

Still, as Roz's photographs on Dirty feet and rubble in my hair remind me, there will be compensations.

The fruit trees should be flowering and there might even be some asparagus if it hasn't been nicked.
The spring bulbs should be performing which will give me heart as I check the poor tender plants to see if there is any sign of new life after the winter's killing spree.
I'll catch up with friends.

It might be all right after all.

All I now have to do is get up at 4.00 am, get the plane to Mexico City, wait seven hours for the connection to Madrid, then see if Iberia are actually laying on coaches for the Madrid to Paris leg as their website says they are, and if not, leg it over to Estacion Sur to try to book a seat on Eurolines the same day. If I cannot, then get a hotel until I can get a flight or a seat - and don't talk to me about catching a train as the alternatives are either taking local trains which take twenty two hours to reach the destination, or a con trip train which offers showers and inedible meals for a price to take my breath away.

So as the local sheep shagging fraternity say
'Revenons-en a nos moutons'.
Back to France it is.

Living the nightmare

Image by Hunter333 via Flickr

A friend has asked me to look over a document translated from French to English on behalf of a friend of hers and, although I have given up on all this stuff, I agree.

After all, it's Sunday and as I am not allowed to vote for the so and sos who will be throwing my money away on wild projects like building skating rinks at a time of economic armageddon, I am confined to the house, so I might as well.

It downloads....just the English version.

I am old enough to remember Japanese imports arriving together with the helpful translation of how to assemble or to use same, which made you think that either Japanese translators were not up to much, or else that disgruntled ex POWs were doing their best to scuttle the Japanese export drive.
Since father, many of whose friends had gone into the bag at Singapore, never to emerge, would have nothing Japanese in the house, my knowledge was acquired at the houses of friends whose fathers - considerably younger than mine - were to be found wrestling with parts and instructions which seemed to have absolutely no correlation.

I learned several new and interesting words at these moments.
Especially from Rhonwen's father.
He used the same ones when finding us descending the main staircase at speed on a silver tray which was designated for the drawing room.

Well, Rhonwen's father's vocabulary would have been useful to describe my reaction to the translation before me.
By long acquaintance with French documents, I grasped what it was supposed to be about, but there was no way I would have guessed otherwise.

I 'phoned my friend.

Where was the original?

With the translator.

Could I see it?

Umm..she'd see...

Well, that was on Sunday and on Monday she rang back.

Her friend's translator wouldn't let her have the original back until she had been paid for the translation.

So how come the translation was in her hands but not the original?

Well, she needed that for her bank in the U.K. urgently, so the translator let her have that, but not the original.

And has she sent that to her bank?

Yes, but that was when she realised she didn't understand it.

It sounds a bit weird. When I use official translators, they send me the whole shebang together with a bill.

Oh, she didn't use an official translator. She got an English woman who teaches French to do it.

What, someone who teaches French in France? How did she manage to get a job?

Oh no, not in school...she teaches French to other English.

The scales fell from my eyes...yet another case of the blind leading the blind and expecting compensation for use of the white stick.

Further enquiry revealed that my friend's friend had aired her problem at a get together of British immigrants and had been told that Mrs. X would see to it for her.

Mrs. X did indeed see to it. She made a dreadful hash of the translation, assured the friend that the only reason she didn't understand it was because it was a legal document and presented a bill of eye watering proportions.

No, Mrs. X does not work on the black...she is a declared auto entrepreneur, though I would have thought that translation demands a bit more than just stating that you do it for money...translation, that is.

I use official translators when I am forced to do so by French regulations - usually for stupid things like a birth certificate which has to have been obtained no longer than three months before it is required for whatever beaurocratic process demands it.
Absurd.
You're only born once, so why can't the original certificate be used?
Because in France, at every step of the way, someone has to be paid.

However, occasionally I need something more complicated to be officially translated and in my experience they have done a good job at quite reasonable rates - but I don't use agencies where the boss creams off the profits and the translators get a poor deal.

Mrs. X is demanding a hell of a lot more than I think a real translator would ask, and she is hanging on to the original until the friend's friend divvies up.

My friend has rung again.

Her friend has paid up and had her document returned.
She complained that it was impossible to understand it and been told yet again that it was a legal document so she wouldn't be able to understand it...in any language.
You need, it seems, the superior intelligence of Mrs. X for that.

She then said that it wasn't just her. I had said it was incomprehensible too.

That was when the solids hit the fan.

Why had she gone to me? Didn't she know what a trouble maker I was? Didn't she know that I was more French than the French (!) and out to make sure no one British could get any work? Goodness, the trouble I had caused for poor Brits just trying to scratch a living over the years..... And who was I anyway to say whether a translation was any good!

The upshot of all that was that my friend has been upbraided by her friend for getting me to look over the translation and thus putting her...friend of friend...in hot water with the local Brits.

And that is why I don't do these sort of favours any more. Election day must have gone to my head.

Paris and the provinces

Image by cbertel via Flickr

 I was reading a pleasant article...though I have now forgotten where...by a chap who had been visiting Paris and was surprised how friendly everyone was which was contary to its reputation and his expectations.
I don't often go to Paris....usually crossing it is enough for me, from one station to the other....but I have only twice met with rudeness there in over twenty years of intermittent visits. On both occasions it was from a person safely esconced behind a counter and a glass wall.

As a tourist, I used to go occasionally to Paris, staying in the cheap hotels round the Gare du Nord. Now, if I have to go for any reason, I stay in the slightly more upmarket hotels in the same area...the ones with bathrooms. Then as now, the hotel staff are Algerian. The local shops are Algerian. The little cafes where I look for lunch or supper do not have maitre d's..they have Italian waiters who are kindness itself.

There must be another Paris which I do not have enough money to frequent.

I have met only one other rude Parisian, and I met her in London. She was trying to find the School of African and Oriental Studies of London University and was clearly lost. From her question as to directions, it was clear that she was French, from Paris and that her English was not up to much, so I thought I would help by replying in French. She looked rather as if I had just slapped her between the eyes with a wet fish, then, eyeing me with a contempt that was palpable, she continued in her execrable English.
I am afraid I directed her to Kings Cross where I thought she would feel more at home.

Seeking approval, the British who buy a house in the French countryside are delighted to be told by  local people that they would prefer to have foreigners - well (unspoken) white non-muslim foreigners - than Parisians as neighbours.
I think this is a sort of back handed compliment, and long observation leads me to believe that this is because the Parisian is far more wary and on the lookout for rural craftiness than the starry eyed British immigrant looking for a dream.

There has long been an urban/rural split in France.
When I was househunting all those years ago, it was long before the days when every gite and bed and breakfast was being run by a beaming Brit, and I stayed mostly with urban French who had retired to the country.
To a man they were scathing about their rural neighbours.

'Watch out when they smile at you...it means they've got one over on you.'
'Off to church every Sunday...from what they get up to they should be on their knees in there all day every day.'
'Keep your hens locked up.'
'Count your fingers.'

This view is not new.
'Ignorant, full of prejudices, they have no scruples in craft or in deceit.' Thus an officer speaking of the country people around Le Mans in the 1860s.(1)

Country people were held - by the urbanites - to be uncouth savages, ignorant and cunning.

Well, from some of the stories I have been told about youth and growing up in the French countryside between the wars here, it was a damned hard life if you were on the bottom of the heap, so what it had been like in earlier centuries passes the powers of imagination. Lack of education, superstition, bigotry and poverty are not the best feeding grounds for ethics and morality.

However, the old habits linger.
The village feuds carry on down the years - luckily, as foreigners, we are excused boots in this regard.
The delight in getting one over on someone else...here we are the perfect targets as not being part of the fabric of the feuds so lessening the chances of retribution.
The avidity for land which leads to endless boundary disputes.
The jealousy. Monsieur X might have three centimes...he begrudges Monsieur Y one.

It is far from universal. There are many kind hearted and helpful people in the countryside, but they are not generally the ones wielding any power.

Book after book and blog after blog relate tales of crafty maires trying to put something over on a foreigner and it is all laughed off as being part of the rich experience and privilege of living in rural France.

It is nothing of the sort. The rose coloured spectacles should be lifted to admit that these guys are taking advantage of the lack of experience and lack of language of foreigners moving into their communes. People who pay taxes.
I have posted earlier here about public and private enterprise in the matter of land and boundaries. You can bet anyone's boots that these shenanigans would not have been tried on a Parisian.
There is a Paris based judge with a holiday home near St. Ragondin. He is deeply unpopular with his farming neighbours for refusing them permission to use a ditch which crosses his land for farm waste.
It wouldn't surprise me if the dafter type of Brit would be persuaded it was his civic duty and evidence of his willingness to integrate to accept.

So, if you're moving to the provinces, make friends with your Parisian neighbour. He has suspicion built into his genes and might well save you from a host of problems.














(1). I am indebted to Eugene Weber's 'Peasants into Frenchmen: the Modernisation of Rural France 1870 - 1914' for the quote.