October 26th - Compare and contrast …

26/10/2007 by Brigid.

The day after the electricians’ surprise appearance on our doorstep, M. Dufour had rung to say that, désolé, they would not be able to start after all, as ‘Nicolas’ was ill and had been signed off until Monday. Having been conditioned by ever-reliable British workmen, this came as no surprise at all. However, M. Dufour promised that Nicolas and his mate would be with us at 8.30am on Monday morning.

If you have read the ‘About us’ section, you will know that when we bought our house in 2002, it had been partially converted into two flats by the previous owners. We had two front doors, two kitchens and 2 bathrooms, as well as a wheelchair-accessible shower room. All that was required to complete the separation, was the construction of a partition wall at ground level and the addition of a simple staircase. Oh, and of course, new meters for the divided gas, electricity and water supplies. The electricians’ brief, therefore, is to modernise the electrical installation in, what was, the lower flat, and to reunite the two supplies, so that we can remove one of the meters. Simple really.

In the event, Nicolas and Sebastian were with us at 8.15am on Monday. They were armed with M. Dufour’s handwritten list of the necessary work and, pleasantries exchanged, set to work with gusto. Nicolas was still a bit croaky from his bug and, while he didn’t complain, one had to admit that the ground floor kitchen, with its draughty louvre windows, was a bit ‘taters* . Having remained unused since the departure of M. Victoire and his flee-bitten dog two years ago, the gas fire obstinently refused to light. Feeling more than a little guilty for my cynicism over last week’s no-show, I brought down a Thermos of coffee and some Rich Tea biscuits, for which they seemed genuinely grateful.

… And so we come to the point of this entry. Nicolas is probably in his mid to late-twenties and Sebastian appears slightly younger. They arrive each morning at or before 8.30am, and work through until about 5pm, with about 45 minutes for lunch. Nicolas is clearly in charge, though both obviously know their craft and work more or less autonomously, giving each other a hand as necessary. By the end of the first day, they had disposed of all the surface-mounted trunking on the ground floor, cut new holes for the back boxes and channelled out and installed the conduit for all the new sockets in the living room and kitchen. A couple of new circuit-breakers had appeared in the consumer unit, and some of the new cabling was already in place.

It is Friday now and, as I write, the whole house is reverberating as Nicolas drills through the floor of the second-floor kitchen to install the new gaine which will protect the mains cable linking the consumer unit on the ground floor to the one on the second. The cats are terrified and have taken cover under the sofa.

M. Dufour has checked up on progress once. In the meantime, Nicolas and Sebastian have completely re-wired the ground and first floor, installed umpteen new plug sockets and special connections for the oven, hob and heating, plastered and made good around all the new installations and have even neatly filled a gaping hole under our meter cupboard that had previously been stopped up with a large rock. (We actually only noticed the hole when we discovered said rock on the living room floor.)

Contrast Nicolas and Sebastian’s work with our experience of British workmen. Jim and his croneys, perpetrators of the longest-running loft conversion in history, were typical of a breed of builder that is now, justifiably, under threat from the army of keen, but generally incompetent, low-paid eastern-Europeans that now dominate the UK construction industry.

For the first couple of weeks, they would arrive at about 8.30am, have a couple of cups of tea, and disappear into the roof space. There would follow about an hour of encouraging-sounding bashing and sawing noises, after which they would disappear for “breakfast”. Little visible progress was made and interest in the job seemed to wane after this brief honeymoon period. Jim’s men were frequently late, citing illness (usually a stomach upset), “traffic on the M25″ or “problems with the van”, and sometimes didn’t turn up at all … for days! On the increasingly rare occasions when they did show up there would be frequent breaks for tea, cigarettes, tea, cigarettes, lunch, cigarettes, tea, cigarettes … and trips to the builders’ merchant for “a couple of bits”. And then, of course, they would be gone by 3.30pm. “Light’s too poor to work, mate.” That the loft got finished at all was something of a miracle.

Of course one finds reliable workmen in the UK: builders, plumbers and electricians. But, though they must exist, I have never encountered qualified craftsmen as young as Nicolas and Sebastian working unsupervised. Nevertheless M. Dufour evidently places great trust in his electricians, and they haven’t let him down.

In part, the problem may be due to differences in attitude to education and qualifications. In the UK, children are required to attend full-time education until they are 16, at which point they generally sit GCSE exams. However, the UK state education system works like a sausage machine with little quality control. Those with brains and commitment to match go on to A levels and university, where they can look forward to an early introduction to debt management. A student in London doing a 3-year degree course can expect to accumulate a debt of around £18,500 by the time they have graduated. No matter. You
don’t have to pay anything back until you are earning - hardly a great incentive to get a job!

Compare this with France, where children also attend full-time education until the age of 16. After the primary school or maternelle, children attend collège until the age of 15 when they take their first important exam, the brevet. If a child is failing at this stage, they may be required to retake a year. But, having passed the brevet, children can either leave school, or choose what subjects to specialise in at lycée.  Different types of lycée offer general, technical or professional courses.  After a further 3 years’ study students take their baccalauréat or a vocational diploma. All holders of a general or technical ‘bac’ are entitled to a university education, for which they pay NO fees. Otherwise they go out into the workplace and, hopefully, start to learn a trade.

* ‘taters: commonly-used English expression for cold, originating from Cockney rhyming slang for “potatoes in the mould”

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