28/06/2008 by Brigid.

At last, at long last, John’s bike is officially, legally, French. Of course it didn’t go quite smoothly. Nothing ever does with us. John has had to pay the extra tax, and we have yet to hear anything from Triumph as to why we had to pay two lots, when both dealer and manufacturer knew the bike was to be exported. However, that aside, we paid, filled out the import certificate and presented our documents to the Sous préfecture. An hour later we were home with a new Carte Grise and a number plate.

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28/06/2008 by Brigid.

Ree is here at the moment with her son, Alex, 5 ½ months. Just for them, it seems, summer has put in an appearance. The weather is still a bit iffy, 92°F one day and thunder the next, but today the sun is shining and all is well in the state of Denmark. Well, we hope all is well in the state of Denmark, as that is where Alex’s dad is at the moment. Wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen, to be precise.

The team is out at the moment. Hans and Flick were going to throw out a very handsome wrought-iron rose arch, before Bill suggested that it might be the very thing to tame the Bonrepos wilderness. So, sight unseen, our heros have hitched up the trailer to help fetch it. I forget whether John mentioned that it is 3m tall …

I, meanwhile, am sitting at home nursing a filthy cold. It came on suddenly yesterday morning and, since I feel like sh*t anyway, I have voluntarily quarantined myself in the second floor flat – well away from baby Alex. At least I have the cats for company.

Earlier in the week, while trying to prise him out from under Ree’s bed, John noticed that Foggy seemed to be hurt. We gave him a bit of a prod and poke to try and identify the problem, and found an odd sort of bulge in the vicinity of his lower ribcage. Definitely bone, and definitely out of place!

A vet visit confirmed that Foggy had, in fact, broken a rib. Goodness knows when and goodness knows how. Anyway, he was now a very sore boy, and had a mild temperature. The vet prescribed painkillers and an antibiotic and told me to try and keep him quiet. Unfortunately, I don’t speak “cat”, so this last piece of advice was a little hard to explain. Once on the painkillers, Foggy resumed normal activities: rampaging round the house, play-fighting with his brother, and jumping for flies.

By lunchtime the following day, he was done in. I suggested cage rest, but the vet decided that would only make him depressed. Instead, Foggy, Tig and I are all now confined to our second-floor sick bay – and, with the exception of Tig, feeling rather better for it.

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14/06/2008 by Brigid.

This post is for my mum, John’s mum and Ree, for having us all to stay, and for Doug for shipping the solution to a potentially sticky problem …  (Like the pictures of the new ‘Hog Pound’, BTW)

They haven’t said so in so many words, but I have good reason to suspect that certain family members are slightly nervous about our summer visit … with Tig and Foggy. Not that our nearest and dearest would turn us away, but a certain amount of trepidation around accommodating two energetic young cats is to be expected. For my own part, I was more concerned as to how they would cope with the 10-hour drive to Calais. Bearing in mind we will be travelling in August, it didn’t seem fair to keep them cooped up in the plastic carriers that we normally use for vet visits. So we needed something that would double as a car carrier and a portable home-from-home.

Now America, as we know, is a Big Country (cue music), and I reckon they must know a thing or two about travelling with pets. So it was no surprise that I came across a company called Sturdi Products selling something called a “Car-Go”. Just what we needed: it secures to the back seat of the car using the seatbelt straps and the cats can use it as their bed while in other people’s houses. Seemed a great idea, so we got a matching Sturdibag Pet Carrier to go with it, as we will have to take the cats to the vet for their tick treatment before we come back to France.

As you see, the cats seemed to take to both before they were even properly unpacked. Hopefully they will show the same enthusiasm on holiday …

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14/06/2008 by Brigid.

My optimism re John’s stomach was short-lived. By Wednesday, it was clear that whatever it was was not going to go away on its own. A doctor’s appointment was required.

One of the questions we have been most frequently asked since moving down here is, “But what if you get ill, how will you cope with the French medical system?” Good question, as not being able to communicate with doctors is frequently sited as a reason for expats, particularly the elderly, selling up in France and moving back to Blighty. Which is a shame really, as even the most feeble attempt to speak French is often rewarded by a doctor’s willingness to speak English. Experienced doctors are, after all, a well-educated bunch, and many will have spent time studying or practicing abroad. In fact, as our GP pointed out, most medical terms work in any language – albeit in reversed word order – and “ouch” requires no translation. We left his office with a reassuring “c’est rien méchant” and a prescription for another medicine cabinet’s worth of anti-spasmodics.

Though we didn’t like to believe it, we had both harboured a nagging doubt that Friday’s dinner had, in some way, been to blame. We wondered whether anyone else was suffering. Awkward isn’t it though. One doesn’t exactly want to ring one’s hostess and ask, “Is anyone else suffering from a stomach bug?” It just doesn’t sound very polite. But then, if dinner had caused John’s upset, wouldn’t I have also been affected? We needn’t have worried. It looks like it was just coincidental timing. Five days after John’s symptoms appeared, I too have succumbed. At least, in my case, we had a good supply of drugs to nip it in the bud.

This week has been a bit of a washout, and I am not only talking about our health. In one way it is lucky that neither of us have felt like venturing out much. The weather has been appalling.

We were watching television on Wednesday evening when John noticed one of the cats flicking his paw at something on the floor. This kind of dismissive paw flicking is a classic sign of feline displeasure, and John looked down expecting to see something nasty – possibly of feline origin – on the carpet. What he actually saw was a large pool of water. A very large pool of water. I went to fetch a mop.

Somehow the torrential rain was soaking through a 2ft thick stone wall and into the electric meter cupboard (!) before collecting behind the panelling and seeping out onto the living room floor.

The problem turned out to be a blocked downpipe. Remember Laurel and Hardy, the comedy duo who turned up to fix our roof the same day in December that John’s mum arrived for Christmas? At the time I remember being a bit confused by their explanation of the tile cleaning process. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising when you know that the French word for foam is mousse and the French word for moss is … mousse. M. Buret said that the product he was using would foam up when it rained to kill the moss that was causing our tiles to lift and slip. What we hadn’t bargained for was that the dead moss would be washed off the roof and into our gutters. The tiles might be clean, but the rain was now gushing over the edge of the gutter and streaming from the multiple fractures in the downpipe. This water was then being channelled into the house via a large crack in our damaged crépi or roughcast render.

With the rain showing no sign of abating, we had no option but to raid the linen cupboard for towels to soak up the wet. Assuming that the whole show was put on for their exclusive entertainment, the cats amused themselves for hours, repositioning them all over the room …

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10/06/2008 by Brigid.

John doesn’t generally do mornings. His argument, these days, is he doesn’t have to. So getting up at 6.45am on a Saturday, so that I could take a few photos of some sheep, was nothing short of heroic. Doubly so after a late night!

Sheep? Well, yes.

Twice a year, many villages in the Pyrenees celebrate something known as the Fête de la Transhumance. The first, in late spring, happens as the shepherds move their flocks to the mountain pastures. The second, in autumn, coincides with the flocks’ return. Because of the remote nature of the participating villages, and the early hour, visitors to the area rarely see the Défilé des Troupeaux, and are simply bemused by postcards showing flocks of sheep wearing bells and brightly-coloured pom-poms. However, last Monday, we found a flyer stuffed under our car windscreen wiper, advertising the event at Mauléon Barousse. I said that it might offer some good photos, and John, in a rash moment, agreed to drive me there on Saturday morning. But that was before Flick rang and invited us to dinner on Friday evening …

It was raining slightly when we arrived at Flick and Hans’ place, where the Garonne river races by at the bottom of the garden. But the gloomy June weather was quickly forgotten over a bottle or two of red wine, in front of the fire in their cosy living room, and a curry supper. Unfortunately, so too was the clock. It was nearly 1am by the time we struck out for the invigorating uphill homeward march. Nevertheless, we were determined to be up and at ‘em when the alarm went off a few hours later.

The flyer stated that the flocks would assemble in the Place de Palouman between 6.30am and 9am, with free coffee being offered to the bergers and pâtres (both words apparently mean ‘shepherd’, and I am at a loss to explain the difference). So leaving Montréjeau at 7.45am, we reckoned we would be in plenty of time for a few photos. Not so. As it happened, arriving in Mauléon Barousse at 8.15am, we only just made it. As I opened the car door, I could hear the deafening sound of hundreds of clanging bells, as the sheep started up the main street. A sea of them. Not quite so colourfully decorated as the postcards, but impressive just the same. Five minutes later it was all over. The flocks and shepherds were gone, leaving a pungent aroma of sheep shit, coffee and Gauloise® in their wake. At least I got a couple of photos.

Back in Montréjeau, I whipped up a suitably hearty breakfast to compensate for the single, rushed, cup of coffee we had had before leaving home. But all was not well. Initially, we put JR’s lack of energy down to the combination of the late night and early morning start. However, soon he was complaining of a leaden feeling in his arms and legs, and his stomach was playing up. A bowl of onion soup at lunchtime did nothing to revive him. By 3pm John had to admit defeat and retired to bed … where he stayed until he woke with severe intestinal cramps at 2.30am on Sunday morning.

I’ll admit that this was a bit of a worry. It is usually me that is the first to complain of gastric upsets, as a result of which, we have acquired an impressive array of remedies. Some of the medicines we have bought in France have great names. Smecta®, for instance, always sounds to me like one of those spy organisations from an early James Bond novel. But this time John was not in the least amused when I presented him with a box of the, appropriately-named, anti-spasmodic, Spasfon®. “Don’t you dare tell David or Mike”, he said, “I’ll never hear the end of it”.

As if I would …

Anyway, I’m glad to report that, 48 hours later, John is now, hopefully, on the mend.

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03/06/2008 by Brigid.

We are angry, very angry …

I am writing this on the train en route to Avignon to collect my bike, which has finally been repaired - a faulty fuel pump, if you are interested. John is at home, fuming over a red-hot telephone line.

We arrived home from Roussillon to find a letter from our friend M. Lavielle at the DRIRE. Huzzah! He wanted to see the bike, presumably to check that we had made the relevant modifications. Double huzzah!

Having been so rude about his telephone manner, I must say that M. Lavielle turned out to be charming. There was something distinctly reassuring about his smile and greeting (in English), “Ah, the famous moto!” Indeed, the whole process took about 10 minutes. It would have been even quicker, had Carl Rosner fitted the required plate as proof that the bike’s power had been limited, per French regulations, to 72.1Kw. In the event, M. Lavielle spent 5 minutes fruitlessly poking about under the bike with a torch, looking for said plate. However, recognising the tortuous process of having got the bike this far, he let us off with a “ce n’est pas grave”, which is quite a coup with French bureaucracy. He told us he would send the necessary form to the Sous-Préfecture in St. Gaudens, so we could now go ahead and officially import the bike. At this point, John and I felt like throwing our hats in the air in celebration!

Alas, this feeling of elation was short-lived.

Yesterday, we visited the Hôtel des Impôts in St. Gaudens, where the “Nice Lady Behind the Counter” asked us to produce the original Registration Document and sales invoice.

NLBC: “The bike is less than 6 months old. Have you ridden less than 6,000km?”

BR: “Err, yes. My husband bought the bike in the UK in January.”

NLBC: “But you live in France, non? How long have you been resident?”

BR: “Since July 2007.”

NLBC: “Then you must pay VAT.”

BR: “But my husband paid VAT in the UK. See, there, on the invoice.”

NLBC: “But you were resident in France at the time of the purchase, so you must pay VAT in France.”

JR: “Surely, you have got to be joking.” (Or words to that effect.)

NLBC: “My name’s not Shirley, and I’m not joking.”

Ok, that’s a fib. She didn’t really say that, but her position was very clear. Seeing an ugly domestic scene developing in front of her, the Nice Lady Behind the Counter disappeared into a back office. She re-emerged a minute later with her supervisor. They were nothing if not courteous and helpful, but there was nothing they could do for us. “Perhaps you can claim a refund from the UK authorities.”

Naturally, one can’t claim a refund without proof that VAT has been paid elsewhere, So John is now staring at a 2,000€ VAT bill but, having spoken to HM Revenue & Customs, there is no guarantee that he will get back the £1,430 already paid.

Now, in John’s original negotiations with Carl Rosner over the purchase of the Tiger, he had specifically asked if a French spec bike could be supplied direct from Triumph for immediate export. It couldn’t, for the very same reason that the UK model required a Attestation de Conformité Partielle to be registered in France. The VIN (chassis) numbers are differently formatted for each market. The question, you might be asking yourself, is why, when the intention to export the bike had been made abundantly clear to both Carl Rosner and to Triumph’s Warranty Department, they hadn’t seen fit to deduct the VAT from the purchase price. Yesterday afternoon, John asked Carl Rosner the same question.

It transpires that Triumph have a policy that dealers cannot issue the relevant VAT 411 form in respect of motorcycles destined for a country where they have local concessions. I am no legal beagle, but à mon avis this seems to fly in the face of the EU free market economy, not to mention breaching HM Revenue & Customs regulations. Perhaps if any of my readers have expert knowledge in this field, they might like to get in touch. I feel a law suit coming on!

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