Now lets face it, the local legal profession in France is not the fastest nor prettiest thing on two legs. Our local notaire wouldn’t have beaten the tortoise, even with a head start and a following wind. He lives, works (and rumour says sleeps)in his shrunken once black undertakers suit, stained with an exotic mixture of, a couple of months worth of lunches, the odd Ricard and a light sprinkling of powdery off-piste dandruff. Today when we see him counting his money, blessings or eggs from the market, he looks perfectly dressed for a soiree at the local Masonic annual legal lobbying aperitifs in the mayor’s parlour, or somebody’s funeral.
But forewarned in this case didn’t help; we were in for a bit of a shock.
The last goods chattels and teapot had gone into the second of two huge brick built pantechnicons and we had shut the door on our old home and life and taken our last fun filled exotic trip across the Styx, sorry Solent to pick up the brood and dog from my anxious parents.
At huge expense Henry had been subject to a bombardment of the equivalent of military biological warfare vaccinations and some form of tracker had been injected into him with a needle of a size I tend to associate with dentists. He took it all with courage and fortitude but then threw up in the car going home…same as me with dentists. It meant that with the correct drugs in him and the equivalent of the Sunday Times in paperwork he might, just might be allowed to leave the country.
The crossing to our adopted country had been meticulously planned…for Henry. There was no way on this earth that Elaine nor the kids were going to let me book an eight hour luxury crossing with five course dinner, silver service and proper beds from Portsmouth…(very close to where we lived) to Caen…. as close to our new home as you could get on water. Oh no!!! poor Henry would be locked in the car in the bowels of a noisy petrol smelling rolling tugboat…so we took the Channel Tunnel.
About three hours and god knows how many miles later (I could tell you the kilometres, but not the miles) we arrived at launch headquarters. A sticker stating that our party comprised two responsible adults, three hooligans and a dog was indelibly stuck to my windshield and that was that, we were on our way.
Henry was not at all pleased, you could tell from the look on his face….”I’ve been through three episodes of Casualty and the entire series of Holby City to move country and nobody cares”….we gave him a chew stick and the brood a greasy burger with thin chips and everybody cheered up. I just sat thinking about a five course dinner, silver service and a proper bed, well you are allowed to dream.
Half an hour later, which was in fact half an hour earlier, we drove our Renault Grand Espace back to where it started its European tour, it was home and so were we and I was no longer driving in the gutter but sitting tall and proud on the right side of the road, which is in fact the left….confusing isn’t it.
The next morning we set off from our hotel at close to 6am with about two hours drive ahead of us before we reached our new home with three very sleepy children and a dog who hadn’t had breakfast. The weather had changed for the worse and the heavens opened and the lorries just sprayed their dirty water all over my nice new car and every thing else they passed in their headlong dash to delivery…..no I am not quoting the bible but the routiers manual, its the chapter after “where to eat if you are in a hurry”.
We had promised to be with monsieur le Notaire at nine o clock and pulled up behind our two huge lorries stuffed to the gunnels with our stuff and parked just outside the house, at about eight thirty to be met by a very unwelcome reception committee.
The committee comprised the wife of OUR agent, the agent of the wife of OUR agent another agent we didn’t recognise and the French owners of what we thought was soon to be our beautiful home. There was no “welcome to your new home”, no “how was your trip”, no “its good to see you again” not even a “good morning”.
“Your money hasn’t arrived” were the only words that greeted us, spoken by the wife of our agents, second cousin’s agents sister, a bearded women with matching moustache, eyebrows and fortified handbag. I could tell immediately that this was a family and town affair and a lynching was on the cards. I looked to our removal vans and some support in this strange foreign land, but you don’t ask a rugby league team, from deepest darkest Bolton or Bury, for help before they have had their full English breakfast (extra fried bread, black pudding and baked beans) with three mugs of tea…and they hadn’t.
I was bleary eyed from the early start, tired from the drive through the French equivalent of the Red Sea, concerned for Elaine’s sanity and soaking wet from the precipitation pouring down my back. My first thought was that we were in real terms homeless refugees and last thought was I will phone my bank on the mobile, but there was no signal on my trusty Motorola on account, I was informed later, of the terrible weather so I would just have to bluster it out with the undertaker.
The brood and Henry went for a walk for three hours and Elaine and I battled valiantly with the undertaker, agents, agent’s agent, owners, owners agent and bearded lady. We had brought with us all our conveyance paper work in triplicate in a huge Waitrose carrier bag including the final bank transfer to pay in full and final settlement every Euro we owed to purchase the house. The French equivalent of purchase tax didn’t seem to be the problem. The agents rake-off didn’t seem to cause too much concern. The last five per cent of the house purchase we were assured by the embarrassed owners, was not an issue. The final stumbling block apparently was Fagin’s commission.
It transpires, according to funereal Fagin, the Notaire, that such monies Monsieur are paid into a national Notairs bank account in Paris and although the money had left our account a month earlier, it had not yet emerged this side of Paris. “It is always a problem Monsieur, happens a lot to my customers, but I have to be very careful as I am a Notaire with grave and solemn duties and am responsible to La Republique” (and I guess, her indoors, his bookie and accountant) “to ensure everything is above board in this transaction” and everybody gets their cut.
The steam was pouring off Elaine and coming out of my ears! as we sat with the hanging party in the tiny office, in front of a huge mahogany 17th century Louis something or other desk, as this bumptious, jumped up, officious office clerk, sat hidden behind it and profoundly pontificated about the law, the banking system and foreigners buying property in his mother country. I sat thinking; this creature couldn’t possibly have a mother, as another avalanche of dandruff landed on his paperwork.
The upshot of this little diversion was that he got his secretary to start phoning around the various banks whilst he ran through the procedures of sale…just in case they found the treasure. I did point out that on numerous occasions I had had to chase him to let me know what to pay to whom and when, but that carried little if any weight. Later over a beer I asked OUR agent if this had happened before, he looked wisely at me and said “Happens all the time old chap…should have warned you about it.”
Eventually Fagin’s little helper found the money and so the vendors, Elaine and I signed every piece of paper in the Notaires office at least twice, offered up triplicate copies of passports, old utility bills and birth marriage and death certificates for our families going back at least two hundred years thus satisfying La Republique and the funeral director, that we were bona fide British buyers.
After over three hours of hell we owned our home at last.
As we thankfully left the Notairs office and walked around the corner to our new house, we noticed a hive of activity around the two removal lorries, already, one had almost been emptied and the other was only three quarters full, the kettle was on and there were cups of tea in abundance. Apparently the embarrassed, but kindly French owner had left the lynch party at the Notairs an hour and a half ago, whilst Fagin was still holding forth about the way things were done in his country, and unbeknown to us told the children to tell the rugby team to start unloading…. aided and abetted by the children and Henry, they were doing a fine job.
