Moving on

So, no entries on the blog in goodness knows how long. My files show a number of half completed essays which I never felt like getting round to finishing or posting. I even looked at last year and started a round up of events too small to make it worth posting about as an entity but which I thought might be interesting to mention.

What happened? We moved house. It didn’t take four months to do it but we spent two months looking, an activity prompted by an advert in the British Ladies Club magazine about a property available less than 15 minutes from Dearly Beloved’s work. It was spacious and, at a pinch, affordable. One of the reasons we were living in a Chateau in France, was because it was considerably cheaper than similarly sized properties in Luxembourg. But it came at a higher price that we only realised after a year of living there. 

 It was a long way from work and the city where our social life was emerging. I spent three times as long on public transport getting to these events than I did actually enjoying them. We spent some long evenings eating Al Desko - I would get the bus to DB’s work with a picnic and we would while away the hours before an event in town started at 8. Not enough time for Dearly B to get home without immediately turning around and going out again, but too much time spent doing nothing. Or we had some unmemorable meals out eaten at a rush. Living the Transfrontalier life meant that we fell between a number of stools, and felt part of neither country.

Then there was the heating. Anybody who has lived in an old or listed building will identify with our dislike of sitting in a draught, with a coat on even though you are paying over 400 euros for two months’ worth of electricity. Nor was it easy to meet people living, as we did, behind high chateau walls. And I realised that my French is nowhere near useful enough to have volunteered for anything. The same could also be said for my Turkish, Portuguese, any North African language you might care to think of and I have no Roma. Mont Saint Martin has many social needs which the local services work hard to address. But I didn’t think they needed another problem expat. 

There are a few things that we shall look back on with affection and I wouldn’t want you to think we were having a horrible time. As I explained to a friend, there were just a number of low level discomforts which seemed to grow daily, and if we had loved the place and got involved with the community, we would have overlooked them and the long and tiresome commute to the city.

So what shall we look back on? 

The pig roast of course was a highlight and in our mental calendar.

 We joined a small archery club and took lessons in a tiny school hall in order to be insured to loose arrows in France. We both got badges and a certificate and we learned some very specific French vocabulary. I would say that this is the closest we got to meeting local people. At the archery club, we were impressed with the way the youngsters behaved and were treated. Each child came in and either shook your hand or offered “les bons bises”. Any adult coming in payed the children the same regard as the adults. C’etait charmant.

Francois, the trainer, made us very welcome and took us for a tour around the area, where he has lived all his life. He remembers a time when Longwy, the town nearest us, was still producing steel and moving it on the once busy railway network. When he was boy, all the buildings were black with soot and a grey pall hung over the town even on a sunny day. Although there is comparatively little employment in the area now, Francoise, who lives near the current mayor, says that the latter strives hard to make the town presentable and a pleasant place to live. Its Vauban fort is listed as a World Heritage Site; the Well house which used to serve the garrison town in the eighteenth century, is now the tourist office, the well glazed over...

 At the beginning of last year, I was rather peeved that the former Mairie, La Roseraie, was running well over its target date in its refurbishment. From the middle of February, the date slipped further into the summer, which meant that the public park in which it sits was out of bounds to the public. The park itself must surely have previously been within the curtilage of Le Chateau, and possibly La Roseraie was too, but the two areas are now divided by a link fence. There is a lake with fish which provided the dramatic reflection of the best fireworks we ever saw in a local festival for the eve of Bastille Day. There are some swings and a death slide, and it was a shame that in those glorious spring days (do you remember that false early summer?) nobody could use the park. However, it was open for a few special events, including a book fair. This explains why, one evening from the chateau, we could see lights suspended in the high plane trees and day-glo clad people in abseiling gear hiding amongst the leaves. In another part of the park, the children were singing songs and listening to a story. I never did find out what story our abseilers were enacting.

Talking of the Bizarre, we took in an open air late spring concert tucked in the gateway of the aforementioned garrison town. It was free, the weather was fine and we knew nothing about any of the acts. Two of the acts surprised us. The gentleman in tail coat and pebble glasses, looking very like Picasso, played electric cello setting up his own recorded backing track while we watched which he then looped over the sound system as he played popular classics which hummed and soared in the Spring air. Then by complete contrast was RIC (pronounced “airissay”. Young men with wild dread locks and dressed in brightly coloured spangly overalls, we soon understood why they were so skinny. Puck like, they jumped, skipped, leapt over and on top of the speakers all the time rattling off the lyrics without pausing for breath. The crowd loved them and all seemed to know the words. We were exhausted just watching them.

The few visitors we have had to Le Chateau will have seen The Gothic Dream. Featured on local Mirabelle TV, the owner has taken a modest bungalow in the little village of Piedmont, and has refaced it in the local sandstone adding a turret and crenellated balustrade around the roof. Then he has added dragons, swords, runes, Black Knights, Knights Templar, Celtic crosses and it is by no means finished. Snugly behind his huge oak door, with its medieval hinges and bolts, he dreams and plots his new creation, lovingly worked in the summer evenings and at weekends. There is always a pile of stone in the trailer outside his house. He smiles and waves as people go past. It is a happy labour of love. I think we shall go back next year and take an inventory of new modifications.

 I might even miss my frequent trips to the post office where I was the only English speaker. On one memorable occasion, the assistant behind the counter asked me if I was looking forward to the wedding. I could only think of the one we had attended the previous year and wondered why she knew about it. She obviously saw my confusion.

“It is the wedding of William and Kate. It is very exciting, is that not so?”

“Oh yes,” I said, rallying well. “There will be many lovely hats.” This seemed a satisfactory response even though I was not attending the event as I evidently should have been.

We spent a lot of time trying to obtain a Carte Vitale, so that I could visit a doctor and benefit from the social security and the medical insurance we had been paying erroneously for nearly a year. We crossed the final hurdle and appeared at the local office with all our paper work intact. The lady smiled very nicely and asked for our bank details. We produced the Luxembourg account details.  

“Oh no,” she said, “That won’t do at all. You must have a French account.”

 I could have wept. In fact, I think I did. We trawled round Longwy looking for a bank. The Post office only allowed you to open an account with a rendezvous, in three weeks’ time when their officer was back from leave. The other banks were shut on a Monday, apart from Credit Agricole. By the following Thursday we had a French bank account and leapt through the final hoop at the social security office. Everyone was very pleasant but the paper work had us completely submerged. 

I could go on. But enough to say we have happily moved and I shall tell you tales from Luxembourg as soon as I have worked out how to change my blog from “Chateau Living”.

A bientot.