Englishman Buys Bar 10 - getting involved in the community

By John Harries-Harries

Famille H-H lends a hand with the village celebrations.

23 Dec 2002.

My brief spell of introspection did me good. I have a good idea of my plans for the next few weeks and my perspective has been restored.

A snag has arisen which is beginning to worry me. The sale of the house back in UK has not advanced any further. We are in the too frequent position of so many others. The 'chain'.  We have two 'very interested' potential buyers, each held up by the buyers of their house, or by difficulty in getting the mortgage money.

I know it is quite common, and although I have funds for the bar purchase, I may not have enough for the improvements which will be required very soon after taking it over. I thus need the funds from the house sale as soon as possible.

The son of the bar owner is due to meet us tomorrow, Xmas eve, and get things moving again. We don't foresee any particular problems as the price is agreed, and he is using the Notaire who arranged the sale of my house in 1999. She is very easy to do business with, and provides an English translation of the contract.

I cannot recommend too strongly how necessary this is to the English property buyer. Legal stuff is pretty well unintelligible to most people in their own language, let alone in archaic French, so everything should be done to ensure you know what you are buying.

In my case with the bar, I shall be letting my accountant/notaire look over the compris, to ensure that everything is set up for maximum tax benefits, and to ensure inheritance plans are not obstructed. I have yet to be instructed in the tax and social security position except in general terms, but know enough to get the advice of a trusted Professional.

Once I have the bar, I have a few things to do to it. It has no kitchen, no bathroom, and the toilets are the municipal ones across the road behind our tiny Marie. These have been adequate in the past, no one ever complained, and our local councillor makes it clear that they want the bar open and will not 'look too closely' at these minor omissions.

This is reassuring only up to a point. The 'fonctionnaire' in France is formidable indeed. Dossiers have to be completed and I am always wary of E.U. regulations attracting enthusiastic officials. I remain fairly optimistic, however, and it is not something I can influence anyway. Our enthusiasm and the goodwill of the villagers will see us through.

Whilst we make the addition to the bar of 3 bathrooms, toilets etc, all to be connected to the 'fosse' (not even a fosse-septique) we will have to complete our own dossiers. We will have no problems with the cartes de sejour or with obtaining the licence and becoming members of the chambre de commerce, but we have to do a 2-day course so that we can sell tobacco products. There is also a rumour that other courses will have to be attended, but again we will wait and see.

I still haven't tiled my bathroom. The suppliers managed to deliver to our local Point P seven square 'russo' tiles instead of 7 square metres of tiles. They couldn't be the beige tiles to be used at high level, which would have allowed me to do the lower half, so I have had the time to set out the next phase of work, and plan the plumbing runs.

I have also used the opportunity to take advantage of a couple of 'promos'. All the brico stores (DIY stores, sometimes of vast size and scope) have a 'promo'.  The trick is to find a promo which is on something you actually want!  I got my oak stairs on an offer which saved about 750 E. and tools are frequent purchases.

Last week I saved about 500 E on my shower cabin and another 200 on the sink unit and taps, so I haven't been too upset about Point P and the tiles. It all fell into place really, and reinforced my resolve to slow down a bit.

On the festive front, the village has had a huge success with the Xmas lights.  It has become an occasion for a committee to be formed! Once this happens there is no limit to the enthusiasm and grand planning.

There was a villagers-only walk (about 3 kilometres) last week to test the arrangements. It finished in the former school that is now the village hall. A steel-framed, plastic tarpaulin tent was erected along the open sided, lean-to building which once was probably the bike shed.

There is the usual dirt floor of course, with trestle tables and benches for the feast of crepes and hot wine. Chris was roped in to assist with the kitchen, and acquitted herself well as a plongeuse (a washer-up, not a diving belle - this is one of the times when you notice the effect of French having fewer words than English). I missed this preliminary dry run as I was on puppy watch, but there was no way I would have missed last night.

Ours is a tiny village. The main street is no more than 300 metres long. The route of the walk takes in a D-shape course from one end of the village to the other via half a dozen farms and as many houses around the curved part of the D. The start times were 18.30 and 20.30, as two sittings were thought necessary to cope with the expected hordes.

In fact this was a stroke of genius by the committee, because at 6.30 rural Brittany had its first ever gridlock! About 200 cars were estimated to be looking for places to park, or to drive those unwilling to walk the course. Wonderful, good-natured chaos. Just up my street (quite literally). I had a whale of a time, as did everyone else.

Most visitors to France probably don't get to functions like this, and it is hard to describe the sheer simple pleasure of the whole village welcoming friends and strangers to their little Xmas party. To be sitting in a crowded, steaming ex-schoolroom and the tented area, with excited kids, dogs, young and old alike, in what most English people would think was quite unacceptable conditions, was truly marvellous. It is a shame, in many ways, that our family, and another friend and his family were the only English to attend.

We couldn't have been made more welcome, and so many new (and some established) friendships were cemented. We know at least half a dozen other English families are living in the village, and were sorry none made the effort to support the fête. Maybe we can help change that over the next year, as it is bound to be a topic of conversation in the bar.

One of our friends here had an excuse not to come. He was lighting a bonfire adjacent to his barn and decided that a pint or so of petrol may help! The inevitable happened. He was engulfed in a flash of flame, singing his (well receded) hair, eyebrows and lashes, and he avoided serious injury only by rolling in the wet and quite long grass. 

He spent the night in two hospitals before returning home looking like the invisible man for the next couple of days. It's a strange way to avoid one of the years' best piss-ups though.

* * *

If you want to congratulate or encourage him (or sympathise with Chris and Lucy)  e-mail me with your thoughts or advice, or better still, write to the Notice Board.

Have fun.

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