Englishman Buys Bar 13 - a history of pleasure, and problems with lead

By John Harries-Harries

I haven’t delayed this episode for any reason except that of not wishing to bore my readers. Although one of the prime functions of my diary is to put down my feelings and experiences as they happen for my own reasons, I know from the reaction of so many friends and people who I would never otherwise have contacted, that it is quite interesting, even if my prose is not brilliant. As nothing much happened for a couple of months I decided to have a break. I hope you appreciated it too.

*** I've added further delay by abandoning Freebooters while Phyllis was out here. Life was more hectic than either of us planned. Thank you, those of you who are still with us. I promise to be more productive for a while now. This is the last of the Buying the Bar series - JHH is now in business, so we'll start a new series about Running the Bar. ***

6th April 2003

I haven’t delayed this episode for any reason except that of not wishing to bore my readers. Although one of the prime functions of my diary is to put down my feelings and experiences as they happen for my own reasons, I know from the reaction of so many friends and people who I would never otherwise have contacted, that it is quite interesting, even if my prose is not brilliant. As nothing much happened for a couple of months I decided to have a break. I hope you appreciated it too.

I feel the time has come to rename the diary. We have now bought the bar, and the dream is unfolding. Perhaps it should become ‘We bought the bar’. The acte de vente was last Thursday, and brought some new surprises. I think that most readers know my address is ‘Porzh ar Blijadur’ in Bonen. The Breton meaning of this is literally ‘harbour [or haven] of pleasure’, so we have until now considered a suitable English translation to be ‘Paradise Court’, as our little close fits this description.

Our vendor is a local man who has ‘made good’, and is very well up on Breton culture and music, and of course, the local history. He was delighted to tell me, with a grin like the Cheshire cat, that the meaning of blijadur is in fact ‘pleasure of the night’. I asked him how that could have come about, and he told me that the house next door, recently renovated by an English family, was a notorious and very disorderly house. This has given us much amusement, and reveals the reason for the knowing smiles of our French friends, which we had not previously understood.

I asked him about our own house, and he just laughed and said that it had seen some very odd occupants over the years. No change there, then.

Our notaire arranged things very well for us. We had so many delays that we were beginning to worry about our bank balance. We had initially hoped to be in the bar [and earning] during January, but the repeated delays meant that we were getting to the hundreds of euros to live on. Our house sale in England fell through and another buyer had to be found, so that added to our stress.

The date of the acte de vente being set finally for 3^rd April, really got us prodding all the solicitors, agents, bank manager we could to speed things along. The exchange of contracts in Uk was made and the purchase money transferred on the 3^rd. I had also over estimated the actual balance to be paid to the notaire, so all was well in the end. My blood pressure has now stabilised, and I no longer wake at 4 in the morning. Once we had signed, our notaire accompanied us to the Cité Administratif [Local council office] and we started the process of the transfer of the Alcohol license to Chris. The lady at the office was bubbly and enthusiastic, and the paperwork completed in 15 minutes. She would get the Mayor to sign it that evening and we could collect the application form first thing the next day.

We rushed back to Bonen to look over the purchase. What we found will be the start of the renovation, which I will cover in episode 14. Suffice to say that there were several surprises, good and bad.

The next morning we were the first visitors to the Cité and there were the forms, duly signed. Brilliant. We then had to go to Loudeac, about 35 miles east to the Douane. Yep, customs and excise. We had the sketchiest of directions, but such is the importance of this office that it was sign-posted from the centre ville [ker-kriez in Brittany]. We had been told that it was not easy to find, but we spotted a small office at the side of a huge refrigerated foods warehouse car park. The sign to the office was about 3 by 5 inches at the front entrance!

Now you will know by now that our French is enthusiastic but not always intelligible, so opening the door needed a couple of deep breaths1 We needn’t have worried. The lady who led us through the next series of forms was courtesy personified, She also enjoyed the fact that we were opening a bar, not closing one. Even the rather stern looking guys in the office made a joke or two. She was also able to immediately find the file on the bar when we asked about tobacco sales, which impressed us no end. We have always found in England that after looking at a computer screen for 5 minutes, the clerk tells us we are in the wrong place, have called on the wrong day, or that we just don’t exist.

Maybe we are just lucky, I don’t know, but we find the French public servants, polite, friendly and efficient. We are also finding great enthusiasm and encouraging attitudes from them. We completed the loop by returning the signed forms to our notaire. She was surprised to see us before 11.30 on the day following the sale. Maybe she isn’t on such good terms with officials as we are…….

I left you in the last episode with the question of what could go wrong with my kitchen project. I am delighted to say, even though it leaves me with no drama to write about, that all went to plan. Better than that in some ways, because the final effect ended up better than we hoped. The only problem was the dust we caused working on the beams. It got everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE, both personally and around the house including the attic space. [I’m not going to mention the personal spaces]. The effect was worth the effort though, and now we have got to the stage of having the ceiling painted and the walls papered, we revel in the praise from our visitors. One thing we did which we pass on to others is the finish to the oak beams. We use linseed oil. It is very cheap here, and mixed with about 25% pure turpentine, soaks into the wood and leaves a beautiful lustre when it dries. Well almost dries. We have also used this on our wood floor and the stairway, and although it will need a little more maintenance than varnished finishes, the smell and appearance make it our preferred option.

We have set a target date of opening the bar on 20^th April. This is because the licence takes 15 day to transfer and for the notification of the change to be publicised. We want to open for Easter and so we can just make it. If all goes well. But what can go wrong? No, don’t even think about it. We have a lot of work to do. The whole ground floor needs refurbishing, and when we moved the bar itself, we found some mould. See the pictures. The snug bar hasn’t been opened for nearly 10 years so the floor has rotted. The walls are asbestos, and there is the dreaded ‘plomb’ in the ‘peinte ecailler’, which has been notified to the Prefecture. We have to rip up the floor, pull down the walls, get huge quantities of ready-mix [and what’s that in French?] lay floor tiles, redecorate and refit. Oh, and I suppose we should get some stock in as well. Will we do it? You betcher!

And finally, our son and daughter in law have made us grandparents. Will this dream ever end?

What do YOU think? Suggestions to the Freebooters Noticeboard, please.

When we cleared the area around the entrance door and found our stone carving, other wood beams were revealed. Again they are too good to just plasterboard over, so we are planning a raid on another friends barn to retrieve a suitable beam to fashion an L-shaped lintel to hide the electrics and waste pipes fitted for the shower room before we found the old beams. As I said, there is no end to the demolition and restoration, but now that things actually get completed to a serviceable state, there is a growing sense of achievement.

It is slow and sometimes frustrating but rarely dispiriting.

Whilst all this work is going on, I occasionally have to clean myself up and visit people. Last Tuesday was a case where it was a great pleasure to dress up to the nines. We signed the 'compromis'. This is the preliminary contract where we sign to purchase the property, the vendor signs the same contract to sell the property, and all parties are legally bound to complete. [There are some circumstances where either party can escape, but they usually incur compensation payments.] We also paid ten percent of the price, and received an estimate of the charges due to the Notaire.

We now are committed [legally] to buy the bar and better still, are now virtually certain to do so. This is a tremendous relief to us both. We have been getting increasingly anxious about the financial side of things. We have no income at present and are living on that sum set aside for the purpose, but there was always a time limit to this period.

We will need the income from the bar to live comfortably here; even with my reduced early pension later this year, we knew this would be the case, so the step forward has been welcome as well as substantial. Coupled with this has come the news that the house contracts are being exchanged in UK, so there are two very happy bunnies in Bonen.

We have also had some lighter moments. I have found time to put in a few afternoons assistance to my friend with his 'new' ETANG. Yes indeed. A substantial lake strongly fancied to have good carp and tench, plus black bass. This lake has been neglected by the fishing society, which used to own it, and there is a major bank clearance project running. To gain access from his present garden, [more like a small park, really] our friend has put a temporary bridge across the trout filled river between his garden and the lake.

This is actually a longish ladder and a couple of scaffold planks, and is somewhat 'springy' especially with a load of tools and fuel for the chainsaws. I was extolling the fine qualities of my ex-U.S. army boots. They are waterproof, unlike British army boots, and very warm. I should perhaps, have been concentrating on what I was doing rather than letting my friends know how superior my footwear was, for I managed to lose my balance. I slipped sideways, with great elegance I am told, gently into this fast flowing brook. It was about mid-thigh deep, and I may still have survived with wet jeans and feet, but I hung on to the kit I was carrying. Very, very slowly I overbalanced backwards up to my armpits in the icy water. Now I am not without a sense of humour, but after 2 weeks, I think they can stop repeating the tale every time we meet up in a local hostelry!

I have suggested to John that he keeps an eye open for an ex-SBS dry suit. He appears to have taken my suggestion seriously.

I am not the only person who acts oddly here. We were driving down a minor road on the outskirts of Rostrenen a little while back. There was a bit of drizzle, and round a bend ahead of us we could see a battered umbrella. Below it was a Breton lady of great, but indeterminate, age. This is not unusual of course, but she was leading a cow by a halter-rope, and stopping every so often to let it graze in the entrances to her neighbours gardens and fields. She was still at it over an hour later when we returned down that road, and we cannot but admire her fortitude and ingenuity.

Around the same period, we were driving across to Carhaix along the N162. There was a man by the side of the road ahead, outside his cottage, apparently just 'looking at the day' as the Irish would say. As we approached he swung round to face us, lifting his right arm in a grand sweeping arc, thumping the inside of his arm with his left hand, in that expansive Latin gesture of derision which needs no words. We thought it was because we have English plates, but watching in the mirrors, we could see him offering the same greeting to every car that passed him. It may be that he doesn't like the road improvements near his home, or just doesn't like cars, or he may be the local lunatic, but it enlivened and amused us. We look out for him every time we go that road, but he has not repeated the performance.

We get a chance to see Sky occasionally and watched the 'No going back' programmes with some friends. The chap with the carp fishery is only just down the road, but the family with the big house without drains, and a heating and swimming pool equipment problem was the most interesting to me. With the problems, particularly of time for official permissions to arrive, we empathised with their dilemma.

We are now expecting to open the bar 3 months later than we first thought. We will have letting rooms in the summer, but not for this Easter. We are fortunate that we had considered, and allowed for this delay. We have to have a 'Geomet' survey on the property we are buying so that the local Cadastre can be updated, and this is yet another delay. Chris, [being the licensee] and I [as joint owner] have to have Cartes sejour before we can open. Again we foresaw this need and our Notaire will smooth the way and make the necessary declarations on our behalf. Seeing other Brits with these problems gave us no satisfaction but we are pleased that the effects on us are minimal, and not the impending disaster ahead of them.

I am so fortunate to have good friends here, French as well as English, and an enthusiastic and supportive family. Even in today's times of good communications, and modern services, moving to another country is not an undertaken to be taken lightly. The numerous books and periodicals I read, the visits here at times of year away from the 'holiday' times, and most of all the gleaning of tips and advice from those who have gone before, have all helped the process. And life is getting better and better.

* * *

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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