Such an easy day in theory. All I had to do was saunter into town and get some money out the bank. Then go shopping. Then pop to the council offices to explain why I actually don’t owe them money.
So I got up early and managed to wash, breakfast, and travel into town before half nine. Such a superior feeling doing all that and realising that you could get all your things done for a week before midday on the Monday. Unfortunately I had forgotten that French banks don’t open on a Monday, and not having a bank card I had to postpone the cash withdrawal part of the day. So I went to the council offices and walked up to the treasury so that I could explain the mistake they had made in their last bill.
It was then that I realised that the week was beginning to be harder than it should have been. Behind the desk of the treasury was a man organising papers from one side of the desk to the other. Clearly a job of significance. I approached his desk, smiled, said bonjour, and began to explain that I had a question with the letter they had sent me recently because it seemed to imply that I owed 100+ euros in fines because of late payment.
The man behind the desk became the rudest man I have ever met, French or English or anywhere. He has got the prize. He just said, well you owe this because you’re an idiot. Well I should say that he probably didn’t say this, but that is exactly his intonation, and therefore exactly as it came across.
His curtness flummoxed me. Excuse me, I said. But when I came into this office last year and spoke with a nice receptionist and paid off all my council tax as you then demanded for the past 3 years, it was agreed that because you hadn’t sent the bill to the correct address then the late payment fine would be waived. If you refer back to your notes you will see that I paid in full back in August and we all agreed the fine wouldn’t be necessary.
‘I’m busy’, said the man. ‘You didn’t put anything in writing therefore I’ve got no record of anything. Go away and rot in your small rainy country you git.’
I was beginning to think that my poor French was causing paranoia, but on further questioning it turned out that he was just the rudest man I’d ever met.
‘Hang on’ I said. He continued to move bits of paper from one side of the desk to the other. ‘perhaps you don’t understand my outrageous accent.’ I tried stupidity in capitals. ‘I PAID THIS LAST YEAR YES?’. ‘WE AGREED THAT THE FINE WAS UNNECESSARY BECAUSE YOU HAD THE WRONG ADDRESS YES?’ ‘EVERYTHING WAS SORTED BACK IN AUGUST NO?’. ‘CAN YOU CHECK YOUR RECORDS AND PERHAPS YOU’LL SEE THAT EVERYTHING IS IN ORDER’.
The man wasn’t having any of it. ‘We have nothing in writing. I have nothing in writing so I can do nothing. Go away you stupid engleesh’.
Yep, he was trying my patience.
To be honest I couldn’t believe that he could be so rude. He was so much the opposite of customer service, that I was beginning to wonder whether it was customer training day and I was at the wrong end of the example of exactly how not to handle members of the public. Perhaps if I waited a few minutes someone would pop out from behind a video camera and say ‘ Merci Jules, now we should see how Natalie does it properly shall we?’
But no. It didn’t happen. I asked to see the boss. He shrugged and told me that he was the boss, and it was him that sent me the letter in the first place.
I was angry at this point, but I didn’t want to lose my cool because it was clear he was a knob. In my head I struggled for a suitable reply – something like ‘You don’t like your job do you?’ – but it didn’t come quick enough, and it was obvious that he hated his life and his very existence behind the desk. Instead I gave him a look of contempt that he ignored, and said ‘so if I write to you to explain that which I’ve just explained to you then that would help?’
He barely ignored me. ‘Comme vous voulez’, he shrugged.
I was still a bit bemused because it’s so rare that you meet such wankers in real life that you really have to wonder to yourself whether it’s YOU that has been unreasonable in this interaction. But no, I reflected on this and decided that I was asking perfectly reasonable, calm & measured questions that it could only be his obnoxiousness that could explain the situation.
Not wanting to inflame the situation any more, I walked out. There would be nothing I could say to this man to make him feel any worse than his menial job behind the desk already had. The silence was my weapon. I got to the stairwell outside his door and thought about being angry, but instead I laughed. Then I walked down the stairs and laughed much louder. He would hear. He didn’t know that I was leaving France and leaving the tax system, and leaving his petty life forever. I laughed because at that moment I had genuinely found him the most arrogantly stereotypical French awkward red-taped tosser that ever lived. And I knew he couldn’t touch me. Come and get me for my 117 euros Monsieur le boss.
It’s a shame really because I’m one of the few that find the French helpful and accommodating. And he had shattered my illusions and put a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the morning because his attitude was just so ungenial. By the time I got home, I just had to write my letter of explanation so that I could put it in front of him tomorrow. Bad French or not, it was coming his way. ‘you no listen frenchie – I already an agreement make several suns ago – you make mistake with your bill’.
Anyway, I went shopping and bought very little because I’m trying to use up all the stuff in the house before I go back. I have flour, and raisins, and rice and sugar, and couscous, and mustard, and cranberry sauce and chickpeas, and balsamic vinegar, and pasta, and quite a few other stuff that won’t go together. Tonight I made something that didn’t quite go with potato croquettes. Tomorrow I might make something that doesn’t quite go with the risotto. I met Madame Tronche’s daughter-in-law in town and she said that she’d saw my advert in the supermarket and thought it was great and thought that perhaps she would be interested in the microwave because she didn’t realise that the microwave was included in the ‘everything must go’ sale. So we arranged to meet later.
As soon as I got home I thought that perhaps I should clean the microwave to make it more presentable to the casual buyer, but before I could get my Mr. Muscle out the Tronche-in-law was in the driveway ready to view the microwave in question.
At first she liked it, but when she saw inside she pronounced it too dirty to possibly be worthy of her house. ‘Well I was just about to clean it’ I protested. ‘No no it was too late. It was too dirty and certainly far too dirty for her kitchen’. Did I not know that one is meant to cover food before putting it in the microwave. I tried to explain that ‘If you give me ten minutes then it could be the cleanest microwave you’ve ever seen’, but I realised something else at work in her manner. She didn’t actually want my microwave. So why make all the fuss? When she’d left I had a good old clean of the microwave, and the gas oven, and the fridge, and now everything looks so clean that there can be now further excuses. I shall probably keep the microwave for myself as it’s so much cleaner than anything I’ve ever seen.
I then set to work on the serious issues of the day. I thought it a good idea to write to the local council and let them know that there may be an antichrist in their midst. It’s difficult writing in French without Mr. Google to help you. You have to think of every nuance of grammar just like in the old days before technology existed. So I made my best attempt at explaining my side of the story to the powers that be, but I’m not sure my heart was in it because I genuinely felt that Monsieur MyJobIsShit wasn’t the sort of person that would change the world even after it had been explained to him that he really was a small merde in pond of bureaucratic shrugging nonsense. C’est la vie. My letter would have to maintain an air on indecipherability and I didn’t care who laughed at the schoolboy French as long as they didn’t get my money ever. It’s probably just as well that my french-engleesh dictionary didn’t have decent swear words in it though.
Next I made a visit to the local dump with the first van full of rubbish. It was nice to be able to do something simple and uncluttered by paperwork for a while. I threw out the big ‘yellow’ sofa and all the cutlery and all the old engleesh books, and all the duvets and towels and clothes and shoes that were grotty for some reason or other. The dump man (simple & uncluttered and so happy in his job) hesitated at throwing a load of books into the paper recycling, but once he noticed they were engleesh any budding sentiment had passed.
I went back to the house and waited for some people who had phoned after some furniture. The day was hot. ‘It’s Boteng’ said the neighbour. There is an event in the calendar I had never heard of until a week of two ago when Ilka first introduced me to it and all of a sudden everyone knows about it. The day between the winter solstice and the equinox. Yeah whatever. I’ve only just got used to boasting that I know about the summer solstice and the winter solstice and now all of a sudden another celestial calendar event has been invented to try and unnerve me. Anyway, ‘Boteng’ was the excuse that the neighbour gave for it being so warm and sunny today. 16 degrees! That must be unseasonal anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year. It was very welcome though. It meant I could go around working in a teeshirt and leaving doors open just like I do in the summer.
At 4, the engleesh people I’d been expecting turned up. They were Mexican furniture experts, and I had a wealth of it. I gave them a tour and then they asked me to write down the price I wanted for each item they wanted. I think it came to about to 520 euros for everything but they scoffed. Bugger. Clearly the haggling God of earlier in the week has gone and had a lie down somewhere because I can’t seem to talk people up like I used to! She said ‘well we would take it all but as it’s not exactly bargain of the century …’ (she was scottish). I wasn’t going to rise to that bait. I knew they wanted the stuff for their holiday lets and it matched exactly what they had already got.
We settled on a price of 300 euros (minus a few items) partly because they were in need of Mexicania, and partly because I was so glad they were going to take the stuff away. The table, the chairs, the sideboard, the dresser, the hall table, the bedroom chest of drawers. I shudder to think what it all cost me originally to bring it all over and put it all together but sod it. As far as I was concerned I was making a tidy profit. And it also meant that I had paid for this week’s holiday!
They gave me the money and disappeared. I went to visit Le Professor down the road because I hadn’t seen him for a while. He’s okay, but is still recovering from his back operation and the fact he fell down some stairs and broke an arm and some other shrugging limbs. On the way back, I met with Madame Tronche who gave me my annual harvest of walnuts. Sharing such pleasant moments in the sunset of Le Chassaing one could be forgiven for having to wipe a tear from the corner of one’s eye.
