Nothing like pain-filled days and nights to cure you of a sense of humour, but I can feel a little bit of it coming back...mostly because if you dont laugh, you weep.
Here we were trucking along nicely on all fronts and someone threw a spanner in the works: A little known (to us and many others, I would think) rule about the sale of land listed as agricultural has reared it's ugly head at the nth hour. Yes, our Notaire is 'taking care of it' but it kind of came out of nowhere, when we feel it should have been an upfront item from the start.
Basically what this law says is this: The local community of farmers must be given first right of refusal to purchase the property that is for sale on agricultural land (we didn't know our 1/3 of an acre with house on it was agricultural!!) before anyone else has a go at it. Yes, we do sit right in the middle of fields of vines, but this house was built in the 50's for goodness sake, so the subdivision was done a loooong time ago.
However, this being France, those things dont just disappear with time. Normally one makes an application to the SAFER people who might take an average of two months to determine if they are interested. They dont actually tell you if they are not interested, but they have two months in which to determine that. If you pay 180 euros, however, you can fast forward this process to one month.
Here we were, having been assured by our realtor that we would be able to take possession of the property by around 15th March, 2018, and then this SNAFU (our opinion) happens.
Now we wait, and it is just as well we started our house buying process when we did, as at this rate, we will be picking up the keys on the way to the airport to leave France.
This obviously isn't at all pleasing to us, as we thought we would have ample time...meaning up to a month...in which to turn the heating on to dry the house out and get rid of any mould, do some cleaning and rearrange the deck chairs, as it were, before heading out of country.
Car: We are still waiting to sign a purchase agreement with the car dealer who is still waiting for the tow bar to arrive at his Garage so it can be fitted. We have been invited to drop by and sign the agreement of sale, but with my body not enjoying sitting in a moving vehicle on humpy bumpy roads (you dont realize how much you tense those muscles to accommodate movement, until said muscles dont work properly!! can you say PAIN!) we have not gone very far. He will have to wait, and the bank will send him money when he asks for it.
About all I can tolerate right now is the 10 minute trip to the SuperU in Villebois Lavalette, our closest supermarche.
Bank: We have our bank account number, but still no verification of our personal information to allow US to withdraw funds or pay someone...e.g. the Notaire, the Accountant, the Car Dealer, the Realtor, the Deposit on the house...etc. What THEY can do is pay on our behalf, which means we have to provide the bank with ALL the IBAN numbers for those we owe money to, and the BANK will pay all our bills for us. They had better not charge us for doing so!
As the title says...fast aint in the vocab!
We knew this! We KNEW that things would take time, here, and we KNEW that there was paperwork for China and we KNEW that we would have to wait for certain things to take place, ducks to be put in rows and dominoes to fall and every other metaphor you can think of would have to happen for us to do what we are doing. IT IS A PROCESS- MONICA!
Does that make it any easier, at this time? NO! lol...there's that sense of humour. I'm not crying coz I dont have any tissues handy!:)
At times like this you have to do things that bring pleasure. A walk up the road to see the cranes in the still water-logged fields, taking a stroll to the trash receptacle at the end of the Hamlet and walking further up the hill to visit the neighbor who is in process (yep, aren't we all?) of renovating his pile of rocks...just joking....he has a very nice pile which could be called a Chalet style home on three levels, it just needs 'refreshing' to put it politely.
We walked around and through Chris' property yesterday, ending with a beer beside the swimming pool (his) in the sun. We enjoyed 15C yesterday, and spending some time chewing the fat with a fellow ex-pat (albeit British one) was a good thing for us. He is very familiar with the processes we are experiencing, so it was comforting to hear his travails and process too.
He is going to help us retrieve our new car when we need to return the rental to the Station in Angouleme and pick up the new one in another town, bless him! That's what neighbors are for, isn't it? As an 'ex' Architect, he is interesting to talk to and to hear his plans and vision for his property. Its a bit large for us...at almost 6 acres, but it was fun to walk some of it yesterday and make some discoveries.
Poor warren isn't always very successful taking photos with my camera, and especially when I am cold, half naked and issuing orders to take a photo in the half dark of the bedroom. This photo of the bruise that has appeared on my right bicep is a bit blurry and was taken a few days ago now, and I haven't had him update the progress of the bruises which now go from shoulder to elbow. And all along I thought it was my tricep that was causing all the trouble! Well, it IS, but perhaps this is a clue that it is really the bicep? Ya Thunk? Arm still swollen, and today it is 6 days since the 'incident'!
Moving right along!
Two days of inactivity...well, not physical inactivity, but certainly brain activity.
While things have been gestating on the car/bank/property front without our input...in seems they only want us when we have to sign something, lol...we have been working on the REST of the plan.
Yes, there is a plan.
When we leave France in April, we will go back to the boat and most importantly to our storage unit. The boat is in good hands in our absence, and will continue to be. It is expensive having it around still, but Rome wasn't built in a day, and boat sales take time, especially on the larger sized boats. We remain optimistic that she will sell in the near future. Well, what else can we do?
We need to pack everything in the storage unit for shipping to France, and what isn't coming here is going to be repurposed somewhere else or consigned to a Marine chandlery in St Augustine.
We have about half of everything already packed into large plastic bins for the most part, which makes for easy searching in the unit, and hopefully they are sufficient for the purposes of shipping. We are contracting with the shippers to only pack the container, not pack anything else. A big difference in price. This way we get to make the inventory, price it all because that's what French customs require. We also have to get the inventory translated and all values have to be in Euros. We can export/import because we have owned it all for more than 12 months, and it is part of our household. Because we own no other home this is our primary residence in France.
We are still trying to get definitive answers from Customs in France about everything because, per usual, we are out of the box importers. We havent owned a home for five years, and having all our household goods in storage for that period of time is highly unusual, but surely it cant be unique!??
The shippers will fill the container in Florida, and then we will fly to New Zealand and approach the same process with our household goods in storage there. We do this with some trepidation, as we havent been further than the first 5 feet into the container since we packed it in 2013. Merde!
We will have to open every single box that we packed back then, note the contents, reseal, number and put it back until the container comes to pack everything. Depending on how much they have to pack, we will be charged accordingly. With good luck and better management, we will have our goods on the high seas within the month of May, after packing the 20 ft container.
As long as everything is in good shape inside the kiwi unit, we will be fine.
I know it seems crazy taking all our stuff across the other side of the world, but this is the important stuff we wanted to keep. You cant replace this furniture for what we would get for it selling second hand. I also have all my kids childhood photos in about 9 packing boxes...I plan to scan them all and make them each a book as a keepsake.
Having locked the container and seen it out the door, we will pack ourselves off back to France to await the delivery of said shipments.
We consider ourselves fortunate to have bought a home that comes completely furnished. No, we didn't buy the furnishings, it came with them all!
Yesterday, as I said, was a gorgeous day. When we set out for our walk after lunch, we thought we needed hats and gloves, but we shed both pretty quickly. With the rest of the country and the north east of the USA suffering snow/ice we felt a little guilty shedding our cold weather clothes.
The guilt didn't last too long, however.
I attempted to take this photo of the Cranes still on the ground, down the road. A couple there still (white blobs on ground), but the majority had already taken to the air, circling around and around, gaining altitude with each circle.
Well, I need to go and do some more work in regard to the shipping stuff. Weekends are the pits, coz we now have to wait for the new week for more information.
All is not lost. It looks like rain shortly, but I'm also thinking I might go for a short walk. Waz is taking a nap, there is an old movie on the Tv and I need to mute it. Not interested:)
A bientot!
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