14 March 2024
THINGS COME IN THREES
12 March 2024
MOVING TO FRANCE the French health system
Unlike the UK NHS, health care in France is not free.
Certain items are not free in the UK either, such as eye care, dental care and medications, except in circumstances due to one's age or financial situation. Generally, GP appointments, hospital appointments, operations and all free in the UK. They are not free in France, although there are exceptions for people with certain chronic conditions and those with a low income where the cost is effectively free.
(There are those that would argue that the NHS isn't actually free as people have no choice in paying National Insurance all their working lives in order to pay for it. A similar system of Social Charges also exists in France.)
The French health system is essentially one where the government contributes part of the cost and it's up to the individual to pay the difference.
Once we had been in France for ninety days we were entitled to apply for a Carte Vitale. This we did by presenting ourselves at the local office of CPAM, the Social Security service, in Tours. We first went to ask for an appointment to do this. At the appointment we had to present the usual set of documents including proof of identity, residence and income. The Cartes Vitales arrived a few weeks later. In the meantime we paid for all our health needs and could claim the money back from the UK.
The Carte Vitale is an actual credit card sized card which we now present at every appointment or at the pharmacy. With this card the French government pay 70% of the cost of everything (but pass that cost back to the UK for its citizens) and it's up to the individual to pay the remaining 30% or take out an insurance to cover it. This kind of insurance is called Mutuelle Assurance.
(Visitors to France and people on holiday will not have a Carte Vitale and pay the full amount. In return they receive a claim form to send to the DWP for a refund or claim on their own travel insurance.)
A consultation with a GP (Médecin Générale) costs around 25€. With the Carte Vitale 70% of this will be refunded to the individual's bank account by the Government and the rest by the Mutelle Assurance. People are not obliged to have a Carte Vitale and can pay the full cost of everything if they wish but costs can mount up. Medications are surprisingly inexpensive and in fact often cost much less than the basic UK NHS prescription charge.
There are dozens of insurance companies offering Mutuelle Assurance and choosing one can be complicated. The interesting thing is that, unlike the provision of private health insurance in the UK, existing medical conditions are not taken into account. The annual or monthly premium seems to be determined by a person's age and location and no questions about medical history are asked.
One thing we really like about the French system is that having registered with a local GP we can get appointments within a very short time and see the same person each time. This is much better than the situation in our part of the UK where the best we can hope for is a telephone consultation with someone we may never have seen or heard of before and may never again. Getting an appointment face to face with an actual doctor in the UK, never mind one you may already know, can be very difficult.
One quirk of the Mutelle Assurance is that people can opt for the level of cover they wish. It's not cheap and typically will cost a couple our age over £1,500 per year in order to have most things covered. Whether or not this is value for money is a gamble as with all insurance. If you never need to be hospitalised it probably isn't but if you do you can end up with a large bill if you don't have Mutelle.
Another quirk is that health care providers can charge what they wish. Many will have a set of fees that are in line with recommendations so that a person who has a Carte Vitale and Mutuelle will have little or nothing to pay. However, some charge more so that Mutelle Assurance providers will offer a level of cover that is much more than the 30% deficit.
One of the curious things is that the process of referral to a consultant is very different from the UK NHS system. In the UK a GP will say he or she is referring you to the hospital and, although you might have a choice of hospital, an appointment is made for you and arrives via the post. In France it's up to you to find a consultant or hospital and make the appointment for yourself. Most of these appointments can be made using a website called Doctolib where most providers and their fees are listed.
One of the disappointments we have found is that once referred it can take a long time to get an appointment with a consultant or hospital. It seems that the French system is oversubscribed just like the UK one. Many people find it impossible to get registered with a dentist in France, just like in the UK. However, everyone I know who uses the system is full of praise for it and from our experience it does feel very much like a private health system but without the extortionate cost of similar private health care in the UK.
9 March 2024
AN UPSETTING EXPERIENCE
This photo has nothing whatsoever to do with what happened.
It's been a funny old week chez nous. We have dealt with numerous things that range from annoying to downright silly but something happened today that was quite unsettling. Upsetting in fact (for me anyway).
We are on the lookout for some new lights for the kitchen and I went along to the huge barn that sells antiques/vintage stuff in Mairé. My friend Alison came with me.
On the way there we encountered a bit of a kerfuffle on the road on the straight part of the route between Le Grand-Pressigny and Barrou. A car had stopped and a young couple were trying to catch a dog that was running about loose in the road.
I have to say that we see loose dogs here in France much more often than we ever do in the UK. All kinds of dogs from tiny fluffy lap dogs to huge guard dogs. They seem to escape from their homes with amazing regularity. It's unusual for a week to go by without encountering an escaped dog somewhere.
This dog was clearly a hunting dog with the usual brown, black and white colouring. It was circling around in the road and whilst being friendly enough and happy to approach people was not going to be easy to catch.
Numerous cars stopped. It's a long, flat and straight stretch of road between two forested areas and two villages and the one place where drivers can pick up speed and even overtake. Not the best place for a loose dog.
I had a spare lead in the car of the type that just slips over the dog's head but this dog, although friendly enough, was careering around and not willing to be put on a lead. I doubt that hunting dogs ever get to be on a lead, or walked, or socialised. In many ways it was surprising that it was so keen to be near so many humans. At one point five cars had stopped to see if they could help and mainly to slow down the other drivers passing by. Several of the drivers had dog treats that they tried to use to capture the dog but it sniffed then rejected all of them.
Eventually a lady said she would call her husband and he would come and get the dog and take it to the Mairie or the vet, which is apparently the usual thing to do. However, it was now Saturday afternoon so I had no idea if that was actually a possibility. With so many other people around and us being the only non-French speaking people we decided to leave them to it and the dog hopefully in safe hands.
An hour later, on our way back home and with no other vehicles around, the dog was still there. We guessed that the attempts to capture it had failed and people had given up and gone on their way.
What to do, what to do? Being short on ideas we thought why not contact the police. Apart from the fact that the dog itself was in huge danger, there was the potential for a serious accident, especially come nightfall. Even if we managed to catch it we didn't know what we would do with it.
We stopped outside the Gendarmerie at Le Grand-Pressigny. To my amazement it is manned every day and by pressing the button and speaking via an intercom we were allowed into the police station to speak to an actual person. I emphasised, in my best French, that it was a dangerous situation and hopefully it made a difference. The young woman heard our story and said she would tell her colleague to go and investigate.
That made me feel a lot better. Dogs are not always treated very well in France (not always in the UK either) and especially hunting dogs. This poor dog was so cute, so friendly, clearly lost and stressed and deserved to be looked after properly. I sincerely hope that a friendly Gendarme managed to catch it, to take it to safety and that it has food, water and somewhere warm for the night, until its owner can be found.
4 March 2024
A WEEKEND OF TWO HALVES
1 March 2024
MOVING TO FRANCE removals and belongings.
For several years our house in France has had everything we need. When we downsized in the UK in 2014 we moved to a much smaller house and most of the furniture we had was too big so everything came to France. We then brought all the furniture from the little holiday home we had in the village as well!
Brexit.......
One of the difficulties caused by Brexit is that the days of being able to bring more or less anything and everything from the UK to France are now gone. Year after year we would bring bits of furniture, tools, paint, plants and gardening equipment every time we came for a holiday. Since Brexit that is no longer allowed. Generally we are only allowed to bring the kind of personal items appropriate for a holiday and a limited value of other stuff. Anything over and above that is subject to import charges.
This is why many UK companies, especially smaller ones, no longer ship to France. The paperwork required and duty on goods is often prohibitive. Equally, anyone ordering goods from the UK is often obliged to pay a disproportionate amount of duty on goods that previously did not apply.
However.......
Because we are actually making France our permanent residence we have a year from the start date of our visa during which we could bring any of our belongings, just like anyone would who was actually moving house (rather than coming to live in one they have had for years, like us!).
Consequently we had a good look at what we had in the UK that we might benefit from having in France and managed to fill the trailer with a variety of things. A few tools, some hobby and craft stuff, a few pots and pans, bedding, bits of furniture and so on. The tedious part was that we had to make an inventory for every item and give its value. Most of it was stuff we had owned for some time and no longer had receipts for, but the information on the French government website states that a reasonable estimate of the value of used items is acceptable. We spent a lot of time writing a list of everything and its approximate value.
We took the opportunity to being extra pillows and duvets. The issue with bedding is that French beds, pillows and duvets are a slightly different size to those we get in the UK. The equivalent items in France vary by just enough that our existing sheets and duvet sets (that we brought from the UK years ago) do not fit them.
So, in my very last trip with the car I brought a supply of replacement duvets and pillows so that when the old ones are past their best and need changing we won’t have to buy a whole lot of new bed linen as well.
Next time……..grappling with the French health service.
27 February 2024
PYLONS AND HOLES
26 February 2024
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
It did not go well. First of all the engineer turned too sharply into our drive (which was widened last year) and dropped his back wheel into the ditch. For some reason he took his ladder out of the van and placed it across the bucket attachment before he tried to drive the van out. Luckily he managed to get enough grip with the remaining three wheels to drive it back onto terra firma. Nick stood by to make sure he didn't do any damage to our new gates.
Then the engineer looked at where the unit was to be installed and immediately declared he couldn't do the job because he didn't have drill long enough to go through the wall. He suggested we get an electrician to drill the hole and he will come back on Friday.
Considering that three quarters of the houses around us all have walls at least as thick as ours, and have fibre already, I find it hard to believe that he didn't have the right kind of drill. Nick suggested several ways he could get the job done using a drill we have for our walls but he rejected all of them.
He made another appointment for Friday then drove off, almost dropping in the ditch again, with his ladder still perched across the bucket thing.
We look forward to Friday. He phoned to confirm the time but we think he said it would be someone else. We rather hope it is! Watch this space!
23 February 2024
JIGSAW PUZZLE WEATHER!
This week we’re back to winter. Yesterday it rained all day and was blowing a hoolie. Our lovely daffodils are blasted to bits and the wind even blew a whole mistletoe plant out of a tree.
Still, Yvonne was very happy to lend a hand with a jigsaw puzzle!
Today I have made a "school cake" and poached some chicken ready for making six litres of cock-a-leekie soup for an event in the village tomorrow. Time passes pleasantly, in spite of the 'orrible weather!
21 February 2024
GETTING THE CHIMNEY SWEPT third time not so lucky after all and awkward confrontations.
19 February 2024
MOVING TO FRANCE getting the right visa
At the beginning of 2023 we started the process of moving to France properly. To do this we had to get the right kind of visa. This is a long stay visa that lasts for one year and is called a VLS.
This visa allows the holder to stay in France for one whole year, during which time we could come and go as we please (no complicated Schengen calculations needed) and is the first step to an application for residency. Getting it was a similar tedious process to getting the VLST the previous year, compiling numerous documents and personal information including evidence of income, of having somewhere to stay and having health cover, then taking them to an appointment at the visa centre.
Regarding health cover, for the previous six month visa (VLST), the UK GHIC card (used to be the EHIC card), is sufficient. It entitles the holder to basic emergency treatment in other EU countries. We also bought a private annual health insurance to cover the things that the GHIC doesn't, such as repatriation. The situation is different when applying for a one year visa.
For people like us who are in receipt of a UK state pension, cover is provided in a form called an S1, which is obtained from the Dept of Work and Pensions (DWP) usually requiring just a phone call. This is a document that effectively transfers health care from the UK to France. (France provides the health care to UK citizens living in France and the UK pays for it). To get it we had to give the date of moving to France so we chose a date that coincided with when we wanted the visa to start and about a month after our appointment at the visa centre.
(The health cover situation is different for people who are not in receipt of a state pension or wish to work in France.)
As with the previous temporary six month visa (VLST) we had to compile all the documents and apply online for an appointment with TLS (the agency that handles all applications). There are only three TLS centres in the UK that do this; in London, Manchester (Salford) and Edinburgh. On the day we went along for our appointments, the centre in Manchester was crammed with young Chinese people who were all holding UK passports but mostly ill prepared for the process. Consequently the centre was running very late and - the toilets were closed!
All in all it was a miserable, tedious and expensive exercise, although made easier by the fact that we had been through a similar process the previous year and had much of the information readily to hand. We had all our documents in order - actually compiled in the correct order for handing over - as per the instructions on the French Government website, including having a set of the right kind of photos.
As the hours ticked away we sat with head in hands thinking thank goodness we would not have to do this again! We were full of admiration for the staff handling the applications for their immense patience in dealing with so many people who were not well prepared, short of documents and photos.
Once we finally got to the front of the queue the young woman who dealt with us whistled through the process in under ten minutes. Then we had to go for "biometrics" - the taking of fingerprints and more photos and then finally, several hours after we arrived there, we emerged into the pouring rain in Salford to search for a public toilet! The total cost on that day was, from memory, around £300 as we had paid extra for our passports to be delivered to our home by courier rather than have to go all the way back to collect them.
Salford is a devil of a place to get to from where we live but I have read that TLS have moved premises to an address not far from Manchester rail station, which will make life a lot easier for most people needing to go there. (Assuming of course that there is no rail strike on the day of your appointment!)
Our passports with visas attached were delivered to our house about two weeks later. They came by Royal Mail. They also included instructions for the next step in the process which was to validate the visas within three months of arriving to live in France. This we did a couple of weeks after we got here. It involved logging onto the French government website and paying a fee of 200€ each.
Kerching!
Next time..........compiling an inventory.
16 February 2024
GETTING THE CHIMNEY SWEPT - THIRD TIME LUCKY!
Back in November we arranged for someone to come and sweep our chimney.
In French this is called "ramonage".
The central chimney serves two fires which are back to back either side of a stone wall. One is in the kitchen and one in the living room. The tubage from each fire shares the same space.
Tubage (pronounced "tewbarge") is the actual flue. It’s a solid metal structure at the fireplace end but once into the actual chimney it becomes a more flexible metal hose.
We spent much of the winter of 2014/15 in the house and came to the conclusion that neither of the wood burners was ideal for the room.
In the kitchen there was a very handsome Godin which threw out way too much heat for that size of room.
The original living room fire that came with the house.
It's an insert that is designed to be fitted flush into a wall.
In the living room was an unbranded "insert" - the kind of fire that is meant to be recessed into a wall with just the door showing. This one was perched on the hearth with all its fixings on show so it was rather ugly and not very efficient either.
At the time we thought it would work if we moved the Godin into the living room and got a smaller wood burner for the kitchen so we invited the local plumbers round to look at the possibility. They discovered that the tubage for both fires ended about a metre into the chimney and above that there was nothing, just an empty stone chimney with no lining.
An unlined chimney is fine for an open fire (assuming the stonework is in good condition) but woodburning stoves are meant to have tubage (a flue pipe) that carries smoke to the top of the chimney. When we lit the Godin in the kitchen we could smell smoke in the bathroom and the previous owners had said that they never had both fires burning at the same time although they didn’t say why that was. We found out for ourselves that this produced a lot of smoke upstairs.
After a lot of head scratching the plumbers decided that the main obstacle to reusing the Godin was that it had a very wide flue. There simply was not the space in the chimney for its tubage and another one. This is probably why the previous fires were installed as they were - with no tubage because the chimney space was not big enough. There then followed a nervous discussion when the plumbers thought it might actually not be possible to have two tubages in the same chimney space because it wasn’t big enough.
However, with much investigation, crawling on the roof and prodding with tape measures, they decided it could be possible but we would have to change both of the fires. We could not reuse the Godin from the kitchen because of the size of its flue.
We sold the handsome Godin for a reasonable price on Le Bon Coin and gave the other one away. We ordered two brand new wood burners from the plumber’s catalogue and are very happy with both of them.
Since then we have only had the chimney swept once, by the company that installed the new fires. They did the kitchen one from the roof. During the covid years the fires were hardly used and in fact they had little use at all until this winter and we decided to get them done.
We tried to contact the company that installed the fires and did the last ramonage but their old business premises is empty and the phone number doesn't work. We asked around and a friend gave us the number of the plumber they used to sweep their chimney.
This person came to sweep the chimneys in November but declared he was unable to do the kitchen fire because it couldn’t be done from inside the house. We asked around again and another friend recommended a firm that they use for chimney sweeping and gas boiler servicing.
Those people came in January but declared they couldn't do the kitchen fire either, despite the fact that I had been into the office, shown the woman the instruction manual for the kitchen fire and been reassured that they would do it from the roof. One the day they said they couldn’t do it because the sweep wasn’t insured for roof work.
We asked our lovely builder's wife if she had any suggestions and she gave us the name of a company that only does ramonage - chimney sweeping - and that they always use for any clients that need it doing. Just to be sure we sent them photos to show exactly what sweeping the chimney for the kitchen fire involves.
Were most impressed but less so when they told us we are legally supposed to have both fires swept twice a year, before and after use!
Well, we shall see about that! There is never a dull moment when you own an old house in France!
12 February 2024
MOVING TO FRANCE in the beginning.....
We first decided to move to France in 2014, seeing it as maybe a ten year adventure. We already had a small holiday home in Touraine so we downsized in the UK so that we could upsize in France and spend more time there. Life and its ups and downs got in the way and instead here we are beginning the process just at the time (and the age) when we thought we would be thinking about moving back to the UK!
It’s a funny old world and it’s probably for the best that we can’t see what’s around the corner. However I thought it time I posted about how we're getting on with the process. Just in case anyone is interested.
This is not meant to be a guide for others or a handbook on how to do it.
Brexit.
Brexit really threw the cat among the pigeons for British people who owned a holiday home in France. We were previously entitled to spend up to six months a year in France in any way we liked but leaving the EU changed all that. The Schengen 90/180 rule basically meant that although we could still spend up to 180 days in France we had to exchange three summer months for three winter ones. The only way around this was to get the right sort of visa.
In 2022 we got a temporary long stay visa (VLST) from the French Embassy. This gives the holder the right to stay in France for six months continuously and overrides the Schengen 90/180 rule. Once the visa has expired any unused days out of the 180 can then be taken under the Schengen rules until all are used up - bearing in mind that you have to actually leave France on or before the date that the visa expires before the Schengen period can start!
Getting that visa was an expensive and time consuming palaver. The instructions on the French government website are quite clear but it involves compiling a large number of documents and personal information, and getting an appointment with the agency that handles applications (TLS) to hand them over.
This worked well for us that year but we had made our minds up that we wanted to be able to divide our time between the UK and France in such a way that we could spend more time in France and come and go without constantly having to make calculations about how many days we had left. By becoming French residents we can spend as much time as we like in France and up to six months in the UK. There are no Schengen-like restrictions on how we spend our time in the UK so no complicated calculations needed.
Getting that VLST was a worthwhile exercise in that the next step, getting the right visa to enable us to move to France, was familiar and part done.
Next time...........getting the right visa!
6 February 2024
JUST BECAUSE WE CAN
30 January 2024
PYLONS
Earlier this month we had a problem with a dead live box and Orange came and fixed it straight away. Not long afterwards one of the new wires connected to our new pylon broke off, was dangling in mid air and resting on top of our telephone cable. We reported this fault to EDF but other than getting a reference number nothing was done about it. All was fine until a storm that had the cables swaying around and bouncing off each other. Lo and behold we lost our telephone service again. We reported this to Orange who sent someone out the next day.
The telephone engineer took one look at the rogue cable and got straight on the phone to EDF. Moments later they cut the electricity off. Which was rather disconcerting as we were expecting five people to arrive for a Burns Night Supper that evening and I was busy baking Scotch pies. Luckily I had in fact just taken them out of the oven as the power went off but there were other things to cook that needed electricity. French cream is hard enough to whip up using an electric whisk so to try to do it by hand would have taken a month of Sundays!
I set about laying the table and fortunately the power was switched back on about an hour later so all was well. The new pylons are still not connected to any live wires.
However, with only two days to go before the deadline of the end of January, we received a text from Orange to say that fibre was now available. We had been checking every day and up to the weekend we were still in the category "working on it". We immediately dashed up to the Orange shop in Loches to put in our order for it. The earliest that an engineer could come and connect us up is 26th February! Still, if we hadn't gone straight away who knows how much longer we might have had to wait as the service is now available to scores of extra outlying households. For once we seem to be near the front of the queue!
In "other news" the weather has made a definite change for the better, frequent sunny days and temperatures in double figures. We have been out and about enjoying the sunshine.
We have had some gorgeous sunsets.
Yvonne has settled in extremely well!!
17 January 2024
FIBRE IS COMING !!
It's time for us to apply for a "carte de séjour" (CDS) which is a residency permit. This involves spending ages uploading documents onto a French government website. We thought it would be a miracle if it went smoothly and we were right!
The problem probably has a lot to do with our dodgy internet. At the moment we are using 4G as that's somewhat better than the ADSL we had until last summer, but it's not always reliable and we frequently get "timed out".
Fibre is coming though. The wires for it have run past our house since September 2022 but ended in a large reel of cable parked at the end of the road! There is a website we can look at which tells us how soon we can hope to be connected and we have moved up the scale a bit from "no chance" (red) through to "we're working on it" (orange).
At a meeting in the village hall last November we were told that even the most outlying farms (meaning people like us) should have the service by the end of January. True, the reel of cable has disappeared but we have yet to move from orange to "you can apply for it" (yellow). Looking at the website we are frustratingly surrounded by farms and hamlets that are already yellow or even green - which means they are actually using it! There are still two weeks left of this month but I'm not holding my breath!
Another job we are tackling is having the chimneys swept (called ramonage cheminée). It is a requirement of house insurance so last November we called on a local firm to do the two wood burners. When the man turned up he declared he couldn't do the stove in the kitchen because you can't access the chimney part from inside. You have to go up on the roof. He dealt with the living room fire but offered no solution to getting the kitchen one done.
Someone recommended a different firm of plumbers so I went into their office a month ago and explained about the kitchen stove. I wafted the instruction book (which is in French) at the very helpful lady on the desk and stressed that the chimney had to be cleaned from above, i.e. from the roof. She reassured me that it was no problem and an appointment was made for the ramonage and also servicing of our gas boiler at the same time.
We were once again up early but when the van rolled into the drive with no ladders on the roof I knew we were in trouble. There were two occupants; a young man to do the boiler and an older man in sooty clothes to do the wood burner. He declared he was unable to do it as he didn't have insurance for working on the roof.
We didn't argue with him as our French isn't good enough to have the kind of conversation that begins with "but we told the office you would need to go on the roof!"
His solution was to take a photo of the stove and show it to the boss who might think of a way of modifying the smoke pipe to enable access from inside. He would then send us an estimate (devis) for the work. Hmmmm........it will be a miracle if that ever happens!
Once the plumbers had left we were able to light the fires and turn on the heating. It was well below freezing and our little electric heaters had not made much headway in warming the house. I took Hugo for his morning walk while Nick settled down once more in front of his laptop for another session of "beat the clock" on our CDS application!