News round-up

There's a few different things that I've been meaning to blog about but which aren't really a whole post on their own, so here's the news in brief (as if I'm ever brief).

- During summer, the Royal Palace in Brussels is open for visits and it's FREE! (Not sure why I put that in excited capitals since it's closed again now, but hey, maybe next year.) We dropped in for a quick tour between going to the library and watching the F1 a couple of weeks ago, and while it's not the most impressive palace I've ever seen, it's quite elegant (and did I mention, free?) They had an exhibition on WWI on when we went, it being the centenary, which I thought kind of spoilt the look of the place. Some of the old photos and videos were interesting, but this being the royal palace, it was annoyingly hagiographical towards the royals - there was even a section on the Congo with seemingly not a whisper about the murderous personal rule of Belgian King Leopold II there shortly before this period. Oh, and there was an amazing ceiling made out of 1.4 million crushed beetles.

In the palace ballroom, kinda ruined by the exhibition

The beetle ceiling

That painting in the corner had serious creepy vibes

I think he's going to haunt my dreams

- Here's the bit where I complain about something. Remember how I called my internet company in France, Alice, and tried to tell them my new address so I could settle up my account, and they were really rude and basically refused to take a new address and said they'd just keep billing me till my contract was up? HUGE SURPRISE!!! They just continued to keep billing me with zero acknowledgement that I had cancelled the contract. Oh but, no problem, I told my bank before leaving France to stop payments on all my old direct debits. Except my useless bank didn't stop the payments.

I let the first month go because I thought I probably owed that legitimately, and then the second month I just wasn't really on top of things. The third month, I actually found where I could tell the bank online to stop the payments, so I did that and it actually worked, prompting some angry emails from Alice. The next month, the bank helpfully let the payment go through again, this time with a late fee. Thanks a fricking bunch. By this time, I actually did get on to re-sending them a letter re-cancelling the contract, by registered mail, which cost more than 7€ from Belgium. The first time round, I had sent it by registered mail, but without proof of delivery, since I knew I was just about to move to another country and I didn't forward my mail from France since it was ridiculously expensive. So I have no proof that I did actually mail them back in June (and I'm still actually waiting for the receipt this time around too). I really don't think odds are that both the letter and the actual box sending my modem back both got lost in the registered mail system. Honestly, I wouldn't put it past them to see that there was no delivery receipt and just shrug and go "she can't prove she cancelled it, so we'll keep charging her". The internet worked fine, but every interaction I ever had with them was so unpleasant that I find that entirely plausible. (This was also the company that made me cry when I was trying to install my modem when the girl repeatedly called me "Monsieur... pardon, Madame" and kept laughing with her colleagues at me in the background.) So... hopefully this time it will actually be cancelled.

- Talking of useless bank stuff, I paid my taxes online, which helpfully involved having to mail a printed authorisation for the transaction to my bank (sigh). I know the bank got the authorisation, because I sent a cheque in the same envelope and they cashed it, but the money hasn't come out. I don't know whether the government just hasn't tried to take it, or they tried before the authorisation arrived. Either way, my taxes are showing as paid, so I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars, but I really do try to do everything properly and by the book and that's why it bothers me so much when things like this and the internet fiasco happen. Life's not fair, it's true, but it seems like you should be rewarded with smooth sailing when you try to make an honest effort to take care of all your responsibilities, but it seems to end up in as much as a mess as if you did nothing. Then dealing with these administrative issues on the phone with French "customer service" people is really really one of my least favourite things to do. So I'm left not able to close my bank account because I don't know what's happening on the tax front.

- On a lighter note, Jules and I signed up as Friends of the Museum, as previously mentioned. When filling out the form, I started putting my details, and then they asked for ID, which I didn't have, so Jules gave them his ID and I added his name on the form. So it was like Surname: Sandiego/Luxembourg, First name: Gwan/Jules. I was amused when the ID cards came addressed to M. and Mme. Luxembourg-Sandiego. Then I remembered that I had definitely filled out the form with the names the other way round, since I started filling it in with just my name. So WTF, Musée des Beaux-Arts, do you have some sort of policy that the man's name has to come first? Or you took it upon yourself to decide it sounded better that way round? Way to mangle our fake, ridiculously long (in real life too) hyphenated name.

- Some other fun things: I joined a choir (yay) and will start evening Russian classes soon (I tested out at level A2, i.e. one up from a complete beginner. Slightly embarrassing since I did study it for 4 semesters at university, but that was a long time ago and it's hard). Last weekend we went to Aachen, Germany, so stand by for a blog post about that, and this weekend we're participating in a (sort of) festival where you go along to a Michelin-starred restaurant and get a surprise 4-course lunch or 5-course dinner for a bit cheaper than usual. We're going for lunch since most of the participating Brussels restaurants were all booked out by the time I found out about this last week. We're going to Bruneau - I can be a bit fussy, so I hope I like it! (The surprise is part of the charm, I suppose, but I couldn't resist writing "please no mushrooms" on the reservation though!)

You can drink your wine and eat it too

I've had quite a busy week (for an unemployed bum. And I apologise to anyone seething with rage at posts filled with fun and frivolous purchases. I assure you I spend most of the time weeping and self-flagellating, but I save that sort of thing for my BDSM blog).

We had a picnic in the park on Sunday to celebrate someone getting her PhD approved, which was very nice. It wasn't sunny, but at least it didn't start raining until that evening (and then all day Monday). Then I went home and watched delayed coverage of the Grand Prix, which, contrary to all expectations, was actually very exciting (although I'm still a bit upset over what happened to Hamilton).

Since then, I've been running around going to the gym and working on my CV and other such scintillating stuff. I walked all the way to the Pôle Emploi the other day because I thought "right, I'm going to go there and work on writing cover letters in French without distractions and see if someone can help me with the French" only to find that there is only one computer there with a chair, all the rest you have to stand up at, and all you can do on them is look up job notices on the Pôle Emploi's own website. And when I asked if I could get help writing in French, they gave me a pamphlet designed for French people who can't read and write well (and I don't mean to sound snarky, but examples of people applying for factory jobs in very simple French are not much good to me) and enrolled me in a general workshop in like a fortnight. And told me that the job I wanted to apply for was only open to disabled applicants (which, of course, is a noble initiative, but it's just discouraging every time you come across something else that you don't understand about how the system works here). I know that sounds very whiny, and I know no-one forced me to move to a non-English-speaking country, but it helps everyone if you help us dirty immigants to speak better French and get jobs. And blogging about it helps to vent some of those frustrations.

Wednesday was hot hot hot, with actual sunshine. I went to a garden party, if you can call 20 or so people having drinks and nibbles in a garden a "garden party" (the Queen wasn't there, let's put it that way), which was nice. I spilled red wine on my new dress and had to wash it with detergent in the kitchen sink, but along with washing it properly when I got home, that did the trick, yay. (I'm a big believer in acting immediately, no matter what stain-busting equipment you have at hand, to get rid of stains.) In a brave move, since there will often be sudden thunderstorms in the evening after a hot day here, they set up a TV in the garden so I was able to happily ignore the football until it got to the penalty shootout after an undoubtedly exciting 2 hours of play without a goal.

On Thursday night it was my turn to have Liz and Charlie around for dinner. We have a sort of 'supper club' where we meet up at irregular intervals at each other's houses for dinner. It's a bit tricky because there's a ton of stuff Charlie won't eat, starting with onions and garlic!! This time, I made spinach, feta and chicken pasties and for dessert, the pièce de resistance:

That's no ordinary glass of wine, that's rosé jelly (jello to our American friends)! Basically, you simmer rosé with sugar, add gelatine and pour it into a glass with berries in it and voilà, hours later you have yourself a wobbly paen to the noble art of finding new ways to consume wine.

Cheers!

I didn't want to give the game away, because I think half the fun is bringing out a glass of "wine" and then the big reveal that it's jelly, but I ran the idea of a jelly-based dessert past Liz, who begged me not to do it, because as Canedolia mentioned recently, the French for some reason think the English can't get enough of eating jelly. And, indeed, Charlie found it hilarious to the point of making a video of it wobbling. But I thought a rosé dessert was too cool not to do! So, how did it taste? I did a little test pot of it and thought it was just okay when I ate some on Thursday morning, but maybe my palate just wasn't ready for wine first thing in the morning, because I actually thought it was very nice when we had it in the evening. Just the right amount of sugar and a nice flavour. The frozen berries were a bit seedy, but oh well.

After dinner, Liz went home and Charlie and I met up with Marion and went to a bar and then a club. Tomorrow is Marion's last day in Tours, boohooooo! Now I will (probably) be back to being the only Kiwi in the village. She doesn't yet know where she'll be living, her boyfriend is looking for an internship and in the meantime she'll be going between London and his family's place in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. They're leaving some stuff in storage here, so I'll probably see her again, but it's still sad to have a friend leave.

We ended up partying with some cute French and Belgian pilots

I also bought these super-cute fold-up ballet pumps from Redfoot shoes in the UK, after Liz sent me a coupon code for their half-price summer sale (which may be still on, let me know if anyone wants the code, because they are really quite expensive). I haven't worn them yet, but it does seem you get what you pay for - the uppers are real, soft leather, and they have a gel sole, so they seem like they'd be much more comfortable for walking than the cheap pair I bought at H&M, which had basically no sole, so it was like walking on the pavement in your socks or something (plus they were too big and fell off all the time, so I gave them to Liz).

In case anyone doesn't know, the idea is you wear them out of an evening and then switch to your high heels when you get wherever you're going, and they fold up as shown and go in a little pouch in your handbag. I look forward to actually wearing heels some time, because with having to walk everywhere and the cobblestones and so on, I never do any more!

Rosé, bureaucracy, and wanky Frenchmen

So last weekend we had a pretty chilled-out time with my sister Jess, her friend Liz, and our mutual friend Marion (who lives in Tours, but knows Liz from uni in New Zealand. Oh and we discovered also that Marion used to work with my cousin, who is an actress back home - god, New Zealand is a small place at times). Some of the highlights were the hour-long dégustation of rosé wine - a bit awkward having to translate for the girls at times, hope I did okay. I learnt quite a lot about how rosé is made (there are two main methods, one which basically follows the method for white wine, and the other for red wine), but not sure how much of that information I passed on! We also got to hang out at the guinguette, the "famous" open air café/dance hall/concert venue on the banks of the Loire. It rained a bit while the girls were here, but it was still mild enough on the Friday to sit outside and have wine by the Loire. The opening of the guinguette is always a very welcome sign that summer has finally arrived in Tours. (Talking of which, it has been baking hot for the last couple of days, although thunderstorms are predicted next week.) We also had dinner at La Souris Gourmande, a cheese-themed restaurant which j'adore (their tartiflette is amazing, if you're ever in Tours), drank lots of wine (but didn't actually have any big nights out) and generally just hung out and relaxed.

I swore I was taking a break from alcohol, but that lasted until Wednesday, when it was so hot that not cracking open a bottle of rosé would have probably resulted in a criminal indictment. Then on Thursday, my friend Liz had just arrived back from Japan and I went round to help her deliver flyers for her business around our neighbourhood. I think we did about three blocks and then decided it was wine-o'clock. We seem incapable of just having a quiet glass and this was not helped by heading to a bar (same one I went to with my sister and friends across from the Souris Gourmande, if you're reading this Jess) where they are super friendly and nice and you can just sit at the bar and chat with all the regulars and your glass just keeps getting magically filled (and these glasses are about the size of a bucket to begin with!). We spent a lot of the evening chatting to a guy who had spent 12 years being tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp before breaking out, fleeing on a boat and getting picked up by a French navy vessel. Getting to meet people with stories like that is definitely a highlight about travelling! He was much better than the young French guy I got talking to later, who said things like "I have a complicity with my girlfriend" (meaning that they have an "understanding" that they can cheat on each other) and then when I said you can't say that in English, he looked up the word on his iphone and showed me that it existed (obviously having a completely different meaning in this context makes no difference) and said (quote) "you're not English so you don't know how to speak properly like an English person does". He also tried to convince me that "snob" is an adjective (as in "She's very snob", because in French they have just borrowed the word snob and thus say things like "Elle est tellement snob"), and then when I said it wasn't, he asked Liz, the "real English person" and damn Liz was like, "yeah, snobby" and the guy was all like IN YOUR FACE and just wouldn't listen when I said "NO! SHE SAID SNOBBY! NOT SNOB!". Plus he said New Zealand and Australian accents were the same and if he couldn't hear the difference it meant it didn't exist. Anyway, I might still be a little bit ragey about this stereotypical arrogant French guy, so we'll move on. (Although, one last thing, I was talking to arrogant Frenchman's friend later and he said that he didn't have a "complicity" with his girlfriend, she just cheated on him all the time and he was sad about it and trying to act like the big man about town to make up for it. It's not very elegant to crow, but I've got to say HA! He deserves it!)

On Friday, the attestation d'emploi I needed from my assistant job turned up, so I had to drag myself out of bed and across town to take it to the pôle emploi. I didn't want to wait since Monday is a holiday and obviously the sooner I get all the paperwork together, the sooner they might start paying me. It took like two and a half hours' round trip to just give them this piece of paper, since they were being rubbish at the reception and I had to wait to see someone else who took all of about 30 seconds to sort it out. Good news though, they still had my file (apparently if they decide it's incomplete, they just reject it and send it back to you, because of course that makes way more sense than just sending you an email saying "hey, we need one more piece of paper from you, can you bring it down?") so fingers crossed now everything will be in order and they'll make a decision on it soon.

Right, that's all of interest (supposing it was, in fact, interesting). I'm going to go catch some rays (21 degrees, my idea of perfection) before watching quali for the Monaco GP in a couple of hours. Hope it's sunny where you are too! Here's some photos from Greg's and my sister's visits to Tours.

I don't know if you can read this, but it says "Bastard is waiting for you at stand E8 at the Tours Fair". I was intrigued!

The west windows in the cathedral glowing in the afternoon sun

A shot of the cathedral from behind

 

Not a great photo (hello fake smile...), but the only snap we got together, courtesy of the covoiturage guy who was giving Greg a ride to Paris 

 

Ducklings!!

An old church (or something) hidden behind the cathedral

Greg and St. Martin's at night

An old building I liked

Me and the ghost of Fritz, the famous elephant, as featured in the Super Best Tour of Tours Ever. I look strangely like my arms aren't attached to my torso, but I assure you they are.

My sister Jess and her friend Ratty got into the swing of things with Fritz as well

Me and Jess at the cheese restaurant. Mmmm, cheese

Liz, and Marion at the restaurant

There has long been a goat-about-town in Tours, which some guy takes around on a leash (you can see a glimpse of him hanging in a kebab shop here, on my first visit to Tours), but now there is a RIVAL GOAT, who rides around in a little cart pulled behind a bike! I've seen him twice in the last couple of days. Is this town big enough for two goats, that is the question??

 
And here's a video of my cat, Bob. Bob is normally frightened of everything (he was severely traumatised for about a week after Greg's visit, due to Greg running around the apartment gratuitously making dinosaur noises and so on, followed by me running the vacuum cleaner and not having enough time to give Bob make-up cuddles before the girls showed up from London), but I have recently discovered that he loves smoked chicken so much he's even willing to meerkat about in order to get it. If you don't know Bob, this will seem like less of a ground-breaking revelation, but honestly it's a big step! I have tried buying him toys and things, but if you roll a ball at him or whatever he gets scared and runs away and hides, so it is awesome to see him playing a little bit!

 
And here's an awesome video of my brother swimming in his own private waterfall in Hawaii. Frickin jealous!

Becoming an auto-entrepreneur

There has been talk for months and months now about my doing some freelance work for a prestigious Parisian institution which shall remain nameless, which I've held back on blogging about since it dragged on and on with nothing happening for so long. However, it looks like thunderbirds are go, so I thought it might be helpful to some of my readers to talk about the process of becoming self-employed - an 'auto-entrepreneur' in French. Please note that this is my own personal experience, so while I've tried to put down the process to the best of my ability, you should probably seek further advice if you're thinking of taking the plunge yourself. Also, I have an EU passport, so I have no idea what hurdles you need to jump through if you are here on an existing visa or you want to move to France to set up a business.

I was initially quite reluctant to go ahead with this, due to a number of concerns - 1) I wasn't sure whether it was okay for me to take work on the side while remaining an employee, 2) I wasn't sure what it would do to my tax bill, and 3) I wasn't looking forward to jumping through administrative hoops that I would regard as a headache in my own country, let alone in a foreign language and in France, kingdom of bureaucracy.

To take those points in order: 1) legally, you are allowed to be an auto-entrepreneur and salarie, with the usual caveats about advising your employer and not entering into direct competition with them. I told my boss when this was first raised with me, and I never actually got a response to my email, so hopefully it's okay! I assume so, I'm not doing the same work or stealing clients (we don't have clients for starters) or anything like that.

2) The tax rate for people providing services is 21.3% of your gross revenue, and you can earn up to 32,600 euros per annum as an auto-entrepreneur. This covers all social security payments as well. You can choose to pay this online monthly or once a trimester. Everyone seems to say that this is absolutely ALL you have to pay as an auto-entrepreneur and you pay nothing if you don't make any money. *However* I ran a couple of simulations on the tax calculator at impots.gouv.fr and adding in the auto-entrepreneur money seemed to add a couple of hundred euros on to my overall tax bill (on top of the 21.3% which is paid separately), which isn't great news since I'm only getting 1000 euros for this job. After thinking about it, I decided to go forward with the job on the understanding that I might not really make much money out of it at all, basically because it will look good for me to have work for nameless Parisian institution on my CV, it will look good to have professional translation work on my CV, and you never know if something will come of it in terms of making professional contacts and potentially opening up new career options. When I get the chance, I'd like to go and talk to someone official and clear all this up, but in the meantime I'm planning on putting the money straight into my savings and holding on to it until tax time. Best case scenario, I'm doing something wrong on that calculator and it is only 21.3% and that's the end of the story, but if not, I'm prepared for that.

3) The most important thing you need to do is register online to create your enterprise and get the all-important SIREN/SIRET number, equivalent to your social security number as an individual. It's actually pretty quick and easy. I won't go through every step, but just some of the things I thought were important to highlight.

You will need (ideally) to have an electronic copy of your ID (e.g. passport scan). The first thing to do is say what the nature of your work will be - I ummed and ahhed a bit about this, since the work I will actually be doing, at least for this first job, is a bit difficult to define, but I opted for 'translator' as the simplest option. I later read somewhere (I think on a form I got sent in the mail) that this information was for statistical purposes only, so don't worry too much. This is classed as an 'activite liberale', which I think does make a difference to your tax rate.

Unfortunately, this next bit got cut off on my print-out of my declaration, but I'm pretty sure where it asks about the regime micro fiscal (BIC or special BNC) I ticked yes. Whichever option I ticked, it is meant to mean that you can pay all your taxes and charges when you do your monthly or trimestrial declaration, so there *should* be nothing left over to surprise you at the end of the tax year.

I think those are the main things I needed help with when filling out the declaration, the rest should be more or less straightforward if you speak French. You also have to pick a new organisme d'assurance maladie, although you still keep the old one as a salarie. I really don't know how the relationship between the two works - it still confuses me that everyone isn't just on the same system to begin with. It says there is no difference to your charges etc. depending on which organisme you choose so I just googled and picked one with an office in Tours, since I prefer dealing with people face-to-face if possible.

After I submitted my form, it only took a week or two for me to receive the notification that they had created my enterprise! Since then, mail has been rolling in about different aspects of being an auto-entrepreneur (plus I am now on the mailing list of every telecommunications company etc. in France), which I haven't really had time to look at. And by "I haven't had time" I mean "I've been too lazy to". It is quite funny getting stuff in the post directed to 'le dirigeant' etc.

Once things were moving forward with the SIREN/SIRET numbers, I had to provide a bill for my services. I followed a model on this website, with some obvious adjustments due to the nature of the work. Note the line telling you that you cannot charge TVA as an auto-entrepreneur! Because I was billing for a mixture of translation and other services, I divided it into a rate per word for the translation and a rate per hour for the rest.

I will put what I'm charging on here since I think it can be hard, especially as expats, to get this sort of information. For this job, I charged 20 centimes per word for translation, and 36 euro per hour gross for my other work (basically liaison work with "clients" and updating the website - I don't want to get too specific on what/who I'm working for on the interwebs). I had actually drawn up a bill at 10 centimes and 20 euro, which I showed to a colleague who basically told me to hike my prices. I have seen rates for translation quoted online at around 7-15 centimes per word, so I initially went for 10 since I'm not a qualified translator or anything. It was good for me to get some advice on this as I tend to be a bit timid and to under-value myself, so sometimes it is good to get someone else to come in and tell you that you're pitching too low.

The translation work I am doing is in a quite specialised domain and intended for an academic audience, so arguably it should be charged at a higher rate. I think so far on average my rate for translation is working out at around about 50 euros an hour, although obviously that's subject to variation based on the complexity of the text to be translated. I had some further discussion with colleagues who have hired translators for similar work in the past, and this seems roughly commensurate with what they have been willing to pay. I don't know how competitive one would be at this rate out in the market, but all things considered, I think it's a fair rate. However, I submitted my facture right before Christmas, so I actually haven't got any word back on that yet!

If anyone is interested, I'll try to keep you updated on any developments as I get to grips with things myself (it's still all a bit new and scary to be honest) and any feedback on any aspect of the process, working for yourself, making contacts, translating, etc. etc. is welcome!

In which nothing has changed

I decided not to go into work today (kind of annoyed about spending another day of holiday, even though I have so many, but oh well) because I was still getting over the tail-end of being sick, I had the tax stuff to sort out and basically I didn't want to. I got woken up around 7.30 by my neighbour leaving his apartment (I would love to know what he does - he often leaves before I'm up in the morning, and he always gets in super late, like 11.30 at night. I have probably blown my chance for neighbourly relations though, by basically running into my apartment and slamming the door the one time our paths crossed in the corridor. It's not my fault, though - studies have shown that 9 out of 10 girls can't distinguish his footsteps on the creaky wooden stairs from those of an angry rapist) and - ding! - that was it, I was awake and worrying about the taxe d'habitation and all it represents (phoning people in French, notably).

I had called the agent on her cellphone a couple of times yesterday, left a message, and also called the agency where I thought she worked, only to be told (confusingly) that she doesn't work there "and she's not in today anyway". Um, okay then. I didn't hear back, so I gave it till 10 this morning and called her again (twice), the second time I got through, she recognised me straight away (for once, the accent came in handy, not like yesterday at the tax place where I said, and SPELLED, my flatmate's name like 10 times and the guy kept on going "Burton? She is English like you?" until I finally got through to him. Damn Rs) but asked if she could call me back in about half an hour.

No problem! Yay! I leant back, congratulated myself on being brave and persistent with the phonecalls and waited for her to call me back and for me to get everything all ship-shape by the end of the day. I don't know why I expected it to be easy. In an universe where someone can lie to and steal from a supposed friend and get away without paying rent for a year without any serious consequences (yes, she technically has to pay the money back to her family, but c'mon...) (and forgetting the whole 'spending years sleeping with a guy who has a partner and kid at home' bit - which, of course, is more his fault, but it's not super classy on her part you must say) and then karma or whatever you call it sticks me with 100% of the tax bill that even the tax office says she should be legally responsible for (leaving any moral questions aside), of course it's not going to be easy. Why would I get a break? And yes, I know I'm *dwelling* but I can't not while this is still not resolved.

So anyway, all that to say that I just waited and waited for her to call back and the call never came. I leapt on the phone once and it turned out to be some crappy autodialling thing which called me 6 times, and there's not even any message or anyone on the line! I looked up the number online (092583697 for any of you in France) and there are pages and pages of people complaining about getting constantly called by this thing. Apparently something to do with Free and Alice selling your number to advertisers or something - and sure enough, in the evening I got a call from an unlisted number and it was Canal Plus telling me that I had been specially selected for a TV upgrade offer. I managed to cut her off by telling her I don't have a TV (you may remember, I - almost - literally threw the TV back in G's face in the moving out process) so mayyyybe they'll give calling me a rest. I guess if you pick up the phone to the stupid machine, you get "selected" for a real person to call you at night.

Anyway, I'm rambling. The obvious question you'll ask is why I didn't call the woman back again. I thought about it, but first I thought I should give it more time, since I'd already called like 4 times (one message, one time actually getting through, oh and the mysterious place where she doesn't work but kind of does as well) and I didn't want to be harassing someone I essentially needed a favour from. And then as the day went on, I just got really down. I'm still down, if you can't tell from my perky post thus far. It's just difficult to have the energy to deal with it. It's hard to feel stupid and unfairly treated and put upon and lost at sea all alone in a foreign country. Plus I'm still kind of sick and I'm just so tired. It's just so hard. And I don't know how I'm going to get up and go to work tomorrow, I just want to lie in bed all the time forever.

Oh yeah, and now I'm officially past due for the tax that I never got official notification of and have no idea what the consequences of that may be (I'm hoping none for me and lots for G, who presumably already knows she's off the hook and is just somewhere cackling with glee about sticking me with it, but like I say, with my luck...)

Flatmate saga - it's not over yet

Warning: Long post about my ongoing flatmate nightmare ahead!

I've just come back from the tax office, since that seemed like a completely fun way to spend my day off. Actually, I first went by in the morning, only for there to be a huge queue in front of me. Since there wasn't that much time left before they closed for lunch, I thought I would be all clever and turn up before they reopened their doors after the break.

Usually, if I need to go to this part of town, I make a detour past the best damn briocherie in Tours. I was kind of embarrassed this morning, cos the lady knew my order without me having to say. Maybe I've been there a couple of extra times lately, with the train trips to Chenonceaux and Poitiers (it's right next to the station), but I swear, normally it's only like once a month max that I end up nearby! Or maybe she just looks at me and thinks "definitely the chocolate chip version for that one"? But anyway, having already got my brioche fix in the morning, I tried to take a shortcut to the tax place and ended up lost in Sanitas, which is officially 'the dodgy part of Tours' - a quartier made up entirely of high-rise HLMs (State Housing) right next to the train tracks. The dodgy bit wouldn't have bothered me too much - it's broad daylight, and it's pretty much just code for 'Here Be Non-White People' I suspect - but I was literally on the wrong side of the tracks and there was no way to get over. By the time I finally found a pedestrian overpass, I had overshot the tax office and had to walk back up the road again, thus negating any possible benefit the 'shortcut' might have had. (On the bright side, this route did lead me past a building which is now a retirement home but was, in the Middle Ages, a home for lepers! You don't see that every day! I had a bit of a chuckle at the symbolism of having a 'ghetto' retirement home in an ex-leper colony. In fact, the leper home ended up giving its name to the whole area, 'Sanitas' being derived from sante - French for health. PS sorry I lost my special short keys to do accents when my laptop crashed, so you'll just have to imagine the accent on sante.)

Normally, I would take this as a Sign From Above to continue eating brioches (and also a good opportunity to work off like 1% of said brioche), but by the time I turned up, 5 minutes before the agency was due to re-open, there was a queue of about 35 people, which swelled to approximately 50 naughty French improper queuers by the time the doors opened.

Why so many? Well, as I would later discover, the taxe d'habitation is due TOMORROW. I still haven't received anything about it in the post, so I had no idea. I had to laugh (and internally hit my head against a brick wall) when I was talking to the tax agent later on and he told me La Poste doesn't forward any mail from the tax department, because otherwise people will try to get out of providing their real addresses to the tax man. This is literally the ONLY reason I paid them 23 euros to forward my mail. I haven't received one piece of forwarded post. Ah hahahaha, you just have to laugh or you'll cry.

Talking of crying, I almost did when I got to Man #1, who was in charge of screening people into the appropriate offices. I explained my whole situation to him - for those who aren't au courant, I was flatting with a French girl, I wasn't on the lease, I gave my rent money directly to her, she didn't pay either her rent or my rent for a year and lived off approximately 4000 euros of my money while quittin' her job to lie in bed all day. When this came to light, we were "asked to leave" the apartment and I had to find a new place without her lifting a single finger to help me with anything. Everything got squared away with the rent money, but I was still left incurring at least a couple thousand euros of expenses in the move. Anyway, I explained a brief version of all this, and the guy was all like "but you weren't on the lease?", "No", "then you shouldn't be responsible for paying". HALLELUJAH! But 2 minutes later he was just all "well, *normally* you shouldn't be responsible for paying, but for some reason the full amount is in your name, nothing's in her name and so hey, guess what, you're on the hook for the full 450 euros". He basically just did his best Gallic shrug when asked why that should be if I was never on the lease and he JUST SAID that I should therefore not be responsible. And then he was all "you can wait to see my colleague if you like, but he's just going to tell you the same thing". This is about the point where I was ready to burst into tears, but I held it together and said I would wait for his colleague, which just earned more "it's your funeral" type shrugging from him.

So, colleague it was, and I must say, this guy was super nice. He took the time to listen to everything I had to say and give me a little fatherly advice about how you should never be in a flatting situation without something in writing, even if it's with friends or partners, even if it's not a proper lease but just something scribbled on the back of an envelope. So yeah, too late for me, but maybe someone reading this will learn from my mistakes...

Another "pro tip" from the pit of despair - we talked about why it would be that it somehow ended up in my name. At first he just said that he didn't know how it worked, but maybe since they had two names on the tax declaration (she did apparently declare she was living there too, which is at least a start I suppose), they just picked one at random. Then he said something interesting - that I might have 'missed something' on the tax form. He explained that you can tick that you're in a flat as an owner, a renter, or that you're living there for free. Now here's the interesting bit - living there for free, in the eyes of the taxman, doesn't necessarily mean you're not paying rent, it just means that you're not legally responsible for the place e.g. you're not on the lease and therefore you don't get assessed for the tax. I had no clue about this, so I obviously ticked 'tenant'. He suggested that she might have been maligne (which means clever, but there's an air of 'sneaky, tricky' about it - you can see the relationship with malignant in English) and ticked that SHE was living there for free, and thus landed me right in it. And you know, that wouldn't bloody surprise me a bit. He also said I was naive - perceptive one, this taxman!

So Mr. Nice Taxman suggested that I needed to get on to the agency that rented us our old flat (rented HER our old flat, I should say) and try to get either a copy of the lease or the etat des lieux de sortie (the paperwork she would have signed on moving out) to prove that she was on the lease and I wasn't, and then they might be able to shift it on to her, which understandably they can't do just on my say-so (even if they have bloody well stuck me with it IMHO unfairly in the first place). If the 450 euros had been divided in two, I would have just paid my part, but it would really kill me to have to pay her part as well, and I know she's never going to give me the money just if I ask for it (for one thing, I "technically" still owe her for the last two months' expenses and supposedly some rubbish tax (as in, stuff you throw away, not bullsh!t) she'd never brought up in the previous 15 months I was there).

So I've called the agency, the woman I was dealing with is not there and wasn't answering her cellphone, so I left a message and am hoping she will get back to me, otherwise I'll have to like try and doorstop her the way she did when she came to get us for not paying rent, ha ha. Meanwhile, I am still legally responsible for this thing that's due tomorrow, and I don't really know what the consequences are for being late with it - the guy said they will "chase me" (although thanks to La Poste not forwarding their letters, I won't know about it ha ha) but I don't really know beyond that. He suggested maybe paying it and getting a refund, but I don't really trust that that will work out. Honestly, I hope that bitch falls into a well, I really do.

Hate French bureaucracy so much!

Took Monday off due to stress/lack of sleep/not wanting to go to work. Yesterday the secretary called me up to say now people on contracts have to file their own paperwork with the government for sick days. So, not only do people on contracts officially get no job security (and, as I've discovered, no-one wants to rent to you, let alone give you a mortgage or whatever), fewer perks, lower salaries, and presumably fewer retirement benefits etc., but now we have to do our own goddamn paperwork as well! It's so unfair! It wouldn't be so bad, but I asked for my social security account to be moved from Nice to Tours a full nine months ago (more than that actually, but nine months ago was when I gave them the last of the paperwork they needed), I've been into see them two or three times since, and they haven't done it yet. So that means all this time I haven't been able to claim reimbursement for medical costs, I haven't been able to declare a primary care doctor, and now I don't know what to do with this paperwork. It's effing ridiculous, hate this place.