Please let me stay

Just over 12 months ago, Cliona and I sat outside this same pokey little office on the first floor of the Agen prefecture, in the south-west of France.

Then, like now, we waited ... and watched our Moroccan friends climb the stairs clutching their appointment numbers to take a seat and attend to immigration formalities.

We didn't need a number. We just sat outside office #1 and waited.

Cliona, as an Irish/European citizen, was obliged to attend my Carte de Sejours (long-term visa) renewal application because I came into France as her spouse.

In my briefcase, I carried a full dossier of documents, certificates, attestations, translations and photocopies. And a printed receipt for 50 euros of fiscal stamps I had purchased online, the standard cost of these applications.

The appointment was set down for 3.30pm but we weren't seen until 4.20.

Our interviewer was a woman in her late 50's or early 60's, with long, dark hair streaked with grey.  She was the antithesis of the dour French bureaucrat. She wore a constant smile and often broke into a giggle.

She was accompanied by another, slightly younger woman, who appeared to be her superior. She was more serious, but had a kindly demeanour.

So I assumed my interviewer was a trainee.

The first thing she wanted to see was my current Carte de Sejours, which is due to expire next month. I produced it confidently.

The first thing her supervisor wanted to see was my passport, and she asked if I had made photocopies of all the pages with stamps.

Damn. I had copied the main page, but not the pages with stamps. That wasn't on the list of documents to bring. It wasn't a requirement for my initial Carte de Sejours application.

I thought, shit, they've tripped me at the first hurdle.

But the supervisor smiled and said, "I'll do it." She took my passport and left the office.

When she came back, she looked at her watch anxiously and said,  "The prefecture is going to close so you might have to sleep here overnight."

I said, "That's OK, it wouldn't be the first time."

She looked at me with a startled expression for a split second, then realised it was a joke.

But time was against us, so rather than take me through the required paperwork category by category, the supervisor said, "Come on, just give me all your documents."

When she saw the receipt for the 50 euros, she said, "No, we don't take stamps."

Oh great. Mr Fixit, John Dislins, told me this was an essential requirement. He should know, cause he's guided hundreds of expats through the French bureaucratic maze.

In the past, you had to go to a tobacconist or a newsagent to buy these stamps. Not anymore. You can purchase them online.

"What can I do?" I asked, "I've paid online.  Do you take cash?"

"Oh no," she said, "we don't require payment at all."

Then I remembered, my application for my first Carte de Sejours at Agen 12 months ago also was gratuit.

This surprised my friend John Dislins.

Clearly exasperated, he dropped me a line saying how amazed he was that Agen prefecture didn't stick to the rules ... and reminded me that the time I go in there without stamps will be the day they ask for them. How true, how French.

After receiving my récépissé, which gave me temporary residency until June, I had the temerity to ask if my next Carte de Sejours could be for five years.

The supervisor grimaced, "That is not something we can determine, it is up to the powers that be."

"But I've bought a house. And we are in the social security/health system. AND I HAVE A FRENCH DRIVER'S LICENCE!"

"Sorry," she said. "You'll have to wait and see."

Hmm ...I certainly don't want to go through this process every year.

But then again, what had just transpired was relatively quick and easy.

It certainly helps focus the mind when the prefecture is about to close and knock-off time looms.

Home owners

As the French saying goes, "Qui cherche, trouve."

And we have found our house. Finally.

It was the culmination of a long search, twelve months in fact. It involved trawling through a thousand real-estate ads on a multitude of websites, innumerable requests for more photos and more info, and around 70 actual viewings.

We cast our net wide, over many departments, and drove a lot of kilometres.

Our search ended on a cold, grey February day, as we were shown through the Maison de Maître that stood on an elevated site, overlooking the surrounding farms, between the villages of Bazens and Frégimont.

Cliona kept nudging me in the back ... an auspicious reaction.

We returned a second time to see our mansion on the hill, with its unusual square pool, its saffron garden and its view to the distant Pyrenees.

A few days later we made an offer. There was a bit of toing and froing through the agent, until we agreed on a price. We put a formal, written offer to Mr and Mrs Negrello. They accepted and the deal was done.

So here we are, in the Notaire's plush office at Agen, solemnly signing a promesse unilatéral de vente.  In France, the notaire is a government-appointed solicitor/conveyancer who processes all the paperwork on a property transaction.

His methodical, clause-by-cause explanation took three hours.

Incorporating the additions and addendums, the sales contract ran to a staggering 240 pages. It included all the diagnostic checks, obligatory before any sale.

A dapper, good-humoured man in his early sixties, our host told us his grandfather was also a notaire. But, in his day, a compromis or promesse de vente amounted to just three pages.

The solid rock of contemporary bureaucracy has been laid down layer upon layer over 80 years.

Fortunately, we only had to sign once on a tablet. It electronically added our signature to every page.

The "cooling off" period has passed and we have paid a deposit.

We are now home owners in France.

The village doctor

It took five attempts to reach our village doctor to make an appointment.

It's never easy to get through to Dr Alvarez on the phone as he doesn't have a receptionist.

In the waiting room, we sat reading our tattered magazines, beneath a poster that showed two matches propped up in bed. Apparently, one of them had flamed too soon. It was a euphemistic case of premature ignition. It advised the spent match to see his doctor.

On the other side of the room sat a well-dressed but withered old man, a red Ottoman fez on his head, sprouting a black tassle ... the fez, not his head.

He didn't have an appointment. Every time Dr Alvarez finished with a patient, the septogenarian Pasha shuffled hopefully to the doctor's door, only to return to his seat.

A thirty-something mother with a listless child on her lap didn't have an appointment either. I knew this because a bossy, middle-aged woman with a blue-blond bouffant, agitated by the long wait, boldly questioned all of us in the waiting room.

"Do you have an appointment?" she asked me.

"Yes, I do."

"For what time?"

"Ten-fifteen."

"Well, that's the same time I've got, 10.15!"

Just then a sallow-faced matron sitting opposite us exploded with a dry, wracking cough. Her eyes bulged and her hand hovered over her mouth.

She also had a 10.15 appointment.

The harried but unhurried Doctor Alvarez then emerged to tell us that the woman with the hacking cough was next, followed by Cliona and me.

As soon as he'd left the waiting room Madam Bouffant exclaimed, "And me?! He didn't even look my way."

She passed her hand across her eyes to suggest Dr. Alvarez had faulty vision.

"Am I not fat enough to be noticed?"

I was about to suggest to the young woman with the sickly child that she could go before us when she came up to me and asked if she could go before us.

I wanted to say, "I was just about to suggest that." But I forget the French and muttered something incomprehensible, which I fear made me look inept.

It was finally our turn, a good 60 minutes late. As we entered his office, the mobile phone next to his stethoscope was ringing. He let it ring. Dr Alvarez was a man under pressure but didn't show it. He seemed unflappable, as he sat smiling on the other side of his desk, with a waiting room full of impatient patients.

The phone rang again. This time he answered it and took a booking. He checked the spelling and wrote the person's name in his appointment's diary, a lined exercise book with 12 minute intervals in the margin. The problem was, each of his consultations took a lot longer than 12 minutes, especially as he spent so much time answering the phone.

I asked him,"Why don't you get a receptionist?"

"I've been trying," he said. "I'm waiting on a call back."

As we left, we could hear Madam Bouffant talking loudly on her mobile phone, as the stooped Turk made his way again towards the doctor's door.

Maybe this time.

vide grenier

The vide grenier at Villeneuve sur Lot turned out to be quite a show.

Multiple stalls stretched along many streets.

Translated, it means "empty attic", or for Australians, a collective open-air garage sale.

Some of the vides greniers we've been to were ordinary but today was impressive.

Here is what I bought ...

antique (1898) bronze miniature reproduction of Roden's classic "The Kiss".

a gift for my gifted grandson in the UK

the seller wouldn't budge from 2 euro each

a double brass wall lamp with superb milk glass shades

An unusual procession

We were out on a constitutional ... near Temple sur Lot.

I noticed something on the road, like a piece of cord or thin rope.

On closer inspection, it was moving. It was snaking along in a chain of short segments.

Now, I've heard of a daisy chain, a chain of ponds or a chain of command ... but a chain or caterpillars?!

Each of these little hairy chaps was about two to two and a half centimetres long. I counted them, there was about 80, all head to tail and moving as one entity across the road.

What extraordinary behaviour, I thought.

When we got back to the same spot, about an hour or so later, we saw, alas, a section of squashed caterpillars the same width as a car tyre.

Well, at least most of them had made it.

I looked these characters up online.

They are the caterpillars of the pine processionary moth, which in late winter or early spring make their way to suitable soil to pupate.

In all my born days, I'd never seen such a thing ... and I grew up in Queensland!

The big white circle in the sky

At 8 o'clock this morning the moon was the biggest and brightest I'd seen for a very long time.

And out on the grass, my little friend was busy foraging.