France

Living in France

• Why your house is damp and how to fix it 2
• Wedding in Molinot July 2016
• The stove story
• The Fall of France: Macron’s election and the Greater Germany
• Summer at Last
• Pork, Secularism, and Anarchy
• Penetrating Damp in your Traditional House (Damp 3)
• Napoleon was a Big Guy Really
• In France, Everything Shuts On Monday
• In France, Everything Shuts at Twelve- (Part Two)
• In France, Everything Shuts at Twelve- (Part One)
• Gendarmes, Police and Faulty Speedos
• Flics: Traffic cops in France
• Fete de la Revolution in Molinot 2002
• DIY In France–Where to Get Stuff
• Croutons and Cheese! French Onion Soup 2
• Bastille Day!
• Bastille Day: Death of a village in France
• Autun, March 2002
• A House in France: Finding and buying

Between 1993 and 2017 I spent a total of twelve years living in France. At the time it seemed like a good idea! I enjoyed it anyway. Living in France was then something of a middle-class British Dream, inspired partly by Peter Mayle’s books – which, when one actually is living in France, seem a damn sight short of the reality!

Living in France can be hard. The bureaucracy, to a Brit, is mind-bendingly complex, but one soon learns that most French people just ignore l’Administration and the bizarre laws it makes, and get on with life. Well, they do in Molinot, our dream village in France. I am sure this infuriates the agents of the State but that seems not to make any great difference for the good folk of Molinot, les Molinards.

I wrote about Molinot, under the name P’tit Moulin, in two books, French Onion Soup! (2013) and Croutons and Cheese! (2017). Another in the series is on its way but for now, why not grab copies of these? They are available through Amazon and good booksellers, and as e-books through Kindle.

Living in France was a mixture of enjoying a rural idyll where nobody really cared about what you did but they didn’t want to see you come to harm – sort of like being hapless children – or half-wits – and the daily struggle to make money and survive, which was much harder there. This was really what led to us coming back from France to Scotland, twice, and on both occasions I was able to establish good businesses that made money in very little time – something I could only have done in France by working ‘on the black’ – which I eventually simply had to do.

No hard feelings to the French State there, and I would say in my defence that for all Britain’s other failings, all the French people I know who resettled there also felt that it was far more business-friendly than the homeland. But then, the cheese is so much better there! It makes up for a lot, you know; as does having health systems that actually work. Anyway, please browse and enjoy the articles.

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