Becoming an auto-entrepreneur is recognised as being the simplest way to set up a business in France, so it’s the route I’ve taken with my language classes. But all things are relative and simple isn’t the word I’d choose to describe the hoops I’ve had to jump through.

When filling in the original forms, I asked several people what one question meant; none of them knew; I ended up going to see the nice man in the local tax office, who made several phone calls on my behalf and concluded “You tick yes, but don’t ask me why!”.

Last week I received an email saying that they’d changed the dossier numbers of all auto-entrepreneurs, since January 1st. Since I only set up on January 1st, I don’t understand why I wasn’t given a new number to start with, but……   There was a link in the email to allow me to change to my new number, so I filled in all the little boxes, going through the reams of paperwork containing INSEE numbers, SIRET numbers, dossier numbers, social security numbers, declaration numbers…… you name it, to find what I needed. However, after numerous attempts over the next two hours, I received an email telling me that these co-ordinates don’t correspond to anyone in the system! A lot more searching led, finally, to a way of contacting them by email, so I’ve sent copies of all the papers they may find useful and I’m waiting for a reply. Perhaps if I don’t exist, I won’t have to pay taxes????

There’s been no sign of Joel yet, but Nick and Kieran have been keeping themselves busy with the task of putting drainage in the garden. So far they’ve laid 40metres of piping, some with slots cut in, to collect the water, the rest left intact, to drain it away into the well.

The frost still lay thick on the ground at 8o’clock this morning, as Nick set off to join about twenty other intrepid cyclists from the Nogaro club on the annual CODEP 64 ride. Their destination was Lourdes, in Haute Pyrenees, departement 64, where they would meet up with other cyclists from all around the area for lunch, then cycle back home again; 180km in total.

The weather was glorious, the sun soon burning the frost away to leave a day of clear blue skies and temperatures around 15ºC. The route was relatively flat, too, much to everyone’s relief; that is, as flat as it gets when you’re riding into the foothills of the Pyrenees! When they arrived at the Lourdes Cycle Club clubhouse, an old railway station just south of the town, there was a barbecue; sausages and ventreche (belly pork), to be piled into baguettes, followed by cakes and dried fruits and washed down with the inevitable red wine.

Nick was a little concerned that he’d done very little by way of training and certainly nothing approaching this distance, but he needn’t have worried; he was strong enough to do a large portion of the return trip on the front of the group, sprinting up the hills a few miles from Nogaro, and didn’t even have the decency to feel tired when he arrived home!

Joel’s back from his hols now, so tomorrow could well be back to the grind; I think the next job will be replacing the roof, so no more lie-ins for a while!

Last Monday we woke to snow! Not what we were expecting at all! Happily, by lunchtime, the thaw had set in and it was completely gone by evening. It has stayed cold, however, so, being a wimp, I haven’t done any tiling this week.

The lads have continued to get on with Joel’s homework, cementing up the window and door edges and cementing around the ends of the beams that support the roof. Joel’s back on Monday and is hoping to start replacing the roof this week, weather permitting. Nick and Kieran have also laid the pipework to drain some of the wetter parts of the garden into the well, so there are now even more big piles of soil and mud around the place; no doubt, one day, it will all be shovelled back into holes, or somewhere! They’ve also made a swimming pool for the goose, which she loves and spends hours diving in and doing somersaults in the water! It’ll be fine till she chews her way through the plastic liner.

The French love their dictées (dictations), so when my CLAN students asked if we could do one in class, I decided to do Roald Dahl’s “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf”. We worked on it for several weeks and they so enjoyed it that we thought it might be a good idea to record them reciting it. I borrowed a camcorder, to get a professional-ish result, but, as anyone who knows me will be well aware, technology isn’t my strong point and I couldn’t work out how to do the editing at all, so that put an end to that plan. However, Alicia had recorded the dress rehearsal on her camera, so here’s the result…… (and a few pics from our Christmas party)

The last few weeks of rain have, if nothing else, served to convince us that the garden has serious drainage issues; so Nick and Kieran, having finished their “homework”, have been working on that while Joel’s away. It’s been a lovely few days, so the moat around the terrace has dried out at last and the lads have dug out a drainage channel, that goes from the moat, round part of the front of the house, then across the garden towards the well.  The plan is to drain the excess water into the well and hopefully, use it to water the garden in summer.

I’ve missed most of the sunshine, through teaching and tiling. But the second part of the arrière cuisine tiling is now finished and ready to grout. Part 3 next week, with a bit of luck 🙂

The first (and easiest)  job on the list of things to do before Joel gets back was to strip the crepi from the front of the new house, so Nick and Kieran tackled it today as it was a lovely day for working outside.

I spent the afternoon getting on with the tiling in the arrière cuisine – I’m getting quicker at tiling now, as you’ll see from the video 😉 But having had such fun this afternoon, now there’s just the small matter of the two lessons to plan for tomorrow……..I  think it might be a late night………

France is still a patriarchal society and I suppose this shows nowhere more than in the building trade. Joel and his lads are quite happy that I regularly take them drinks and cake, and even that I’m consulted on such points as the size and position of windows and doors, the placing of items in the bathroom, etc. But Joel’s face was a picture yesterday when he came in to explain something and found me tiling the arrière cuisine walls; it was a look of total disbelief! Once he’d got over his shock, however, and conceded that, actually, I’m not making a bad job of it, he offered to bring round any extra tiles he’s got left over from jobs he’s done, that would be the right size.

He and the boys finished the brickwork on the chaufferie yesterday; we won’t see them now for a fortnight as Joel’s going to Guadeloupe for a holiday (we must be paying him too much!) When they get back, the next job is to replace the roof; but in the meantime, Nick and Kieran have been left their homework to get on with while he’s away, cementing around windows and doors.

They have spent the last couple of days building a temporary staircase in the new house; a ladder is just too precarious for carrying stuff up and down. Having a staircase seems to transform it from just a building site into something that may, one day, become a home. 😉

After weeks and weeks of rain, the sun shone today – bliss! As Nick got on with the daily task of pumping out the moat, Joel arrived to start building the chaufferie, which will house the water heater and the pipes and stuff that will run the heating system. He set Nick and Kieran to work, opening up an old, blocked up window upstairs, while Seb and David started cutting holes in another wall for the French doors and window onto the balcony. Once cut, they put up the shuttering and poured the concrete lintels.

I finished the first little wall of tiling last night, so I laid out the tiles for the next section this evening, arranging and rearranging them until I was happy that I’ve got a “random” pattern. It seems such a small job in comparison with the rest of the work going on right now, but I like the result so far.

Today’s time lapse video

The rain has hardly stopped all week; rivers are nearly bursting their banks and fields which haven’t flooded in living memory are flooded. We’ve hardly seen Joel since Monday; his next task here is to build the boiler room on one end of the terrace, but it’s just been too wet. One of his lads arrived on Tuesday with a truck-load of bricks, which he and Nick unloaded in the rain, and Joel brought round some roof tiles so that we can choose a colour; the oldest, muckiest-looking one will do nicely, thank you! In a dryish spell yesterday, the lads managed to concrete the plinth to stand the pompe à chaleur on, so that’s ready to go.

Nick and Kieran have continued working on the arrière cuisine and it’s down to me to get the tiling done now. This isn’t as easy as it may sound, as I’m now teaching five language classes a week; two English and three French. In between times, when I’m not preparing the next class, next meal or next lot of clean clothes, I try to do a bit of tiling. So far, it’s taken 2 weeks to do that little wall, but I’m getting quicker!

I was gobsmacked yesterday when a friend phoned to ask if I fancied a week in Strasbourg next month; she sometimes works as a translator for an organisation, but can’t do their March convention and wondered if I might like to give it a try. I was very flattered and did attempt simultaneous translation of an article I found online; but I was rubbish at it; the bit of my brain that does the “input” doesn’t seem to work with the “output” part at all and I could only manage an occasional word here and there – certainly nothing that would have made sense to a listener! So bang goes my jolly! Tant pis!

Today was a milestone; the first floor concrete was arriving.

When Seb got here at 8am he announced that the cement lorry was on its way; he and David removed a few tiles from the front and back roofs, to allow the concrete to be poured in from above and we waited to see if the lorry would get in through the gates. There was no problem; apparently all the lorries are the same size; whether or not they got in before was down to the driver’s skill and today they sent us the best.

The first lorry had an amazing array of pipes, tubes and hydraulic-looking bits; the driver had a remote control unit attached to a belt, with which he moved it all into position with the apparent ease of someone who really knows what he’s doing. The lorry discharged a load of concrete into a hopper, from where it was pumped up the pipes, over the roof and in through the holes. Joel and his lads levelled it inside the house. A second lorry turned up at 9am to refill the first one with more concrete; once they’d done inside, it was time to lay the terrace.

While this was going on, our electrician friend who’s been doing the wiring in the arrière cuisine turned up to attach the sockets, now that it’s all plastered. With everything that was going on, it felt like a whirlwind! But by lunchtime everybody had finished and gone home; Joel and his lads won’t be back till Wednesday, to give the concrete time to dry. What a relief; we can have a day off tomorrow!!!!

Today’s time lapse video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxaQpa5e15k&hd=1]