Kicking Back

Had to be brave and use some French today. We’ve run out of recycle sacs and needed more, so off to the Mairie we drove. Every small village/commune has a Mairie which runs the place and we’d been told that we could get more sacs there. I used Google translator to get a nice, polite sentence in French, copied it down on a piece of paper, and marched up the steps of the smart new building in St Felix de Villadeix. I came back down flushed with success and clutching a big roll of yellow recycle sacs. My prepared sentence worked beautifully, and I adlibbed the rest!

Afterwards we drove to St George de Montclard by way of Rabard, and drove slowly by the house we almost bought about ten years ago. We couldn’t sell our own at the time, so the deal fell through, but it was a lovely house with lots of land. Actually, the recession of 2008 convinced us we had done the right thing in staying in England, and now Brexit is about to reinforce that. There are 129 houses for sale in this commune at the moment, prices ranging from 73,000 euros all the way up to 900,000 euros. No doubt a lot of English who’ve chosen to live here will now be thinking of returning. 

Lots of things that were easy and good in the EU, for travellers and those who chose to buy homes here, may now not be so good – medical attention when required, travel insurance, UK pensions that don’t rise with inflation – in other words, an income that is decreasing rather than keeping pace with the cost of living which is not now that much cheaper in France than in the UK. (Just as an aside I bought a tin of Heinz baked beans in the Intermarche the other day. In the UK it would cost me somewhere in the region of 35p; here it cost me the euro equivalent of £1.25.) The French don't do that kind of bean, though there are lots of other bean choices.

A journalist on the Daily Politic show today called Jeremy Corbyn’s 500,000 supporters “a group hug” which I though a nice way of putting it. His people keep quoting this figure as a reason for staying put at the head of the Labour Party but just don’t seem to realise that he has to get a substantial number of the other 60 million people of voting age in the rest of the country to vote for him as well.