Category Archives: estate agent

Thursday 12th July 2018 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… afternoon!

Sat down on the sofa at about 15:00 with a nice cold glass of lemonade. Next thing that I remember was that it was 18:45 and all my ice had melted.

And I’d been on my travels too. Out in Canada. In another setting that I have visited in the past too. This time I was doing a circular tour of some area, and I had some kind of deadline to meet too, so I couldn’t afford to hang about and I was relying on the dashcam for photography, thinking that I’ll take some stills of my voyage from the videos. But I arrived at an area with a huge girder bridge going over some water, with a big main road like a motorway. But for some reason the motorway came to a dead stop before the bridge and there was a ferry announced. For some reason or other it reminded me of the set-up at the Confederation Bridge from Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Isle in the old days. The ferry was leaving in 10 minutes and I had 8 miles to travel (we’ve had a couple of real circumstances like this on our travels) so I didn’t even have time to check the map to see if this was the correct ferry. I just had to put my foot down and get going, and look pretty silly if it turned out to be the wrong ferry.

Yes, the exertions of the last couple of weeks have really got me down, haven’t they?

A late night last night didn’t help much, but then again that was balanced out by the fact that although the alarms went off as you might expect at 06:20 and 06:30, I just turned over and went back to sleep again. 09:00 is a much more reasonable time to be out and about.

After the usual medicine performance I had breakfast and a shower and general clean-up, and then off out. Just outside, I bumped into one of the neighbours who told me that the remote controls for the new barrier are ready, so I added that to my list of things to do.

First stop though was LIDL where I stocked up with a few things – nothing special. Next stop was the remote control, and then across the road to LeClerc, where I wasn’t quick enough with the phone camera to catch an old Renault 4CV that was driving around the car park.

Nothing exciting in LeClerc so I came home and, picking up the coolbox out of Caliburn, packed everything away and put the coolbox soaking with bleach to clean it out.

My lizard was there waiting for me on my wall when I went for a rather late lunch, and then back here, well, you know the rest of the story.

Once I’d come round, I had a think about tea – for the first time in a week or more – and made myself some pasta and vegetables tossed in garlic powder, pepper and olive oil.

While that was doing, I assembled a couple of little things that I had bought in IKEA and tidied up the first part of the European Cardboard Box Mountain.

Once I’d washed up, the rubbish went into the bin across the road and I went for a walk around the headland. I need to restart my good habits.

jersey ferry port de granville harbour manche normandy franceWhile I was walking around, I was miles away with my head in the clouds, as is my usual situation.

But my reverie was interrupted by a rather loud reversing siren coming from down one of the boats down in the harbour.

It turned out that one of the ferries, Granville that go over to Jersey was in the process of reversing out of its berth at the Gare Maritime.

victor hugo jersey ferry port de granville harbour manche normandy franceIt seemed to me that it was rather a weird time to be going out on a ferry crossing, so I watched it for a while.

However it wasn’t setting off out, but moving into the inner harbour to be tied up next to its older brother, Victor Hugo.

We must be having a very low tide tonight for them to want to move it inside. There will probably be crowds of people out on the sands tomorrow at low tide.

Back here now, exhausted and ready for bed despite all of the sleep that I had had. I dunno where this is all going but I can’t say that I’m enjoying any of it.

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Thursday 25th January 2018 – THE DIE IS CAST

All last evening, part of the night and for the early part of the morning, I had a long think about the letter that I wrote yesterday.

To say that it’s an incendiary epistle is an understatement and at one stage I was thinking that maybe I should calm it down somewhat. And then I thought again.

I remembered Gotthold Lessing, and his quote, crudely translated by Yours Truly (and if there’s anything that needs doing crudely, then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man) “A man who does not lose his reason over certain things has none to lose”.

What’s been happening to me at the Crédit Agricole over the last 9 months has long since passed beyond the point of reason and one day I’ll tell you all about it.

And there are also the words of Sir Walter Raleigh – not the Elizabethan adventurer but the early 20th-Century author – who said “he is thrice armed who has his quarrel just”.

And so with this letter being the perfect lead-in, there’s no time like the present to start to wage a war, and so I made a couple of minor amendments, posted one copy off to the Bank’s Head Office and took the other one to the local branch where I instructed the receptionist to place it in the hands of the Branch Manager.

As I said, I’ll probably regret writing it, but I need to bring this sorry affair to a conclusion one way or another and there won’t be a better opportunity.

Last night was another bad night. I ended up going to bed late because I couldn’t sleep, and I was awake before the alarm went off too. There’s a lot going on in my mind right now of course.

So I medicated and breakfasted, had a shower and then went off to town and my letter deliveries.

It was a struggle to make it to LIDL but I made it in the end. And then I couldn’t think of anything that I needed. I bought a baguette, some rice and some pasta because that’s the kind of thing that you can always use.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that I’ve encountered another problem. I need to send in a “proof of residence” with my driving licence, and as my annual electricity bill is outside the date limit, I was intending to send a rent receipt for my apartment. But on examining the latest rent receipt, they have the address wrong!

And so while I was in town I went to the estate agents and they revised the details and very kindly printed off a new receipt. So that’s that problem sold.

hotel des bains casino granville manche normandy franceJust by way of a change, I came back from LIDL a different way – along the plateau to the south of the town and then down the steps right into the centre.

And from the top of the steps there’s this nice view across to the Hotel Des Bains (the big building right of centre) and the sea, right by where the Casino (the turrets poking up left of centre) is.

And you can see that just for a change we were having some fine weather. And it wasn’t cold either.

Back here I made a coffee and then sat down to recover up until lunchtime, when I finished off the rest of yesterday’s vegetable soup.

Having done that, I attacked the driving licence. And start as you mean to go on – a piece of paper jammed itself in the printer and I was there for an hour dismantling … "disPERSONtling it" – ed … it to solve the problem. It was only a tiny fragment too, but it would have to be just big enough to cover the sensor, wouldn’t it? It’s a good job that that didn’t happen when there were important things to do.

But eventually all of the paperwork was completed and having deleted all that I can off my telephone, I had enough free space to receive the texted code from the Bank to authorise my payment.

So that’s gone off and I have the receipt. But by heck it isn’t half a complicated procedure.

square maurice marland granville manche normandy franceI was late for my afternoon walk but I went all the same. And I went once more around the medieval walls.

My route took me past the statue of Maurice Marland. He was a schoolteacher and leader of a cell of Resistance fighters here in Granville. Despite having been arrested and tortured in 1943 he carried on with his Resistance work but was captured again on 22nd July 1944.

No-one knows what happened after that but a couple of days later his body was found in a ditch with five gunshot wounds.

His Resistance cell was broken too and several membfitbiters were likewise executed. This is a monument to all of them.

Another coffee and a session on the guitar, and then a chat to TOTGA on the laptop. That led up nicely to tea which was another frozen curry from the batch in the freezer. Potato and chick-pea, this was.

The day finished off with another walk, and I’m now at 120% of my day’s activity plan.

No sign of the Bank but it’s probably the calm before the storm. We’ll see what tomorrow will bring.

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Tuesday 22nd October 2013 – I’M SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING IT EASY …

… today, but you wouldn’t have thought so. First on the ‘phone was Rosemary. Her roofer is staying on for a day or two and so he’s going to have a quick go at her barn. Of course, we took the scaffolding down on Sunday, so could he borrow my roof ladder?

So at 08:30 they were here at Pooh Corner to take it away, and from there it all went downhill. Marianne called me to remind me of an errand that needed doing in Brussels and about which I had clean forgotten. Then I had two other calls in quick succession and I can’t now remember who they were and what they wanted – such is advancing age.

Then I had another task to perform. Seeing as how I’m not leaving until this afternoon now, I went to put another plan into operation and that involved meeting an estate agent in Pionsat. We had a pleasant morning out, but this idea that I have will not come to fruition, which is a shame, as there is a major stumbling block with my idea.

Back at Pooh Corner I fell in with Lieneke and Guus who are here for a week, and we had quite a lengthy chat. It’s always nice to see friendly people – they are in quite short supply here. And Raoul the cat put in his first appearance of the autumn. Checking up on his sources of food supply for the winter, methinks.

I loaded up the van and after a brief repos I set off for Brussels. And I got well on my way before I realised that I had forgotten my passport, and so I had to come all the way back again. I made it as far as Melun where I stopped for fuel and also for a bag of chips and a vegetarian pitta. I’m going for a little luxury in my old age. Another sign of old age is that I only made it as far as Valenciennes, a good 90 minutes short of Brussels, before I pulled off for a kip. I’m clearly not as young as I was. Consequently I didn’t make it here until about 02:30 – to find a major change about the property and also the fact that the internet is disconnected – more of which anon.

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Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – I’ve had another one of these days …

… where I haven’t done very much. Life seems to be conspiring against me right now.

I was awake long before the alarm went off – in fact I had to crawl out of bed to go for a Gipsy’s but it was far too cold to stay up so I went back to bed until the alarm went off. At least, that was the plan but for some reason or another it was 10:04 when I came to my senses (such as they are).

I didn’t have time to have my breakfast either for while the kettle was boiling the phone rang. It was the Mairie ringing up – could the woman doing the census come round and take my details? So she and her minder came round (they’ve clearly heard all about me) and took down my particulars. It was a good job I had put clean ones on. But the French census is a lark – they just want to know your age, place of birth, profession, education standard and your employment as well as something about the conditions in which you live. Vastly different from the UK where they want to know more about you than you know about yourself.

After that, someone from the Conversation Group rang up with a chagrin d’amour. I suppose that I should be pleased that people feel comfortable in confiding their problems to me. It’s a pleasant change from being totally ingored – the usual state of affairs.

I managed an hour or two on the wall but it was then time to go off to Montaigut to look at these two houses. One is supposed to be livable in a certain fashion but the other one is merely four walls and a roof. We had a good poke around and as you might expect the “livable” one didn’t live up to expectations – damp penetration being one of the major problems. And from the corner of the roof that was supposed to have been fixed. But we had a good chat afterwards and some serious discussions took place, with the result that for better or for worse we placed an offer on the properties – suitably balanced to cover the cost of re-redoing the roof (I made sure that the estate agent was aware of the defect) and putting right the damage. The way we see it, the more time we spend discussing the situation the longer it’s going to take us to make a start. And all the time with inflation at 3% and bank interest at just 0.5% the longer you wait the more the real value of your savings melts away before your eyes. The quicker we can find something suitable and start to invest our labour into it the better.

After that, it was 17:00 when I came home and I didn’t feel like starting work again just for an hour – which was just as well as Claude came round for a chat and he was here for over an hour. I’m going to have to put in a good day tomorrow.

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Wednesday 27th January 2010 – I haven’t done much today.

I crawled out of bed this morning on time for a change and after a quick breakfast I piddled off to St Eloy to meet Liz and Terry for stage 2 of our househunting. First estate agent was on the phone all the time we were there and so we went to the second. Three people inside the office, two chatting to each other and the third on the phone.
“Ohh, she’ll see you. She won’t be a minute” said one of the chatting colleagues, indicating the one who was on the phone. So we waited and waited and waited while she carried on talking on the phone and the others carried on chatting to each other. 10 minutes of this and we piddled off elsewhere. Yes, don’t sell your property with ORPI of St Eloy – total waste of time and treat the customers with contempt.

At the third the estate agent selected three properties for us to have a look at and we wandered off to look at them. One was out of the question – although you can make 7 or 8 apartments in it, it’s expensive and needs a lot of money throwing at it. And there’s no way you could just do up one or two for starters – it all has to be done together. The other two are distinct possibilities and one particularly has fired our collective imaginations.

But why oh why is it that estate agents over here are so disorganised. When we looked around Pionsat the other day the estate agent forgot the keys and had to run back to the office to find them and here today the estate agent had “issues” with the keys. No sense of organisation, let alone “customer service”.

This afternoon I did even less. I’ve had a whole run of bad nights where I’ve had problems sleeping and it caught up with me this afternoon and I crashed out. But it’s no surprise. Minus 273 degrees C, or zero on the Kelvin scale, is when all molecular activity ceases. And while it hasn’t got that low yet it’s …. gulp …. minus 9 outside and my molecular activity has ceased. And I shan’t be doing much tomorrow if it doesn’t warm up any.

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Thursday 21st January 2010 – I’ve finished the verticals for the studded wall…

upright stud wall first floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… between the bedroom and the rest of the first floor. And you can get some kind of idea how the bathroom is going to look.

The end three verticals are going to be for the bathroom bit, and the gap between the third and the fourth (ie the first from the left) will be the door into the bedroom. From the third vertical across to the vertical by the shower base – that will be the door into the bathroom and the shower base will be between there and the wall. You can just about make out the sink – that will be on the diagonal in the angle in the bathroom and there will be another sink in the angle in the bedroom. The toilet is in the far corner underneath the window.

This afternoon Terry Liz and I went to see some houses. We’d heard of three cottages for sale at €27,000 for the three in a village near St Maurice and it was worth a look. Money in the bank is fetching nothing right now and three cottages in a small village have the potential to be three income-generating holiday homes. We don’t mind the hard work in repairing them and so on and realistically for the price we weren’t expecting much, but these three were right at the limit of what was achievable. Furthermore there was no land to go with them – not an inch – and there was no view. They really were right in the middle of a village.

The estate agent took advantage of our presence to show us a few more houses and there is one of them that has got us talking, but we’re going a-hunting over the next few days to see what else we can turn up. It’s all about income generation at the moment and cash in the bank with almost-negative interest rates and inflation at 3% isn’t working right now.

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