… is thoroughly and completely getting on my nerves now and I’ll be resorting to violence if we have much more of this, I promise you.

We were all at the notaire’s today and ready to sign up when the purchaser requested a six-week delay (usually a delay of 10 days) of the final act in order to confirm the acceptance of the loan.

Yes, that’s like forever, but he wasn’t willing to budge, that was clear, so I wasn’t all that bothered. So I’ll have to pay another month’s service charges on the place, but that’s a small price to pay.

I was confident that given 10 minutes with him afterwards I could have managed to persuade him to shorten his time scale no matter what he had signed up to.

But this blasted agent immobilier went on and on and on at him for about half an hour (and I had an attack of cramp while she was doing it) and wouldn’t leave him alone.

In the end I had to tell her three times to put a flaming sock in it. Then once the meeting closed she had another go at him, and then she had another go at him in the hall and then a further go at him outside.

I tell you now, I shan’t ever be doing any more business with her – it’s appalling.

We didn’t sign the compromis because yet another snag has surfaced. Marianne and I have told everyone that there’s a cellar included in the deal. And indeed there is, and Marianne (and now I) has the keys for it.

But nowhere in the deeds of the property is there any mention of the cellar. Maybe the owners of the apartments don’t own the cellars and only have the enjoyment of them, but that needs to be cleared up.

So this morning I had another exciting dream. I was part of a team of people going exploring, and we were on a kind-of converted fishing trawler on our way to some remote spot somewhere. But the guy leading the expedition was something of a martinet and at he first sign of dissent he sailed to the nearest port and offloaded the dissenter. I remember chatting to a young guy who was working on the deck above me, an open deck, and I climbed up onto his deck to have a chat, but he informed me that he was being put ashore at the next port.
The trawler had in fact turned back and after a while we sailed into a harbour in South Western Ireland just as three small Ro-Ro car ferries were leaving the harbour in line astern. We sailed up the harbour wall and onto the car park and across the car park to a building on the far side (it’s a dream, of course).
A little later I was driving a taxi with a woman passenger in the back. I was taking her somewhere where I was sure that I knew the way but at the end of the road (on the outskirts of Crewe) I couldn’t remember whether I turned left then right, or right then left. I went right then left and I was sure that it was wrong, and how I wished that I had made sure before I set out.

So up long before the alarm, and into town. I’ve paid the outstanding property tax and that wasn’t without excitement. I also had to deal with some issues about Marianne’s succession –
Belgian Civil Servant “you don’t pay that here”
Our Hero “where do I go then?”
BCS “where it says on the letter”
OH “well you’ll have to tell me because you have the letter”
BCS “it says here (pointing) – Rue de la Regence”
OH “where’s that?”
BCS “I don’t know”
Further enquiry from a security guard (of an ethnic minority, not a Belgian) revealed that Rue de la Regence is the street at the side of the Tax Office.

Yes, you can’t make up rubbish like this, but everyone living in Belgium will tell you all about it. The whole lot of Belgians, especially Civil Servants, DiT shop workers and agents immobilier should be stood up against a wall, preferably at the tir national, and dealt with accordingly.

The same at the Post Office. I have an account at the Post Office, still registered at my Belgian address, and I want to change the address to France. Armed with a passport and French driving licence you might think that this would be easy, but I promise you that it isn’t.

She had to ask three different colleagues how to do it and none of them knew, so when she had a go on her own the computer system crashed. So that was that.

But it’s a good job that I went to my bank though. While I was activating my card (only one of them – I’ve flaming well forgotten to bring the other, haven’t I?) for Canada, the bank clerk noticed that my credit card had expired.

Luckily there was one awaiting me and so I picked that up and we activated it then and there, but by God I was lucky. I could have had a major embarrassment about that.

And then all of this flaming rubbish with the agent immobilier.

And Cecile and her mum are setting off for Brussels tomorrow. That means that, knowing Cecile, they’ll arrive some time in April 2016.

And in a master-stroke of organisation, they are taking the bus to Nantes and picking up Cecile’s car there in order to come here, rather than coming from door to door in Cecile’s mum’s car.

That means, of course, that they can only take back with them whatever they can carry on the bus rather than a whole car-load of stuff that is otherwise heading for the tip, and that defeats the whole purpose of coming here, doesn’t it?

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