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26.02.2008
Is 1.51€/£ possible today? In January 2007 the exchange rate for the €uro/£ was 1.510, and today it is 1.328. The market in the south Charente-Maritime, in line with the rest of the world, has been relatively quiet throughout 2007 so that today you would expect to pay about the same price for a house as you would have in January 2007 …what has changed is the exchange rate. The house you would have bought for 300,000€uros in January of 2007, with an exchange rate of 1.51€uro/£ would have cost £198,675… …to buy the same house today at 1.328€/£ would cost £225,903… …an increase of £27,228 or a little less than 14%. This issue has been of concern to me recently but last week Deborah Lewis of UCB (formerly Abbey National) of
We as individuals have no influence over the factors that have caused the change in the exchange rate but what you as an individual do have control over is the way you buy your house to reduce the impact of this change as much as possible, or even avoid it completely. If you were able to buy your house in €uros without any exchange considerations then you would not suffer the effect of a declining £. So, for example, let’s stay with this notional 300,000€uros, and let’s assume that you have this money available but your plans to buy your French house have been put on to the ‘back burner’ while you wait for the exchange rate to improve… …If you were to take this £198,675 (300,000€uros) and place it in a bank in the ...If at the same time you were to take out a French €uro mortgage on an interest only basis of 5.5% to 6%, you would be able to buy your house in France in €uros thus avoiding the exchange rate difficulties, and make a small income from the higher rate of interest from your English deposit… …and when the £ recovers you can transfer your money and pay-out the French mortgage… …and in this way you will have bought your French house at the ‘real’ price that you would have paid in January 2007, in effect realising the exchange rate of the time…1.51€/£. On an interest only mortgage of 300,000euros at 6% the annual payment would be 18,000€uros per year or 1,500€uros per month. In January of 2007 with the 1.51 exchange rate your monthly payment in £’s would have been £993.38 and on February 26, 2008 at the 1.328 exchange rate your monthly payments would be £1,129.52, a difference of £136.14, however this would be offset by the higher interest rate you would be receiving on your funds deposited in the UK bank… …and so in this way, dear reader, you avoid the prevailing lower exchange rate and so “can have your gateaux and eat it too!” _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ The morning walks with the pups are always good but never more than now. Spring has arrived and the days are becoming longer and warmer and the pruning of the vines is almost complete.
Yesterday I took a picture of the vines before pruning...
...and a picture after pruning...
I usually begin my morning walk just before the sun rises, and day after day when the sun does rise it is glorious, at first peeking over the horizon as a red ball before becoming a glorious orb of deep gold and bringing the valley to life. The mornings still are crisp often with a little bit of mist at the bottom of the valley, and the sunlight has that gentle, ‘translucent’ quality, almost as if the sun hasn’t really woken up yet and isn’t really trying…more like an impressionist water colour than an oil painting...and as the sun rises the thousands of spiders’ webs draped across the plants in the fields sparkle as the dew catches the sunlight. If you saw the film Dr. Zhivago you will remember when Omar Sharif and Julie Christie went into the abandoned palace where everything was covered in ice and was stunningly beautiful because of it…well we don’t have the ice here but the mornings have that special feeling. I recently completed the sale of a particularly nice house; the house was a great bargain and sold to the second client to see it, in fact it was so good that my only surprise was that the first client did not buy it! The house was sold ‘lock-stock-and-barrel’ and when we visited the house shortly before the signing of the deed everything was left is the house just as we had seen it at the time of the initial sale, 3 months before, including the furniture, battered cd’s including Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” (great records!), packages of Knorr soups and Heinz ketchup, Bird’s Custard, and a 6-pack of beer!...as we had not had any contact with the vendors after advising them of the appointment to sign the final deed we became a little concerned that they did not know about the appointment, and this worry was compounded when we arrived at the Notaire’s for the signing but the vendors did not…they did in fact arrive but an hour late as they had driven down from the UK because of problems with flights. They mentioned that they had just been to the house to ‘say goodbye’ before the signing (and after we had visited the house), and so the purchaser returned to the house after the signing with a little apprehension as to ‘what was left’, but in fact the only thing that had been removed was the 6-pack of beer…so they had got their priorities right! Also I recently went to visit Mel and Lyall in their ‘new’ house…you can see a pic of them in the entry for 27.07.2007 below. Their house is still a ‘work-in-progress’ and so I won’t publish any pics till later however it is so exciting to see the house developing. The house is actually 2 houses joined (and so it has the luxury of 2 staircases!) with lots of very large, perfectly proportioned, rooms. Mel and Lyall are improving the house day-by-day, and they are having great success with the various artisans they have chosen to do the work…for example, the plumbing for the central heating boiler is worth a pic for itself, and the fitted kitchen is exceptional…so stay tuned! Penny and Mike recently moved into their new house. I sold it originally about 3 or 4 years ago and the then purchasers did an excellent job of updating it until now it is one of the nicest houses I have sold. The reason I mention this is after months of our marketing the house and the purchaser offering the full-price without any conditions the vendor decided that she did not want to sell it! The law in I was away from I listen to Radio 4 on my computer and recently accessed a news story which made me chuckle. The basic story was not funny at all because it involved the discovery of a headless torso in a packing crate behind a garage in London however what was funny was the accompanying police comment ‘foul play is suspected’! My Pot Pourri is usually not ‘autobiographical’ because as a relatively shallow, superficial, ‘umble, real estate salesman whose biggest excitement and pleasure is walking our puppies, I am about as interesting as a cardboard box but a peek into my history will help with what follows. I can trace my family tree all the way back to my grandparents. They all lived in My mother’s father was a carpenter and sometimes window cleaner who had been forced to retire early because of a work-related injury and who spent his time looking after my wheelchair-bound grandmother, looking after my mother, playing the harmonium he had in the back room and being the choirmaster/organist at the local Methodist chapel and at the local Gilbert and Sullivan society. My father’s father was a foreman in a cotton mill. My dad left school at about 14 and went to work for one Noel Coward, a notable local businessman in the market in Wigan, training to be a butcher. His experience with Mr. Coward gave him a taste for a better life and it became his ambition to open his own butcher’s shop. The war came along in 1939 and he became a stoker in the navy and after he had sorted out Hitler in the When he came home with the wedding ring to show my grandmother she was concerned that it was very ‘thin’ and so she gave him a gold sovereign from her savings (she actually saved sovereigns rather than trusting a bank!) to take to the local goldsmiths to melt and add to the ring. I was always close to my mum and so when she died I was pleased that my dad gave her wedding ring to me which just fits onto my ‘pinky’. I am certainly not one to wear jewellery but this ring is special to me because, in addition to being my mother’s, it has been present at all the major stages of my life…conception, birth, nursery, primary and secondary school, my first girl friend, university, my first job, moving to Canada in 1975, their move to Canada in 1978, and my law degree and being called to the bar in 1986. 1945 and demob. was a crossroads for my dad and although he could have returned to work for Mr. Coward he decided that he wanted his own shop and with his stoking skills he secured employment with the railway as a ‘stoker’ on the steam trains and moved with my mother to Bletchley which was at this time the hub of the English railway system, and this allowed my dad to obtain ‘long distance stoking jobs’ which were very remunerative because pay was ‘by the mile’. When the time came for my birth mum returned to So that’s the background and if you are still awake the story moves on… About a year ago I had met a couple who have a particularly attractive house in the valley between my house and Floirac. I met the owner because alongside his front door he has one of those metal advertising sign for “Craven A” cigarettes, and when we first talked he told me his name was Alan Craven and at school when the daily register was read he was always identified as “Craven A” to the amusement of everyone and so when he had the chance to buy this sign he bought it! As my loyal readers know, I enjoy cooking and while I like to think of myself as “le chef dans ma cuisine” (Kim thinks I am more a “fast-order cook” but anyways)…I do try, and Alan and his wife came over for dinner, and during the course we must have discussed where we had come from to arrive in France (as you do!) and I would have mentioned that I was born in Wigan. A year went by and there was no further contact with the couple. I took a break over the Christmas/New Year period, only going into the office ‘by appointment’ and it was on January 3 that I had such an appointment. From the port of Mortagne there are two roads in a “V” formation, one leading east towards Mirambeau and the other north to Gémozac and Saintes and each morning I drive down a country lane through the vines past the fishing pond and the hunters’ ‘lodge’ to reach the road to Gémozac...here is the fishing pond on an unusually busy day...
Usually there is no traffic but this morning there was a grey Citroën car in front of me and as it stopped at the junction the driver and passenger alighted and walked back to my car and it was the Cravens stopping to wish me the best for the New Year and then Alan’s wife asked me a very unusual question, which was ‘if I had been born in February of 1951’ which was correct, and ‘if my mother was ‘Brenda Kay’ which was also correct, and then she told me that she had been born in March of 1951 (the month following my birth) and when she had retuned to England recently she had mentioned our dinner and where I had come from, and her 82 year old mother asked her to confirm these facts about my date of birth and my mother’s name as when she had been pregnant she had lived in Wigan and knew a ‘Brenda Kay’ who used the same doctor and midwife and who had given birth the month before she had, however she had never seen my mother (or me!) after the birth…so here was someone I had actually met before I/we was/were born, 57 years later in the country in south-west France!!! ..."What a small world!" The second aspect of my narrative, relevant to my ‘mini-biography’ is the new grocery shop which has been added to the butcher’s shop in Gémozac, owned by Denis and Marie Gassien at 7 rue Libération, (across rue Libération from my office), between the Post Office and the village square. They are a particularly nice couple, and so helpful, and their meat is excellent, and here are a couple of pics of their shop...
...and Denis and Marie...
If I am making something special Denis will order-in the meat or if I take a recipe with a photo he will cut the meat to match the recipe. Recently I have begun to buy my eggs from them too. They are supplied to him from an elderly lady in the village and are so huge that I cannot but help feel sympathy for the hen! The eggs are enormous with deep yellow yolks, and as one measure of the difference whereas it takes 3 minutes to boil a supermarket egg, these take 4 minutes.
...and to me it’s like stepping back 50 years as what Denis and Marie are doing so reminds me of my parents’ history. I don’t have a picture of my parents at their shop when they were young however here is a pic of my younger brother outside their shop 44 years ago,
…and here’s a pic of my parents on the day they retired...
…and finally here’s a picture of your ‘umble chronicler…the chubby one on the right hand side…and the building to the left is the cotton mill where my grandad was a foreman, and my old primary school, St. John’s C. of E. is on the right.
…and continuing with this glorious self-indulgence…
The restored hotel/restaurant has now opened in the centre of Gémozac, and here is a pic:
…and I have received excellent reports about the standard of the meals…you will remember that the chef used to work at the Hôtel Georges V in I had lunch at "La Vielle Poste" last Friday because on Fridays they serve chips and fish in a beer batter which is very good, and as my readers will remember I have been working on trying to find the recipe for the perfect “poisson et pommes frites/fish and chips” meal. I recently purchased a special deep frier for 19€uros which is excellent and allows me to prepare the fish and chips outside on the back patio so the house does not have that terrible fish and chip ‘aroma’. Delia’s recipe for batter is excellent (and very easy) and using beer instead of the water is also excellent but I recently came across another recipe which I think is the best.
The recipe is by the chef Gino D’Acampo and serves 2: 100G/3.5oz self-raising flower 300-320ml of soda water…we can’t buy soda water here so I take a half-bottle of lemon Perrier water (the ‘gassy’ one), shake it up an then use this water with lemon wedges to serve (Gino also recommends using Chinese 5-spice powder and salt but I prefer it without and he also recommends 175-200ml of water but I find this is not enough, and use 300-320ml.) Sift the flours together and add the water slowly and whisk so that it becomes a little like ‘wall-paper’ paste…if it is too thick then you will end up with fish with batter which is too thick and if it is too thin the batter won’t adhere to the fish. Finally before putting the fish in the batter dredge it through seasoned plain flour so that it is completely covered, shake of the excess and then into the batter. Allow the excess batter to run-off before placing it in vegetable or groundnut oil at 185°C, turning occasionally, until it is golden. When I make fish and chips I have the oven already heated and remove the fish from the frier but still allow it to retain a lot of the moisture rather than completely ‘draining’ all the oil off, and then place it in the oven to keep warm and the retained oil on the surface ensures it doesn’t dry. For the pommes frites/chips I use the recipe of Heston Blumenthal: Peel and chip your potatoes into similar sized chips (HB recommends ‘Maris Piper’ however we only have one sort of potato which doesn’t have a name and it is fine) and then place under running water for 5 minutes to wash off the starch. Place the chips in boiling water for 10 minutes Drain…(I use the sieve I use to sift the flour, and shake a little so the edges of the chips become a little roughened) and dry between kitchen paper towel and leave on a fresh paper towel on a rack in the fridge for at least half an hour. Then deep fry in the vegetable oil or groundnut oil at 130°C for 5 to 7 minutes or until the chips begin to colour a little and then drain again and back onto the kitchen paper towel and onto a rack back into the fridge for at least 30 minutes and then either use or store in a sealed container for future use.
When you are ready for the final fry of the chips, turn the heat to the maximum of 185°C. I fry the fish immediately before this last stage with the chips and place them into the oven to keep warm, and then I return the chips to the oil at 185°C until they assume the correct colour…it is very important that you are vigilant here because at this stage the chips cook quickly and so if you do not watch them they will become too brown.
With the frier I have there is a metal frying basket to hold the chips and remove them from the oil however while this is essential for the chips, fry the fish without using this or you will find that the batter sticks to it making it impossible to properly fry the fish. Serve with salt, malt vinegar, ketchup and tartare sauce and lemon wedges…yum! (Regarding the fish from Vietnam I was concerned about the global warming issue of bringing a fish all the way from Vietnam but when I raised the issue with my fish lady, ‘Madame Poisson’ (really!) she assured me that they swim in gigantic shoals from the coast of Vietnam to just off the coast of Royan where they are caught by local fishermen, so questions about global warming are not relevant!) Another of Heston’s recipes I did recently was Bresse chicken, but alas dear reader it was a disaster.
He had come to France in search of the ‘best’ chicken and chosen the chicken from Bresse, and by luck when I decided to try it I was able to find the chicken at 20€uros (about 3 times the price of ‘normal’ chicken). The recipe involves cooking the bird for 4.5 hours at 60°C which seemed very low, and in fact it is because the chicken is not done at all, so, dear reader, I cannot recommend this recipe. A chicken recipe I can recommend however is ‘English Style Roast Chicken’ by Trish Deseine, a well-known cookery writer in 'Her recipes blend the culinary traditions of the British Isles with those of her adopted France where she has lived for 15 years, and her book “Ma petite robe noire” won the coveted Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2007…this competition is the ‘Oscars’ of gastronomic literature , and the book also won the prestigious Lamazille Prize in 2006. Her latest book is “Ma Cuisine”'. English Style Roast Chicken
Preparation time 45 minutes Cooking time 1hour 15minutes Ingredients for 4 1 chicken of about 1.8kgs/4lbs
For the stuffing 150 to 200g of stale or toasted bread 1 large onion 4tbsp of fresh parsley 150g of butter zest and juice of one lemon Preheat the oven to 250°C/480°F Thoroughly rinse the chicken with cold water inside and outside and drain and pat dry with kitchen paper Put all the stuffing ingredients into a blender and whiz until it is a fine mixture and use this to stuff the chicken…do not overstuff as the stuffing will expand during cooking. Rub the inside and outside of the chicken with the remains of the lemon 'flesh' and then 'paint' melted butter over the bird and into a roasting tin. Place in the preheated oven and immediately lower the temperature to 200°C/400°F and leave to cook for approximately 1hr 15minutes, checking after 45minutes. To check the chicken is cooked insert a cooking thermometer into the thick part of the thigh (drumstick) and a reading of 87°C/190°F shows it is cooked…otherwise pierce the plumpest part of the bird with a fork and the juices should run clear and not pink…if they are pink, return to the oven for another 10 minutes and check again. Serve with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts and ‘Le Bisto’ chicken gravy, using the juice from the chicken in the roasting tin to make the gravy.
Finally, dear and patient reader, I want to share a ‘David Attenborough’ moment with you. For the last six years or so I have fed the birds behind my house. Each morning when I leave the house the trees surrounding my back yard are full of chattering birds waiting for the restaurant to open, and as I watch them day-by-day I see the ‘regulars’ …I like to think them as members of my ‘Breakfast Club’. This was fine until a couple of weeks ago when a neighbour’s cat caught and killed one of the two Collared Doves ("Bertie and Bess") which came each day; these are a pretty grey bird with a collar around the neck, almost like a vicar.
I was away from home when this happened but when I returned several days later I saw the feathers on the floor and the uneaten bird seed which Kim had put out each day, and Kim told me that the birds had simply stopped coming. Each day following my return I went out with the water and bird seed and could see the birds waiting in their usual places in the trees surrounding the back yard but they simply weren’t feeding; I concluded that they had been traumatized by the attack of the cat. The picture below shows my restaurant with tables on either side of the open gate.
In my efforts to restore their confidence I swept all of the unused grain away and started again, and I did see that over the following days some of the grain was eaten but it was always on the left side of the gate and not on the right. This puzzled me for a few days. Normally the grey Renault in the pic is parked to the right of the gate where the seed remained uneaten, and then the day before yesterday I had the idea to park the Renault away from the wall to see if it made a difference…which it did immediately, and my theory for this is that the birds were simply not eating on the ‘Renault side’ because they were worried that the cat was hiding under the car, and once it was removed and the area was much more open and so the cat could not hide, everything was fine.
And, in closing this edition of Pot Pourri, I want to tell you about a very pleasant experience that happened this evening. I have not driven "Penelope", my E-Type, for many months and so on Sunday I decided to put her back on the road. The battery was flat and so I jump-started it from my other car, and drove about 200 yards down the road before she stalled and would not restart. I had to return home and bring my car and try to start her again but I couldn't and so I went to the home of the local mechanic and he came out to help me without the slightest hesitation, despite it being Sunday. He could not start her either and so returned to his garage for his tow truck and towed me to the garage. He kept the car for 2 days, checked her out and could not find any problem. I met him this morning and he showed me the dismantled carburettor and he told me he had ordered a small part for it, and that she would be ready this evening which she was. I went to collect her this evening and asked for the bill, and he laughed and told me there would be no charge!...and isn't that a nice way to end this edition of Pot Pourri! …and so, dear, gentle, loyal reader, that’s all for now from Paradise...until next time…!
12.11.2007
It’s also the time of year that the foxes too are bedding down for the winter and I hope that fewer foxholes this year indicate a mild winter.
I have lived here for about 6 years and during this time I have seen 4 foxes, two during the harvest when the machines have flushed them out of the fields, once on a lunch time walk and once early in the morning, although as they are principally nocturnal creatures this is not surprising, although traces of their activities are often seen!
Tab, our boy pup, does not like the sound of the hunters’ guns and so last Sunday we took the walk up to Floirac church where we never see hunters.
Here are a few pics that I took around and inside Floirac church.
November 01 is “All Saints” day and on this day many families visit the graves of their families and place flowers on them. There are always lots of flowers however this is the time of year when there are the most.
Recent changes have taken place regarding eligibility for the French medical system for people moving to In a nutshell, if you have paid national insurance in the UK for 2 years or more before you move to France you will be eligible to join the French medical system for 2 years immediately following your arrival however at the end of this period if you have not reached the UK retirement age of 65 or are not in receipt of long-term incapacity benefit (and therefore eligible for E121 designation), or are not gainfully employed in France, it will be necessary to take out private medical insurance for up to 3 years until you have lived in France for 5 years or until you have reached the age of 65 (whichever comes first) when you will be able to re-enter the system. (More details, and questions and answers can be found under the “Doctor” section of “Post Script” on page 1 of my website….this page takes about 1 minute to download.) A person in ‘good health’ will be able to take out private medical insurance to cover this ‘waiting period’ but where a person has a pre-existing condition requiring treatment which is costly it is going to be difficult for this person to find an insurer willing to offer cover, and depending on the condition and cost this may impede that person’s ability to leave the UK. These changes are still evolving and there are a number of websites listed in “Post Script” where you can seek further information. Sometimes rules/laws exist which can be questioned on the basis of ‘fairness’ and this is one. If, for example, the European Community had enacted a reciprocal provision that where an individual transferred from any member country of the EU to another and that person had pre-existing medical problems with associated costs, any amount that the first country would have been responsible to pay if that person had stayed in the first country would be paid to the second country to offset any costs incurred by the medical insurance of the second country until that person became eligible for the medical insurance of the second country, and because it would be a reciprocal provision between all EU countries, then it would be much fairer and less restrictive on freedom of movement between the countries…the EU is either a ‘common market’ with freedom of movement or it’s not. As things stand with the recent changes, the It could be argued that such a provision which removes long-existing rights is unfair and a person might consider steps to comply with the change in such a way that that the effects of the change are minimized. For example, a client of mine has planned that the date of his early retirement coincides with the date that is exactly 2 years before he reaches 65 and so he will come to France at 63, have the benefit of his 2 years coverage because he has paid NI contributions for 2 years before he leaves the UK, and then at the completion of this automatic coverage he will be 65 and move ‘seamlessly’ into the French medical system. I wonder also if a person did buy a house in France but kept an address in the UK and continued to pay the NI contributions and be registered with the same doctor/hospital and did not formally make the change of residence, viewing the French house as a second home, and when necessary travelled back to the UK for any treatments, if this would be a way of avoiding paying for these treatments? With the frequent cheap flights, and depending on the number, frequency and potential cost of treatments, this may be a way of avoiding the need to use and pay for the treatment in France. I remember in the 90’s in Of course each case needs to be assessed individually to determine its practicality and to comply with the law/rules but in some cases this approach may provide an answer. |
