Happy New Year!

And what a year 2024 it has been! Who would have ever thought that we'd pack our things together and move our live from busy and bustling London to the French quiet and serene French countryside? I mean, we were hoping for it, at some point in the far future. But not in 2024. 🙂

The Good

We've learnt new skills trying to master countryside life. Hubby is learning French, our daughter certainly embraced French as her new language. When she plays by herself she'll sing French tunes, she'll talk to herself and her cuddly toys in French and my brother and his partner provided her with loads of interactive TipToi books which certainly boosted her French skills. I mean, even I didn't know what a milk tank at a farm is called... (in my defense, not something I'd regularly use anyway...)

We've navigated the French bureaucracy system and so far I have to say it wasn't quite as bad as it was put in some of the social media groups we're in. Maybe we were just lucky, but I have to say about 90% of all the interaction we had to deal with went smoothly and considerably fast. The only hick-ups we had were with the national health insurance and getting our second building permit approved, but more about that later.

Of course we started life with six chickens and a rooster back in June and so far have been quite enjoying it. It has been a bit more difficult the past few months - as in Winter season - and some adjustments were needed. Towards the end of November and certainly beginning of December my husband (yes, the allergic one) decided we should adopt one of the stray cats. Luna, our elderly cat is not too happy about it, but she's been considerably tolerant so far.

Winter came. Now for many that might not be something you are looking forward to. But if you are like me, who missed the snow after living in London for 15 years (and in Paris 5 years before that), then you might just understand what I mean. Also... and that makes quite a difference... we have a 4yo child. One of the things to make the move to France more enticing was "in the mountain there is more snow". So since June she wanted to see snow in winter. She was not disappointed at all, in fact, by Christmas we were drowned in snow. So we had an outdoor Christmas tree (no space inside, but also lasted muhc longer!) and it was covered in snow. So much so that it struggled to keep up straight! 😀

Renovation-wise we managed to install 75% of the new windows that are required to make this house a bit more insulated and livable. It certainly has increased the quality of living a bit. I cannot imagine having the old windows, particularly over the past couple of weeks where the weather has been a bit less friendly. We've also seen a lot of bad stuff about the energy infrastructure provider ENEDIS here in France, particularly the renovation groups on Facebook seem to be bitching about them immensly. I am happy to report that their service was brilliant. I am assuming part of the issue was also that we said we can't use electrical heating (which we can't) with the installation we have at the moment, but also have a 4yo child in the house. Six weeks from request to someone coming around to sort it out, they even hung up a new line from the electricity pole to the house at no extra charge. We were told to expect 2000-3500€ for this, altogether we paid less than 1000€.

Something that can never be underestimated is having family around. I know for my husband this is going to be a bit more difficult, but I for a change am very happy to have seen my family, particularly my brothers, more often in the last few months than over the past 15 years. Particularly for our daughter it has been good who has otherwise not been in touch with them at all or just via video chat. At some point, once the renovations have progressed a bit more, we do hope to be able to invite more people over, i.e. our family back in the UK or even my parents if they can still make the trip. Certainly my aunt - despite the fact that she obviously now has to share the house - seems to have been happy to have us around. She might not admit it, but she certainly cheered up a bit when we came to visit on a few occasions.

We were also quite lucky, after a health scare, one of our neighbours stepped in to look after our daughter, whilst we were out dealing with things at the doctors'. General all neighbours and village people (pun intended) have been very friendly and welcoming. We had one looking at our electrical installation (yes, the news were all doom, but that was expected), another one helped my brother drive his car with a trailer out of our parking lot (yes, again, we never had to do that before, we got stuck!), and a few of them picked up all the stuff we put out that was supposed to go to the skip but was too big to transport (mostly wood!).
Another good example was the fact, that we had that massive (steel) machine from my granddad. I wanted to donate it to museums etc. but no one wanted it (or rather "had no space"). First one of our neighbours helped me take it out. I needed it out before the new doors were installed, as they are 15cm higher up from the floor. One of the window installers mentioned that they might know someone who might be interested. In the end, his dad came and picked it up. He was happy, I was happy, and what a relief it was after months of stressing how to get that machine out!

What could have been better...

Or also translated as "the bad", but trying to stay positive here. 😉

The stray cats
Certainly, as in one of my previous posts mentioned, the stray cats have been quite an issue. Particularly as the weather got quite cold they clearly got more desperate to find food. Luckily they didn't dare to attack the chickens, but they certainly tried to get to their food. The cats were so desperate, they forced their noses through the chicken fencing. So hard that the wire eventually got weaker and weaker and they made a hole, just big enough to sneak through and eat the scraps from the chickens. Obviously the chickens were not happy (neither were we). As we have to run around the house to get to the chickens, I managed to scare some cats now with pretend-dog barking from the window, but unfortunately not all cats fall for that trick.

The chicken coop
Staying with the chickens, we also noticed that the quality of the chicken coop (meant for 10 chickens!) was rather poor. First of all, all the qualities for "easy cleaning" turned out to be the exact opposite and the coop cannot be easily cleaned. Of course aided by the fact that we put a cage around it as well and so it is quite difficult to stand and walk around. So eventually, the suspended "side wings" if you want to call it that, where you are supposed to open the flaps and take the eggs out, collapsed and the chickens bums were sticking out. Temporarily that has been now stabilised by putting a concrete block underneath.
Then recently we had some heavy snow, and whilst it was OK for most of the time, during one day we had so much snow, that about 30cm of snow collected on the roof and the metal frame buckled and collapsed. The bent corner made a hole in the chicken coop roof. In the end, I've been really disappointed by the products I bought (brand VidaXL, avoid!!!). Also BricoMarché have not been particularly helpful when I originally bought the chicken coop and reported issues during the construction. But that's for another rant... 😉
In the end it came down to either buying a new chicken coop or - in our case - hubby deciding to use his free time and actually build one from scratch. I can't wait until it's finished, it already looks very cool. It will even have insulation for the chickens to stay warm. He thought of everything, only thing missing is an aircon!

Health insurance
Another issue we had was with CPAM, the national health insurance system. We are supposed to be signed up after three months residing in France. So we signed up end of May towards June (so after two months) to make sure we're signed up for July. They asked me three times to send in paperwork that was apparently missing (it wasn't, so basically provided most paperwork at least 2x or 3x!), and calls where they asked for more paperwork (which I told them they have already). Only to get my health insurance card in October, so four months late, Abdullah got his in the last week of December, so six months late! This had quite an adverse effect, as...

Health...
...suddenly became an issue. My husband became quite unwell. Like a cold that never really went away. So eventually we braved the fact, that we had to go to the doctor and explain the issue. After an extensive investigation (I think neither of us never had that many tests made in such short amount of time in the UK) we were told to rush to the hospital as they suspected a lung embolie. Once again many tests were made and after spending a whole day in the hospital, we were told that we're free to go. It transpired he had a - what they called - "atypical lung infection" (or rather pneumonia). It didn't quite clear up as easily as they said it would, but he was in good care by the local doctors and I am happy to say he recovered.

Hopes and expectations

Whilst we were expecting having a time-out or rather a sabbatical to kickstart the move to France and of course the renovations of the house, I do hope we can get some things sorted this year.

One of the big issues was trying to sell our car. Of course British cars are not that popular in France, so we had to take it back to the UK. But particularly at the end of the year, people don't seem to be too eager to spend money on a car. So hopefully this sells soon, as we need a car here in France and currently we're renting one and with winter tyres (which are required in this region) that is not cheap. We also noticed that we need to transport large items much more than expected, so the new car needs to have a trailer coupling. Something we never thought of to begin with! 😉

Of course at some point we need to get jobs. Renovations cost money, life is expensive as well, especially during winter time. Our energy bill has skyrocketed (despite it being much cheaper here than in the UK!). So if anyone knows of work-from-home part-time job for me, I'd be grateful. 😀

In terms of renovations, I really would like to get the workshop and the old garden-room renovated this year. The workshop has a water issue, and I have been waiting for the mason since November to pop around. He was meant to come the week before Christmas and was a no-show. Rather unusual, so far we were quite lucky with the tradesmen here.
A couple of the new shutters were not installed - again because the mason needs to pop around first to fix the wall first - and with that said, I am also waiting for a building permission to be granted for the last set of windows and openings I want to make in the wall. Weirdly enough this has taken over four months already, the first permission was granted after six weeks I believe.
And then one of the big projects are plumbing and electricity. So far we found an amazing electrician, helpful, timely, friendly and happy to share knowledge for stuff we can do ourselves. Something we found rather important after we saw how expensive certain things are here. He's also been brilliant to find temporary solutions after some unforseen issues. Let's hope it stays that way! 🙂 Plumbing is an issue we didn't consider until last week. It seems we need to re-pipe quite a few items if we don't want to run into issues in the future. Particularly as some require opening the flooring (some of it being concrete!). Not looking forward to that. 
Other than that YouTube has been a massive help trying to understand how certain things work (looking forward fixing the floor in the workshop, I hope I don't f' it up.) and things like how to insulate the place. 
At some point in January, someone will come and insulate the ceiling in the small appartment we're living in at the moment. As the ceiling is 5m high this is not something we wanted (or could!) do and were hoping someone else can help us with that. Finding a date is a bit of a nightmare as we will have to move out temporarily. So let's see what happens there...