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The word habitable means something along the lines of being able to live in. It seems in France that a habitable house is just that, you can live in it. You can also live in cardboard boxes, tents, mud huts, corrugated iron roofed shanty’s, some would say in some countries you could also live under the stars. All of the latter options would be more suitable than some of the ‘habitable’ houses we have seen. Got to give the immobilliers 'A for effort' in their marketing of these properties.
We have however found one or two gems in amongst the merde, so to speak!
Though it is quite funny, the French don’t wear their wealth on their sleeves, they won’t normally as a rule spend their money on the finer things in life - cars, furniture, clothes (in some cases the fashion over hear has been enlightening!) and the decoration and up keep of their homes. It seem to me that their wealth is better spent on the things that mean more to them like family meals, food, wine and carpet thick wallpaper for the not just the walls but the ceilings, cupboards, sides of baths - pretty much
anything that sits still long enough will end up with some kind of lurid wallpaper slapped all over it, which is quite interesting as a majority of the elder here spend most of their time sat on porches in a coma (probably explains some of the weird clothes they wear - they have been sat around too long and someone has daubed them with wallpaper!)
Back to the houses, they don’t finish them off, pretty much all the electrics we have seen have all been wired in safely and correctly right up to the point where the final fixtures for the bulbs should be, it seems that if you have a fixture of any kind you are seen to be showing off your wealth, so inevitably all the lights are just hanging by their wires from the ceilings! You can see this shyness to show any particular wealth off in the floor tiles as well, they will have a lovely sized room but don’t want to be seen to be too plush so will go for tiles that are completely hideous to give the impression that that was all they could afford!!
There is a sign that the
showing off of ones wealth may well be on the increase, not necessarily a good thing, as beautiful house are now being transformed to show new found wealth (normally fleeced from British punters looking to buy houses over here from what we can make out!!) It is also seen here that if you have beautiful wooded beams, stone walls and ancient fire places in your house you are seen to be poor? Whereas if you pebble dash the be-Jesus out of everything, cover over floor tiles with lino and paint the original beams with a chunky great layers of ghastly paint (paint is very expensive here) then you are seen to be in the height of house fashion and fairly well off!!!
So the house hunting has been very interesting and we have seen a couple of goodies - one of which we will be going back to view. It needs some renovation, something which we were keen to avoid, but as is the case in all of the houses here in the south of France they all need bringing up to date and or a little renovation here and there. The thing we have to be careful of
The "local" ski resort
Gourette is one of the largest ski resorts near to where we are hunting is making sure we pay a fair price for our property; there are UK agents that are popping up all over the place especially to deal with the influx of people like myself and Helen. They will up the price of properties just for the UK market to increase their percentage on a sale. We're lucky in the fact that were not scared to go into French speaking agents and ask them to view properties. We did this recently and saw a property which was up with an English company. The price difference was quite astonishing and there are plenty of people who would have gone straight through this company as they would be worried about being ripped off. Funny isn’t it, you feel safer with people you can understand clearly, sometimes it’s better not to be able to understand fully as this cuts out some of the chit chat and you can then get straight down to business.
Also don’t get me wrong, some of these UK agents really are here to help you set up a new life and are practicing what they preach themselves, you just have to be careful and leave all your options open until you are sure that the road ahead is a clear one.
Any now onto a finer point - it’s bloody boiling here!!! The evening storms have stopped coming in off the mountains and the day temperature is going to be hanging around the 30 mark!!! How’s the weather back home?
I’m sure were in for more heavy rain soon, but at the moment it’s great sitting outside sipping your café avec croissant in the mornings, sauntering around tabac's for a fresh salad lunch and then popping to the local auberge for some fantastic local cuisine!
It’s got to a point when we enter our local bar sportif, great for watching the rugger, we are greeted with hand shakes and beaming grins, I did tell them I was a Bath supporter, which went down with fantastic applause as they are all Biarritz supporters and Biarritz beat bath in the European cup whilst we were here. Rugby is big business here, the bar owner’s son plays for Biarritz and the walls are covered in pictures of him through various stages of his career including his recent debut for the French international side. One of the agents who has shown us around, her father is the coach of the French national A team, she knows most of the first team very well. This pleased Helen who was very interested in getting Fredrick Michalak’s phone number!!!
All of the small towns and villages have stadiums for their sides, to put it into perspective the local side in Navarrenx, a town smaller then Marlborough and even Hungerford has it’s own stade which is probably about the same size if not bigger then Newbury’s ground. Alright it might not be as modern or up to date with the technologies of the ground at Newbury, but on a Saturday and Sunday afternoon, it certainly seems habitable!
Bye for now - keep any news coming - love you all.
Ben & Helen.
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Kate
non-member comment
So Jealous!
Hi Ben, Just read this latest entry and it sounds absoultely amazing! You guy's sound like you are having a fantastic time! Keep the info coming in, its great to hear what you are up to! Thanks for the email by the way - I did reply but it bounced back for some reason! Take Care Kate (Valspar)