Let there be light!

And lo! there was light.

The electrician came. Our bathroom now has a light in - and it's even one that's safe to use in bathrooms, unlike the very pretty one we have before, which even without a leak upstairs apparently wasn't safe to use in bathrooms. Awesome. I love it when people try to kill their tenants for the sake of aesthetics.

Anyway, it's fixed now and we can see again.

Door is also fixed, and boiler is certified as safe. Our flat is now almost perfect.

Tree chopping person is supposedly coming later to sort out the tree outside our window - I'm more bothered by the mattress and carpet bits outside, to be honest, but they scare me too much to try lifting them. Creepy crawly things live in carpets outside, I'm not going near them. The council will get rid of them. (Hopefully.) Maybe the tree people will help...

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An Open Letter To The Previous Tenant

Dear Previous Tenant Who Clearly Didn't Have The Brains God Gave A Gnat,

What the fuck is wrong with you? You see that tall, round thing near the sink? I know you did. You correctly identified it as a bin, for putting rubbish in. Well done! You failed, however, to notice the existence of bags that go inside it, didn't you? I know it can be confusing, calling them Bin Bags - the name doesn't make it at all clear what they're used for. Obviously, you never made the link.

For the benefit of the people who come and live in your next flat after you've gone, let me explain. Bin bags go inside the bin. You take them outside and throw them away when you've filled them, in the giant bins outside the house that look a bit like the one in the kitchen. This should happen quite frequently. If you don't do this, and instead just throw food directly into the bin and leave it for months on end, you get mould growing. I don't dare explore too closely what the hell else is growing in the putrid mess you left in the bottom of the bin in my kitchen - I'm just adding "new bin" to the top of my shopping list. But it would all be oh so much easier if you could have learnt to fucking use bin bags.

Lots and lots of love,

The pissd off tenant in your last flat who hates you nearly as much as the landlady does

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Gah

Nothing fucking works in this flat. The fucking washing machine doesn't fucking drain. Guess how I found this out? Putting new clothes in the machine and getting splashed by stinking undrained nasty washing machine water. This goes near the top of Things One Shouldn't Have To Deal With Before Coffee.

Now my whole house smells of stinking washing machine. In a futile attempt to save my clothes - which include all my work clothes, of course - I've put the machine on again. Think that will fix it?

I hate technology.

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Flats

The good news: we found a flat! It's a 1 bedroom with a garden and a kitchen and a bathtub and a washing machine and it's half an hour away from work, and perfect. It's just had new carpet laid, and it has a new mattress and it's lovely. Except.

The bad news: The flat above us had a leak between me seeing the flat and moving in. And it's screwed up the nice new paint work. And it's run into the bathroom light, making smoke billow from the lights in an alarming fashion. So we switched all the power off and took the lights off the ceiling, so it could all dry properly. And the inside of the light where the wires connected to it is all black and melty. Lovely. Since the ceiling is still wet, I'm thinking it's not entirely safe. Am now reduced to showering by torchlight, which isn't as easy as you'd think. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, by a real electrician, if I'm really lucky. At least the wires are taped up so it's now safe to shower. I hope. (If you never hear from me again, it wasn't safe to shower, and you should all learn a lesson from this. I'll leave it to you to decide what lesson - I personally favour "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" but you can pick your own. And if you know where that quote comes from without looking it up, you get a gold star.)

Photos of the new place will follow at some point when I have a proper internet connection. I'm currently sitting in the garden which is the only place that gets 3G internet, so the dongle works out here. It's bloody cold though, so updates will be strictly limited until inside internet is installed... My UK phone number works, for those of you who have it - if you don't, and think you should, email me. (And if you don't have my email address, you shouldn't have my phone number, so that solves that.)

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Further thoughts on commuting...

Much nicer when you have a seat! I had to stand all the way in today; not happy feet.

Going to look at a flat now - keep your fingers crossed for me; I think I actually want to live here! (Well, in as much as I want to live anywhere that isn't in Villefranche...)

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Finding a flat in Nice

I have had a request! (There are people who actually read this! I'm shocked!) I've been asked to explain how we found our flats - which is a good idea, and one I should have written about before. Thank you for the prompt, Martin.

The first flat, we found through Anglo-Info.com (on their rental properties board) -I recommend starting looking there, since it's one of the few places I've found that allow landlords and tenants to talk to each other directly, without having to go through an agent. Which means you avoid honoraires (agency charges) - normally a month's rent. It's also helpful if you don't speak a lot of French (and Anglo Info in general has some helpful articles on living in France, if you can wade through their crap website design.)

Another website to consider, particularly if your French is better, is De Particulier a Particulier - this is more use if you're in Paris, where they have lots of properties (we found at least one of our Paris flats through PAP), but they do have some properties in the Provinces...

The flat we currently live in, we rented through an agency - we'd been looking for flats in Villefranche since we first saw the place, and seloger.com came up with this one, along with the contact details for the agency managing it.

You will need quite a lot of pieces of paper to rent somewhere in France - as with most things in France, actually. Passport (or ID card), proof of income - you are supposed to only rent somewhere that costs 1/3 of your income, and agencies check - proof of your last address (be warned that agencies, particularly, may contact your old landlord for a reference). Probably some other things I'm forgetting, I'll add to this if I remember them...

Price - I've just noticed Martin particularly asked about prices. €550 a month is a cheap 1 bedroom flat in a fairly dodgy part of Nice; prices go up from there. Posh parts of Nice tend to be around €850-1000 a month - you should check whether charges are included (charges compris) or not. If they are, check what that actually means. Usually, it means water (and sometimes gas, if they're using gas) is included, but electricity is not, and taxes are not. But this varies - where we are now, all charges including electricity and taxes are included. So it's definitely worth checking.

Outside of Nice, prices vary. Villefranche is more expensive than Nice, possibly because there are less grubby bits. Monaco is shockingly expensive. If you can afford to live in Monaco, you probably don't need my advice, because you can afford to pay someone to do it all for you. Beausoleil is a slightly cheaper alternative to Monaco proper, but that's not saying a lot.

I'll add to this as I think of more things to say. Martin - and indeed, anyone else who is reading this - if there are specific questions you want me to answer, let me know either in the comments or by email...

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Moving house

We have a new and shiny flat. It has views like this from the bedroom and the terrace. (Which is big enough to eat dinner on. If you're in the area, give me a shout...)




Gratuitous shots of this evening in our new village - the largest noise problem we have in the new place is the sound of fishermen talking, and that clinking sound boats make at night, rocking in the small waves. (At least until the bar near us opens again for the summer - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)






And my new flat has 2 bedrooms, and the aforementioned terrace with a sea view, and a bath tub and a washing machine - and even a dishwasher. It's perfect, and I love it dearly. And it's all ours, now.

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Bugs

I find it oddly comforting, despite knowing it's just marketing, how much our insecticide and roach-killing-thingy emphasise their lethal power. The roach thingy doesn't just kill roaches, it destroys them. The spray we've got promises not only to make them come out of hiding (actually, that's the *last* thing I want!) but it threatens a "shock effect" that will stun them and kill them quickly. It will also warn off other bugs, as a helpful side effect.

Now, I'm not sure I believe any of it, but it's nice to know there are other people out there who clearly hate crawly bugs as much as I do, and make an industry out of killing them as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

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We have moved!

Success! We are installed in our new, cozy little flat which is fantastic. It has doors, and storage space and a giant telly, and loads of windows and plug points, and a lack of irritating theiving people right outside the window.

It doesn't have a balcony, though it does have giant windows in the living room and the bedroom, and it has a mezzanine with 2 single beds on it which is actually possibly usable (unlike the other flat, where it would have been a ludicrous idea, and not just because of the safety hazards...)

All in all, am tres pleased with this flat. Absent anything going horribly wrong (like the sink trying to kill me again, or something) I might even be willing to stay here!

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Officially unemployed!

OK, so, dissertation completed and handed in yesterday. Back in France where it hasn't rained, but looked like it might this morning - it's cool enough to wear jeans without dying now though, summer must be over!

Moving into a bigger flat in the same house this afternoon, which will be nice. An actual bedroom and everything. Awesome.

Photos today are from sunset on the plane last night. On the way over on Monday we had stunning views of the Alps, but my camera was in the overhead compartment, so couldn't get to it. Sunset last night was almost as pretty, though the pics aren't great...




Now I'm properly unemployed, and don't need to worry about any essay deadlines ever again, I'm going to get started on making some more chainmaille pieces, something nice and simple and easy. Or, at least, once we've moved over into the new flat. And unpacked again. It may be a while...

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A flat full of woe

Well, not really - now the flat has stopped trying to kill us, it's quite pleasant really. It's the neighbours that are the problem. We face onto a courtyard with flats on each side of us, and the people in there are *noisy*. On a level even I find difficult to live with. Skyrock is not my favourite radio station (rap is not my favourite accompaniment to dissertation writing, oddly) and the screaming, shouting arguments are getting old very, very quickly. The mad woman at the end who mutters about the English and throws her possessions off her balcony in fits of pique is, well, disturbing.

The last straw was sitting on our balcony watching our Skyrock-playing neighbour climbing from his balcony into the balcony of his next-door neighbour and go through everything left out there - bags, boxes, the fridge, everything - collecting things as he went. No idea if he was allowed to do so (one would think the whole climbing balcony to balcony bit would imply not) and I'm certainly not getting involved (he's the one with the screaming violent arguments). But it's making me a little uncomfortable about my own balcony and the accessibility of our flat. Big windows are nice, for letting light in - but they also let people in quite easily, too...

We went for dinner in Villefranche yesterday, and it's wonderful. Calm, quiet, small, old fishing village slightly modernised - the old town is like walking into a postcard, it's stunningly beautiful. And the water is crystal clear. Maybe we should move there...

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Flat fixed! (Fingers crossed...)

So far, so good. It's lunchtime and nothing has yet broken in my flat today...

Also, we have a new table and chairs on the balcony! Eating outside just got a lot easier! Plus I have chopping knives and a big saucepan and all kinds of useful things! (And a new état de lieu to go through and check we have everything they think we have...)

I've also downloaded articles from the Independent now, for 1988-1990. They used to write a lot more bluntly, back then, in their foreign news sections...

And I met one of my neighbours! Who is American (or Canadian, I can never tell the difference between the accents, major failing, I realise...) and very nice. And who appears to have lost a hoover. I didn't ask how, not least because her flat probably doesn't have any carpet in it, assuming it's the same as this one...

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Flat has beaten me...

Well, sort of - it's fighting back. The kitchen sink is still safe, thankfully, but it now doesn't drain. I'm almost sure this is because our electrician/builder/plumber/general everything man, when he taped it together, taped it at too tight an angle. He does, however, get a bit... tetchy... at people trying to fix things he's broken, so I am waiting for him to turn up to recitfy the situation, so I can do washing up and generally not have a fetid swap of dirty water in my kitchen. And the pipe is leaking again, so the tape didn't actually fix the problem at all, just made new ones. Awesome.

In more positive news, my balcony/terrasse gets full morning sunshine, so I can sit and read about securitisation *and* work on getting a tan. Chilled melon in the hot sunshine is divine (sadly, the pineapple/lime/mango Tropicana has all gone already). And I've written 700 words this morning, bringing my total so far up to 2000ish. Planning to do another 800 or so this afternoon, while it's too hot to go outside, and maybe a couple of hundred in the evening, after going to the beach. Tough life, isn't it?

The local English language radio station (not named, in case it triggers a Google alert for them) is... unique. The ads are hilarious - there's one that repeats frequently, asking if we can provide services (or hotels, bars, restaurants, pretty much anything new and shiny) to very high-profile VIPs, one that starts "for last minute work on your yacht..." and, my favourite, that I've only heard once and can't remember what exactly it was for, advertised services in English and Scandinavian. Scandinavia is obviously more politically integrated than I had heard.

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Success!

I have beaten the flat! Well, the electrician the landlady sent round seems to have done, at any rate. I can now have the washing machine going *and* the kitchen tap running, without nearly dying! (Given the length of time for a washing machine cycle, this is a good thing...)

The leaky pipe under the sink has also been fixed (is there anything duct tape can't do?) and hopefully later this afternoon, we will have a working telly and everything! Maybe even bathroom door handles - the luxury!

Dissertation not going so well - but we do have spare door keys now, and I managed food shopping. (Pineapple, mango and lime juice is divine. If Tropicana sell it near you, go buy some, now.) I'm going to go and read about securitisation now...

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My flat is still trying to kill me

And its efforts have intensified. It no longer just tries to electrocute me when the washing machine is on, but when anything electrical is on. This is... slightly challenging.

On the other hand, while I can't do any cooking (because I can't do any washing up), we can still go to the beach with beer and a takeaway pizza and watch the sun set - there are good reasons for us having moved here, murderous flat notwithstanding!

(For any of you who might be concerned - I am, enough for all of you, anyway - someone is coming to fix the wiring tomorrow. I will be happier if a proper electrician does it, mind, particularly since while I can use rubber gloves to do the washing up, a similar work-around is harder to find for the shower... But hopefully by tomorrow, I should be able to turn on the tap and put my hand in the water without getting electrocuted. Progress!)

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A flat!

We have a flat! I'm knackered now, have spent all afternoon cleaning, baby-sitting and supervising the construction of furniture, so this will be a mercifully short post - but we finally got our keys today. The below sort of gives you an indication of the actual readiness of our flat, though - for example, it electrocutes us whenever we turn on the kitchen tap. Not so totally useful...



That said, it will be lovely when it is finished properly! Lots of light, big windows, not as small as I had feared before the furniture got put in. Lacking a telly, internet, a phone line and a sink that isn't actively trying to kill me - but you can't have everything...

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A new, fiscally responsible me...

Most of you will be surprised - nay, even disbelieving - at today's title. But I am feeling very virtuous - rather than spend money in my usual profligate way, I have today cleared two of my credit cards. And I even have money left over to buy a travelcard (you can get a year's travelcard, with unlimited travel on buses, trams and who knows what else, for 150 euros! That impressed me, anyway...) and actual food and things. And meet the minimum payments on my remaining card. Go me!

Today's pictures of sunshine will follow when I get them off the camera and onto the computer. I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath...

(Oh, and we still don't have a flat. Tomorrow, we're told, again. I'm going to throw a screaming tantrum if it isn't really tomorrow.)

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Blue, wet, salty - I live by the sea

The sea is warm. And it has fish in it! (To everyone in Nice, and perhaps everyone reading this, this is probably like pointing out that water is wet. For someone who's just moved from Brighton, where neither warmth nor living sea creatures are at all a given, it's amazing!)

I have a new, purple hat, too, but the photos are upstairs, so you'll have to wait to see it. And I took some photos which might turn out well of Nice's old town this evening (while waiting - and waiting, and waiting... - for dinner. Crap service, nice scenery - almost balanced. But not quite.) But the colours were spectacular - not sure they'll come through properly on the photos...

Tomorrow we should (assuming it's been built) get the keys to our flat. Hopefully. Though that our landlady hasn't rung us to confirm is slightly concerning. We're also getting a bank account tomorrow afternoon, assuming the bank like us enough to allow us to pay them for the privilege.

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One step closer to getting a flat

We nearly have a flat to move into - we have a signed contract for a flat, and a letter box key. That's got to count for something (hopefully enough to navigate French banking and general bureaucracy. She says optimistically.) We will have keys to the flat by Thursday morning, we're assured - once they have, you know, finished building it. Builder swears he'll be out by Wednesday afternoon, all finished - I won't quite hold my breath...

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Pharmacists in Nice are better than Boots...

Lovely people, pharmacists. All sympathetic and soothing of my hypochondria - and I now have waterproof giant plasters (unfortunately not ones with cartoon characters on, for extra awesomeness) so I can even go swimming. And much pain - alcohol wipes for disinfecting things are *brutal*.

We're going to sign our contract today, so as of tomorrow when the builders supposedly finish, we should have a brand new flat! And we can get a bank account and register with the local council and all those good and sensible things we need to do before everyone goes on holiday at the beginning of August.

I haven't forgotten about the European Petanque Championships (Sweden has a petanque team; I bet you didn't know that. They won, too...) but this blog is all about me, and right now, my aching knee is the centre of my world. I had forgotten the grimness of the French police, too - walking back from the beach, they were chasing some poor guy, and started beating him up in front of the hotel. He might have done something to deserve it, but I somehow doubt anyone deserves that...

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