November 2023

So Blah, Blah, Blah to start with. Photos coming further on. You have been warned.

Sailing into the holidays thoroughly drenched. We left Scotland and its brutal storm Babet and lo and behold, we met another storm in Lille named Ciarán. It felt just like Scotland’s, so they must have been siblings. In Scotland it was hardest hitting in Aberdeen, north of Edinburgh. In France, the storm was hardest hitting in Brittany. Still, it was still festooned with wet, icy, brutal winds in Lille (in photo below we’re right between Paris And Brussels).

As a result, G and I celebrated his birthday inside. The planned café and croissant out in the morning, was transferred into me dashing around the corner to pick some up at our boulangerie. The movie out in the afternoon was completely skipped – he opted for a nap. Who says life isn’t fun over 70? The dinner reservation was canceled and a quick pasta dish filled in for our meal as we watched the heavy rain pelting the pavement below our windows. He was still showered with birthday cards and gifts all day – no storm was going to eliminate that!b

When we left in October for our Dublin/Scotland trip, we were at the end of colds but after enduring the travel and the inclement weather, we dived right back in to a relapse. Both of us shared being miserable on the couch, coughing and hacking, surrounded by tissues, cough drops and hot soup. We even put off starting our French tutor lessons for two weeks, in order to thoroughly get past it. We just don’t bounce anymore.

The second annoying issue revolved around our annual renewal of a Titre de Sejour. The residency card must be renewed every year but after 5 years, you can apply for a 10-year card. My appointment at the Prefecture was two days before G and you are not allowed to take anyone with you for the process. It’s rather like a DMV. For this, you walk to the front gate with proof of a set appointment on a text message) in order to gain access into the building. You walk directly inside to a 4 person reception booth and one of the people there will check your appointment and give you a number, on a slip of paper, a bit bigger than one you get from a supermarket meat counter. You continue on to a large waiting room, with lots of seats that face huge digital boards posting numbers to alert you as to when you are to go further, to a room equipped with a glass partitioned counter. At that counter, after you show your number and your identification, they give you the residency card you had applied for.

The Prefecture is also a bit like the Social Security Agency. They really don’t answer their phones or their emails or if they do, it’s a lengthy process to get through, netting much misinformation and the appointments they set have a long wait as well. Here, since you are barred from the building without proof of an appointment, one is unable to just show up to ask any questions. The notification that we received via text message regarding our cards, showed that the cards were the usual one year annual cards. We would have to wait until our appointment to ask anything regarding our 10-year application. Damn.

We conferred with our attorney, we got the list of forms he had submitted and we printed them out so that we would have back up for any questions regarding our applications. I practiced my French like an insanely driven basket case (OK, not a big stretch for me), petrified of fighting for a ten year card with no more than my extremely poor French skills, a load of documents that may or may not help, some misguided courage and well, maybe an extra cough drop or two.

I got into the building, got my number from the booth and got up to the counter when the time came. The card was indeed for just a year. I asked about my submitted 10-year application. The person at the counter could not access my file to see the status, could not answer any questions regarding the application, could not set another appointment for me to come back to meet with anyone else who could help. She directed me back to the ‘accueil’ – reception – where they issue the numbers. There I spent 45 minutes with a woman. As an aside, she was very nice, conversational in decent English and we got along very well even with my poor French. I learned that she was born and raised in France – even that she was schooled by nuns, but I digress. She first started insisting that I had not been granted the 10-year card because I had to pass a verbal and written French test. That I already knew was not the case and I argued calmly, stating that as incorrect (and why). Then after some back and forth (a fax machine got involved) she gave me a packet of forms to fill out and told me that I had the wrong status on my annual card. It said, “visiteur” which she explained was used for people in France temporarily. If I had that status, I could not get a 10-year card. Defeated, I bid her good day and I went home.

This is where G really kicks in. He investigated the entire batch of claims I came home with and determined that none of it was correct. He noted that our attorney had requested the Carte de résident de longue durée-UE (étranger en France depuis 5 ans), not the French Carte de Résident which had different requirements. He loaded his IPad with information from the government website addressing each point I’d been told, he printed out even more documentation from our immigration attorney and also boned up on his French language vocabulary that he expected to need. Two days later, he was allowed into the building for his appointment.

He had two problems to address. The first was receiving a 1-year versus the 10-year card. The second was the fact that they had listed his country of birth (on his last two annual cards) as ARE – the United Arab Emirates – not the USA and in the last two years they had not corrected this mistake. He got his number and when he got up to the counter, they told him (as they had me) that they couldn’t access his file regarding the 10-year application. The wrong country once again, was on the card they were giving him and THAT they could correct. They would send him another appointment date to come back to get the corrected card. That was the first hurdle and for me it was interesting to find that they could indeed schedule appointments.

Back to the accueil which issues the numbers, he asked for and got to meet with the woman who was so helpful with me. For the same answers that she had given me, he was able to supply contrary information directly from the government website, on his iPad. She referred him to another person, who after reviewing all that he had brought, left for 30 minutes before returning. This person said that all of the documentation for both of us was correctly done but they could not access the files to find the status of our 10-year card applications. They said that if we hadn’t heard anything in the next 6 months, to have our attorney send a registered letter requesting an update on the application. They are required by law to answer an attorney’s inquiry (unspoken – they don’t have to answer ours).

There you have it and yes, we have gone through the same exact frustrating dance with the Social Security Agency, in our previous times. If you’d ever seen the waiting room of the ‘after life’ in the movie Beetlejuice, you’d get the drift. I only hope that our attorney, whom we have used from the beginning – even before we arrived in France, doesn’t marry some hottie from the other side of the world and leave us. I would really hate to do this all over again with a new one. In fact gaining the 10-year card and skipping this annual torture would be utter heaven.

Past these two large issues and having recovered from our colds, we began our tutoring sessions again. We love our tutor, Émeline. She is a young vivacious woman (and mother) who makes our sessions challenging while keeping it light and fun. What would otherwise be something to dread, we look forward to being put to task and actually it instills confidence that we will eventually become comfortable with the language. We have moved past stuttering miserably, “Un café” to (more importantly) navigating service phone calls in (still admittedly) poor French. Just to be able to communicate the basics in deliveries and requests for repair, is nothing short of thrilling for me. I would say that I need to get out more but the last time I did, I came home with a cold. Rather pathetic, I know.

Before we knew it the month came to an end. We watched them erect the Christmas market and rides, we started to pull out our holiday decorations and we chose a restaurant in which to celebrate Thanksgiving. It isn’t difficult to make a reservation when no one else is clamoring to celebrate the US holiday. We’ve had very good ‘Thanksgiving’ meals in the past few years, being the only ones in the restaurant celebrating a holiday. We even got to watch the Macy’s Day Parade on television, which we are unabashedly fond of. For dinner this year we picked a place named SOlange, with a traditional, seasonally-based, gourmet French menu and we went with the two Americans, C&B, with whom we’ve become good friends. It was a fabulous meal (despite our pictures) and as always, the company was wonderful.

And, as is our habit, we spent the weekend decorating our home for the holidays.

G worked on putting up the window lights and the outside balcony lit boughs while I started baking. We’re giving everyone a box of assorted Christmas cookies because some of the American baking is too sweet for the French. Now that is rather interesting in light of the fact that they sell HUGE blobs of meringue during the holidays, which is extremely popular. When we saw them in the patisseries, a variety of pastels, lined up and stacked like firewood – we tried one. I thought my teeth would fall out from the incredible sweetness. It was akin to biting into a sugar cube. So to say that American cookies are too sweet, I just nod and keep my mouth shut. And I made sure to put 6 different kinds of cookies in our gifts. I can’t eat sweets myself but I enjoy baking and live vicariously by giving baked goods away.

There was an interesting aside – well to us if no one else – regarding looking for a suitable variety of cookie recipes. When we disbanded our storage in the US and brought over all our documents, along with it was a cookbook which we had made early on, for our family and friends. We were always broke when we started out and for the most part handmade our Christmas gifts. One year we came up with the idea to put together a cookbook with recipes from our family and friends. Everyone would see themselves and the other people who made up our lives, in the gift. We got small 3-ring binders on sale, I covered each with material from my sewing stash and I hand wrote all the recipes – some I illustrated as well. We got colored copy paper from G’s work that they were discarding and snuck in on the weekends to photocopy the pages. In all, we made 27 books. The cookbook had separated sections, starting with Appetizers and ending with Desserts. Everyone in our lives had a recipe of theirs in the book and it was flushed out with recipes duplicating our favorite meals from the neighborhood restaurants. When I went through an expanding file I keep of recipes for some cookie ideas, I pulled out the old cookbook and went through that as well.

As I went through each page, I revisited the friendships of the time and people we now miss. At that point I called G over to read the introduction that we’d written for the cookbooks and showed him the date – Christmas of 1989. The book was the last remaining thread to a time connected to a street with a hundred year old house that we renovated, along with a handful of neighbors doing the same to their places. Our first house with a smell so bad that the realtor wouldn’t step inside – she let us explore it alone. Ten years and a complete redo later, we moved on. The book brought so many memories back, reflected on each page. We couldn’t find a photo of the house when we bought it – the front window had a hole the size of a dinner plate, the brick was painted white and the front door was duct taped shut – no key. This first shot is after we sandblasted off the brick paint, replaced the front window, put on a proper wood door and a screen door. The second shot is after we’d torn off the roof and added a second story.

The interior shots are of the place before we touched it and then it’s finished renovation. This place had three layers of filthy carpet over four equally filthy layers of linoleum flooring. The interior doors couldn’t close because of the layers and the smell was compounded by a gas leak that we had to fix.

So, back to the cookbook. I weeded the book as I went through it because some recipes were very dated, some I would never make again and frankly some weren’t that good (but we did want everyone represented when we put it together). When I got done, there were only a handful of pages left that I was keeping and it didn’t make sense to keep the book. I moved the keepers to the expanding file and set the empty 3 ring binder next to the trash. It was a great trip back in time and when I finished, it made me email a few folks that I needed to check in with. Keeping up with friends is so much better than keeping the recipes.

Here we are, at the end of the month and we were ready to enjoy the next one. As is wont for G, here are a few photos of Lille’s environs. An old 1970’s Opal in immaculate condition and a window display of beach sands from areas of the world. How great is that!

We saw after we stuck this last photo in, that the doll on the right has the year we were married, stamped on the foot. Too funny !!